From the annoyingly-titled, “I’m a Developer. I Won’t Teach My Kids to Code, and Neither Should You.” ( ¿what savage puts a period in a headline? ), which, according to the page title, is also called “Teaching kids to code: I’m a developer and I think it doesn’t actually teach important skills.”, which is either to get extra SEO juice from different keywords or a hilariously incompetent mixup from modern newspapers too cheap to give a shit anymo’:

That is, of course, ridiculous. Coding is not the new literacy. While most parents are literate and know to read to their kids, most are not programmers and have no idea what kind of skills a programmer needs.

Programmer walks into a social issue & completely misunderstands history. Yes, most parents are literate — now. But during the boom o’ literature that led to the Industrial Revolution, most people weren’t. & those people who weren’t were @ a huge disadvantage.

Coding books for kids present coding as a set of problems with “correct” solutions.

& books aimed @ teaching kids literature present them stories with just 1 “correct” story, & the vast majority o’ literary schooling is still teaching kids the “right” way to write. Your school won’t give a shit how creative a rapper Ice Cube is: you write your term papers in ebonics & you’ll get marked down. I don’t see him bemoaning the fascism o’ language arts class. Maybe that’s ’cause, looking @ some o’ the style he uses, he probably hasn’t studied writing in a while…

And if your children can just master the syntax, they’ll be able to make things quickly and easily.

Hardly any learning material tries to get beginners to “master the syntax”. In fact, most hardly talk ’bout the syntax, which is a problem for those trying to learn, in-depth, how the language they’re using works in total, but works fine for those who just want to get things done to see how it feels like. That’s why they do it — it’s training wheels.

But that is not the way programming works.

Yes, & writing books doesn’t work by taking a crayon & writing inane nonsense, but that’s how most kids learn ’cause kids are kids & aren’t smart ’nough to program like true professional programmers. But if you get them used to computers & creating things on them, then it will make it easier for them get better @ it as their brains develop mo’.

Programming is messy. Programming is a mix of creativity and determination.

So is reading & writing, so I guess kids shouldn’t bother trying to learn those, either.

While both literature & programming involve creativity, you can’t just do whatever you want. It’s an objective fact that there are programs that simply won’t run. Typing out exactly what a book tells you to type out will get you closer to avoiding that than having a kid just type random buttons on a keyboard & hope it works. Similarly, being considered “literate” requires certain rules. If your kid just writes random letters that don’t spell any true words, they fail school & aren’t considered literate ’cause, just as a random jumble o’ code doesn’t give any useful info to the computer, jumbles o’ letters don’t communicate any useful info to other people, & communication is the only reason for words & programming.

Early in my career, I wrote some code to configure and run a group of remote servers. The code worked great. At least that’s what I thought until about 18 hours later, when my phone dinged in the middle of the night telling me a group of the servers had failed. Staggering from bed to my laptop, I ran the code again to replace the broken servers. Hours later, a different group failed.

“21-year-ol’ me didn’t just copy what a workbook said. ¿Why can’t these dumb 5-year-ol’s?”.

¿What does this prove other than that this writer isn’t good @ programming, but the demand vs. supply for programmers is good ’nough that his employers can’t rely entirely on great programmers? This sometimes happens to me, ’specially when it’s an unfamiliar system somebody else made; but I would ne’er pretend to myself that this process is better than actually knowing what’s wrong & figuring out how to fix things through logic & expertise, nor feel proud o’ my ability to fix my own fuck-ups.

There wasn’t a syntax problem.

But there would be if you hadn’t figured out the syntax yet. It’s also true that college literature students don’t usually fail their final ’cause they couldn’t figure out what the word “the” means in Shakespeare, but we still need to teach children that.

This guy says “early in my career”, not “when I was learning”, so this example is completely irrelevant. I can bet you that when he did 1st learn how to program, he had to learn syntax, ’cause last time I checked, programmers weren’t born knowing any programming language.

Coding is like that. Try something. See if it works. Try again.

Only a shitty programmer codes like that. Most programmers think a’least a li’l ’bout what the code will do before typing it ’cause they’re not monkeys bashing their fingers randomly on their keyboard. I’m sure Mozilla makes their programs by just typing random strings, compiling, & seeing what shit sticks. <Hmm… “error: ‘asfsdfsa’ does not name a type”. I guess I’d better type in some other sequence o’ letters & see if that will name a type. I’ll find 1 o’ those crafty fellows ’ventually>. As for syntax, having code with coherent ’nough syntax so that your code compiles is the minimum requirement, which is why those dumb books probably focus on that when teaching kids, just like how dumb reading books waste time teaching young kids something as easy & frivolous as the alphabet before teaching things they’ll truly need, like how to judge a sentence’s trustworthiness by the information not written ’bout.

If a problem was straightforward, it would be automated or at least solved with some open-source code.

¡Stupid Kindergartens! ¡Wasting our tax $ having kids write down all the letters in the alphabet when they should just have 5-year-ol’s run “npm i alphabet –save-dev” in the terminal!

If this guy had looked outside his window @ the real world he’d be surprised by how many straightforward things are not automated. Customer service isn’t quantum mechanics, but still hasn’t been automated. & open source code comes with caveats: it may only be available for other projects that are open source, may have slight incompatibilities with your project’s goals, or may just be badly made — which leads to the catch-22 problem that, in order to know whether the open source code does what it does well, you have to be knowledgeable ’nough to know what a good version o’ the code would be, & thus need to know how to make the good code, essentially. This is why people still “reinvent the wheel” so oft: it’s a great way to learn how wheels work so you know which wheels are good & which aren’t.

Finally, ’less you take the time to carefully check the open source code, it may contain security flaws or outright spyware — & may develop them after you 1st decide to use them if you upgrade the open source code without carefully checking the code ’gain, as had legit happened to WordPress plugins after they had secretly been bought by someone unscrupulous. This is why the npm leftpad controversy has caused npm to become a laughingstock by so many programmers: it’s oft simpler to code something yourself & be sure that the code is exactly as you want it than have to trust complete strangers.

All that’s left is the difficult task of creating something unique.

Which you can’t do till you figure out how to do the things everyone’s already done. That’s why John Cormack literally started by copying code out o’ magazines & running them on his own computer. That’s why Shakespeare started by translating already-written Latin texts. Indeed, read ’bout the history o’ Shakespeare’s learning & witness how much monotonous reciting & robotic copying & memorization he had to go through in that relatively conservative school he went to. Somehow he still figured out how to create well-beloved works ( technically not “unique”, since e’en the most renowned English writer copied other people ).

Also, his claim is disproven by his own example. Configuring & running remote servers isn’t e’en close to creating something unique. The vast majority o’ programmers are doing things already done ’cause the reality o’ the costs o’ using foreign code is different from the abstract ideal this programmer made up in his head.

Besides, as that emo story o’ the Bible, “Ecclesiastes”, & many emos hereafter have said: there’s nothing new under the sun, son.

There are no books that teach you how to solve a problem no one has seen before.

Which is why it’s a good thing none o’ these books offering to get kids started programming don’t promise to do that. ¿Have these books promised that your kid will be the next Linus Torvald? I haven’t seen those books myself.

Writing unique literature is also something you can’t learn from books, & yet many societies have somehow caused the literacy rate to jump from a tiny few elites to the majority by wasting their time teaching kids to robotically memorize the basic elements o’ writing so they could use that knowledge in creative ways when they are older.

The entire basis o’ his argument is, “These books don’t teach kids everything ’bout programming so they’re baby Donald Knuths, so clearly they are completely useless”. This programmer should learn what “Perfect solution fallacy” is.

One day, my son was concerned that a chair of his was wobbly. We looked at it and he helped me isolate the problem: One of the screws was loose. I found one of our many leftover hex wrenches and showed him how to screw it back in. After that, he was curious what would happen if he screwed the other way, which he did until the screw came out. We ended up taking the chair all the way apart and putting it back together a couple of times, often mismatching pieces, before he was satisfied the job was finished. Try something. See how it works. Try again.

“& now he’s already working for Google, so clearly this is better than all those dumb books”.

People did this kind o’ thing for centuries before programming e’en existed, which proves that this isn’t sufficient for learning programming @ all. You would think a’least 1 o’ the many mechanics working in the 1800s would’ve invented the kind o’ computers & software we have now centuries earlier, since apparently knowing how to unscrew screws is sufficient knowledge to become a programmer. That’s why I always put “I spent my whole day bonking pieces together till it closely resembled a chair” @ the top o’ my resume when applying to Microsoft & Nintendo. I have no idea why they’ve ne’er called me for an interview yet. Those books he complains ’bout, meanwhile, will a’least get someone a working program, e’en if it’s not impressive in the slightest, whereas this li’l adventure doesn’t lead to a working program @ all.

Of course, getting something working is just the first step of building software.

& the 1st step is necessary for any further steps, so you better make sure, ’bove all, that you can do it. & no ’mount o’ wobbly-chair sleuthing will help you if you can’t e’en write a program with correct ’nough syntax that the compiler or interpreter can understand it @ all.

The next step is to make code clear, reusable, and neat.

Many great programs, — far greater than this guy has probably come close to doing — from ’bout every game on the NES & SNES to Linux kernel code ( which is somehow the most secure kernel code, relied on by the vast majority o’ web servers, while using those dreaded gotos ), fail these 3 criteria. There has ne’er been any true scientific, empirical evidence that “clear, reusable, and neat” code is anything beyond subjective taste.

Once, early in my career, I wrote a feature and gave it to a senior developer for review. He took one look at my sloppy spacing, mismatched lines, and erratic naming conventions and just said, “Do it again.”

¿Anyone remember how this article was almost entirely him ranting ’bout how unimportant syntax is? But now “sloppy spacing, mismatches lines, and erratic naming conventions” are o’ huge importance. Clearly teaching kids a grounding in these basic things is a waste, then. I would love to know how learning ’bout why chairs wobble would solve this problem.

The syntax was valid. It was still wrong. Good coders don’t just get something to work. They want it to be good.

Which books can’t teach you, ’cause spacing & keeping lines matching is too complicated to teach, e’en though these are subjects that can have specific, consistent answers ( e’en if people may disagree on which answers are best ). Indeed, if this writer is a professional programmer, he should know that companies have documents that specifically delineate the rules they demand you follow, like Google’s Style Guides.

He goes on to reiterate that real programming is hard — which is no different from real writing, & so goes gainst his claim that being literate in programming is completely different from being literate in human languages. This is ’cause it’s not: both are just writing. The only difference is that traditional literature is aimed @ only humans, while computer programming is aimed @ computers, which think in much mo’ radically different ways from humans. & that’s the point those who make the comparison: that just as it’s vitally important that humans be able to communicate with other humans through writing to thrive in modern society, as computers become mo’ & mo’ prevalent, it becomes mo’ & mo’ important to develop the ability to communicate with them, & those who do ’head o’ the rest may have advantages o’er those who don’t.

He continues with ’nother irrelevant example o’ showing his son how to bake cookies, & claiming that it, too, teaches his son how to program better than books that aim @ teaching programming, e’en though it teaches general skills he would probably already learn in a million o’ other places & is not sufficient for learning programming — which is why all chefs can’t also make iPhone apps.

He then ends the article with the kind o’ flowery poetic bullshit ’bout how having a “blatantly employable skill” isn’t important that only a ditsy upper-middle-class parent who’s rich ’nough that they’ll ne’er have to worry ’bout their kid being able to get a job when they grow up would write. Parents who can’t afford to keep paying for their children into their 20s or who can’t afford to game on the small chance that their child will whimsy themselves into their dream job may want to stick with the solutions that actually has empirical evidence ’hind it & make sure their children are well educated in matters that will make them employable, & thus able to keep themselves ’live when their parents are no longer ’live, as well as maybe their own kids, which will require mo’ money — money the vast majority o’ people get by being employable. When they’re doing that, they can also work on becoming creative, & use those boring ordinary skills they learned as the backbone to their creativity, since it’s actually quite hard to think ’bout things in new ways when you don’t e’en know what things are ol’. If the ditz who spewed this nonsense had read a biography o’ just ’bout any great creator they’d know that almost all o’ them, while they may have done wacky, fun experiments with wobbling chairs, also spent a significant ’mount o’ their time when young sitting the fuck down & learning fundamentals.

If this article has shown anything, it shows that most people aren’t quite as literate as popularly thought. You could say this article’s syntax was “valid” ’nough that I can identify it as English that says something, but it’s not good: its central point isn’t backed by most o’ the arguments he makes, — &, in fact, some o’ his arguments contradict his main point — & some o’ his examples are so irrelevant they verge on nonsequitor; his grammar is full o’ choppy small sentences that he doesn’t e’en try to tie together, which adds to the rambling feeling o’ this article; & for someone who emphasizes uniqueness & creativity, he’s just spewing the kind o’ empty bourgie philosophy millions o’ others have already done before just to cast the appearance o’ depth onto others without putting in the mental effort to actually say anything profound ( or e’en coherent ). Like this writer’s programming interviewer, if he had turned this in to any writing professor, they would simply say, “Do it again”.

& yet this is apparently good ’nough for Slate, & Mozilla thought this was good ’nough to show me in their amazing Pocket ads recommendations. Well, I say if all these fucking idiots on these braindead glorified blogs can rape something as important as literature every day, let your fucking kid make whatever sloppy code they want. Web developers make, on average, 50K a year; & I can say with personal experience that they have virtually no standards, as evidenced by the aforementioned npm leftpad scandal & the existence o’ JavaScript & PHP.

This writer’s central problem, in addition to being bad @ writing, is that he can’t comprehend the very basic idea that the people comparing learning coding to learning how to read are making. They’re not saying every kid should become a professional programmer any mo’ than schools teach kids how to read so they’ll all become professional writers or teach kids math so they’ll all become mathematicians. E’en when almost every kid in developed countries learn these 2 subjects, they usually are far too bad @ them to excel — as proven by this guy who obviously learned how to read & write when he was young, e’en though he ne’er became an accomplished writer ( though for some reason he thought that he could be one ).

’Course, there was a time when everyone who learned how to read & write were a minority o’ upper-class scribes & everyone considered learning to become literate useless for petty workers. Then society changes, as it tends to do. ¿How does this writer know that only professional programmers will be programing in the future? So many other professions are already invaded by technology that is becoming e’er mo’ complicated so that their users have to give e’er mo’ complex instructions that creep close to being like programming in the need for infinite options for creatives. Already professional artists learn how to program macros when working in Photoshop, many writers & accountants use regular expressions for complex search & replace, & many people on social media run into short snippets o’ HTML & CSS all the time. Someone I work with knows nothing ’bout programming, but knows ’bout “hex” color codes used for describing colors on the internet, though they don’t know what “hex” means.

Meanwhile, the ideal o’ only a few programmers making tools for everyone else to use is showing its weaknesses. The internet is slow & annoying ’cause too many people who need websites have the delusion that they can make 1 without programming & ’stead just get junk like Wix & its ilk spew out. There are too many examples o’ computer software that’s s’posed to make things easier for people breaking & spewing out error messages that only a programmer could understand, which just feeds the need for customer service. It’d be like a world where customers had to call for instructions in every place where we usually use written words — from instructions to setting up everything to knowing the ingredients o’ a food product — ’cause they ne’er bothered to learn how to read.

This writer himself demonstrates a complete hypocrisy himself in his regard: he claims that programming is too hard for the majority o’ plebs to do, & that they would be better off not trying, but has no trouble trying writing, e’en though people mo’ literate than him could tell him that he’s not good @ it. While we rightfully understand that writing & reading skills aren’t binary: we expect everyone to have a baseline level to be able to function in modern society, but only expect the highest skills in brilliant writers, this writer & many others treat programming as if you either can do it or not — e’en though the fact that this programmer apparently spent most o’ his time with remote servers ’stead o’, say, programming for NASA shows that there are clearly programmers superior than he is.

This doesn’t fit utility, as the demand for programmers is still quite high, & mostly for endeavors that don’t need the best programmers — which is, ’course, why so many people are jumping on the bandwagon, & why so many publishers are pumping out books to feed that demand. Businesses pay mo’ for programmers ’cause they can’t get ’nough for their needs. People realize that & aim for that career path so that they can make mo’ money. Thus, mo’ people want works or services that help them accomplish that goal. It’s possible this may change in the future; but it doesn’t seem like computers o’ anything is just a temporary fad. People who see that computer skills will be mo’ useful to society in the future, & thus the sentiment that mo’ people should aim for getting those skills is just being rational & useful for society. Just throwing caution to the wind & hoping someone will pay you simply for having curiosity is utterly irrational & irresponsible, & only works if you’re privileged ’nough to have people they can sponge off or scam.

Notably, the only biographies I’ve read where someone succeeded without working hard to learn tedious fundamentals when young were people who were essentially con men, like Steve Jobs¹. Those are usually the people who like the spin the bullshit that these small whimsical stories are what got them successful ’cause they can’t talk ’bout what truly made them successful, since it would out them as a con man, & can’t use examples o’ actual technical knowledge, since it’s too easy to prove that these people don’t have technical skills. Thus someone like Steve Jobs would try to tell you that knowing some arcane, pseudoscientific inner knowledge is mo’ useful for something like programming ( which, Jobs, who forgot multiple times that computers need fans to keep them from o’erheating & dying, obviously couldn’t do ).

Interestingly, 1 o’ the aspects o’ being literate that schools teach you is what they call “critical reading comprehension” so you can read works & analyze what they call “authorial intent” & underlying meaning. Part o’ that includes, what they don’t call, seeing the bullshit ’hind writing. The fairy tale o’ the person who became a brilliant creator by learning not to put the cookie cutter in the middle o’ the dough is 1 o’ those. The fact that it isn’t based on any proof @ all, but just the author asserting that it is so based on logical fallacies so obvious e’en a dimwitted blogger could point them out is solved thanks to Americans’ habit o’ slobbering subservience to privileged figures, whether it’s some Silicon Valley mogul or some famous online newspaper like Slate.

Thus, why Mozilla, an organization s’posedly dedicated ’nough to fighting fake news that they show pop ups ’bout it whenever I open Firefox, decided to throw in my face an article without any science or evidence @ all, but not, say, the many scientific studies that exist. Maybe that’s good: maybe science should only be kept for the professional scientists & we plebs should just get by with quirky stories o’ being curious ’bout wobbly chairs.

But Mozilla will get their effigy in my next editorial…

Death is in the air this rainy March, but the march must keep marching, & e’er mo’ verses must be added to the death death devil devil devil evil evil songs so long as there are balloons left unpopped.

We can thank Mozilla’s new Pocket integration that pops up every time I open a new tab — a development that has predictably led open-source dorks gnash their teeth in horror @ the coming capitalist consumption o’ their ol’-fashioned villages ( presumably built in Perl ) in the name o’ Efficiency. Since this “efficiency” includes wacky articles from The New York Times, or as it should be called now, “The New York Buzzfeed”, ’bout babies playing with their food, or a bunch o’ basketball stories, — since I am clearly an avid fan o’ basketball — including 1 ’bout Obama getting a jersey ( that’s racist, guys: the only gift he gets from me is an X Ambassadors album in all their milky-white glory ), or shit from the billionth knock-off o’ Lifehacker, “Two Cents Lifehacker”, whose name e’en spells out how cheap they are, I shall join these modern-day Jacobins in ranting ’bout it uselessly on the internet — just like authentic modern-day leftists — & snorting @ those who don’t use emacs or vim, ’cept I won’t do the latter, ’cause emacs & vim are pains in the ass.

This article is “15 Morning Habits to Boost Your Creativity All Day”, by what must be the millionth Buzzfeed ripoff I’ve stumbled ’pon in this new form o’ the internet as the digital equivalent o’ all those magazines you get in the mail that you ne’er signed up for & just end up filling corners o’ your house ’cause you’re too lazy to put them in the recycling, Brit+co. You know they’re hip, ’cause they use a nonstandard top-level domain, & not in a way that gives information ’bout what type o’ website it is, as per the original purpose.

As for the article itself, it shows a striking but common example o’ having no self-awareness & an ironic misunderstanding o’ what the word “creative” means. The whole idea ’hind “creative” is that there are no patterns ’hind it. Once you find a pattern ’hind something, it ceases to become creative. That’s what makes creativity so hard & so amazing — so amazing ’cause it’s so hard, ’cause you can’t just learn it in an inane listicle. You simply will not become an atom mo’ creative by following this listicle’s tyrannical rules; in fact, you’re highly likely to become uncreative by simply following an external pattern without the self-found passion for it that makes inspiration from others work — making the inspiration one’s own ( as opposed to the common fallacy that simply copying elements o’ an actually good work o’ art without remaking those elements is “creative” — the difference ’tween, say, James Joyce & Ctrl-Alt-Del ).

We start with a paragraph ’bout early-rises being “mo’ productive”, ’cause nothing makes you artsier than becoming an assembly-line-style arm o’ the machine who is “productive”. ( Presumably, “productive” is the same as the simple-minded mainstream economics version: making a lot o’ stuff, regardless o’ quality. That a reader may not want a lot o’ low-quality stuff — that having a lot only adds to the burden o’ using it by making them put in mo’ time — is beyond the imagination o’ these “professional” writers & this worshippers o’ the god o’ Economics 101 ). After that there’s a short sentence ’bout alarm clocks just so the writer could give ’nother incestuous link to ’nother riveting Brit+co article ’bout our relationship with alarm clocks. Call me a filthy liberal, but I think what sex positions people have with their alarm clocks is their own business.

We feel you on the whole

This article provides its own evidence for my sexual harassment case gainst them.

…but we all have to begin the day eventually.

Actually, it is physically possible to sleep all day. & if I’m going to wake up ’ventually, ¿why does it matter when I do it?

This article ties in the subject o’ being a lazy asshole who doesn’t get out o’ bed & writing the next Stephen King ( he’s the only human being whose entire DNA & biological systems are written entirely in English — a 100% fact ) by claiming they have morning routines for “maximum inspiration”. ¿How do we scientifically measure this purported maximum? ¿What unit do we use to measure inspiration?

I wish other superstitious elements made themselves this “scientific”, since nothing fits media made for escapism & going beyond tedious reality than tying it to tools refined for measuring tedious reality, nothing mo’. ¿Wouldn’t churches be better if they mathematically measured people’s “spiritual points” like RPGs? I wonder what the threshold for spiritual points would be ’tween the maximum & minimum o’ holiness that decides whether you get sent to heaven or hell. I know whenever I eat, I always measure its “zestium” count to see where that meal lies on the line ’tween maximum & minimum o’ zestiness.

They derived these morning routines by “consulting” with “creatives” & “lifestyle experts”. I’d love to know what official degrees they have — surely from regionally accredited universities. “Lifestyleology” is, I’m sure, a science right up there with molecular chemistry in terms o’ scientific rigor.

We dare you to hit snooze once you start giving them a shot!

There are so many better ways to keep you from hitting the snooze button. Here’s a couple off the scalp:

• Take drugs.
• Realize that unlike these yuppie idiots, you have a job, & if you come in late your ass will be fired & you’ll be dying o’ hypothermia in the rainy streets.
• Become an authentically devout follower to a religion strict ’nough that it teaches you you’ll burn in agony for eternity if you don’t get up in the morning every day.

I dare you to hit snooze once you live in pants-wetting fear that an angry deity will disintegrate you with a righteous thunderbolt if you do.

1. Engage in a moving meditation

The obvious choice: good ol’ fashioned western bourgeois alternate spirituality woo. Just make sure you carefully measure your “ki” so that it reaches your maximum potential.

Your morning routine is more than just the process that takes you from bedhead to beautiful.

¿When did making me creative become making me sexy?

Make the most of it by doing some mindful multitasking.

I love how these listicles can’t decide whether multitasking is “very important” or the ultimate danger o’ modern society — probably ’cause they’re torn ’tween mindlessly lapping up anything modern & being alternative, which oft becomes a form o’ quaint hipsterism as fast as some bearded twerp on accoustic guitar.

This article then quotes an assertion by a “leadership expert”, an expertise tested through the extremely rigorous course o’ him putting that title on his website.

Let your thoughts and awareness move to the people and things in your life that you’re grateful for.”

Secular prayer: the irrationality o’ religion, but without the flavor ( or e’en half the philosophical depth — which says something ). This is the store-brand version o’ the Abrahamic religions. If you’re going to buy unhealthy candy, you should a’least make sure it tastes good; otherwise, ¿why eat it @ all?

2.Shower.

In all likelihood, a shower is part of your morning routine anyway, but if you start thinking of it as part of your creative process, you may find your whole day transformed!

So, the advice isn’t “shower”, which, as the writer points out, is something normal people do, anyway, but “shower, but in a magical way”. ¿Wouldn’t this work for anything else?

• “But if you start thinking o’ driving as part o’ your creative process…”
• “But if you start thinking o’ clipping your toenails as part o’ your creative process…”
• “But if you start thinking o’ petting your cat as part o’ your creative process…”

This article is such a fucking fraud that it has the audacity to say, essentially, “1 way you can become mo’ creative is to become mo’ creative while showering”.

Certain studies have even shown that a morning shower can spark creativity.

These “certain studies” are apparently just ’nother article by Brit+co, since we all know Brit+co is a peer-reviewed journal.

3. Avoid social media

¡Ha, ha! I agree: I’ve been going round reading all this clickbait shit, like Brit+co, & I haven’t written anything new in years.

We know, we know — people are always suggesting that taking a break from social media can be the solution to, well, everything.

But by this point you should’ve recognized that none o’ their advice on creativity has been creative.

“By forcing myself to keep my phone charging in a different room overnight, when I wake up in the morning, I’m alone with my own thoughts,” explains certified financial coach and entrepreneur[—]

Fuck off with that shit. ¿“Certified” by who? ¿By her friends who gave her that “Best Financial Coach & Entrepreneur” mug for her birthday?

I’m noticing that the general pattern o’ this advice is, “isolating yourself like someone in solitary confinement is the key to high creativity”.

4. Listen to your vision board

“Don’t waste money on name-brand Ouija boards”.

No, the actual advice is that you should talk to yourself like a maniac. Finally we’re getting close to the actual key to creativity ( a’least in being a writer ) — madness.

5. Don’t check your email

I agree ’gain: don’t talk to anyone e’er. That’s how the government gets to spying on your porn cache. Tell those feds to buy their own porn.

When you check your email early in the day, you end up planning the next few hours based on what other people want and need.

¡Don’t let that email from your mother telling you that your father’s on his death bed get in the way o’ your creative process! Nothing is mo’ disgusting than other people wanting things. ¿Don’t they realize that I am all that’s important & great?

[ some trite advice & vapid secular spiritual woo… ] encourages entrepreneur and mastermind leader [ name redacted ] [ emphasis mine ].

I always take creativity advice from supervillains with a thirst for world domination.

6. Take a walk

Nobody’s e’er thought o’ this vibrant idea, so I’m glad they told me ’bout it. “Hey, ¿have you e’er heard o’ this walking thing? ¡It’s the best! You do it with your feet. Here: this is how you do it”. CLOMP CLOMP CLOMP.

7. Pay attention to your dreams

I can’t: I’m too busy sleeping.

Writer and certified dream expert [ name redacted ] reminds us… [ emphasis mine ]

…that she is a god damn quack & we don’t need to take seriously anything she peddles. Clearly Brit+co has far different standards for what counts as “certified” than I normally do, but maybe I’m the one who’s wrong. From now on my official title is “certified web content critic”. “‘Blog posts that simply regurgitate quotes from random people with made-up titles without any objective evidence, as if these randos have any intellectual authority in the slightest, is insulting to readers’ intelligece’, says certified web content critic, J. J. W. Mezun”. See, I can do it, too, assholes.

8. Meditate

¡That was the 1st routine! ¡We’re not e’en halfway through your random # 15 & you’re so creatively vacant that you couldn’t make it that far without repeating yourself! ¡Shame!

9. Practice morning pages

That’s so vague, I don’t e’en know what that is.

Curious?

These half-assed literary attempts @ libido teases would be better if they promised authentic porn, not mo’ cliché phrases out o’ Middle Class Dick’s Almanac o’ “wisdom”.

Set your alarm 20 minutes earlier than absolutely necessary…

That’s some zen shit there: ¿What is 20 less than the smallest #? Any programmer knows the obvious answer: 19 less than the maximum. So set your clock for 11:40 PM ( the very 1st second & millsecond, ’course ). ¡Your 3rd-grade math morning practice pages couldn’t stymie me!

“It can be boring, trivial, or complaining. The point of this is that you clear all the mundane stuff out of your mind, clearing the way for creativity and creative thoughts.”

Spoiler: this doesn’t work.

10. Enjoy some quiet

I’m already enjoying this Engrish sentence.

I don’t enjoy that this is a copy o’… pretty much all the other advice. It’s all just “don’t think anymo’”.

I take back what I said before ’bout this being store-brand Abrahamic religion: this is store-brand Buddhism, but only the small shred that the average inane Westerner who calls themselves “Buddhist” ’cause it’s hip with the bees actually knows.

11. Peel oranges. We bet you didn’t see this one coming!

Also, in Buddhism’s defense, it doesn’t have lol-random bullshit, either.

[B]ut now that we understand why a little morning citrus can be a creativity lifesaver…

¿& what “certain studies” have you learned that from? ( ¿Is it the popular fallacy that Vitamin-C prevents colds? )

According to [ name redacted ] — head of creativity for mindful innovation firm [ name redacted ] and former head of creativity and innovation for Gap, Inc. — oranges stimulate many of your senses.

This is ’nother thing that could be replaced with any other thing.

“According to J. J. W. Mezun — head o’ proletarian interactive gaming coverage repository The Mezunian and former head o’ imagination & word-processing for Pixelated Pestilence — the moon stimulates many of your senses”.

12. Ease into the day

You kept berating me for being slow to wake up; now I’m going too fast. ¡I’ll ne’er live up to your unreasonable expectations!

“A morning habit won’t inspire creativity if it feels like another item on a never-ending to-do list”.

E’en though that’s exactly what this is.

“That’s why my first morning habit is to not put pressure on myself to have any habits for the first 90 minutes of the day.”

¿Do any o’ you fuckers have actual jobs? No wonder you have no time to put any quality into your writer & maybe rise ’bove below-minimum-wage blog-post slave when you spend an hour & a half o’ your precious time every day sitting & communing with the great Energy Spirit.

[ The rest was mo’ metatative woo, so Mezun fell asleep ].

I Must Know the Identity of This Woman Who Brought an iMac on a Train

Actually, I’m not sure if this is satirical, so it very well may be a kind o’ The Onion. The 1 comment seems to make fun o’ the “controversy”. That’s The Onion problem, after all: news is so ridiculous, it’s impossible to tell genuine from parody.

What I do know is that looking @ the tweet page itself I saw numerous news agency asking the guy for permission to use the photo in their paper. & then I just thought o’ all the much mo’ important stories they could be talking ’bout ‘stead… Hmm…

¿You know what I love when looking up info on how to use SSH? Some artsy douche trying to defend their liberal-guilt love for o’erpriced brand computers made by monopolistic corporations by spewing pseudoscientific sociology. E’en better when they depict themselves as a Powerpuff Girl with Jimmy Neutron hair.

This writer starts by talking ’bout screaming @ open source software being a part o’ “the partriarchy”, which is the kind o’ o’erpretentious word for something as simple as “sexism” that builds the butter for ad hominem arguments by sexists to mock me for actually being able to read statistics. See, this is why I can’t stand dumb leftists: with rightwingers, I get to be the 1 laughing; but now this idiot’s making me look bad in association.

I mean, they actually end their bio with, “I keep myself sane through African dance and wandering around NYC documenting daily life”. That’s a parody, ¿right? That’s the kind o’ leftist that leftists make fun o’, ’cause they usually only read ’bout them in Mallard Fillmore. “I keep myself from wallowing in self pity by appropriating the culture o’ people far worse off than me & wandering expensive cities creepily spying on people who do actual work”.

That’s right, fucker: I have Social Justice Magic, too — & my spells are stronger. I got the rat’s tail.

Anyway, this person strangely singles out open source software for being part o’ the patriarchy sexist not ’cause o’ Eric S. Raymond’s involvement, but ’cause you have to spend a lot o’ time to figure it out — which is probably ’cause the people who made them aren’t privileged ’nough, not being paid & all, to add all those usability touches. So, basically, they’re unemployed losers. That’s true — but not the ultimate in privilege. I would also add that it’s ironic that this person complains ’bout other people having too much time on their hands when this working-class hero mentioned in their bio, as we read earlier, wasting copious ’mounts o’ time wandering expensive cities screwing round. While I agree that most open-source-software creators are probably quite rich & well-off, I’d say they’re probably less privileged than this rich, urbanite idiot who gets paid to complain ’bout how they’re too dumb & lazy to do actual work.

’Course, it might be that software in general is sexist — & ’specially bigoted gainst poor people. That should be obvious: as it turns out, it is harder for poor people to work with expensive electronics that they can’t get access to ’cause they’re, well, poor, e’en if the software the exists on that hardware they can’t get is free — provided they can get internet access to download it. This writer e’en could’ve pointed out that, technically, Linux is no cheaper than Windows ’cause hardware that comes packed with Windows is cheaper than any hardware you can get without an operating system or with Linux preinstalled, thanks to the economic magic o’ monopolies. Linux fans, not being bitter ol’ bearded men @ all, lovingly call this the “Microsoft Tax”. I approve o’ this term not ’cause I care that much ’bout OS politics, but for plain politics: it’s a rarely-acknowledged existence o’ a tax that exists without government intervention @ all — well, ’cept for that huge government intervention known as “private property”.

But we’re digressing. Anyway, if this writer were to acknowledge this, they would have to acknowledge Windows as the winner, not shiny ol’ Apple — &, indeed, Windows is still the most popular OS &, as someone who actually doesn’t live in fancy cities & who actually has met working class people once in his life, I happen to know that that is the go-to OS for working class people. So far the only people I’ve met who use Macs are upper-class people — though oft the kind, like this writer, who likes to pretend they’re lower-class without having to bear the actual negative consequences o’ that class.

If this writer had any self-awareness, they’d realize that they are immensely privileged themselves simply for the fact that they get to work with computers @ all & not, say, have to worry ’bout getting their arm cut off from the sewing machine they have to use 16 hours a day. I might e’en, as admittedly presumptuous as it may be o’ me, try to argue that I, as a 1st-worlder in a comfy home, having recently had the fun o’ dicking round with great open-source program designs as SSH & command lines in general a few months after leaving a job where I worked 16 hours a day in drudge work, can say that fiddling with computers is still a blast in comparison. I might, as rash as it may be, go far ’nough to inquire this person as to how positive they’d find the proposition that they trade in their burdenous job o’ asking other people to tell them how to do things for the exciting job o’ cleaning & filling dirty trays & running back & forth carrying equipment on high shelves for 13 – 16 hours. I can imagine their response would be a hearty, “¡Yes! ¡Please!”

&, the reason why I feel bad ’bout bringing up this subject myself, is that that’s not e’en that bad in comparison to most people. Actually, most o’ my coworkers @ said place had it much worse &, bizarrely, didn’t whine nearly as much.

See, if this were a complaint ’bout software in general, I would agree wholeheartedly — though I’d note that “software sucks” or “Linus Torvald sucks ’cause he doesn’t program a way to delete the massive inequality o’ upbringing to leads to massive inequality o’ skill potential” aren’t useful conclusions. Somehow I doubt the kind o’ person who enjoys wandering fancy cities would prefer we go back to living in the countryside & churning our own milk; I know e’en as much as I utterly despise shit like Heroku or Docker or whatever the fuck bullshit, I’d much rather do that than fingering some cow’s tits — as sexy as that is.

If I wanted to put on my Marxist hat — & I do like Marxist hats, ’cause they’re swanky & let me use my own fancy meaningless terms like “dialectics”, proletariat”, & “horse-piss” — I could say that this represents the “bourgeois” decay — all decay these days be bourgeois — wherein we naturally turn to individual solutions to economic problems, like badgering random programmers to not make random people have to ask them how to do things, ’stead o’ government solutions ’cause Cap’n Capitalism & his Scurvy Crew hardwired our minds to not think o’ such things like how our grassy English makes us forget most o’ our words for snow.

My problem is that this person is trying to then argue that Macs are somehow better for lower-class people, ’cause they’re s’posedly easier to use, e’en though all o’ the working class people I know find Windows just as easy, & much cheaper. But then Windows is dirty & gross. Then ’gain, so are real working class people, as opposed to the ones that exist in this writer’s imagination.

Actually, to be fair, I have to remember this writer used the word “patriarchy”, not poor, which seems strange. ’Gain, if the complaint were what a sausagefest software in general was, I would agree — & that is, indeed, what the actual points this writer makes are. But then it devolves into a driveling piece o’ self-pity that’s basically, “I don’t know this stuff, but I do know Mac stuff, so the former’s obviously privileged & the latter isn’t, ’cause obviously I’m not privileged”, e’en though there are plenty o’ actually unprivileged people who would find Macs just as incomprehensible. I might e’en admit that if I, programming prodigy that I am who can’t figure out basic SSH, were to have to use a Mac, I’d probably get frustrated & bitch ’bout what idiots the developers were. I wouldn’t post a pretentious article online ’bout what a capitalist conspiracy Macs are to subjugate the proletariat or how unfair it is that I have to learn them — ¡You can’t make me, mommy! I would write an article making fun o’ idiots who waste my time trying to research info by putting their inane claptrap online, which is why I’m here now; but I wouldn’t pretend I’m noble for doing so, any mo’ than I should find myself noble for making fun o’ someone for thinking themselves noble for doing so, rather than helping lower-class people in useless, idiotic ways, like giving to charity or doing actual social work. Phhh. ¿What use is that compared to a bunch o’ middle class college brats pontificating ’bout the sociology o’ command line?

See, I’d be less annoyed if this wasn’t obviously a narcissist trying to appropriate serious social issues for their own ego trip. What’s e’en mo’ annoying is that this person then goes on to try deflecting the inevitable criticism o’ what they themselves clearly see is a stupid argument with what is essentially self-pity:

And now, I’m going to put this down and go do something else. Lately I’ve been wondering how I got here. I never intended to become an amanuensis for technologists. There were other things I meant to write about, and do.

You know someone’s truly @ the bottom o’ the hierarchy when their main stress is, ¡they just don’t feel like they’re doing what they’re meant to do, man!

You know — I shouldn’t pick on these frivilous details too much in this serious treatise o’ mine ( so serious I had to e’en look up how to spell “treatise” ), but I’m half anal, half asshole — but I love when blog writers feel the need to tell readers what they’re going to do after finishing the post. “& that’s it. Now I’m going to go smoke pot & listen to Pink Floyd albums.” That’s a perfectly good hobby to have; but if you’re going to bother me ’bout it, you better be a good comrade & share both the Pink & the Floyd, if you catch my carrions.

Also, I can think o’ 1 good reason to not want to be an “amanuensis for technologists”: that’s a stupid term for “scribble slave for programmer douche bags”. You know which 1 makes a better slugline on the ol’ resume.

Maybe I shouldn’t focus entirely on this mere individual, who, after all, is the veritable emperor o’ feminism & technology & not just some random nobody who wrote a blog post that happened to unfortunately hit my headlights in that wonderful repository o’ scholarship known as Google. To be fair, I’m sure I thought these kinds o’ things when I was, like, 16. But that doesn’t mean this pattern isn’t itself something silly that should be mocked in the hopes that people don’t get the idea that it’s somehow logical to construct convoluted theories for why preferring PlayStation 4 o’er the Switch is the prime method for smashing capitalism — ’cause I know plenty o’ smart people look to random blogs full o’ insane poetry & pretentious analyses o’ their own shitty rom hacks for life lessons.

If you read this writer’s article where they pontificate on the social importance o’ Mac’s shininess — I’m not fucking kidding — you’ll see some o’ the mo’ pathetic pseudointellectual bullshit that seems to contradict itself. “Attacking Mac’s shininess is truly an attack gainst women, ’cause society forces them into the role o’ shininess… which is wrong, ’cause it’s sexist… but we have to accept this social fact, ’cause it just is…” You know, I remember a time when people who called themselves “leftists” actually attacked social norms — attacked the idea that women had to be “girly”; now it’s sexist to attack the social norms themselves, ’cause “leftists” themselves have apparently internalized them. Note that the expense o’ Macs isn’t brought up @ all — presumably ’cause that’s a weaker class that this writer isn’t a part o’, & therefore unimportant.

The silliest thing is a simple question: ¿Who’s putting a gun to your head & demanding you to use Linux shit? I mean, that might make me look hypocritical for making fun o’ Lispers; but I ne’er accused them o’ white supremacy ’cause they nagged me to use their shit. Granted, there was that Lisper who made up some story ’bout beating the shit out o’ some Jew stereotype out o’ a Nazi cartoon for the unrepentable behavior o’ not apologizing for trying to open his car, & then leaving without causing any damage @ all… ( Laughs ). God damn — ¿why are all you programmers such shitty people? ¿Do these fucking things leak chemicals?

But as Crazy Racist Jones says, “It is all a matter of choosing your words correctly!”

( Laughs. ) Sorry: fuck this stupid subject; we have to talk mo’ ’bout this Google Group. This comes right after those delightful examples o’ storytelling:

> > > I really foresee the collapse of civilization.
> > Yep, me too.
>
> I’m trying to prevent that, by building a new kind of economic
> system based on labor rather than national $currency$ as the unit
> of exchange, but I’ve been unable to find anyone to help me with my
> project.

You may want to try resurrecting a man named Karl Marx — I hear he influenced some wonderful economic systems beloved by all.

Everybody who foresees the collapse of civilization, also notices that
the problem is our economic system. I discuss this in “Ramon.” I would
be happy to discuss your plan, which I looked over. If you give me
your email address, I will respond that way. I don’t think this is a
appropriate topic for comp.lang.lisp though. Lets resolve the lack-of-
laptop problem first.

“( Boyish laugh. ) We can trade conspiracy theories ’bout the Obamapocalypse after we help Scottie fix his laptop. ( Waves hand forward ). ¡C’mon, buddy!”

My favorite part is that, a few messages down, someone else says:

Either I have lived a very sheltered
life so far, or c.l.l has a disproportionate share of people I would
describe as odd. People who brag about how they beat up others
certainly qualify.”

Well, maybe if you weren’t so sheltered you’d know that beating up strangers who don’t apologize for touching your car is the epitome o’ social intelligence.

You know, this is the 1 time when I might berate this writer — the narcissistic blackface ( seriously, I can’t get o’er that “African dance” bullshit ) Mac nut, not Crazy Racist Jones — for not employing ad hominem. ¿How the hell are you complaining ’bout Linux “patriarchy” & not mentioning this shit? It’d certainly be mo’ entertaining than that bullshit ’bout concert posters or some tacky picture o’ that dumbass Linux penguin in a Harry Potter outfit. Harry Potter is the best example o’ patriarchy ’cause… ¿it’s written by a woman?

It annoys me, ’cause it makes me look dumb, thanks to simplistic association. I used to defend leftists as being smarter than right-wingers & used to make fun o’ idiots like Sir Keynes the 3rd for his strawmen gainst the true enemies — women who want equal pay. He’s still wrong: these leftists aren’t dumb ’cause they believe the obvious fact that there’s plenty o’ sexism & racism & that it isn’t mostly based on some huge inherent biological difference; it’s just that their arguments are stupid. This person’s right that technology’s sexist; they’re wrong that it’s ’cause people aren’t all buying expensive Macs ’cause o’ some wall o’ text ’bout concert posters & Photoshop bling, which this author apparently had time to write ’bout, but didn’t have time to learn how to install Ubuntu. ( I call bullshit on that last part, by the way: anyone who has actually used Ubuntu knows that it’s just a few GUI prompts, with such arcane questions as “¿What’s your time zone?” It’s literally no different from setting up Windows or Mac. Either this writer is a complete moron or an utter liar; & considering the long pontifications they spewed, I’m going to assume the latter. )

This kind o’ idiocy is mo’ dangerous, ’cause it feeds idiotic ad hominem reasoning — in both ways. Criticizing dumbass sexism gets labeled as sexist ( only by complete idiots, thankfully ) — ’cause if the conclusion’s right, then every argument that supports it must be right. So if someone claims that Hitler was bad ’cause he stuck his dick in Hostess™ Cakes all day ’stead o’ being a true leader, I can’t say, “No, that’s stupid”, without being a Nazi. Meanwhile, some idiot points to this tripe to argue that it magically makes independent gender statistics invalid.

This is the curse o’ the western world now — Hairpiece politics. It’s just a race to the bottom o’ stupidity. Leftists don’t help their cause by defending leftist idiocy by just going, “Yes, but their heart’s in the right place” ( which, considering the cynicism o’ these posts, isn’t e’en correct ). I would actually argue that anyone who considers themselves trying to be intelligent — & I must admit, I can’t imagine why anyone wouldn’t want to — should attack not only idiotic conclusions, but also idiotic arguments for correct conclusions.

¡& now I’m pissed ’cause I now have to go out & buy a Mac after going out & trading my Windows computer for a Linux @ the advice o’ that Ruby nut! ¡Damn it! ¡This is genocide, I’m telling you! #WhitePeopleWhoPretendToCareBoutSeriousSocialIssuesAsAScuseToFlakeLearningNewThingsArePeopleToo.

Media rag Hollywood Reporter ought to learn that if they’re going to puke out political propaganda, they should pick people with actual political accumen to deliver it — not 2 professionals in “shouting incoherently into their microphone”.

They rightfully make fun o’ some nobody celebrity for making a threatening photo o’ Hairpiece with his head decapitation, & then rightfully make fun o’ her narcissistic moaning ’bout what a victim she is for doing so. But then they stupidly turn it into an attack on “political correctness”, or whatever, e’en though she’s the 1 accusing her opponents o’ being “politically correct”. Indeed, she’s doing what right-wing clods do all the time: someone rightfully attacks her for saying something hateful & stupid, & she claims that they’re violating her “freedom o’ speech” much in the same way that calling people racist is a “violation o’ freedom o’ speech”.

After a small snippet o’ fantasy history ( duh, ¿what’s the “Alien & Sedition Act”? ¿What kind o’ low standards did the schools that these ol’ conservatives go to that none o’ these idiots know basic American history? ) they cite a study that shows that the minority o’ Millennials believe racist speech should be illegal & the majority say that “hate speech” — presumably actual threats, since that’s the only way one could differentiate it from merely racist speech — should be illegal. This is as it has always been, just as how slander & shouting “¡Fire!” in a theater is illegal. This is as opposed to people back in the 60s who thought ’twas OK for the government to violently suppress political protests — O, wait, many o’ them still do.

They then turn this incoherent rant into an advertisement for some movie that is an incoherent rant gainst colleges & their “safe spaces” & their “triggers” & their hip-hops. This always bewildered me. ¿How is not being allowed to say things @ a college the same as not being able to say things @ all? I’m not allowed to say all kinds o’ things @ all kinds o’ places, & am not e’en allowed to be on many other premises — ¡including colleges! Hell, only a tiny few people are admitted into colleges; that’s far mo’ discriminatory than the few admitted into colleges but s’posedly silenced. This is ‘specially the case since most examples are famous people who probably aren’t e’en smart ‘nough to graduate a college being protested @ colleges ( ‘course the right to protest speakers isn’t a kind o’ speech that needs to be defended, ’cause anti-PC rhetoric is always Orwellian ).

[ Since I’m lazy, just imagine I included that xkcd comic where the stick figure gives the author’s opinion on free speech for 6 panels, like everyone else &mdash ¡Psyche! ¡It’s the 1 with the vagina, ‘stead! ]

The fact that these 2 are trying to argue that the mere prospect o’ threatening speech ( which they invented — as they themselves said, nobody said anything ’bout suppressing speech, so what relevance this has to their shallow ad can only be that they truly want people to buy their garbage ) that is directly threatening the life o’ the President is modern society going to far is evidence that they’re either brain dead or liars. ¿You truly expect me to believe the FBI would tolerate such a public figure pulling that back in the 60s, 70s, or 80s?

If anything, it shows that freedom o’ speech is healthier now than it’s e’er been. Sure, you can get banned off Twitter or banned from giving speeches @ a college, just as how you could always get kicked off newspapers for the same for centuries; but there’s nothing stopping them from starting their own websites or colleges… Well, ‘cept capitalism — but I’m going to presume these 2 aren’t exactly jumping to “smash capitalism”, or whatever.

We already know America’s doomed ’cause its media is filled with “left-wing” idiots who think drawing pictures o’ someone decapitated & crying ’bout people rightfully calling her stupid for doing so is intelligent discussion & “right-wing” idiots who don’t e’en know basic American history, law, or anything beyond mindless curt sentences.

Late as always, since this shit always gets lost in the couch cushions…

Noah Smith’s actually good critique o’ Silicon Valley: “Useless Gawker-inspired rags with stupid names like Gizmodo & Whatthefuck are hypocrites for criticizing Silicon Valley despite themselves being mostly upper-class white people who do nothing to help others & are a parasitic cancer on the web, when the real problem with Silicon Valley isn’t that they’re evilly well-run businesses but actually incompetent, shittily-run businesses. Also, Peter Thiel is a shitty person”.

Sounds right to me.

OK, so I may have twisted his words a li’l bit on Gizmodo & Whatthefuck ( ¿Deadspin? That’s not a name you give a magazine — that’s a name you give a forgettable Marvel superhero ); but be honest: we were all thinking that.

Also, I love his reaction to the possibility o’ a tech bust: “It’s OK: it’s mostly computer dorks who’ll suffer, not normal people”. Ha, ha: fuck you, nerds; no mo’ $400 PlayStation 4s & $1,000 8-core 16GB-Ram monster towers for you. It’s just abandonware DOS games & SNES roms from now on, just like the rest o’ us plebs — the true sign o’ utter destitution.

What I don’t love is his goofy use o’ a screenshot from some generic tactical war game as some clunky metaphor for some theory vs. evidence bullshit. ¿Are blog readers so stupid that they can’t just read text if there’s not some irrelevant picture somewhere to ease them in? See, Sir Smith still hasn’t learned from the time he flunked economics in collegio — a true story, & a true English word — ’cause he thought it’d be great to put a screenshot o’ Golden Mario running through a bunch o’ coins in New Super Mario Bros 2: The Blandness Returns ’bove the abstract o’ his economic thesis on currency manipulation & fiber equilibriums.

Later on, Sir Smith demonstrated his expert knowledge o’ psychology by spewing some pseudoscientific bullshit ’bout what he called the “shouting class”, but what ordinary call “obnoxious assholes”, & which has existed since the cavepeople days when cavepeople would smash someone with a boulder if they saw a John McCain sticker on someone else’s wheel. This was inspired by him whining ’bout someone making fun o’ some Twitter thread thing he made wherein he talked ’bout how Democrats & Republicans should all stick dicks in each other’s bums & lick each other’s tears & some leftists rightfully called that “Family Circus shit”. This is 100% true if we translate “some leftists” as “J. J. W. Mezun”.

Join me next time as I twist the words o’ ’nother blog post.

Nothing says smarmy pseudointellectualist like naming your website Château Heartiste. If you look @ the “about” page, you’ll see it’s ’bout… ¿some artsy vector cartoon o’ 2 incredibly bored-looking people leaning into each other o’er a couch, ’bout to kiss? After that there’s just a contact form. “About” != “contact”.

Worst: I had to manually type out the carat A in the website name ’cause I couldn’t find the footer bar. I’ve now found it on the navigation bar. You clearly just used some WordPress theme & you still fucked up by picking 1 o’ the most asinine you could.

Anyway, the post we’re looking @ is, “Single White Women Want To Spread Their Legs For The World”, which is presumably ’bout my favorite porno wherein Lucy jams globes into her vagina.

Psyche. This is a super serious intellectual piece ’bout… fuck if I know. Pretending to be intelligent, obviously.

What other conclusion are we to draw when the voting behavior and opinions of single White women corroborates exactly what this post’s title asserts?

Please tell me this guy isn’t trying to claim that white women voted for Hairpiece ’cause they want a piece o’ his… hair… Ugh. I’ll just boil myself in acid for a few hours now.

From Bigly E, another id-buster post that reveals a leetle too much about the vagoconductive currents that emanate from single White women’s hindbrains.

Considering half o’ these words you made up, I doubt it reveals anything.

He next shows an immensely relevant graph o’ demographics for opinions on Trump’s brilliant plan for keeping out immigrants, borrowed from that apex o’ technological advancement known as ancient China. These demographics are, indeed, embarrassing, as they show that a li’l ’bove the majority realize how dumb a plan it is & that the majority o’ 3 mutually exclusive groups, “whites”, “all men”, & “married men” are dumb ’nough to think it will work. This only proves that white men are truly the least racist, ’cause only someone so ignorant o’ racism that they ne’er heard the popular slur gainst immigrants — “wetback” — could think that a purely land-based wall would be an unstoppable block to immigrants.

Single white women are more opposed to a big, beautiful wall than Asians, blacks, or even Hispanics are.

& here we see white men smashing that ol’ stereotype that only women are ditzes who love frivolous things simply for beauty, regardless o’ substance.

*twatpalm*

Either these statistics or the sexiness o’ Hairpiece’s wall made Heartiste stick his hand straight into his vagina & slobber with pleasure. Great.

Single White women are, presumably…

No, I’m going to stop you there before you make up some totally valid, unquestionable sociological analyses from the venerable source o’ science known as your rectum.

Hey, you know, this is clearly going to judge white women for not liking pretty walls that don’t do anything; but the polls show that blacks & latinos hate it almost just as much. ¿Why isn’t this post called “Blacks, Latinos, & White Women Want to Spread Their Legs for the World”? I expected mo’ cultural sensitivity from a man like you.

…for those of them…

Fuck, no, I didn’t say you should continue. ¡Stop!

…who still have a bit of bloom on the rose…

Stop plagiarizing shitty Irish poetry & get serious now.

…actively trawling the sexual market for cad and cavalier…

That is, indeed, odd. I would expect sex.

Thus, they are in their stage of life when all faculties, mental, emotional, libidinal, are focused to a pinpoint of estrogenic vitality, with the familiar shit-testing behavioral profile that vitality presupposes.

See, when I mix fancy words & words like “shit”, I’m trying to be funny, ’cause I’m obviously aware that nobody can take “estrogenic vitality” & “shit-testing” in the same sentence seriously.

This means, single White women are limbically primed to be aroused by dominance and a ZFG attitude in men…

See, this is what people rightfully make fun o’ bearded white men for doing: arm-chair psychoanalysis that’s half based on made-up concepts. It’s just there so the author can smugly tip their dumbass hipster hat & say, “You just don’t get it, man”. But I do get it: it’s cliche science fiction. I read this exact thing in Dark Moon Mirage, that “#1 thriller” that I bought from my local drugstore — you can’t fool me, “Heartiste”.

…and those men who fall short in these traits are dumped into the beta orbiter/friendzone with a quickness, when they aren’t rejected outright

You know white men — sorry, I mean White men, ’cause we’re back in the 19th century, — have it bad when their biggest fear is, DUM DUM DUM, The Friendzone. I don’t know what he’s complaining ’bout: the friendzone sounds like a wicked fun place to be. I bet they have pizza & arcades 24 / 7. Certainly sounds better than some stupid fucking wall in the desert.

The dumping can be literal, or metaphorical, as in a political friendzoning that weakens the electoral power of White men.

“I talk ’bout this in my science fiction novel wherein the Friendzos invade earth & subjugate the US under their tentacle powers”.

As a social phenomenon, a large chunk of America’s White men have spectacularly failed the dominance/ZFG test.

Well, in my defense, I ne’er e’en took the test. ’Cause it doesn’t fucking exist.

America the Shitlib Feminist Shrike…

Stop, stop. Go back to a thesaurus & learn words that aren’t inherently silly & then maybe I’ll take your pseudoscience seriously.

…has effectively neutered White men…

Awesome. Now I get to fuck as much as I want without worrying ’bout popping out some brats.

and unmasked them for romantically unappealing doormats to single White women.

The greatest crime o’ White women is finding out the secret that white dorks who spend hours o’ their time typing reams o’ pseudointellectual slop online might in fact be unappealing. I’ll ne’er know how they cracked that secret.

As women are wont by the essence of their sex to spread their legs for the dominant tribe’s men…

Sorry, ¿did I say we were stuck in the 19th century? I meant 19th century BC.

Also, wouldn’t the “dominant tribe’s men” be the people in charge — i.e. Hairpiece & his circus. Looks pretty white to me.

…they will wish…

But they don’t do so yet, since that would require this author to not write in the most hilariously pretentious way possible. Here’s a word you probably don’t know, but should probably learn: “hypercorrection”.

…to see tribal battles play out…

See, the slight problem with this guy’s “research” is that it’s based entirely on his ’bouts o’ furious fapping to his favorite episodes o’ Xena: Warrior Princess.

…so that they may enjoy the luxury of choosing winners and their winning seed.

¿Can I add a South-Park-like warning that blinks the words, “This isn’t made up. These people actually believe this”. Now I see why Hairpiece is so nonchalant ’bout climate change; if I had to hang out with these idiots all the time, I’d wish for the whole world to drown, too.

The single White woman desire for open borders is nothing less than a desire for alpha male interlopers to test the mettle of their betatized male loafers.

I take back what I said gainst those Lisp-using racists ( all 1 o’ them ): a’least they were entertaining. This idiot just makes me want to fall asleep.

A massive civilizational shit test, if you will.

No thanks — but I can clearly see you’re passing with gold stars.

For this reason, it was always a mistake to entrust the nation’s future to its native daughters…

Damn. Well I guess voting for Pocahontas for the last election was stupid after all.

…especially while in their pulchritudinous primes.

Stop plagiarizing Lovecraft.

Women are more xenophilic than men…

I think all those ads I see on Pirate Bay & Zoom V — whatever his stupid name was — tell a different story.

…and this difference goes deep, all the way to the Darwinian pulses…

Made up by someone who’s ne’er read Darwin.

Heartiste goes on to throw out his listicle o’ solutions to the serious political problem o’ his bitterness o’er some women he liked preferring a black guy o’er him ’cause the black guy doesn’t actively make her brain melt with subliterary tripe like “pulchritudinous primes”. None o’ these will actually be put into place, ’course, ’cause Hairpiece is too cynical to care & too incompetent to get anything done, anyway, & ’cause the brunt o’ Heartiste’s political strategy is wishful thinking & sending his bored fans to roam Twitter calling random women fat. In that spirit, most o’ these goals are totalitarian & could only be enjoyed by the kind o’ people with absolutely no individualist self-respect. So, they’re basically what laissez-faire libertarians strawman socialists as being — ’cept on the right wing. Maybe if you guys actually cared ’bout individualism you’d spend mo’ time attacking these guys & less people who raise tax — O, ¿who am I kidding? These guys liked Pinochet. They don’t give a shit ’bout anything but money.

I welcome further suggestions from the commentariat.

Suggestion #1: don’t use stupid words like “commentariat”.

An “overfeed the beast” strategy that I sometimes see entertained by crueler elements in the Exasperated-Right won’t work…

I think he’s confusing politics with the lingering plotline o’ Johnny the Homocidal Maniac. “Listen to that Pillsbury Doughboy, Johnny: trying to keep the wall painted with the blood o’ your victims is futile…”

…if you dump millions of Dirt World trashkin into single White women playgrounds…

Woah, woah, woah. I was joking before, but I seriously want you to stay ’way from li’l white girl playgrounds — I don’t care how many bootleg Pokémon you have in your long, black jacket.

…all that will accomplish is an increase in the murder, rape… and miscegenation rates.

Well, yeah: I guess it makes sense that after you rape & murder all the li’l white girls you’ll have to go after the dirty ethnics. Now I see why it’s so vital for white women to keep their fertility so high: ¡they have a huge murder spree this maniac has planned for them to outpace!

The bleeding heart politics of these dumb bunnies won’t move an iota.

( Laughs. ) You have all these obtuse, pretentious labels that are basically just “poopy head”, & then you have “dumb bunnies”. “Shit: my thesaurus ran out. Ah, fuck it: nobody not lobotomized’ll read past this part, anyway”.

No, the way forward is for White men to retake control of their homeland and scoff at the precious political boilerplate their women solipsistically indulge.

“The plan is for uppercase white men to take absolute control from the majority through the magic o’ saying bad things gainst them”. Shit, if that worked, I should be Dictator for Life already. I love how these idiots who clearly weren’t paying attention to politics for decades happen to barely luck into having their favored politician win once & they think that means they have the right to be kings. That’s why the Supreme Court was able to block parts o’ your master Hairpiece’s dumbass travel ban, despite his magic powers. You know someone has the most childish conception o’ politics — & should probably save their words for something they actually know something ’bout — when they think the president o’ the US is the supreme ruler o’ the country. “Duh, ¿what’s the branches o’ government? I ne’er went to middle school…”

Then ‘gain, when a guy who thinks, “People who disagree with me are dumb bunnies”, tells me I have to support it, I have to.

I can tell you…

Yes, you’ve shown your ability to tell a lot, & I’m sad for it every time.

…that if we refuse to tackle our shared single White women problem…

“¡We must bomb those filthy Mormons in Utah!”

…the nonWhite…

¡Nope! ¡I’m done! I tolerated a lot; but I fucking rage quit @ camel-case races. The fact that any alt-right douche has the fucking gall to accuse me o’ being an “SJW” when this pretentious shit goes on in their fucking lawn is laughable.

But Now the Greatest Hits

The page below “About” is “Alpha Assessment Submission”. Presumable “alpha” refers to a male’s intellectual development, with “alpha” being the Big Riggs Over the Road kind o’ mind, while filthy Betas are those who have figured out how to make the other truck move.

Submit in the comments below conversations in the form of texts/phone calls/voicemails/face to face interactions that you have had, or plan to have, with women you are attempting to bed.

“Send me your private info so I can jerk off to it”.

I love how he can spell look up how to spell pulchritudinous, but he can’t get “face-to-face” right.

I can bet that these comments are 100% true & not fantasy trips by insecure egotists.

For instance, let’s look @ some o’ the lines o’ the top comment, from a guy whose icon represents what he probably is in real life: a Commodore-64-era dick.

I’m too badass to be a mere bf.

“…I said as I drew my Dragon Ball Z pictures in 6th grade”.

That’s a label, and I don’t think we’re the type of people who are given to labeling ourselves.

What I love most ’bout the alt-right is that they mix the worst o’ both the left & the right: pretentious douchebaggery & bigotry; the intellectual rot o’ cowboy conservatives & the frivilousness o’ rich liberals. It’s like science finally engineered the least likeable people in the universe.

Her: Hmm, I’m not sure I understand, but if what you’re trying to say is that you don’t want to be tied down, that’s ok because you can do what you want and so can I. = )

Me ( 6 hours later ) : Hey, guess what I overheard the hairdresser telling her girlfriend about me?

Her ( immediately ) : What? ( etc. etc. )

That’s literally how it ends. What a badass ending — right up there with Gohan finally defeating Cell.

If you enjoy the feeling o’ having your dick ripped off & having it slapped gainst your face… No, I still wouldn’t recommend reading mo’. & if you’re a woman, well, imagine how much worse it must feel to have an imaginary dick ripped off & slapped gainst your face. It’s not e’en your own dick. ¿Whose dick is it? I don’t want some other fucker’s dick gainst my face — I don’t know where it’s been.

Next I have “Beta of the Year Award”, after this shitty WordPress theme takes a million years to load. I expected it to be an “Hour o’ Hate” for prominent feminists or whatever online, but ’stead found it to be a place for people to bitch ’bout rappers they don’t like anymo’. Next.

Then you get “Dating Market Value Tests” — a pretentious way to say, “How Good You Are @ Being a Prostitute” — for both men & women, which is proof that Heartiste has the apex o’ gender-equality beliefs. Unsurprisingly, these are just the writer throwing out his particular tastes in men & women as if they were scientific fact, ‘cept without that vital element o’ science known as “evidence”. In truth, you should get -1,000,000 points if you’re pathetic ‘nough to take dating advice as law from some random nobody on the internet, ‘specially when that writer is so professional that their top posts have such titles as “Penis Size Around the World”, “The Sixteen Commandments of Poon” & “Li’l Asian, Tight Pussy” ( my other favorite porno ). It’s like the guy’s screaming to the world ’bout how much he wishes he was the next George Carlin with all these edgy titles, yo, ‘cept without anything resembling the cleverness, originality, or charm that made Carlin actually interesting. Also, it’s 2017 & nobody ‘bove the age o’ 15 reacts with anything but embarassment @ these clunky titles.

Also, ¿what’s up with the occupation scores? ¿“Struggling web designer”? Well, yeah, I can imagine being a struggling anything would be unimpressive; ¿why is “web designer emphasized? ¿& where’s the score for someone who’s a well-off web designer? ¿How will Andy Clarke know his potential for getting some prodigious fucks? ¿Is this our grand Heartiste revealing a bit mo’ ’bout himself than he meant to? ( As if the clunky WordPress theme weren’t ‘nough. )

Worst, Heartiste gives up the chance to make silly obviously-wrong answers. For his “In the middle of the conversation you have to pee” question, which apparently enraged Commodore-64-Penis Man in teaching young men not to tell women everything ’bout their juicy bladder needs — which is, indeed, sexy & the best way to connect pipes — he could’ve added an answer, “Raise your hand & go, ‘Ooo ooo. ¿Can I pretty please use the bathroom’? I have to go reaaaally bad”. I’m disgusted by your lack o’ fun ‘bove all else.

Also, I heavily disagree with some o’ his points. For instance, “I’m thirsty. Are you thirsty? Let’s go inside and taste DC’s finest tap water. But you can only stay for a minute, I have to get up early” definitely shouldn’t get points, ’cause that’s a shitty pick-up line — ‘specially if you’re 1 o’ the vast majority o’ people who aren’t in Washington D.C.

I also love how in his woman test, 15 – 16 year ol’s get a higher score than people in their upper 20s. Turns out my joke ’bout him being a pedophile isn’t all that wrong. That’s unfortunate.

The women test is also hilariously wrong & obviously tends purely toward the fantasies o’ an insecure man rather than resembling anything close to real human behavior. Apparently women who have won several sports trophies have the worst time getting dates.

It’s obviously mo’ a sad case o’ someone trying to encourage other people to act the way he wants them to do than anything resembling true advice.

Next we have “Diversity + Proximity = War” which only reminds me o’ my favorite anonymous sprite comic critic. “¿What the hell? Diversity + Proximity = Shitty”. This time the author actually does have studies — a bunch o’ links to studies with summaries & no analysis deeper than that. I’d be surprised if the author e’en read them all & didn’t just get them as hand-me-downs from some other white-supremacy site. Meanwhile, that fucking dork Noah Smith actually bothered to do mo’ commentary on much o’ the studies, & shockingly ‘nough, the results are mo’ questionable. Still, Heartiste deserves points for going a li’l ‘bove the usual standards.

“Shit Cuckservatives Say”, meanwhile, is a quick return to rock-bottom standards, with a regurgitation o’ a meme that was ne’er funny to begin with. Alt-righters in their deep narcissism & lack o’ political knowledge seem blithely ignorant o’ the fact that they’re the weird ones in the right wing, not those lame ol’ conservatives who are too busy for that childish Pepe shit, “God damn it, when I was your age I was walking 8 miles in the snow everyday to some coal mines to work for 16 hours a day, & now you hipsters are meming up my Republican Party, ¿what’s going on in this world anymo’?”

This post is just a bunch o’ quotes that I’m s’posed to think are stupid, e’en though Heartiste doesn’t bother to ‘splain why, ’cause he’s so narcissistic that he can’t imagine needing to actually convince anyone anything. That’s great ’cause it means he won’t e’er have any influence on anyone: either they’ll already nod their heads or they’ll leave in bewilderment or annoyance. Either way, nobody’s mind’s changed, & thus there’s no point, since there’s certainly nothing inherently funny ’bout “Unions destroyed Detroit”. ¿Is Heartiste 1 o’ those “Realist Left” who think capitalism is a conspiracy by the illuminati to make black & white people put dicks in each other’s bums & lick each other’s tears? ‘Cause if that were true, I’d definitely support capitalism, ’cause that sounds immensely sexy. ¿Or is he 1 o’ those people who thinks talk o’ economics @ all is a Marxist conspiracy & that obviously Detroit was ruined by those whorish bitches who won’t sleep with me :(. Heartiste, you need to ‘splain your views in mo’ detail so I know what kind o’ crazy racist you are — there’s all kinds o’ flavors.

I made the mistake o’ looking @ the last page, that famous treatise, “The Sixteen Commandments Of Poon”, that’ll surely put Heartiste right up into the echelons o’ Aristotle, Sun Tzu, Hume, J. S. Mills, & Baldwin, & regretted it. Most o’ it’s a guide on how to act like a child in reaction to children — clearly the only women Heartiste has e’er encountered, judging by how he thinks relationships work. Tip to Heartiste that he’ll definitely take to heart: you attract people like yourself. I’d stop to take a look round the kind o’ people you find yourself surrounded by & then take a longer look in the mirror ‘fore it’s too late & you end up like Hairpiece, wishing for the floods to come.

The last thing I don’t get is the sidebar labeled “Chaos”, which links such prominent alt-right websites as “Stuff White People Like”. I’m not sure if this guy doesn’t get irony or… doesn’t get irony & failed to do so here. “Chaos” seems to be 1 o’ those words infantile men throw round so they can feel like Nero from the Matrix — the “manly” version o’ “epic”. Like with “epic”, it just makes you look laughable. I’m guessing these 5 sites that are the true representation o’ leftism is meant to be a slag gainst leftists, since they are, indeed, inane.

Sorry this is late: WordPress for some reason decided to keep this as a draft ‘stead o’ being scheduled & has such a crappy interface that I didn’t find out till I happened to stumble onto it now.

---

Honest-to-god Huffington Post article:

To The Racist Guy Who Picked Up My Pencil During Class

Read this article & tell me it doesn’t sound like some wacky parody from The Onion.

I can only imagine the response article: “To The Rich Company That Exploits The Work O’ Desperate Journalists Without Paying Them Who Criticized Racism”¹.

Also, if we’re actually trying to make an intellectual argument to actually change the mind o’ a racist ( a futile endeavor ), I don’t think just asserting to them that racism’s bad is going to do anything. If anything, the racist, if they actually read this post ( ’cause I’m sure a racist Hairpiece-supporter would read Huffington Post ) would probably just convince themselves that you’re being all hostile — ¡& when they did you the great privilege o’ picking up your hefty pencil! — & convince themselves that this further backs up their view that the nonwhite-socialist-Starbucks-drinker Borg or whatever are crazy extreme pushy people or whatever & continue posting trite racist jokes ’cause they have no creativity.

Thanks for that, by the way. I mean, yeah, I’m sure your family getting deported is a problem & all; but I think we need to look @ the dire problems here, such as me having to see dumb racist jokes online & roll my eyes.

Huffington Post, I truly wish you’d learn that when you write articles arguing gainst legitimately bad things, you should try to not be stupid while doing so, so you don’t unintentionally hurt the cause you’re fighting for. Maybe if you actually paid your writers, you could get some who actually give a shit ’nough to try.

’Twas a bad time to stumble on economics articles.

I just have to mention the words “Less Wrong” & you’ll probably already smack your forehead. From what I’ve seen, “Less Wrong” are like most people, in that they try to not be idiots; but unlike most people, they make the idiotic decision to constantly brag ’bout how much better @ not being idiots they are than other people without any evidence while simultaneously pretending that they don’t do so.

To be fair, these “rationalists” should be praised for brilliantly figuring out something that benefits us all: they can assuage their shriveled egos while we can get hours o’ hilarity making fun o’ how shriveled their egos are.

If I were an actor in an improv show, and my prompt was “annoying person who’s never read any economics, criticizing economists”, I think I could nail it. I’d say something like:

Economists think that they can figure out everything by sitting in their armchairs and coming up with ‘models’ based on ideas like ‘the only motivation is greed’ or ‘everyone behaves perfectly rationally’. But they didn’t predict the housing bubble, they didn’t predict the subprime mortgage crisis, and they didn’t predict Lehman Brothers. All they ever do is talk about how capitalism is perfect and government regulation never works, then act shocked when the real world doesn’t conform to their theories.

Fun tip to economists: making childish strawmen arguments is a great way to confirm others’ judgments that, yes, economists are much mo’ mentally mediocre than they like to pretend they are.

This criticism’s very clichedness should make it suspect.

No, I think the fact that you pulled it out o’ your dick hole makes it mo’ suspect.

It would be very strange if there were a standard set of criticisms of economists, which practically everyone knew about and agreed with, and the only people who hadn’t gotten the message yet were economists themselves.

“¿What’s ‘hive mind’ mean? ¿What’s bias? ¡I don’t understand these elusive terms!”

If any moron on a street corner could correctly point out the errors being made by bigshot PhDs, why would the PhDs never consider changing?

So this superrationalist relies on appeal to authority — the idea that PhDs must be smart, ’cause that’s what PhDs are. Meanwhile, average people must be dumb, ’cause o’ “appeal to obscurity”. This hyperrationalist post sure is a great way to win Logical Fallacy Bingo.

A few of these are completely made up…

No, don’t underrate yourself, man: I’m quite sure you made all o’ them up.

[M]y impression is that economists not only know about these criticisms, but invented them.

Too bad your “impression” has the validity o’ what I heard ’bout in my fever dreams ( but are much less entertaining, sadly ).

For the next quote, I made sure to highlight all the fun regurgitated buzzwords that show that, no, this person didn’t put any thought into what they were saying.

During the last few paradigm shifts in economics, the new guard levied these complaints against the old guard, mostly won, and their arguments percolated down into the culture as The Correct Arguments To Use Against Economics.

Also, apparently German-style nouns are the rational way to do scare quotes.

As a psychiatrist, I constantly get told that my field is about “blaming everything on your mother” or thinks “everything is serotonin deficiency“.

Truly the most hurtful slur anyone has e’er punted @ someone.

Maybe people would be less ignorant ’bout the things you know so much ’bout if you actually provided scientific evidence that they’re wrong, rather than just telling them they’re wrong & tut-tutting them. Or e’en providing real evidence o’ these defamations rather than just saying some nebulous mass o’ people told you these things, “just take me @ my promise”.

If I were an actor in an improv show, and my prompt was “annoying person who’s never read anything about rationality, criticizing rationalists”, it would go something like…

No, stop. Nobody’s going to buy your shitty Ayn Rand plays. Stick to constantly asking people, “¿How does that make you feel?” till their hour is up. ( ¡Ha! ¡You missed a cliché! )

I didn’t bother reading his “play”, since he himself already warned me that ’twas stupid, & I’m not sure why he thought I’d want to read something stupid. Which makes me wonder why he wrote this post in itself… or why I’m reading it if I don’t like reading stupid things… Hmm…

Like the economics example, these combine basic mistakes with legitimate criticisms levied by rationalists themselves against previous rationalist paradigms or flaws in the movement.

’Cept, unlike economists, who have true PhDs & actual academic standards, there’s no rule regarding who can & can’t describe themselves as “rationalists” — well, ’cept a minimum level o’ narcissism. I can put underwear on my head & run round traffic calling myself a “rationalist” all I want, & you can’t prove me wrong, or e’en “mo’ wrong”.

Like the electroconvulsive therapy example, they’re necessarily the opposite…

O fucking God, this diction. ¿“Necessarily the opposite”?

There have been past paradigms for which some of these criticisms are pretty fair. I think especially of the late-19th/early-20th century Progressive movement.

“I think” is my favorite mathematical proof.

But notice how many of those names are blue. Each of those links goes to book reviews, by me, of books studying those people and how they went wrong.

“¿See? You’re wrong. The fact that I wrote some shitty blog review on these classics proves that I’m right. Obviously it’s physically impossible to write a stupid or wrong review”.

So consider the possibility that the rationalist community has a plan somewhat more interesting than just “remain blissfully unaware of past failures and continue to repeat them again and again”.

How ’bout I consider the possibility that the “rationalist community” is just a made-up name for your adult-child clubhouse & that though they “plan” something different from sitting round regurgitating thoughts that’ve already been made, they do something e’en less interesting than that.

Hey, if you can prove something with “I think”, so can I.

Modern rationalists don’t think they’ve achieved perfect rationality.

“¡Look @ how humble I am for thinking I’m not an intellectual god in fleshy form! ¡Please lay ’pon my feet all your adulation for my magnificent humility!”

[T]hey keep trying to get people to call them “aspiring rationalists” only to be frustrated by the phrase being too long[.]

You should replace “by the phrase being too long” with “by everyone ’stead calling us ‘narcissistic shitbrains’”.

( my compromise proposal to shorten it to “aspies” was inexplicably rejected ).

“For some reason, e’en my fellow narcissistic twats didn’t buy my attempt to appropriate a true social condition with my need for pity @ the weakest o’ criticisms”.

I can back him up on 1 thing, though: from my experience with psychiatrists ( who told me I shouldn’t publish these — ¡But they can’t stop me now! ), I oft see them throw round slurs for medical conditions for the people they’re s’posed to be helping. I know my psychiatrist was all, “Man, those fucking retards. ¿Am I right? Let me disclose all the stories ’bout this 1 loser named Becky Brown who was too pussy to leave their house”. So we can see that this psychiatrist is showing the utmost professionalism here.

They try to focus on doubting themselves instead of criticizing others.

¡Which he’s done so well here! ¡Look @ how oft he criticized his poor self, & didn’t e’en say a single bad word gainst any o’ the people who criticized him! ¡How noble!

They don’t pooh-pooh academia and domain expertise – in the last survey, about 20% of people above age 30 had PhDs.

“We don’t pee-pee academia; we just cite irrelevant statistics”.

They don’t reject criticism and self-correction…

Well, ’cept for all those “annoying” people who have “never read any economics” or have “never read anything about rationality”…

Tip: focus less on appropriating Aspergers & mo’ on trying to get pity for your obvious bout o’ Alzheimers.

They don’t want to blithely destroy all existing institutions[.]

¿What the hell does that have to do with anything?

O, great. So they’re not fun. I see.

[T]his is the only community I know where interjecting with “Chesterton’s fence!” is a universally understood counterargument which shifts the burden of proof back on the proponent.

“This is the only community out o’ the few I actually know that pretends that using obscure slang terms is the road to rationality”.

Sadly, wrong there, too.

They have said approximately one zillion times that they don’t like Spock and think he’s a bad role model.

OK, I tolerated all your other inanities — but being mean ’nough to hate Spock goes too far. He died in 1 o’ the movies… ¿I think? ¿Didn’t his actor die, too?

Fuck it: just pretend I made some shitty joke ’bout some dumb show I obviously ne’er watched.

They include painters, poets, dancers, photographers, and novelists.

Apparently his idea o’ propaganda is listing irrelevant “facts” he made up in a second. “They don’t eat @ Burger King; they eat @ Panda express. They include people who own mice, cats, armadillos, & iguanas”.

They…well… “they never have romantic relationships” seems like maybe the opposite of the criticism that somebody familiar with the community might apply.

His totally rational argument is “Man, we totally get lots o’ tail, unlike you losers”.

[…]encourage each other to give various percents of their income to charity, and founded or lead various charitable organizations.

“We are the only people to e’er do so, ’course”.

Look.

( Swings head all round, turns back to the screen & shrugs. )

I’m the last person who’s going to deny that the road we’re on is littered with the skulls of the people who tried to do this before us.

“This’ll be ensured when I finalize my robotic space pod, which’ll keep me ’live while the rest o’ you suckers drown in the seas o’ death”.

We’ve looked at the creepy skull pyramids and thought “huh, better try to do the opposite of what those guys did”.

“I’ll just assure you that we won’t be fuck-ups & you’ll just unconditionally believe me, ¿right?”

If you have this sort of concern, and you want to accuse us of it, please do a quick Google search to make sure that everybody hasn’t been condemning it and promising not to do it since the beginning.

Google is, after all, the most rigorous source o’ scientific knowledge.

We’re almost certainly still making horrendous mistakes that people thirty years from now will rightly criticize us for. But they’re new mistakes.

No: inane, arrogant douchebaggery’s as ol’ as fire.

And I hope that maybe having a community dedicated to carefully checking its own thought processes and trying to minimize error in every way possible will make us have slightly fewer horrendous mistakes than people who don’t do that.

Considering the utter lack o’ self-awareness present in this post, that’s guaranteed to fail.

If this is what passes as “rationalist” in the western world, I’m not surprised that it’s filling its leadership roles with the most pompous buffoons in the world. Welcome to Hairpiece America: where e’en the left is stupid, & the right has to become e’en stupider to keep ’head.

The fact that this article was on Wired makes me wonder if they programmed a highly sophisticated robot write it. ¿Can we have a flip-side to the Turing Test? — the test to see if a work is so dumb you can’t e’en tell if ’twas written by a human or a robot.

It starts out fair-’nough, albeit with questionable assertions:

Literature is language-based and national; contemporary society is globalizing and polyglot.

Somebody’s ne’er heard o’ translation.

Society has always been polyglot — hence why translation has existed for centuries. E’en in Shakespeare’s time English would be mixed with French, Latin, & e’en Greece ’cause o’ how big an impact those cultures had on English culture.

Vernacular means of everyday communication — cellphones, social networks, streaming video — are moving into areas where printed text cannot follow.

Solution: don’t print the text.

¿How is this a problem for literature? ¿Why does literature need to be printed? ¿’Cause printing feels good?

Literature is quite great @ moving into cell phones, social networks, & e’en streaming videos. In fact, social networks are primary build up o’ literature, & half o’ most streaming videos involves textual chat. E’en as video builds up popularity online, text is still supreme. In fact, society’s probably mo’ literate now than it’s e’er been thanks to text’s supremacy o’er the web. Maybe in the past we could worry ’bout some dystopian future wherein everyone’s a mindless slave in front o’ the flashing colors o’ their screen, blissfully free from reading a single word; but nowadays, while the dystopian future o’ people being mindless slaves in front o’ technology may still be a prospect, you can bet it’d involve reading reams o’ text.

Intellectual property systems failing.

This implies an economic barrier to literature’s success; but the literature industry seems to be quite adept @ making tons o’ money on literature, e’en if it’s mostly shallow companies that make the money. & technology such as eBooks & Kindles have, if anything, improved the profitability o’ literature.

No, in a world where the leading country in art production still keeps works copyrighted 90 years after its creator’s death, & wherein international laws like TPP threaten to push stronger laws on the rest o’ the world, copyright is still ’live & well, despite the existence o’ a few mo’ online pirates.

If anything, literature is hindered mo’ by the increasing attention given to profitability o’er quality, leading to lowering standards o’ literature.

Means of book promotion, distribution and retail destabilized.

Which is always terrible in markets.

So now rather than authors relying on busy big businesses to market their work, they have social media, where they can do it themselves mo’ effectively. I think by “destabilized”, you mean “made easier & mo’ effective”.

Ink-on-paper manufacturing is an outmoded, toxic industry with steeply rising costs.

Which is why it’s a good idea it’s becoming less prevalent.

¿How is this a challenge? ¿Would it kill these writers to just once not contradict their own core theses?

Core demographic for printed media is aging faster than the general population.

( Laughs ). No, that’s physically impossible. Nobody can “age” faster than anyone else. Aging is simple existing in time. ’Less print readers have time traveling devices to make them go forward in time mo’ quickly, I don’t think so — & I find the prospect that the least technologically sophisticated people would have technology centuries beyond what’s possible now to absurd to chew.

I think you meant the less weaselly words ( though still fragmentary ), “Core demographic for printed media is dying off mo’ ” That’s mo’ depressing to consider, but mo’ accurate.

Maybe 1 o’ these “challenges” should’ve been the devolving quality o’ diction as online writing succumbs mo’ & mo’ to sterile & vague businessese.

Failure of print and newspapers is disenfranching young apprentice writers.

No, that’s just Republicans.

So… ¿The failure o’ print is affecting those who use it the least the most? I’d think it’d be the oldest people who are still unable to use popular technology competently that’d be most blocked from success in the industry. Young people familiar with new technology should feel in bed with… well, new technology.

¿Or is he trying to claim that literature cannot continue without print & newspapers & that young “apprentice” writers are becoming less literate? I’ve already ’splained why that’s obviously false.

Media conglomerates have poor business model; economically rationalized “culture industry” is actively hostile to vital aspects of humane culture.

& now we degenerate further into meaningless buzzwords.

¿What the fuck is “economically rationalized ‘culture industry’”?

I certainly don’t think conglomerates being actively hostile to vital aspects o’ humane culture is anything contemporary. We’ve been calling that kind o’ thing “capitalism” for the past 2 centuries, & it’s probably 1 o’ the only things certain in this world, other than maybe death & tax loopholes.

Long tail balkanizes audiences, disrupts means of canon-building and fragments literary reputation.

& now we’re delving into outright fantasy. I don’t know what creature “Long tail” is, but I do hope the Good Wizard Whitebread stops him with his Shape Spells before that foul beast can “balkanize” the audience with its 4th-wall-breaking powers.

¿Whose literary reputation is hurt? This writer couldn’t go the whole way o’ pretending there’s only 1 reputation that exists by giving that phrase an article, so we’re just going to have to figure it out ourselves.

Maybe this is an attempt to recreate the strengths o’ modernist literature through blog posts. You have to dig into deep analyses to understand what this loon’s trying to say, just like with James Joyce.

Digital public-domain transforms traditional literary heritage into a huge, cost-free, portable, searchable database, radically transforming the reader’s relationship to belle-lettres.

¿By making it mo’ accessible? Yes, nothing is a greater challenge to literature than the fact that mo’ people can indulge in it.

¿Remember when we used to fear that we’d lose literary classics — those ol’ dystopians like Fahrenheit 451? That’s ol’ news: now we worry ’bout too many people being able to get access to Shakespeare, apparently.

Contemporary literature not confronting issues of general urgency; dominant best-sellers are in former niche genres such as fantasies, romances and teen books.

I’m almost tempted to rewrite these quotes in all-caps to emphasize how much they sound like some hokey ol’ computer. “BEEP BOOP. COMTEMPORARY LITERATURE NOT CONFRONTING ISSUES OF GENERAL URGENCY. ERROR CODE 728”.

Yes, ’cause no fantasy, romance, or teen book could e’er confront modern problems. I could see the assumption for the 1st for someone immensely ignorant & shallow ( A Song of Ice and Fire could tell you a lot mo’ ’bout the complexities & corruptions o’ political forces that is just as applicable to modern society as medieval than some lit fic that dicks round with word structure & takes place entirely within a literary professors head ); ¿but romance & teen books are irrelevant to contemporary problems?

Considering the author ne’er bothers to specify what he considers to be “issues of general urgency”, we’re left with yet ’nother blanket assertion that has li’l backing, & is probably mo’ wrong than right.

Here’s ’nother better problem for modern literature: “Dumbs down complex issues into simplistic listicles”. If only there was a way to write anything with any semblance o’ depth online. But that’s impossible, ’course. I mean, you can put the entirety o’ Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs online; but you can’t write anything that intelligent online. Those are the rules.

Barriers to publication entry have crashed, enabling huge torrent of subliterary and/or nonliterary textual expression.

Just like this 1.

Algorithms and social media replacing work of editors and publishing houses; network socially-generated texts replacing individually-authored texts.

’Cause collaboration has ne’er created anything valuable, artistically. Nor can anyone hope to do anything individualistic online. Contrast this with, say, Shakespeare, who ne’er worked with anyone else & ne’er had anything to do with the cultural currents o’ his time. He was just some isolated crab in a cave, writing everything from his pure invention, with no inspiration from anyone else @ all. That’s how true writers write. Or how ’bout T.S. Eliot, who filled his poetry with references to ancient literature that everyone in his literary club knew — what we might call “literary memes” today.

As for algorithms & social media replacing the work o’ editors & publishers, that’s false — not the least o’ which ’cause algorithms & social media don’t have any self-consciousness to make decisions independent o’ their fleshy masters. A mo’ accurate statement would be that all 4 o’ these things are guided by profit, which has been the guide to the literature industry since… well, ’twas an industry. As it turns out, industries are always guided by profit, ’cause if it’s not selling for the purpose o’ making money, it’s not called an industry. ’Gain, this is called “capitalism” & has existed for centuries.

If he were making the point that profitability & quality are diverging, that’d be a coherent argument; but he ne’er comes close to proving it. If this writer were half as knowledgable o’ the history o’ literature as he pretends to be, he’d know that the literature industry has been glutted with profitable but low-quality crap fore’er. ¿Know how I always liked to call shitty online writing Boon & Mills 2.0? Yeah, there’s a reason: it’s to emphasize that this is a modern version o’ an ol’ form o’ pumping out cheap, mindless literature. The corollary is that there was a traditional means that existed since the early 1900s. This writer might be pleased to know that back in the 1930s Hemingway, too, bitched ’bout the proliferation o’ cheap romance literature — ’cept he didn’t blame new technology so much as those bitchy womenfolk. As it turns out, the idea that investing a lot o’ money in truly intelligent writing is less profitable than investing less money in convincing lots o’ people that crap is gold was conceived by companies centuries ago.

“Convergence culture” obliterating former distinctions between media; books becoming one minor aspect of huge tweet/ blog/ comics/ games / soundtrack/ television / cinema / ancillary-merchandise pro-fan franchises.

1. I won’t e’en pretend to understand what “ancillary-merchandise pro-fan franchises” means. Well, I do know: it means nothing. It’s just something the writer thought sounded cool. I would imagine that any franchise would be “pro-fan”; Shakespeare certainly didn’t write his works with the intent that people would hate them. I’m also not sure if it’s s’posed to be the literature that’s ancillary or the merchandise. In context, it seems as if it should be the literature, since I can’t imagine someone complaining ’bout the problem o’ literature being that they don’t care ’nough ’bout selling Mr. Darcy action figures; however, its connection to “merchandise” with a hyphen seems to state that it’s the merchandise that’s ancillary. The meaning o’ what he actually wrote directly contradicts what makes sense in context — which is no rarity, e’en in this short post.

2. How dare you mix your filthy lesser media in my literature. Classic literature sure ne’er mixed with other mediums. Ne’er mind that Shakespeare’s plays were “ancillary” to literature & were made primarily to be performed in essentially an older version o’ television; that didn’t apparently hurt its stature as the highest point o’ English literature. Meanwhile, that hack James Joyce would love to mix in songs, advertisements, & e’en camera techniques from early cinema into that dumb piece o’ pop-culture pollution known as Ulysses.

3. People who can’t e’en bother to use “/”s consistently shouldn’t be judging others on their literacy.

Unstable computer and cellphone interfaces becoming world’s primary means of cultural access. Compositor systems remake media in their own hybrid creole image.

Let’s ignore the fact that his denigrating comparison o’ different window sizes changing literature to creoles is racist & hilariously worded in the most pretentious way possible & ’stead focus the fact that he seems to think literature falls apart if put in a different-sized rectangle. This is in contrast to books, which have always had the same standard size for all published books fore’er.

I’m actually not e’en sure I interpreted his incredibly vague diction correctly. I’m not sure what part o’ computer & cellphone interfaces are “unstable”, since an “interface” is just any way you use them, which is a large problem domain.

Also, love the redundancy: he could’ve just said that “computers are becoming world’s primary means of cultural access”, since cellphones are, by definition, computers & interfaces are, by definition, the way you access computers. Nothing’s mo’ literate than using mo’ words just for the sake o’ mo’ words. That’s what Strunk & White always said, a’least.

As for “Compositor systems”, they are just the programming techniques operating systems use to keep screens from flickering & give windows spiffy affects when they’re minimized, as well as the way image blending works in Photoshop. Not sure how any o’ that “remake[s] media in their own hybrid creole image”; the latter doesn’t e’en seem to have anything to do with literature @ all. ¿Is he trying to imply that programmers try to hide subliminal messages in the screen’s double buffer?

Scholars steeped within the disciplines becoming cross-linked jack-of-all-trades virtual intelligentsia.

With the context o’ this writer / robot’s stuffy language, I can’t imagine him saying “the disciplines” or “jack-of-all-trades” without quotation marks. “These scholars — always be steepin’ in those disciplines, ¿you know what I’m saying?”

This 1’s actually coherent, but not relevant to literature. Also, he doesn’t provide any evidence that it’s true or e’en a bad thing. He basically just asserts something ’gain with the stupidest o’ diction & leaves us, as if his profound li’l fortune cookie o’ wisdom were ’nough.

Academic education system suffering severe bubble-inflation.

Wired listicle plagiarizing The Economist headline.

I had to rewrite that sentence to make it closer to the terribleness o’ the original, since my natural proclivity gainst English atrocities made me neglect the participle. I in my silliness wrote “plagiarizes” in simple present tense, which is far too concise to be good.

¿How the fuck can an education system have inflation? I guess this writer is trying to say that there’s too many colleges & not ’nough demand, said in an inane mixed metaphor with currency & economic bubbles ( ¿Why both? ’Cause the writer had to fill what was still a much shorter word requirement than e’en this post I’m writing & couldn’t fill that word demand with substance ). With how expensive colleges have gotten, I doubt that.

Polarizing civil cold war is harmful to intellectual honesty.

( Pause for laughter ).

All right: this is the line that inspired me to do this whole post. This deserves to be enshrined. Forget those wimps who read Eye of Argon without laughing; I’d like to see them read this sentence with a straight face.

1. ¿A polarizing war? ¡You don’t say! That’s right up there with “wet water” or “crappy shit”.

2. ¿Is the “civil cold war” some fantasy hybrid he’s writing ’bout in some novel he’s writing? ¿Do those evil commie Soviets develop a time machine & conspire to use it to go back & force the north to lose the civil war in hopes o’ debilitating the US’s global power, allowing the Soviet Union to be dominant? ’Cause you’d probably do much mo’ for contemporary literature by writing that amazing plot than writing this dumb listicle.

3. Sentence fragment is harmful to Hulk brain.

4. After making all these jokes, I’ve realized that I still have no idea what this crackpot is talking ’bout. Stop trolling: everyone knows it’s the Worldwide Mad Deadly Communist Gangster Computer God™ that controls everything, not some dumb civil cold war. Leave the insane ramblings to the experts, please.

The Gothic fate of poor slain Poetry is the specter at this dwindling feast.

Looks like you failed to copy that headline from World News Weekly & still had that line from that emo poetry you were composing in your clipboard. Oops.

I’ll give this article 1 thing: usually I feel a bit soul-sick reading these listicles, just rolling my eyes & thinking, Not this vapid shit ’gain. This article was a’least refreshingly creative in its insanity, making me slap my forehead & think, ¿What the fuck? ¿Where’d you e’en come up with that garbled mess o’ words? I’m still not sure that these lines didn’t all just come from the Chomskybot.