cumbeard-the-pirate

[cumbeard-the-pirate]

Thoughts on the "spectrum" in the autism spectrum

anxiety means: a feeling of worry, nervousness, or unease about something with an uncertain outcome.

general anxiety disorder is: a disorder characterized by excessive or unrealistic anxiety about two or more aspects of life.

so then, anyone can have anxiety, and anyone can be anxious, but not everyone who has anxiety (or is anxious) has general anxiety disorder. The criteria put in place to describe GAD represent some cutoff or limit of sorts.

But you would not describe anxiety as a spectrum. Anxiety is better described as two on/off states: do you have anxiety (yes or no)? do you have GAD (yes or no)? In order to have GAD one must have anxiety, but not everyone with anxiety has GAD.

With this in mind, I think about the autism spectrum. The word spectrum here refers to the fact that a diagnosis of autism represents a wide range (a spectrum) of symptoms and behaviours.

That spectrum is inside the diagnosis of autism, as in, autistics are varied people with various strengths and weaknesses. This spectrum is not allistic-autistic.

A person either has autism or they do not (on/off). Someone can have traits or symptoms commonly associated with autism, such as repeditive behaviours (on/off), but not everyone with repeditive behaviours is autistic, and (because autism is a spectrum) not everyone with autism has repeditive behaviours.

[cumbeard-the-pirate]

you don’t hate winter, you hate living an atomized existence where you get up and go to your shitty job rather than sit inside under a fire with your kin telling stories, eating, and playing

[cumbeard-the-pirate]

sandwhich mum

okay so imagine this, your mum asks you if you want a sandwhich , and you do. She asks your dad to make one and comes in and the plate has like twenty teeny bite-size sandwhiches.

You go to take a bite of the first one and she says, "woah you gotta pay me first, thatll be $1". to which you reply, "but the sandwhich already exists, and nobody else wants it, and i need it to live" to which she replies "i took a big risk, what if i droppes my plate and had to replace it, what then? i deserve compensation for that".

Dumbfouded you reply, "but mum, catering is a right not a privellage, and also you didnt make this sandwhich dad did, he gave it to you and you just brought it to me, without dads work you wouldnt have a sandwhich to offer me, all you really did was intellectual work that, while valuable, shouldnt be worth more than my life."

anyway so landlords are cunts right?

[cumbeard-the-pirate]

the bed man

Imagine now, if you will, that a man stands above your bed. This man built your bed with his bare hands. He worked hard to build this bed and he wants money for it. He stands above youe bed and every night he demands $1. Some nights you dont have the money because life is hard and weird. He doesnt let you sleep in your bed, he forces you to sleep on the wooden floor, without a blanket. That man is a cunt, isnt he? His actions are unjustifyable.

The bed man is a landlord. Landlords are cunts. If you know a landlord, theyre a cunt. If you disagree, youre also a cunt.

[cumbeard-the-pirate]

[cumbeard-the-pirate]

fuck landlords

theyre all cunts, every single one. if someone in your family is a landlord - fuck them, and fuck you if you dont hate landlords. cunts.

[cumbeard-the-pirate]

Ebirah, horror of the deep

Okay, so to start with, heres my summary of the movie: Ebirah, a giant lobster, protects an island rich in uranium. Capitalist company / private army Red Bamboo go to the island to strip mine it for the aforementioned uranium. Red Bamboo trick Ebirah into not attacking them using chemicals. Red Bamboo enslaves the native population of the island to make said chemical. Godzilla shows up and fights Ebirah because Godzilla is a little shit in this movie. The human protagonists sabotage Red Bamboo, and the company is killed by Godzilla and Ebirah. Mothra shows up at the last second and saves all the slaves and the human protagonists.

Okay, so now the fun part. Ebirah is a mad comrade. Ebirah protects the island specifically because of the uranium, and the bad guys have to specifically fool her into not attacking them. Thats what Godzilla used to stand for, anti-nuclear and anti-capitalist. In this movie Godzilla isnt so much anti-Ebirah as she is anti-Monster. It had been a rough year, having lost to Ghidorah that is, so Godzilla was a little salty.

So now we have the giant lobster who hates nuclear power, we have the evil capitalists who want to make bombs, and then we get Mothra. She is an ex machina in this. The entire movie the human protagonists talk about her, but she doesnt show up until the last second. And when she does, it is specifically to free the slaves and carry them to saftey. The human protagonists are just lucky to be there too.

So weve got: Ebirah the environmentalist, Godzilla the anti-super power, and Mothra, the breaker of chains.

[cumbeard-the-pirate]

The cult of personality

I just went to an orientation day on my campus university. I spotted the World socialist web site group, sometimes called Workers united or some other sub-title like that.

I had met with this group previously and didnt like how they did things, so i thought it would be fun to pretend i didnt know much about socialism and see where it went.

All i got was pitch perfect reheresed speach about their great leader Marx and how his ideas apply now and how his ideas are better.

They also mentioned Lenon and Trotsky in a positive way, and also noted that Stalin was a big bad no good bully.

Now i tend to agree with all those statements, but i wouldnt say "lets save the world because Marx said so". I wouldn't defend Marx to the detriment of all other ideas.

They didnt even ask me if i knew who Marx was they just assumed i knew.

So strong is their faith in their god they exhibit the arrogance of a drunken 17 year old on his red P's.

[cumbeard-the-pirate]

Privelage and Cleaning Cars

I happened to realize today that car detailing for car rental is a great way to demonstrate privilege.

Lets say a car rental office has 10 cars on fleet. Every day 5 of them need to be cleaned.

If i clean my 5 today, the guy tomorrow can clean his 5, and the next guy can clean his 5 and so on. Nobody loses. Equal work.

If i only clean 4, the guy tomorrow has a choice. He can clean his 5, leaving 1 dirty, or he can do more work to clean the 6 that are dirty.

Now imagine instead of 5 cars you had to clean 20 a day, and i stole your kids and sent them to conversion camps...

yeah the analogy falls apart a little...

[cumbeard-the-pirate]

Being Fascist is lazy

What does the fascist do save bully and torture? Nothing! For the slaves (literal or otherwise) do all the work. The fascist sits about idly as things are handed to him.

Conservstives mock leftists of all kinds by provokingly suggesting we're all "lazy bums" who've "never worked a day in [our lives]". This is humours at best, but upon closer inspection, is actually an interesting notion.

The communist works hard for their rations. It is a commonly quoted "criticism" that a lazy communist doesnt get to eat. Well surley then the communist is the hardest working? "Nay" proclaims the conservative, "It is the capitalist who works hardest!" they suggest.

The anarchist works for the good of their community. Being lazy would be shameful. A criticism of anarchy, that it relies on publicly shaming, but oh wait... wouldn't the anarchist therefore work harder? "Never!" asserts the conservative, "They're all thugs and gangers" they suggest.

The libretarian works for money. They work to buy food and water and housing and clothes and fuel and all that just to work. They work and work and work, so surley theyre the hardest working? Well probably, because if they stop working the McPolice will hunt them down and charge them for the gas.

[cumbeard-the-pirate]

Herein a framework is described

Narrative

The narrative of politics and life, the intersection of worldview and culture. Narrative is comprised of several stories, and informs the way we interact with the world.

Story

Stories are discrete, several stories form our narrative, as do films in a series. A story will demonstrate many, but not all, components of literary works. It is not always relevant to explore each of these and so I have chosen a few below which I feel are important to explore in almost all stories.

Author

The writer of the narrative and the person in charge of each story. You are not necessarily the author of your own life.

Character

I define character as anything which acts on or with another character. For instance, using this framework, Luke Skywalker is just as much a character as is his Lightsaber.

Characterization

Is the way an author turns the objective reality of a character into the character as found in the story. For example Tom Cruise is quite small, but the characters he portrays are not, he has been characterized (in his films) as tall.

Themes

As in literary works, but so important as to deserve an honorable mention.

Priming

Coming from psychology, priming describes the use of a statement in order to alter the interpretation of future statements. For instance if I said the word “Tisane” is real and then ask you if the word “Tsained” was real how would you respond? Tisane is a tea or something I just googled “low frequency words” and it came up, Tsained is not real.

Framing

Framing occurs when priming and themes are used to change characterization. For example if we constantly prime “Feminazis” to be dumb and angry by presenting our own themes as superior it comes framing. In this way priming is a tool used to achieve framing. The result of this is that the character of Feminazi becomes more dumb and more angry, and therefore every character that associates with the Feminazi becomes, be association, more dumb and angry.

Bamboozles

If you are familiar with Egoism and Max Stirner a Bamboozle is essentially a spook as he describes it with a few changes.

A Bamboozle is essentially any socially constructed or “imaginary” character. Anything we cannot see but directly acts on the characters is a bamboozle.

An Example

First I will tell you a story, then I will go through and explore it using this framework.

“Last week my PC broke. I tried to fix it but failed. I had to take it to the shop.”

Put another way...

“Last week my PC broke (bamboozle). I tried to fix it but failed. I had to take it to the shop.”

Notice the addition of a bamboozle. That is because something broke my pc, I do not know what it was, probably time. In this story we do not know what broke my pc, making it a perfect example of what a bamboozle is.

“I” is the character which interacts with the computer, which is now characterized as “it”, but “I” fails. “I” does not interact with “failed” in this sentence, but “Failed” interacts with “I” in the following sentence, because the bamboozle that is failing means “I” had to take “it” to “the shop”.

Clear as mud? Good.

[cumbeard-the-pirate]

Living under the bridge

So you wish to become a master troll...

Pick your fight. Look for people who have indicated with their comment they already have a strong opinion on the matter. Only go after people whose opinions are particularity problematic. Make sure you have a clear idea of what you find problematic before you start trolling.

Do not get personal. The best way to troll is to make sure you never actually offend anyone, just piss them off.

Do not align yourself. Strawmen hunt in packs. If you align yourself with any type of group your target will be easily able to dismiss you as "just another crazy communist".

Leave as soon as possible. A little understood part of trolling is knowing when to leave. When you start you should set a goal and when achived leave immediatley. I usualy choose to derail the conversarion until it is so far removed i have to go back to read previous comments to remember what the fuck we were talking about. It is also important to leave if the target isnt taking the bait after one or two tries.

Protect yourself. I turned my fb account into a soc but you may wish to make a new email address and profile so you can troll away safley behind layers of lies and deception.

Now go out into the wild and annoy some racists.

[cumbeard-the-pirate]

The Equalizer

good movie, fun, but it has some problems.

a feminist analysis shows the movie falls to all the worst cliches. The one main female character has no real plot, a young woman who wants to go to collage but is roped into prostitution. Bet you've never hard that story before. So she gets beat up and Mr Hero Man goes to bash the pimp who did it. At the end of the movie our damsel ends up going to collage and thanks Hero Man. But her story doesnt develop for her own sake, the reason she gets beat up is simply to give Hero Man a reason to go on a pimp killing spree. At the end of the movie she goes to collage so Hero Man can feel good, as if all the people he killed meant something.

from a psychological perspective i noticed that Hero Man got more and more sadistic as the movie went on. At the start he kills some pimps quickly, save one, who he lets bleed out. The he shoots some more pimps. Then he uses a hammer to kill some petty theives. At the end he uses barbed wire and broken glass to massacre some gangsters. He guts them, hangs them, stabs their eyes. He electrocutes the big boss. As he goes on more and more he becomes this sick freak. At one point in the finale he uses barbed wire to choke a man to death and literally stares into the guys eyes as he bleads to death.

the movie also has some massive neoliberal politics, where cops are the good guys and gangsters are bad, even though most of the cops in the film are corrupt and work for the gangsters. throughout the film Hero Man saves a bunch of prostitutes and various people roped into the drug ring. But he never tries to fix the problem which causes people to get roped into it. He never uses the thoudands of dollars he finds to end poverty. He never tries to end police corruption. He just kills the gangsters and hopes that everything else solves itself.

Fun movie though, a lot of cool scenes. Id put it somewhere between Die Hard 2 and Die Hard 3.

[cumbeard-the-pirate]

Value and I’m Dead

I like the song I’m Dead by Duckwrth (no that is not a typo). I like this song, it means something to me. It evokes emotion, it is enjoyable  and is lovely to play in the background as I write this rant.

It occurs to me that I’m Dead has value to me. Not value in the sense that Marx writes about, not economic value. I have spotify premium, so I guess the value of this song is my monthly fee divided by the total number of songs on spotify... I suppose. But that’s not what I mean. I mean that if someone said to me “you can either listen to this song or do do X, Y or Z” I would weigh the song a certain way. 

To compare quickly with the type of value Marx talks about, simplified, value has a few different components: 1) the labour needed to produce the product, 2) the usefulness of the product,, and 3) the amount of money a person is willing to buy or sell the product for. Notice how none of these three things really cover what I am talking about? I am describing something more emotional, more subjective. 

It takes a long time to make a song. A lot of people had to work on it. Other than the writer and composer, the people who built the studio where it was recorded, the people who built my speakers, the people who built houses for those people and the people who grew food for... it goes on and on.

The song is not usful to me, it doesnt do anything real or tanigble. If i never heard the song again I would not die.

I would be willing to pay money for the song, but I dont know how much, not really. It wouldnt be until someone put a gun to my head and said "never hear the song again or pay $X" that I would really know.

The point of this rant is to explore value. Value means something. We need to think about it more.

[cumbeard-the-pirate]

How to win using “data”

Did you know that in Australia, using data collected over the past twenty years, it can be seen that five times more poor people catch the bus to work than ride their bike? Using the new bus fare system that could be almost $5 a day! That’s $35 a week and $140 a month! Imagine spending $1680 a year when they could just ride their bike! If you do not believe me look at this table that comes from the Australian Bureau of Statistics:

The poorest group have 17,061 people who catch the bus to work every day (on average) while only 3,402 ride their bike! What lazy bums! Can you see what I am doing? I bet you can... sort of. I have done a few different things here.

I made this table myself. I used the ABS tools to make this table to suit my own nefarious ends.

I only used two types of travel and two levels of income. The ABS has 17 methods of travel to work, I chose two at random. The ABS has seven (standard for Australian economic analysis) income levels, I chose the highest and lowest.

I also set out an arbitrary “cost of bus travel” which I chose at random, but which makes my argument sound much better than it really is. 

And one of the most insidious, but most powerful “fake data” tricks I used is... this is how these people are getting to work! I made it sound like these people are lazy, evil no-good bums, but this is how they get to work! The people catching the bus probably cant get to work by bike because it would take forever. In fact I know it would because I also made another table.

Would you look at that lovely table, where people who live 0km to 2.5km mostly walk to work, and people who live further than that catch the bus. Incredible. If only those people living 250km away from work would ride their bike instead of catching the bus! THE DEGENERATES! 

Additional: last night I had a discussion with someone who read my tables here and thought "who lives 250km or more from their work AND WALKS!?" But this proves my point even more, this is data directly from the ABS using their "microdata" tools, but what is happening is miners work in Perth but live in Sydney. They stay in on-site accomodation in Perth and literally walk to work, making it look like they walk 250km. Actually they walk less than 1km but this data is unable to differentiate "where your legal residence is" from "where you sleep".

[cumbeard-the-pirate]

Narrative and characters

In my rants here I have now got three characters: the right, the left and the nationalist. I would have had another character for the alt-right but in that rant chose not to characterise them, instead I focused on my own perception of their ideology, rather than my perception of their “character”... if that makes sense. 

It is interesting to me to think about when and why we use these characters in political discourse. The alt-right and the centrist have this idea that ANTIFA are violent thugs, and that the left is a weak beta soyboi cuck feminist. These two ideas contradict each other. This is why, as far as I can tell, the centrist and the alt-right refuses to turn ANTIFA into a character, the same way I refused to turn the alt-right into the alt-right until now. 

When I refused to characterise the alt-right it was because my rant was about how they are unable to empathise properly, I showed this by keeping them separate from myself, a “character” who can empathise, by not characterising them. I knew exactly what I was doing, I did it for a reason. And I think the centrist knows exactly what they are doing.

The narrative that the centrist tells is that they are rational (see my rant a few down called “critical thinking...?” for more on that bullshit) when you compare them to ANTIFA. So they cannot humanise ANTIFA, they cannot give ANTIFA any semblance of character other than being a violent evil group. 

The centrist turns the left into a weak cuck soiboi beta male feminist because that makes them embody everything bad about people. ANTIFA remains inhuman because the centrist needs ANTIFA to represent the worst parts of society. If your political opposition is a group of dumb weak people or a vague manifestation of violence it is pretty easy to appear “impartial, logical and rational”.

Notice I stopped mentioning the alt-right... think about what effect that had, I suddenly turned two evil groups with the same opinion into one group of “dumb people” (the centrist) and one group of vague bad ideas (the alt-right). It is much easier to argue against someone who only exists how you make them look. 

That is the narrative these people tell. They need to do this, because the left is strong, and ANTIFA is scary to them. The left represents ideas that these people cannot understand, so they need to be weak and dumb, and ANTIFA keep punching them, so that means ANTIFA has to stop being people and start being bad evil no good ideas. It is much easier to beat those in a fight.

[cumbeard-the-pirate]

The nationalist and the evil other

The nationalist thinks that mankind's greatest invention was the nation. The invisible border between “us” and “them”. The nationalist perceives their people, as defined by their nationality, to be better than all others. The nationalist thinks that we should close all borders, stop immigration and keep each culture “pure”.

These ideas are pretty fucking loaded, and the nationalist knows it, so when you ask them why, they have a few generic responses. The Jewish problem, the female problem and the great replacement. Yes, those are real things, and they are just as horrible as you think they are... actually probably more so.

I do not want to discuss them here because there is no reason to give such hateful and ridiculous ideas any attention other than to say they are fucking dumb. But, what I do want to discuss is why these are the go to arguments.

The nationalist needs to call on not one, but three international conspiracy theories, claiming that the Jews, feminists and the blacks are intentionally working together to kill western culture and more specifically, if you look at more “radical” nationalists, that these people want to kill all straight white cis- males!

What the fuck? Like what the actual fuck? I have no idea how to process that. The nationalist needs three international conspiracy theories to prove their idea makes sense. They need three of them. International conspiracy theories. Three of them. Conspiracy theories that claim most of the world hates white men. That is what they need to do in order for their ideas to make sense. 

In a token effort to appear impartial and fair I would like to discuss the “leftist conspiracy theory”. Now nobody really talks about this, but you’ll see why in a bit.

The leftist has this theory that giant corporations all around the world use their enormous economic power to force government into letting them do whatever they want.

The reason nobody brings this up is because it is objectively true. There you go, that is my attempt at being fair.