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Thunderf00t: The BEST emotional PORN
February 14, 2012 — xanthippaHe is right, of course!
In a similar vein…
People often justify ‘religion’ by saying that ‘it brings people comfort’. Quite aside from the validity of the justification, I am begining to doubt the truth of the statement.
Let me explain…
Many of my friends are religious – and yes, they do claim that their religious beliefs bring them ‘comfort’ and make them ‘feel better’. Not being religious myself, I have simply accepted this assertion at face value. While I never bought in to the claim that it is ‘good’ to promote/accept things simply because they make you ‘feel good’, I had never questioned the assertion itself.
Until, that is…
A friend of mine got hit by a truck while riding her motorcycle. She was really lucky – not only did she survive, thanks to medical advances, she did not loose the leg that was so badly injured in the crash.
This friend also happens to be deeply Catholic.
One day, her (then very pregnant) daughter and I visited her in the hospital. My friend had already had one surgery to screw the bones of her leg back together, but was still waiting for more surgeries, including the one that would use a skin graft to try to close some of the biggest wounds. (Sorry to go into this much detail – it goes to ‘state of mind’… My friend was hurting, afraid, and had almost died in a crash before her first grandchild was to be born.)
While we were putting on a brave pretense of lighearted banter to relieve my friend’s discomfort, a volunteer had come into her room. This woman offered to pray with us – which my friend and her daughter gladly accepted. At the end of the prayer, whe did some sort of a blessing and handed each of them a consecrated host. Both my friend and her daughter said they were greatly comforted, we thanked the woman, and she left.
The thing is – I don’t think that it did make them feel better!
No, I am not accusing them of lying – I think they truly believed they ‘felt better’. But their behaviour betrayed their actual state of mind.
Both their demeanours changed – for the worse. Instead of talking about how lucky my friend was, that she survived the crash, she was tearful, saying things like that since her soul has been cleansed, it would be OK for her to die now…which brought hysterical crying from her daughter, and then it spiralled downwards from there.
They were certainly not ‘feeling better’!
There was a disconnect between how they believed religion made them feel and how it actually did make them feel. Sure, it can make some people feel better at some times – but, we need to treat self-reporting in this area in the same way as we treat self-reporting in other fields…with a very healthy dose of skepticism.
By constantly focusing the mind on physical death and ‘fear of God’, ‘religion’ brings terror, not comfort, to the people who fall for it. And they don’t even realize it themselves…
Thunderf00t compares ‘religion’ to ‘spiritual masturbation’ – and I can certainly understand his point. But, having thought about it, I am wondering if it would not be more accurate to see ‘religion’ as ‘picking on a spiritual scab’: it is hard to stop doing it, even when you know it is bad for you!
Another example where copyright laws are being used to censor one’s critics
January 31, 2012 — xanthippaYes, ThunderF00t and William Lane Craig have some serious disagreements on the topic of science. And both have been speaking up on this topic on YouTube.
ThunferF00t is a bona-fide scientist, with the credentials to prove it.
William Lane Craig is a theologian, self-described philosopher and calls himself ‘Dr.’.
They got into a bit of a spat – ThunderF00t used clips of Craig’s videos in his rebuttal videos: this is perfectly legal and ‘protected se’ under the DMCA rules. Despite this, someone has, on behalf of Dr. Craig, filed false DMCA claims against ThunderF00t and others. (We know they know their claims are false because they have filed these DMCA notifications many times on the same groungs – even after being repeatedly told that this use is not a violation of their copyright – yet they continue filing…)
The purpose of these types of actions is clear: to force the filer’s critics to spend so much time and energy fighting against these false claims that they will not have the time and energy to criticize him.
The reason we must pay attention to this is because it demonstrates how laws already passed with the good intent to protect copyright are already being abused to stifle speech – and these laws are nowhere near as intrusive as the ailed SOPA bill was…and we all know that those promoting these tools of censorship will not stop. They will simply try to pass these types of laws more stealthily, a tiny increment at a time.
Constant vigilance!
Thunderf00t documenting DMCA abuse
January 26, 2012 — xanthippaIf things are like this under existing laws (DMCA), imagine the situation under SOPA or SOPA-like laws!
ThunderF00t: ‘The Stagnation of YouTube’
November 12, 2011 — xanthippaWhat he is describing is yet another application of the ‘Filter Bubble’:
Thoughts about ‘Anonymous’ and the #occupy protests
October 21, 2011 — xanthippaWhy is ‘Anonymous’ so much on my ‘radar’ now?
Couple of reasons…
They are, well, enigmatic… When a big company picks on little guys – and this appears on their radar – they kick but. Their aims are altruistic – perhaps idealistic – at least for now. And they are big-time fans of freedom of speech!
They are techies who are kicking some slick behinds – you have GOT to love that! (OK, I am indulging in a bit of tribalism here – even if the ‘tribe’ is diffuse and I don’t know them personally. I suspect that most of the people behind Anonymous are Aspies or have strong Aspie tendencies: they are, after all, techies. And I like to think that I am rather good at playing ‘spot the Aspie’. The rules they pick and the way they adhere to them: very Aspie-like…)
We are still full of the #occupy news….and Anonymous was there first. No, I don’t think that the majority of people who are there now are in any way connected to Anonymous, but, please, consider the following:
- before anything happened, Anonymous announced the protests and said to look for them there, on Wall St.
- when the occupation of Wall St. first started, there was an almost complete news blackout on it
- Anonymous had hacked into some local CCTV cameras and streamed the signal – that was, at the very beginning, the ONLY coverage of the event
- then, as time went on, the professional protesters and their media henchmen began to trickle in…and Anonymous disappeared from the picture…
- now, the protests are creatures of the professional protesters and the big money behind them – including semi-official backing by the US President and his minions, with absolutely no role played by Anonymous (that I can discern)
It is not a coincidence that the vast majority of the people protesting in the #occupy movement have no idea what they want to accomplish with this protest: it is not a ‘regular’ protest of the sort where people want to accomplish a specific goal, analyze the approaches to achieving this goal and then choose protesting as their tool. Rather, I suspect, this may have been a bit of an experiment…
…an experiment to see IF Anonymous can harness the power of the professional protest organizers when they need to – and to get an idea of how it would play out.
…an experiment to see how ‘neurotypicals’ (non-techies/non-Aspies) would react and behave, to gage their intelligence, initiative and individuality – or lack thereof in this type of a situation. How soon and how deeply would ‘mob mentallity’ set in?
…an experiment to see whether ‘if we build it, they will come’ would work with protests.
Recently, when an Islamist group doc-dropped/outed Thunderf00t and his family members and threatened them by urging ‘all Muslims to do their duty’ because he dares to criticize Islam (he criticizes all irrational belief systems – systematically and effectively), Thunderf00t dropped the name of Anonymous as his protectors….and potential avengers!
Which got me thinking: this is not the first time Thunderf00t has talked about Anonymous in his videos. So, I went back and looked through his earliest material. Here it is:
Interesting, is it not?
But there is more here, here, here, here (note the Guy Fawkes mask in the background) and here.
Not just in what Thunderf00t says – and how he says it, but also in how fascinated Anonymous is by Scientology. Remember how, a few years back, they tried to build some sort of a movement against that cult? I wonder if this is an indication of their fascination in how brainwashed neurotypical behave in groups … or the source of this fascination.
Don’t get me wrong – I do not think Anonymous has bad intentions. I rather suspect that they are attempting to figure out how to help neurotypicals help themselves from self-imposed servitude (if this was not a full fledged attempt of its own to get them to help themselves).
But experiments/projects can go wrong – and more people than just Anonymous are keenly watching this and taking notes.
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