One of those things that makes you go, "Jesus Christ,"

http://www.salon.com/news/the_labor_movement/index.html?story=/politics/war_room/2011/02/24/union_thug_video

"Because these people are completely fucking shameless, the woman from the video has compared herself to Lara Logan. I am not making that up. I wish I was making that up. But I would actually not make that up, because it would seem beyond the pale to accuse conservative activists of being so horrible, so desperate to play the victim, so morally depraved, so deep into their persecution fantasies that they've lost all perspective on the rest of the world."

Republican policy is not fundamentally evil - fundamentally wrong, yes, but not evil - but as of late all Republicans have become is petty, morally depraved greedy children who are desperate to play any fiddle that makes them look like nothing but the horrible victims of unions, the recession, gay marriage, or whatever else they can get their hands on.

Equating someone defensively pushing your camera away with the survivor of a brutal rape is exactly the kind of petty unreal false equivalence conservatives have been playing up lately and I am unable to believe it. And yet, there it is.

EDIT: Changed title and added a few things for clarification.

In response to death

It's kind of alarming to see someone, who is the most two-fisted, loudest, angriest person in the world, a person so driven to comedy and anger that they run an entire site about it, suddenly turn morose and poetic. It's strange that I could not know this person well enough to form any kind of real friendship, hell we've even had the occasional spat with each other over really fundamental issues, but be struck so dumb by how drastic the change is in their personality. Especially seeing them post on their personal site with a blank, shocked post, even filing under their rarely-used real name vs online pseudonym.

It's one of those reminders that, as tough and independent that we are, everyone is still human, and when it comes to death, it strikes us hard, and seeing people struck hard hurts us in turn.

Polly I can't imagine the kind of unbearable agony you're in right now but I'm thinking about you and hoping you are quickly recovered from this incredibly difficult time.

A thought on Zelda's writing

One of the main reasons I've noticed that Majora's Mask is way, way darker is because it doesn't have the need to cherry-coat everything. When the girl from the farm gets abducted by aliens, she's broken mentally, completely shattered. When Kafei vanishes, she's devastated. People die, and everyone seems really upset about it.

Meanwhile you look at Ocarina of Time, such as when the Gorons have been herded up to be fed to Volvagia, and they all cower in the prisons. "Please...don't...eat...me..." they whimper, not looking up to realize that you're trying to save them. "If you eat me you'll get a stomachache, and you'll be sorry!"

I understand we're making this an E for Everyone game and I don't take issue with what they did, but it does strike me as one of those surprising moves that Majora's Mask was not doled equally with heaping spoonfuls of sugar. Majora's Mask was really miraculous in several ways, the most specific being that we even got the game as it exists now at all.

Me RE: Assange in custody

I'm not going to act as though this whole thing isn't largely suspicious since only after he became one of the most wanted men in America - be that good or bad - did the rape accusation take full-on force and he was actually issued a warrant. It is very suspicious. You'd have to be a lobotomized ignorant douche not to find it a little suspicious.

But please, please, do not act as though he should be let off scott free just because the case was dropped then picked up. This sort of thing has happened, is happening, and will happen again to people who are not connected to Wikileaks. If a rape accusation was taken center-stage by a public figure like a celebrity and authorities were coerced by public pressure to prosecute him, things would be no different. 

Claiming that Julian Assange should be let off of his accused rape purely based on the grounds that he runs Wikileaks is an equal crime to saying he should be killed or imprisoned purely on the grounds that he runs Wikileaks.

I'm very okay with a public figure being tried and imprisoned for raping someone - at this point, it is still just an accusation, and acting as though he is either a rapist or an innocent victim is just as not fair. A man on trial for murder is neither a murderer or an innocent; he is being tried. He will be found guilty or not guilty based on the circumstances.

But please, do not assume for even a second that he's being treated fairly. His Swiss bank account has been suspended, and he was refused bail. 

THIS IS NOT FAIR. He must be tried fairly on the crime. The special treatment he is given is bullshit. No celebrity gets special treatment in prison or trial based on being an actor or musician. Likewise, unfair treatment by the law system based on his unofficial 'criminal' status is wrong. 

If he gets deported to the US I am going to go nuclear I swear to fucking God. 

UPDATE: In the third paragraph, a person can make judgments based on the facts presented to them. I should clarify that my post is referring to it as far as law is concerned. A convicted rapist or an innocent victim. 

Just to keep it around.

Friend on Facebook Alecia G said she got tickets to "Harry Potter 7.1" and the whole thing just came to me.

HARRY POTTER 7.1 PATCH NOTES
- reduced range of Expelliarmus
- fixed clipping errors on the Gryffindor Robes
- rebalanced damage dropoff of Stupefy
- reduced Protego's duration
- increased health of conjured snakes with Serpentsortia
- fixed a glitch that prevented characters from counterspelling
- reduced likelihood of Game Not Found errors on matchmaking
- Accio should now target correctly

- fixed the way Diffinido renders blood
- increased health restored by Episkey
- increased radar range on Homenum Revelio
- REMOVED AVADA KEDAVARA FROM MULTIPLAY DUE TO BALANCE ISSUES okay I'm done now seriously

Kids Murder Someone - Instant Messengers To Blame

Its pretty fucking hilarious if you imagine this entire article takes out anything to do with World of Warcraft. All you would need to do is replace it like this: 

After Proctor's murder, the boys told a friend on AOL Instant Messenger what they had done. One of the teens admitted that the murder didn't feel like he thought it would. Those messages were collected by police and used by prosecutors.

...

Bonnie Leadbeater, a psychology professor at the University of Victoria, says some kids have trouble knowing that what's acceptable in an internet chatroom may not be in real life. 

"You don't know which aggressive kid is going to take the fantasies of instant messengers and try them out in reality. You just can't predict those very rare occurrences," she said.

And it's instant comedy gold.

Everyone knows at this point that violent games don't even have anything to do with murders other than namedropping or a videogame being in the room. But in this instance a bunch of twats at CTV News saw a videogame somewhat related to it and decided to make the connection. The connection, in this instance, is online communication.

That's it. There is no talk of what they trained to do, any measure of practice, or some kind of educational murdersimulator horseshit you usually hear, maybe like about Manhunt or GTA or something. It is just a fucking chatroom. 

I guarantee you if Kotaku didn't exist we wouldn't have heard a fucking word about this horseshit schlock journalism. I'm not sure if that's a good thing in this instance or not. 

Basically you should read Glenn Grenwald regardless, but...

This is worth reading for a point I want to talk about today.

This kind of character smear ("he's not in his right mind," pronounced a 25-year-old who sort of knows him) is reserved for people who don't matter in the world of establishment journalists -- i.e., people without power or standing in Washington and, especially, those whom American Government authorities scorn. In official Washington, Assange is a contemptible loser -- the Pentagon hates him and wants him destroyed, and therefore the "reporters" who rely on, admire and identify with Pentagon officials immediately adopt that perspective -- and that's why he was the target of this type of attack. After I wrote my criticism of this article on Monday, I was contacted by Burns' co-writer, Ravi Somaiya, who defended this article from my criticisms. I agreed to keep the exchange off-the-record at his insistence -- and I will do so -- but that was the question I kept asking: point to any instance where the NYT ever subjected Someone Who Matters in Washington to this kind of personality and mental health trashing based on the gossip and condemnation of associates. It does not exist.

If you had read the long-ass bullshit piece, it detailed all of his ways that Julian Assange - an enemy and target of the US Government's butthurt defensive stance via all those leaks Assange Wiki'd - is crazy and dangerously paranoid. Of the government. Who hates him. For leaking government documents. And he's crazy for thinking this way. Aaaaaaaaaaaaahyup. 

This seriously isn't the New York Times' only stint of pulling this kind of ridiculous bullshit. I recall - admidst tears of laughter and holding my sides - the time when New York Times (though strangely not Burns) had a wonderful, tear-jerking ten page narrative about what a nice guy Glenn Beck is. 

In person, Beck is sheepish and approachable, betraying none of the grandiosity or bluster you might expect from a man who predicted “the next Great Awakening” to a few hundred thousand people in late August at the Lincoln Memorial or who declared last year that the president has a “deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture.” He wore a blue dress shirt tucked into jeans and brown loafers, which he kicked off as soon as he sat down. He showed little interest in the results from primary elections held the day before — upsets in Delaware and New York for Tea Party candidates whose followers often invoke Beck and Palin as spiritual leaders and even promote them as a prospective presidential ticket in 2012.

You can tell the writer in this instance is trying as hard as he can to be nice to Glenn Beck, but it comes off as needlessly neutral. Glenn Beck is the same guy who has no concept of how fair use works and insinuates outright that Disney just doesn't care about it. This is the same guy who blames everything he can on immigrants, be it blacks or latinos. This is the same guy who had his rally to restore racism on the same day as MLK's speech, and even though it was sheer apathy, he called it 'divine providence' and touted that God wished it to be so. 

Being nice to Glenn Beck is not the same as trying to make Julian Assange look like a nut, but this is the kind of thing the New York Times has had prior experience with. Painting people who are outright full of shit like they're nice, approachable, decent people despite all that awful stuff you hear in their own radio show that they own that comes out of their mouth is right up the same alley as painting a ballsy, honest rebel like a nut.