Brickmuppet Blog 2.0

October 15, 2020

Worry.

Banality is below the fold. As a contrast to that, here is some cheesecake rendered by Jun (@navigavi).

He's taking commissions on Skeb.

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October 14, 2020

I'm Going to Link to This

It's not really news.

It's not unexpected.

It's been known for a while.

But I'm gonna link to it.

Because doing so has become important.

Because I can.

IT'S RIGHT HERE.

I do this because this dog bites man story became very important to spread to the four winds this afternoon.

There's some discussion of why that is here, here, here, here and here.

Unlike a lot of people who are seeing that this story sees the light of day, I'm not stunning and brave. I don't have to sit pondering the potential cost to my livelihood and social circle that speaking this truth will entail. I don't have to ask myself "Is it worth losing my site?" "Is THIS, where I make my stand? "Will it matter enough to make the cost I pay worthwhile?"

That calculus does not trouble me, as it does so many others, because I don't do Twitter and don't have a Facebook page. I blog at Mee.nu!

Because Mee.Nu is still free, in both senses of the word.

You should probably migrate your social media here.

UPDATE: Pixy, the administrator of Me.Nu has taken a break from his usual policy of being apolitical on his tech blog to opine upon this dumpster fire at length.

UPDATE 2: Sargon also got his channel locked in the series of purges that have happened the last 36 hours.

Watch on Bitchute

In fairness to YouTube, the company says that this ban was not related to his coverage of the NY Post Story. Rather, they say they banned him for a post from some months ago in which he decried the normalization of Pedophelia.

"Wait..WHAT!? That's their cover story!?"

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How to Play Chess

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Alright. I Do Not Want to Hear ONE Word About Pineapple and Ham....Ever Again

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Truly a Fine Example of a 2020 Headline

Researchers At Large Hadron Collider Are Confident To Make Contact With Parallel Universe In Days

Uh...WHAT!?

I call bullshit.

I was skeptical too, so I looked for another source (with proper grammar) and found a report on the results of the experiment. That the results of an experiment which hasn't yet happened, but were reported on 3 years ago might prove that they've at least broken causality.

However, due to a silly, neurotic concern about using a 2017 article from The Onion as a source for a story about a 2020 science breakthrough, I dug a little deeper and found the awful truth.

"Just as many parallel sheets of paper, which are two dimensional objects [breadth and length] can exist in a third dimension [height], parallel universes can also exist in higher dimensions.

"We predict that gravity can leak into extra dimensions, and if it does, then miniature black holes can be produced at the LHC.

"Normally, when people think of the multiverse, they think of the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, where every possibility is actualised.

"This cannot be tested and so it is philosophy and not science.

"This is not what we mean by parallel universes. What we mean is real universes in extra dimensions.

Further digging revealed stories about the LHC creating matter from light and making progress on the discovery of dark matter, but no imminent Isekai applications, or any evidence that Warhammer 40,000 might be prophecy.

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October 13, 2020

Now It's ALIENS Getting Involved in Our Elections.

As I am opposed to cattle mutilations and the destruction of crops, I guess I have no recourse but to vote for the angry cheeto.

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Overview of the Situation in Japan

Japan is locked down hard regarding international travel but they've been fairly laid back with regards to the lockdown on businesses. It's largely voluntary....aside from masks on mass transit, and there are various off and on travel restrictions in place.

Their economy is largely open now, though restaurants are suffering from what I've heard elsewhere. All in all, they seem to have been much more sensible than in many places in the U.S. They were both more cautious at the beginning when the situation looked very dire, and quickly relaxed the lockdown when it became obvious it was dangerous, but not as bad as initially feared. The state of emergency was lifted in May. Despite demographics trending quite old and this disease being lethal to the old, Japan's death rate is remarkably low.

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1 Wait a moment... Yesterday, Russians announced resumption of commercial airline flights between Russia and Japan, starting on November 1. Is Japan actually hard locked?

Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at Wed Oct 14 17:07:01 2020 (LZ7Bg)

2 There is also Taiwan, which was much quicker and more restrictive in their immediate handling of foreign travelers (Citizens coming back from foreign locations were a different matter, and represented all the new cases in the country for a while now.), but while they did impose some select restrictions on capacity and masking, never came close to locking down the nation...To the point that the more alarmist people were demanding to know why the government was still allowing bars and clubs to be opened. This result came despite not only having a significant cross-strait passenger traffic, but also other sources of infection, like the ocean liner (Which was actually a good case study in how less infectious the Wuhan Flu was, even under near-ideal conditions for it to spread.).

Taiwan as a model for other nations to follow is obviously imperfect (The ROC had the ability and authority to do contact tracing to the level of detail that they could release for public consumption, several days' worth of point by point movement details for confirmed infected patients, which is something that would never fly in the US.). But given how the State Department, even at the height of the Wuhan Flu, never moved recommending travelers take 'normal precautions' for Taiwan, there is something to be learned from there.

Posted by: cxt217 at Wed Oct 14 17:08:21 2020 (4i7w0)

3 There is an overview of the Japanese Counter-CoronaChan Quarantine Controls here. They were not allowing ANY foreign entry for most of the year (even for residents at one point). Now tourism is still disallowed and they are easing some restrictions, but all entrants must be tested before coming as well as upon arrival and need to quarantine 14 days.(not self-quarantined..held in an approved facility under guard and isolated for the duration). As they build more containment facilities, I suspect their numbers allowed in will increase rapidly, but given the measures, I'd consider the place to be locked down pretty hard.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Wed Oct 14 17:34:31 2020 (5iiQK)

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October 12, 2020

Blasphemer !

I was going to write something on this story, but Pixy found a video that sums up this dumpsterfire nicely.

Makes a not entirely applicable but still non-terrible intro to the previous post.

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It's Good to Learn the Mistakes of Others. It's Better Yet to Not Repeat Their Mistakes

Pete Zaitcev linked to this piece by Hillel Ofek in The New Atlantis that looks at why Islamic countries tend to have such a dearth of scientific achievement today, despite having been the undisputed world leaders in the sciences early on.

The article is well researched and informative. While my history degree did not have islamic society in particular as its main focus, this article certainly comports with what I have researched regarding the matter, and clarifies a few specifics regarding the ascendancy of a particular strain (denomination?) of Sunni thought that is generally considered to be the culprit, but as the article proposes, may well have simply accelerated existing trends within the civilization.

Honest critiques of "The Religion of Peace" are hard to come by in this day and age as they tend to be either the "woke" apologia frequently produced by todays very PC academia or the product of independent researchers who in response to that Islamophillic dynamic....overcompensate to say the least. It's a good article and I suggest you read it in full. Given today's publishing climate and academic realities I'd go so far as to call it brave.

However, the greatest relevance of the article to us today may not be what it says about another society's past, but the implied warnings it holds for our future.

While it is commonplace to assume that the scientific revolution and the progress of technology were inevitable, in fact, the West is the single sustained success story out of many civilizations with periods of scientific flourishing. Like the Muslims, the ancient Chinese and Indian civilizations, both of which were at one time far more advanced than the West, did not produce the scientific revolution.

Humans have been humaning for as much as 300,000 years over those 30 millennia there have been flashes of brilliance and periods of innovation that gave us math geometry and the ability to do engineering feats build aqueducts to bring water 56 miles from Subbiaco to the Capitoline hill and many other innovations that are not to be sneezed at, but the massive cascading tsunami of knowledge building upon itself without regard to where new knowledge came from as long as it was testable, that we've enjoyed since the renaissance and enlightenment....well that's sort of thing has started a couple of places, but such golden ages always petered out after a decade or two, or were strangled in the crib by entrenched interests (as in China and Rome)...except for the two closely linked phenomenae of the Renaissance and Enlightenment begetting the industrial revolution. These bizarre bank shots involving a series of very specific, political, cultural, and religious conditions allowed for something that had not occurred in humanity over its many endeavors over a third of a million years. Using Thomas Newcomb as a completely arbitrary start for the industrial age, we've been in this happy state for about 300 years.

That's a thousandth of the time we know that humanity has walked the earth (and we can be reasonably sure the earliest known remains were not the earliest people). So, going into the past of humanity and picking any one year there is a one in a thousand chance that one will land in a world ruled by tyranny, oppression, superstition, backwardness, malthusian cycles of despair looming over lives brutish and short with little or no hope of it ever getting better. That's the norm....the median state of humanity...the direction in which history bends.

The idea that history and the universe inevitably bends towards progress is a product of 300 years of everything getting better every year. Between 1803 and 1903 we had gone from near feudal agrarian societies of subsistence farmers, to cars, electricity, and airplanes. 66 years later there were human footprints on the moon, shortly after that we were sending rock-&-roll, bagpipe music and porn to the STARS! It is easy to see how, given the short lifespans of humans, some saw this as an inevitable trend, but it is a divergence from the mean that represents only 1/1000th of humanities existence.

Western civilization, and those others that have used its insights to rekindle and build upon their own lost glories are not examples of the arc of history inevitably bending towards progress, they are an example of a middle finger raised against the very norms of the universe. Our societies are like a kayaker fighting heroically against the flow of a maelstrom threatening to drag us down to the foetid depths that humanity will reach by regressing to its mean.

And we've stopped paddling.

Returning to Ofek's article, look what was happening in Islamic universities at about the time that Europe was beginning to leapfrog Islamic civilization.

No one paid much attention to the work of AverroÃ«s after he was driven out of Spain to Morocco, for instance â€” that is, until Europeans rediscovered his work.

Sounds like AverroÃ«s got cancelled.

The things that made this wondrous aberration in which we live possible are under attack from multiple quarters. The so-called cancel culture used by the cultural enforcers of "wokeness" is becoming every bit as pernicious and stifling as the ash'erite courts in stifling anything outside the accepted norms. One of the reasons that Ofek points to the Ash'erite school for Islam's fall is the inability of the Islamic leadership to reconcile reason and faith, impericism and theology. Christianity explicitly allows for "rendering unto Caesar what is Caesar's" in fact Christ himself (not a prophet or apostle) implored people to do so. There is a very distinct understanding in Christianity, that there is a separation between the secular and the sacred. (The cultural basis for the church /state separation so important to our progress). Sunni theology sees this as another example of how Christians are weak, and that Christianity is the religion of slaves.

Likewise, the secular religion that is so sweeping our ruling classes sees itself as fully integrated into the power structure and government, which its adherents see as weapons to be wielded against unbelievers. Certainly that is hyperbolic, but it does not seem to be far from the practical result. A twitter mob is little different from a sharia court, except that it cannot dispense an amputation or direct death penalty yet. It can ensure that someone who commits apostasy, or blasphemy against the received wisdom of those in charge, looses their ability to engage, their banking privileges, and their ability to live in peace. There were, of course, such blacklists, extortions and literal witchunts, in Europe, but given Europe's balkanized nature, one could leave and go somewhere else. Today, the long arm of the blue-check-stassi can reach you anywhere.

And it gets worse.

Unlike Islamic theology, which is based on the Koran, today's transgressions can change minute to minute on the whims of hash tags, and be fiendishly non-intuitive (did you know that understanding that astrology is bollocks is...SEXIST?)

The pernicious influence of Foucault, Derrida, Sarte' and others is attacking the very foundations upon which this civilizational edifice is built, and the implications are terrifying.

I'm not suggesting that there's going to be a collapse like the Greek dark age (where they literally forgot how to write and had to re-invent the alphabet) . Technologies are rarely lost. Even after the fall of Rome only a few closely held trade secrets like the chemical formula for the Roman's better concretes and the methods of hydraulic excavation were lost. The beau monde wine-moms are unlikely to discard the washing machines and microwave ovens that have liberated them from 300,000 years of domesticity. It's worse than that. You see the very technologies that make the Twittermob so effective can, as we've seen in China, enable a panopticon undreamed of in the worst nightmares of Orwell. That's a set of technologies that the beneficiaries of these toxic trends are unlikely to see fall by the wayside. Getting out from under such a system would be nigh impossible, not only because of its capabilities, but its stability. After all, freedom as we understand it has been an alien concept for the vast majority of 300,000 years.

We need to really embrace and promote the values of the enlightenment and push back against those who blame it for our ills. Because if we don't, we will not have cast off our chrysalis, and moved on to greater things in the stars, but, instead, like our many forebears we will regress to the mean...a bad place to be indeed.

This dynamic might have implications for the Fermi Paradox, but it has more urgency at the moment for us.

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1 A very well written article, BM. As societal collapse and technological decline is an important thread in the tapestry that is my Machine Civilization future history, I think about things such as this rather a lot.
One idea I had after finishing Barzun's "Dawn to Decadence" was simply how improbable the story of the last 300-500 years of the West is. As you rightly point out, to think our story is the norm is not only wrong but dangerous. In 405 AD everyone knew the Roman Empire had a few problems, but it had always been around so it always would, right? No worries! What was that about the Rhine freezing over...?

Posted by: Clayton Barnett at Tue Oct 13 11:07:30 2020 (ug1Mc)

2 Well, there's several other problems.
1) You can only have so many times to conquer great Byzantine or Persian cities full of leading Christian or Zoroastrian or Jewish natural scientists. And those guys might have kids or grandkids, or a few disciples who are Muslims, but soon the Islamic theological bullies will shut you down or murder you.
Heck, you can't even do textual criticism or Islamic historical research under your own name, openly, at most Western universities.
2) The Quran explicitly says that Allah doesn't set up natural laws as part of Creation, which was why the Mutazilites and other "progressive" groups were shut down hard in the early Middle Ages.
3) Without getting all conspiracist, it's pretty obvious that the Quran contradicts itself in some fairly serious ways, including mashing together passages that indicate that Jesus is divine, the Quran is a divine person, etc., etc. Given that there's also some extreme funny business going on with the Islamic account of history for several centuries, and some very weird archeology, and several different versions of the Quran that contradict each other on fairly serious topics.... Well, basically you can't start thinking and poking into any aspect of Islamic culture and literature, or natural philosophy, or the sciences, without running into serious trouble with the religious/state authorities of the possibly fatal kind. You might be safe sticking to math, but there's problems there also.

Posted by: Suburbanbanshee at Tue Oct 13 20:45:20 2020 (sF8WE)

3 Regards number 1 of your points. They were successfully building on those assimilations, until the Asheri'te ascension.
I think number 2 is the big one of the three things you point out. The idea that the almighty set up a system without any rules kinda puts the kibosh on looking for universal constants. The outlook also hampered application of their technologies. The Muslims basically INVENTED optics, their contributions to the theory of optics is very hard to overstate, but it was the Catholics that invented eyeglasses and the telescope and Dutch opticians perfected the microscope. In the case of eyeglasses (mid 1200's) this happened almost as soon as they got the data.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Wed Oct 14 04:43:58 2020 (5iiQK)

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Hippy-San 0n Boogie 2988

Styx has one of the more reasoned takes on the recent situation with a YouTuber (Boogie2988 ) who had a stalker show up at his house.

I'm not a fan of the YouTuber, but whatever one thinks of him, having a stalker is a dreadful thing, and having them show up at your house is absolutely terrifying, beyond the pale and not acceptable. Deadly force is authorized. However, Boogie's response was...sub-optimal. I've seen a lot of hot takes on this bit of drama over the last week but this one is notable for not being stupid.

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October 09, 2020

Monstergirl Doctor...Almost Over

Well, Monstergirl Doctor has really gone into wilds of nowhere.

Our female protag, putting up a fierce face.

There is a brief moment in episode 4 when one of the protagonoists literally trips over what appears to be the actual plot to the show, but that potentially interesting storyline is resolved in the same episode, mostly off camera. It then muddles along for several episodes with our male protagonist being either a predator, or autistic (or possibly both) and our female snake girl protagonist trying to drive through his thick skull the importance of communication with one's patients, or at least not intrusively examining one's female patients without discussing the matter first and getting consent. (good grief)

Dark secrets are revealed...and then thrown away and due to the lack of actual storytelling, background on the world and characters is provided occasionally by a giant exposition squid.

This is a medical procedural set in a fantasy world and there has been some exploration of interesting ideas...and there are only three episodes left....so I may finish it...for the sake of completeness....but yeah at this point I'm taking a break and am going to have to say that the show has not lived up to its early potential.

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Asking the Important Questions That Have Nagged at us for Some Time

And come to think of it, yeah, our protagonist is not in a fetal position perpetually screaming for some reason. (Well...MOST of the time he's not)

Season 2 of Re: Zero seems to have come to an end, though the story is DEFINITELY not over. If you have not seen this show, do NOT start with season 2 go back and start with Episode 1-A of season one (which I discussed here back in....it's been four YEARS since this came out!).

This season, while lacking the breakneck pace of the first, is nevertheless exceptionally good, maintaining the gatling gut-punch tone but interspersing a good deal of character reflection, development and revelations about the overarching plot, which give the viewer a better understanding of who the heroes aren't.

This show is grimdark to the max but it has a thread of idealism running through it that keeps it from becoming nihilistic.

This season does not progress as far as the first by a long shot, the time that has passed is about what it would take to watch the whole season, and the characters are not far removed in time place or situation from where they were at the beginning of the season. The season finale, doesn't really FEEL like a finale, but there is a definate sensation of having gotten over a hump of sorts as the plot is moved forward tremendously and the story keeps one on the edge of one's seat.

This is a fantastic show, and I highly recommend it to any who have missed it.

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Chekov, Dostoyevsky and Solzhenitsyn Look Down and Weep....

...at the chilling proof that they have, again, been unheeded.

BLM/Antifa rioters march into the suburbs of Wauwatosa (Watch on Bitchute)

There's a lot of talk in certain circles about Civil War, most of it profoundly ignorant, on many different levels. For one thing, such a horrid event would not be cathartic, or cleansing, but rather would be a dreadful terrifying, cancerous waste of lives. Second, the U.S. has never had a real civil war, . "The Civil War" was, in reality, a failed secession, with the secessionists not trying to take over the country, but leave it. While this is hardly more than a semantic point to some, it meant that there were clearly defined geographical boundaries, and an intuitive understanding of the definitions of victory and defeat.

What is shown in the video above is akin to a REAL civil war. The most applicable example of which might be the nightmare that befell Spain in the 1930s. I suggest you read about the Spanish Civil War....but not on a work night, for your sleep will be neither sound, nor in great quantity after you do so.

Other actual Civil Wars had far worse outcomes than even that nightmare.

The parallels to the seeming insanity of our own upper and upper middle classes with the the behavior of the minor nobility and upper middle class in the last days of Tsarist Russia are sobering to say the least. They are completely unwilling to criticize even this pandemonium, lest it threaten their political purity and social standing.

...and that was a thread I was going to expond upon until this morning, whence came news that a small group of smooth brains, allegedly opposed to the above suburban raiders had decided to play the left's game of Burn Loot and Murder....and then it became clear that...well not clear at all....'cause I have no IDEA who these numb-nuts are actually affiliated with. They certainly don't SEEM to be on team MAGA or team D.

However, I would argue that, on balance, this ugly plot is actually not as worrying as the video above. That is because an attack on a public figure has been thwarted (something we should be able to, in a bi-partisan fashion rejoice over). But the attacks on ordinary citizens in their homes...for the crime of being middle class...was not responded to until well after the fact.

In case your reading comprehension or my typing skills are lacking, I'm not suggesting that an assault on a public figure, even one as loathsome as Whitmer is in any way acceptable. I'm pointing out that, in a time of civil unrest, it is easier to protect a few politicians than the vast bulk of the unprotected populace from those who seek to do evil, and evil rarely attacks the most protected positions, leaving the citizenry to fend for themselves in this situation. And this situation is a very worrisome one indeed.

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October 08, 2020

I'm FREE! But Not As Free as I'd Like.

Last Tuesday I was...ill. I had a bad cold and a splitting headache on top of an active kidney stone. Going to work in a mask with a runny nose is unpleasant in the extreme, and given the anxieties I would cause my fellow employees as a snot-rocket, I called in. Wednesday I was sicker, with severe gastrointestinal distress a headache akin to having a wayward chestburster in my head and the cold had moved into my chest, but the coughs were dry.

Thus, I scheduled a test to see if I had indeed been visited by Coronachan. The test was on Friday and I was, therefore, under quarantine, until I got the results, which came in yesterday.

I failed the test.

No Wu-Flu for me.

This means no certificate of pestilence-proofedness to get me into the fast lane on planes or allow me to go to Japan or any of the other benefits that come with getting the Corona-coof . Dang.

OTOH I'm feeling much better and am not, you know, dead. Since I did have a certificate of not having Coroina YET, I was allowed to return to work today, which I VERY much needed to do having missed over a week of pay. However, 10 days in bed did nothing to get me into shape for lifting boxes during our peak season, which started last Wednesday.

I'm gonna lay down for a bit.

CoronaChan by Alart90

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October 07, 2020

A Hurricane Season Worthy of 2020

Is this the fifth to hit the gulf this year?

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October 05, 2020

Given the Current State of our Entertainment Industry

I have my overwhelming joy upon learning this slightly tempered....

...by a nagging curiosity regarding exactly how they will subvert our expectations.

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October 03, 2020

Insightful Commentary

Mark Hamill gives a thoughtful overview of the recent debate.

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The Vanishings Have Begun

CoronaChan, was a You-Tube channel that aggregate news related to the current pandemic. Its mirror still exists on Bitchute.

Midnight Tease is down as I type this.

Perhaps Ben referred to Taiwan as, you know, a country.

That's what happened two two Hololive V-tubers, Kiryu Coco and Akai Haato, who, in the course of a joint You-Tube livestream looked up their analytics online (a very common thing for V-Tubers and YouTubers to do), discussed where their viewers were, and, I gather thanked the residents of each country. A lot of their viewers are in Taiwan, and they mentioned and....

For those "inappropriate remarks", they have been suspended, by Hololive's parent company, Cover Corporation for at least three weeks.

There is coverage of this here, here, here, here and here...though it's anyone's guess how long those links will go somewhere.

The whole affair came as something of a shock, particularly since these are not small talents, Kiryu Coco is much bigger than one would think as as she's frequently the top super-chat earner on You-Tube in any given month. This made such waves that even American V-Tubers who avoid politics completely have taken a moment to mention it...and say "Taiwan".

It's telling that according to the ANN and Niche Gamer articles linked above that China's One China Policy was specifically mentioned in the Simplified Chinese version.

There has been a bit of backlash particularly about that latter discrepancy.

more...

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1 I'm OK. Site should be back up, now. It was a simple matter of mis-reading a bill. I thought it was due January 10th, not October 1st. It means a lot that someone noticed, though...hopefully I'll get back to posting about models or World of Warships again, soon.

And someday, I'll detail my epic 5 year adventure.

Posted by: Ben at Sat Oct 3 19:37:55 2020 (9Wcjc)

2 So for some reason this site seems to have gone into night mode or something, with black on black text.... Hopefully that's just a glitch on my end....

Posted by: Mauser at Sun Oct 4 03:27:36 2020 (Ix1l6)

3 It's black text on a black background for me as well...

Posted by: Siergen at Sun Oct 4 08:53:02 2020 (jIT9h)

4 Well, I was playing around with the settings and tried to switch to a dark background with white text, but for some reason the white text remained black. Now the text on the Styles dashboard is invisible and I'm fumbling around in the dark trying to fix it.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Sun Oct 4 14:29:14 2020 (5iiQK)

5 Hololive is an idol production company, Japanese-style; indeed they initially intended to be a singing-type of idol thing, just on Youtube, and the whole vtuber streaming kind of happened organically. The downside is, of course, that it also imported a bunch of the pathologies of that market to a new platform.

The real trick there is that their performers basically start off with a huge leg up. The technical challenge of setting up a cute little avatar image and getting the streaming going is not that large. But building an audience is tough - most people stream to almost nobody, and it takes a lot of work and luck to go from a dozen people to a thousand.

The Hololive folks, now that they've got that critical mass, basically walk into the job already successful there. They launched their EN side with five streamers all with thousands of people watching, just because the company could afford to spread a little hype around the market - because they've got their already-popular stuff feeding into it, it's like being a brand new cover band getting picked to tour with and open for an established band that can pack the stadium every night. Of course they still have to be engaging enough to keep people watching, but there are plenty of people who have that trait but not the interest needed to get a career off the ground.

The downside is that yeah, the idol industry is not pretty; it's about sucking a bunch of money out of the wallets of lonely young men, and part of that is not pissing off the lonely young men. In Japan this usually manifests in "no boys" - no boyfriends, no partners, definitely no getting married, to keep up the fantasy that you're at least theoretically available (even if the guys have no chance, a lot of them just won't deal with the reality of "my idol is interested in a man who is not me!")

If you take the Japanese money, you've got to deal with that kind of pathology; if you take the Chinese money, well, you have the Chinese equivalent.

In either case, the company reaction is pretty much par for the course - even though as observers we can nod and say "man, the idol industry sucks," that's how it is. As far as the production company is concerned, the idols are there to do a job and get paid, and they're disposable if they cause the company trouble; how much more so for a vtuber, when they're just anonymous actresses for an identity that the company manufactured?

Posted by: Avatar_exADV at Sun Oct 4 16:58:12 2020 (v29Tn)

6 Brickmuppet, do you know HTML at all? If so, you can hit F12 and use the browser tools to disable the black background so you can read the control panel. You might have to do it more than once--so that I could read the text here I had to turn off hte background-color on both the html body tag, and the div with the "main" id.

Posted by: Rick C at Sun Oct 4 17:13:24 2020 (eqaFC)

Hololive is an idol production company

Oh.

An idol company.
So the "doesn't have their employees back" thing doesn't aply, since in this country they'd be a 13th amendment violation.
Interestingly, several of their V-tubers got their audiences on their own and (as I understand it) Hololive walked in and offered them marketing deals.

Now Hololive is doing auditions for V-Tubers whose ascendance they can micro-manage. I've heard (from a few English language V-Tubers) that even the ones who built their own following have, in the last few days. been shocked to learn that Hololive owns the characters now, and they can be replaced. ( I have no confirmation from that other than hearsay, but learning that Hololive is an Idol company means that they are the Weyland-Yutani of meat markets).....and yeah...looking it up, If I'd known ANYTHING about the Idol scene I'd have known what hololive was. I thought they were a new company looking to get in on the V-Tuber thing.

Still no luck on the Blog obviously. In fact, it is supposed to be back to its old settings now.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Sun Oct 4 17:16:03 2020 (5iiQK)

8 Huh. So I can just color my text using the widget at the top of the comment field.

Also, if you highlight the text, it's readable.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Sun Oct 4 17:17:49 2020 (5iiQK)

9 The only thing I want to know is if Kizuna Ai is owned by Hololive.

Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at Sun Oct 4 18:46:26 2020 (LZ7Bg)

10 No. Kizuna Ai was affiliated with upd8 but now she is run through Kizuna Ai Incorporated.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Sun Oct 4 21:30:37 2020 (5iiQK)

11 Time to have some kind of Taiwan film festival!
Did you guys see the story about the new CCP Chinese ethics and law textbook, where they include the story of Jesus and the woman caught in adultery... where Jesus waits until the Pharisees have gone away, and then HE stones the woman to death?
Seriously, I think it's clear who the baddies are.

Posted by: Suburbanbanshee at Mon Oct 5 08:43:25 2020 (sF8WE)

12 While Cover Corp (Hololive) is indeed an idol company, they take a percentage (albeit a large one) rather than taking the whole amount and paying a salary. And the talents are largely individual; from what I've seen (Korone, Coco, now Gawr Gura) many of the girls could walk away, set up an alternate new character, and have 50,000 followers on day one.

I hope that what went on behind the scenes is more along the lines of "you did nothing wrong, but we have to pretend to punish you because these Chinese assholes are insane".

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Tue Oct 6 10:25:05 2020 (PiXy!)

While Cover Corp (Hololive) is indeed an idol company, they take a percentage (albeit a large one) rather than taking the whole amount and paying a salary.

OK. That's better than I'd feared. It also makes sense given how the first lot of V-tubers were recruited (Most, if not all were already established.)

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Tue Oct 6 10:51:03 2020 (5iiQK)

14 I'll admit that I find Coco quite funny and I've watched quite a bit of Fubuki playing various games (and they just announced a Fubuki nendo, so there's a buy!) Haven't quite fallen all the way in the hole, though, there's a bunch of them I can't recognize and a few I only know names for but can't really get into watching.

Posted by: Avatar_exADV at Tue Oct 6 14:43:27 2020 (v29Tn)

15 Remember the good old days, when the internet was free, and it really did interpret censorship as damage, and route around it?

Posted by: Ubu at Thu Oct 8 00:35:44 2020 (UlsdO)

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I Hear Tell There Was Big News Yesterday....

...so I checked and I guess this was it.

Artist unknown....nay, Anonymous even.

In all seriousness, Trump getting the Wu-Flu is hardly a black swan, there being a pandemic and all, but the timing is such that it fosters maximum chaos.

If Trump succumbs to the virus it is too late to replace his name on the ballot, indeed people are already voting, so I'm not sure how that works. I checked...and I'm less than edified.

So go ahead and rant about 2020, where the headlines over the last month have been something out of an '80s cyberpunk novel, but with forest fires. However, remember that 4-chan has been around for 17 years....so it's not entirely 2020's fault.

But 2020 is obnoxious, so here is some gallows humor to help you face the day.

Video by Leolide

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 12:23 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 145 words, total size 2 kb.

September 30, 2020

Why I'm on Team Mask.

A LOT is being said by people I usually agree with and even look up to regarding the oppressive tyranny of having people wear masks, and how this is an unnecessary and useless annoyance, a violation of our civil rights and a sign of submission to a tyrannical state

I disagree.

If we're going to open up (and I think we should have done so before now) we need to do everything in our power to slow the transmission of this bug. It may be less lethal than it was earlier in the year due to improved treatments, but it is still very lethal to the elderly and the vulnerable.

While it is true that masks (other than N-95, N-99 and equivalent) provide very incomplete protection, they do provide some, and if everyone is wearing them their aggregate effect is substantial. We've seen this demonstrated in places like Japan, Korea and Singapore where they have been quite effective.

There is an anti-mask meme going around about a fellow using a chain link fence to stop mosquitoes. This is...flawed.

The virus itself is indeed tiny enough to avoid most facemask fibers, but is generally attached to water droplets and dust particles that are much less so, and thus a significant percentage of viri can be caught by less effective coverings. Also, the purpose of the mask is not necessarily to protect the wearer, but to prevent spread, with lower grade masks this is to prevent the wearer from transmitting the disease and thereby protect those most vulnerable. If an asymptomatic person and a vulnerable person nearby are both wearing masks, the chances of transmission to the vulnerable individual are significantly reduced.

A good analogy is the "Duck and cover!" drill that scared so many of us as children during the cold war. That desk we were hiding under (or a convenient ditch) was not going to provide any great protection against an atomic explosion. However, it was one of the few measures that was demonstrated to work...albeit on a macro scale. Ducking and covering, would, in a statistical sense increase ones chances of avoiding injury by an amount that was statistically significant in the aggregate. A, let's say, arbitrarily, 2 percent increase in chance of survival is of no great significance to an individual. However, in a nation of 300 million, that's six million more people alive than there would be otherwise. These macro trends are how public health decisions have to be made.

I find it amusing that the sneering douchebags who poo poo'd the duck and cover drills as futile are draconian about the masks, and those who understand the grim and desperate calculus behind the old cold war drills and who arm up and prepare for all manner of catastrophe, won't wear them.

Increasingly the retort to this from the right is the libertarian principle of "Why should I give a f**k about the vulnerable?...I don't like it...ain't gonna do it"

Well, there are counterarguments to that, but as a conservative, I'm unpersuasive by association, so I'll let Karl Kasarda, one of the more Libertarian Libertarians that have Libertarian'd on Gun Tube to explain almost exactly how I feel.

This is part of an unrelated Q&A session, if for some reason, it doesn't queue up to the right point, the relevant bit is at 39:50

He is kinda wrong about herd immunity being unachievable without a vaccine. In the early 1600's the Natives of North America achieved herd immunity to chicken pox without a vaccine, (but that was a sub optimal outcome for them). Now, the Chi-Com bat-soup-pestilence is nowhere near as dangerous a disease as that, but it has killed almost half as many people as flu1918 did in about one third the time.

Kasarda also at one point suggests that those not on team mask are sociopaths, but I don't think that is either helpful or even correct. I think most of them are just either autistically oblivious, or fed up with being pushed around. And in fairness, they do have some completely valid points that don't involve masks.

The lockdowns seemed like a good idea with the info that was available (particularly the calamity that was befalling Italy) at the time but the implementation in many locales WAS tyrannical.

The restrictions ARE likely to be a template for any oppressive measures to control the citizenry.

The masks ARE seen by certain of our leaders as a symbol of submission...one which they ditch as soon as they think the cameras are off.

The examples of political targeting with and selective enforcement of the restrictions ARE numerous.

Perhaps the most worrying trend was the snitch lines reminiscent of the East German Stassi. Furthermore, the prosecutions of protestors, in cars, wearing masks who only wanted to open their businesses, and Parishoners in cars, for violating lockdowns which was followed, by the initial waves of the still ongoing riots as not applicable to epidemiological precautions...which were being explicitly endorsed by the same health care providers who had pushed for the lockdowns...well that did not inspire confidence that restrictions are not politically motivated cruelty.

Finally, the devastation wrought on small businesses by the lockdowns and the hyper acceleration of worrying trends in retail and real estate by them have done nothing to alleviate the fears of those who feel (rightly to an extent) that the powers that be hate them and will miss no opportunities to screw with them.

Note though, that those valid points are about the clumsily targeted lockdowns and not the masks, which are lumped in with them by a beleaguered and miserable public.

However, if we are to continue to open up again I REALLY don't think that a mask is the hill to die upon. Indeed, to the extent that it mitigates the spread, it will prevent further devastating lockdowns by making them unnecessary and indefensible even to those who gain a sadistic pleasure in inflicting them upon us.

With regard to those smug nags who look down on those who chafe at the lockdowns as if they were impatient children, I think it was Pete who mentioned in the comments some months back that there are two Americas right now.

There are those like myself who are unaffected or making MORE money than usual, and those whose lives have been absolutely devastated by the lockdowns. I see little difference in empathy levels between the oblivious libertarians who refuse on "principle" the basic civic duty of wearing a mask to prevent the spread of a disease and the contemptuous indifference that those who can continue their jobs via ZOOM have towards those who are loosing everything while those who hold the keys to power keep them imprisoned.

The minor annoyance of wearing a mask when in a store or using public transit seems like a small price to pay for ending both the economic and human nightmare, and seems like an easy way to give some protection to those who are most vulnerable to this gift from the CCP.

This being an election year, there are other practical, though less universally appreciated reasons to wear a mask as well; ones that don't actually involve giving a hoot about anyone else. The vulnerable are largely old people and if they die of the Wu-Flu before November 3rd they will surely (as the dead are wont to do) end up voting Democratic.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 05:35 PM | Comments (10) | Add Comment
Post contains 1240 words, total size 12 kb.

1 well said. The sooner we beat this thing the sooner we can quit masking up.

Also, for the "I HAVE ASTHMA I CAN'T WEAR A MASK" people - I have asthma. It's generally well controlled with a daily pill, but I still feel it in allergy season. And I wear a mask. Yes, it makes me sometimes breathe like Darth Vader, sometimes I have a little trouble catching my breath after running up a couple flights of stairs in one....but that's nothing compared to what it would be if I caught the damned virus.

the thing is? the people refusing to mask (there are many in my town) are likely prolonging the agony for the rest of us. I have not seen my mother since early January, probably will not see her (please God let her live that long) for at least another year, and that breaks my heart. But I am not getting on a plane or a train in this and maybe bringing it to a woman who, while she is otherwise healthy, is in her 80s. I might care less about whether I live or die (I AM GETTING THERE) but I would hate to live with the thought I caused misery or death for another person, especially a loved one.
I know there were fights about seatbelts when they became a thing, but most people wear them now. This is just the seatbelts of 2020. The problem here is if you don't wear one, it's not your life that's most at risk...

Posted by: fillyjonk at Thu Oct 1 09:27:02 2020 (o5UlT)

2 The only place I wear a mask is the only place I need one: stores that won't let me in without one. Since those are the only kind of stores that exist in California at the moment, it really doesn't matter how I feel about it.

"Whenever the locals rub blue mud in their navels, I rub blue mud in mine just as solemnly." -- Lazarus Long

-j

Posted by: J Greely at Thu Oct 1 10:45:45 2020 (ZlYZd)

3 My mother doesn't have asthma and never has, but she had some kind of lack of oxygenation or overly CO2 attack while wearing a mask. Which was followed by some kind of panic attack or something, with heart palpitations. Even after we got out of the area and my mom was able to take off the mask and breathe, we had to talk her through not gasping for air, and she was somewhat weak for days after.
Thank God, it has not recurred.
My father fell and broke his finger while adjusting his mask to go into a store. Then he lacerated another finger while doing yard work, and then he had to repeatedly go back to the doctor to have the wrappings fixed from cutting off his circulation or the cast not keeping his finger rigid. Finally everything healed up.
And again, I suppose that only breaking a finger once is a negligible consequence. But my dad has balance problems that went untreated for months because no appointments for no elite threatening stuff during COVID, and now it turns out he has a neurological problem.
I had COVID back in December, before all this, and I didn't die or pass it to others, despite not wearing a mask. But I did spend time with my parents, albeit being careful to keep myself away from them. So either they caught it and got over it without symptoms, or they never caught it despite sitting one chair away from me. And I am glad, because it was unpleasant to have a mysterious crud and find it more dangerous than anticipated; but I have gotten much closer to death from bronchitis and pneumonia strains that were well understood. (And they won't let me get vaccinated against pneumonia, even though I have historically been susceptible. Fortunately I have caught it less in middle age.)
We do not shut down commerce and breathing for the sake of pneumonia or other deadlier diseases. Somehow we mostly live.
If wearing a mask was a free choice, like in Japan, and if masks were better fitted to those of us with weird European nose shapes that promote congestion and lack of oxygen, big deal.
But I get to wear a mask for hours every day, while doing manual labor, when I have already had it and cannot pass it to others, and when I am the kind of person who feels faint easily. (Luckily we all know that singers train so they don't need oxygen. See the "singers' mask", which is like oxygen deprivation in a bag.)

I am prepared to be cheerful about masks, because I am paid to wear one and pretend to be happy about it, and to watch for elderly customers fainting, or toddlers running low on air, and so on. But since almost everyone not paid to wear a mask is routinely exposing noses, and since cases have dropped to negligible levels in most places, it is just kabuki theater at this point. (And frankly, better to have kabuki than toddlers turning blue or red or white.)

Posted by: Suburbanbanshee at Fri Oct 2 08:56:48 2020 (sF8WE)

4 I'm really sorry about your mom, and dad that sucks.
Hearing from people in Japan, I don't think masks are a free choice there on mass transit. Stores can mandate them if they want to and otherwise it is indeed left to the discretion of the public. I think that Japan's way of dealing with it was pretty solid, Korea too though they had very bad luck early on, getting hit hard before measures could be taken.
Anything can be made stupid with enough government.
I thought I'd mentioned in the post (but I didn't) that I think that a lot of the actual mask regs are kind of dumb. Forcing people to wear masks outside is dumb, unless perhaps one is in a densely populated concrete jungle, and there are municipalities that demand people wear them at home which is just bonecrushingly, mind addlingly stupid.

In fact the draconian, counterproductive dominance displays by the ruling class is why there is so much pushback against the one thing that is the least Kabuki theatre of all the measures proposed. (except for cordon sanitaires around hot zones, which, in addition to being far more worrisome from a civil liberties perspective, are way past the date that they might have been effective.)
I thought I'd mentioned in the post (but I didn't) that I think that a lot of the actual mask regs are kind of dumb. Forcing people to wear masks outside is dumb, unless perhaps one is in a densely populated concrete jungle, and there are municipalities that demand people wear them at home which is just bonecrushingly, mind addlingly stupid.
However, I think that masks on mass transit, in stores, and such are the best, least intrusive and most effective way to mitigate the spread. And yes, if they're going to enforce a mask, they need to enforce the nose being covered up.
This situation; the mitigation of disease; is one of the few actual legitimate roles of government and stands in stark contrast to the majority of what government does. I know that there are people who have issues, actual medical issues with face coverings, and some consideration of their needs, in an ideal world, would be taken into account...but the government has to look at trends and the needs of the majority of its citizens.....that it cannot deal with every individual case is one of the reasons that we need to keep government small.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Fri Oct 2 11:45:50 2020 (5iiQK)

5 All of the discussions of this issue that I've witnessed online always end up frustrating me more than anything. It seems like virtually everyone, on both sides of the issue, agree on some level that the wearing of masks helps to mitigate the spread of the virus. Given that assumption, I can't really sympathize with anyone arguing against wearing one regardless of whether it's uncomfortable to wear or the authorities are being heavy handed in their imposition of mandates.
The thing is, I don't agree with the assumption that wearing masks generally reduces transmission of the virus. First of all, all of the data seems to universally agree with the idea that mask mandates increase the spread, as counter-intuitive as that might be. In the US for example, as of about a couple of weeks ago, I read that there were 30 states with mask mandates and 20 states without, and that both infection rates and rate of deaths per 100,000 population were greatly higher in states with mandates than in states without. Furthermore, the 13 states with highest death rates per 100,000 (55 or more per 100,000) were all states with mask mandates.
I realize that even data like this doesn't absolutely prove anything. It occurred to me that, for instance, the causation might work the other way. Maybe the states with the highest rates of infection and/or deaths are more likely to respond with mask mandates. But still, if masks are such a great idea, and refusing to wear one such a bad one, shouldn't there be at least a few examples of places paying a heavy price for their (assumed) incorrect decision to avoid mask mandates?
Here's what I think is going on: People who are convinced that masks reduce the transmission rate are only considering airborne transmission, as if that were the only way the virus could spread. Furthermore, it's true that microscopic water droplets and dust particles that contain the virus are stopped to some degree by masks, but it's not like they bounce off right? They stick to the mask if anything. Also, wearing a mask is usually less comfortable than not wearing one, this fact combined with the fact that masks frequently become incorrectly adjusted on the face lead most people to touch their face far more often as they're adjusting their masks frequently or else rubbing or scratching where the mask is uncomfortable or itchy. I for one would rather not catch the virus if I can avoid it, and so it makes me feel a little uncomfortable in places like grocery stores where I see many people frequently touching their faces and/or their masks in between touching surfaces that I and others are likely to come in contact with.
So, I am against wearing masks the way I see most people wearing them. I think people just generally wearing a mask on their face all day is likely to actually increase the spread of the disease. I am absolutely against any and all mask mandates. I believe that if you're going to mandate something, you'd better be absolutely positive that it's the best approach, otherwise leave it up to individuals to make up their own mind. Finally, it bothers me when people decide that because I'm generally against wearing masks in public, that it indicates that I must care more about the inconvenience of wearing a mask than about saving lives, when that's absolutely not the case.

Posted by: aboot at Sat Oct 3 16:58:52 2020 (rTAyL)

6 I am of two minds about wearing masks and mandating them, although I do wonder if the real effects of masks is to prevent the undetected asymptomatic infectees of the Wuhan flu who are wearing the masks from spreading it to other people, rather it directly protects the non-infected from the virus.

However, I also live in a state where several days ago, the governor was caught on record as admitting to playing political theater with wearing masks, so I am VERY skeptical of any kind of mandates, especially when the mandates come with the heavy-handed lock-downs that have occurred in far too many places, and done by both those with good intentions and with ill intent.

If the mask mandates had come in with sensible precautions like what Taiwan and Sweden introduced, where the governments did NOT lock down their countries, I probably would be persuaded, especially Taiwan now is more restrictive on where you have to wear masks. But I am not going to support a masking mandate that comes as part and parcel of a heavy-handed lock down.

Posted by: cxt217 at Sat Oct 3 17:23:56 2020 (4i7w0)

7 Grumble. I should have typed out:

"Taiwan is less restrictive on where you have to wear masks," because trying to type out a double negative (i.e. "more restrictive" on allowing the use of a mask mandate, thus not requiring people to wear it as often.) does not work if your mind is on other things.

Posted by: cxt217 at Sat Oct 3 18:19:26 2020 (4i7w0)

I am not going to support a masking mandate that comes as part and parcel of a heavy-handed lock down.

I think that's about right. The masks ought to make the more draconian and intrusive measures unnecessary. I also think they're being over prescribed. The should be used in, basically, mass transit and stores that require it (probably grocery stores especially) ...but there are places that are requiring masks outside, even in cars. That's stupid.

Also, it is true that they DON'T protect the wearer terribly well, but they give some protection to the vulnerable from asymptomatic spreaders. The aggregate effect seems to be noticeable if the apparent experience of the big East Asian cities can be taken at face value.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Sat Oct 3 21:04:02 2020 (5iiQK)

9 @aboot says "shouldn't there be at least a few examples of places paying a heavy price for their (assumed) incorrect decision to avoid mask mandates?"
New York City.

Posted by: Wonderduck at Sat Oct 3 23:19:21 2020 (vNkOW)

10 @Wonderduck New York City has a mask mandate, but maybe they're an example of a place that saw a mask mandate as a response to higher infection rates instead of the other way around. Here's the thing: the common sense assumption that wearing a mask reduces transmission rates only takes into account airborne transmission. After giving it some thought, my common sense tells me that more people wearing masks all the time will increase transmission because of all the increased face touching. As far as I can tell, the data that I'm able to find online supports my idea more than the other.
Bottom line: I'm not on team mask, and it's not because I prioritize comfort or convenience over lives.

Posted by: aboot at Sun Oct 4 12:57:14 2020 (rTAyL)

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