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Is it also National Doughnut Day in Canada?

 

I meant that as a general statement, but from what I can gather, some establishments that have locations in both the US and Canada honor it.

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Well they fucking shouldn't, it's not International Doughnut Day. Where's my free doughnut?

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Well they fucking shouldn't, it's not International Doughnut Day. Where's my free doughnut?

 

me irl

 

national-donut-day-homer-simpson.jpg

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extremely strange coincidence...or weird Big Doughnut influence for the invasion of Normandy to line up same day

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I wonder if that's why about 30 doughnuts appeared near my desk at work yesterday.

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ALL RIGHT.

I'M ACTIVELY APPLYING FOR JOBS AGAIN.

I just applied to six different places today. Most of them Big Giant Game Dev Giants, which I've actually done very little of up to this point because big devs are less enticing, but I should stop being picky and also it's probably easier to get a job at a big dev (or so I'd like to think) (although maybe not easier to get a job where I'm not in danger of losing it after the big project ends, but I'm willing to accept that at this point).

 

anyway here we gooooooooooo

 

My goal is to apply to five new places each Monday. I know today's Tuesday. Fine. Each week.

My back still hurts. I finally got my Obamacares. Time to find a doctor who'll accept my insurance, I guess.

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I just gave some interns work to do.  It's the first time I've ever been able to order someone around at work.  I feel like a big man.

 

We gave our intern an intern, it was hilarious, she had no idea what to do with the power.

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Go for it, Twig! You rocked the HELL out of the E3 IRC, imagine what you could do with a powerful JOB!

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What the hell, seems like the last couple of weeks have been nuts with shootings.  Logically I know that mass, public shootings are statistically very rare crimes, but we've got the misogynist dude, the LV couple, the Canadian guy, the Christian school guy, some dude this morning at another school and the nut who was going to take an entire courthouse hostage in Georgia with an arsenal and explosives. 

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it was a long winter in many places...could be cabin fever

 

there have been studies to correlate temperature to crime rates in Chicago, but i suspect that is more like gang/street violence

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Also a shooting in Vancouver earlier today, 3 people shot (one cop, the gunman, and the first guy the gunman shot)/

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it was a long winter in many places...could be cabin fever

global warming at it again

 

Yeah it does seem like, at the very least, there's a lot more shootings being reported on, if not just more happening in general. Man. It's always shitty to be reminded that shitty things happen.

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I think I read somewhere that there have been over 100 mass shootings in the US this year, defined by any more than 4 people shot in one event. I don't know if this is greater than in previous years if extrapolated, but it's still a staggering number to think about when compared to other countries with more strict gun regulations.

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More than 4 people is actually a lot of people; like, 3 people shot at once is really quite a lot and yet that's not a "mass" shooting.

 

I can't help but think that there's an entire industry based around capitalising on these shootings, that takes the concerns of the shooter seriously and pushes out all other news to focus on their actions. Surely the navel-gazing and picking over their thoughts posthumously glorifies them, makes their horrific actions all worthwhile? Why isn't it enough to decide whoever did this was a fucker, and get on with things?

 

I'm also reminded of the anti-kitten-burning coalition, who turn out in force whenever there's a story about horrific examples of animal cruelty. What's interesting is that, despite it being pretty non-controversial that torturing animals is cruel and unacceptable, quite a lot of people frame their displeasure as if it's addressed at someone who believes that torturing animals is OK. There's a common thread between that and, for instance, Satanists, who for the most part only exist as a troll group and certainly don't have baby-eating rituals in the woods, where we invent monsters in order to feel righteous in our mediocre and not particularly generous lives. As much as we feel like we should actually help homeless people, well, at least we aren't kidnapping them and eating them. I wonder if shooters fill the same void; we may have fantasised about killing our boss and our annoying co-workers, but at least we never actually did it. Let's ignore the fact that this is a horrible fantasy. I don't know.

 

I suspect there's something desperately wrong with the NRA, as well, but I'd need to find evidence of NRA members making up false stories about being attacked that they tell others to really be sure. I found out about Code White and Code Yellow recently, and it was pretty disturbing - internal jargon that replaces and disguises the idea of being ready for unseen attackers, who are assuredly out there because there's no Code Blue for 'no-one will ever attack me here'.

 

Anyway, gun control worked here, so I'll enjoy my state of Code Blue.

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I suspect there's something desperately wrong with the NRA, as well, but I'd need to find evidence of NRA members making up false stories about being attacked that they tell others to really be sure. I found out about Code White and Code Yellow recently, and it was pretty disturbing - internal jargon that replaces and disguises the idea of being ready for unseen attackers, who are assuredly out there because there's no Code Blue for 'no-one will ever attack me here'.

 

Anyway, gun control worked here, so I'll enjoy my state of Code Blue.

 

They kind of do this, in that they repeat urban legends that have zero credibility, they spread ridiculous (and sometimes racist) memes about "self-defense", the rare story of legitimate self-defense they amplify the magnitude of, etc.  The NRA itself is almost more symptom than cause, there are plenty of people who think that way who aren't NRA members.  Virtually all the responsible gun owners I know (myself, my father, my father-in-law, some friends), all canceled their NRA memberships years ago as the focus moved away from hunting, sport target shooting, education and personal responsibility.  Unfortunately this move also gutted the moderate and liberal minded types in the organization, only unshackling the crazy ones from having anyone inside the organization try and reign them in. 

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Virtually all the responsible gun owners I know (myself, my father, my father-in-law, some friends), all canceled their NRA memberships years ago as the focus moved away from hunting, sport target shooting, education and personal responsibility.  Unfortunately this move also gutted the moderate and liberal minded types in the organization, only unshackling the crazy ones from having anyone inside the organization try and reign them in. 

 

That's the real problem with the NRA, that it is vulnerable to the same radical shift to the right that produced the Tea Party. Nowadays, I know no one, even from among fairly dark-red conservatives, who does not see the NRA as a parody of itself. The Welcome to Night Vale bumper stickers are closer to the NRA's current position than the opinions of anyone who actually owns a gun:

 

cpb-wtnv-bumperstickers-pic.jpg

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The head of the NRA calls the Civil War the War of Northern Aggression. The NRA is an actual parody of itself, but I've still met plenty of people who are card carrying members. The focus on "protecting yourself" I've seen from those people is really disturbing. They encourage you to basically make your home unit into a mini-militia ready to protect itself against the hordes of crack fiends and meth heads just breathing down their middle class suburban necks. It's a really weird rhetoric that just hinges on the question, "Don't you want to be safe?"

 

Then there's the misinformation they peddle. Stuff like "Obama is trying to take our guns" when last I checked the only gun related laws enacted during his presidency have expanded second amendment rights. It's just a gross organization in general, really.

 

 

I'm also reminded of the anti-kitten-burning coalition, who turn out in force whenever there's a story about horrific examples of animal cruelty. What's interesting is that, despite it being pretty non-controversial that torturing animals is cruel and unacceptable, quite a lot of people frame their displeasure as if it's addressed at someone who believes that torturing animals is OK.

 

As non-controversial as "torturing animals is bad" is as a statement, these people do kind of have people to protest against. Torture is defined differently for everyone. Some people will lecture you on how tying your dog up in your backyard is torture, then go home to a designer dog they happily bought from a puppy mill. There are still dog fighting rings and cock fighting rings, and it's still mandatory that you test any cosmetics sold in China on animals (until the end of June, anyway). As ridiculous as the animal cruelty protestors seem at times, things like medical testing on animals is a very real grey area. I grew up right up the road from an animal research facility and while I personally think the good outweighs the bad at that site, I don't think it's ridiculous for them to show up and protest the things that are actually happening there that they don't agree with.

 

Maybe I'm confusing actual protestors with whoever you're referring to with that anti-kitten-burning coalition thing, but America can't even seem to agree where the line is between interrogating and torturing people, so assuming that everyone defines animal cruelty the same way is a pretty unrealistic expectation.

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Reason I bring up the mythology of the NRA here, and why I'm specifically looking for delusional, overblown confessions and not merely mythologising, is because there's a pattern to cult behaviour (or, more accurately, totalist belief structures, of which cults are only one aspect of) that the NRA shares some elements with. The confession pattern means that members are encouraged to share their "stories", and the lack of sharing reflects upon their honesty and their commitment to the cause. So when they run out of stories they just make them up. This is important because one of the key controls for totalist structures is to inflict guilt and shame on their members to keep them in line, and encouraging them to be "honest" with their superiors gives their superiors the weapons to wield to ensure their compliance. The NRA generates fear, yes, but that's fear of the other, of outsiders. Does it generate guilt and shame amongst insiders to keep them pliable? That's what I want to know.

 

Maybe I'm confusing actual protestors with whoever you're referring to with that anti-kitten-burning coalition thing, but America can't even seem to agree where the line is between interrogating and torturing people, so assuming that everyone defines animal cruelty the same way is a pretty unrealistic expectation.

 

I'm referring just to burning kittens, here, not wider issues like animal cruelty. The core of the problem is the people that are treating something universally obvious as a brave moral stance, because it means that they are brave and take moral stances, not like those other people.

 

Compare to something like the Holocaust. "The Holocaust was bad" is similarly not an especially brave moral stance, but there's value in reminding people what happened, and there are ways to elaborate on that stance that are illuminating. The Nazis were real, and they were democratically elected. There is comparatively very little to be said for "don't set kittens on fire" because there's no story there about why someone would do such a thing. Someone could run a dogfighting ring for a number of reasons - arrogance, maliciousness, greed - but burning kittens is a petty act of cruelty and that's all it ever is.

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I've been offered a place on a sort-of-like-an-unpaid-internship-program* where we're gonna make some short films, woop!

Now I just need to check if I can still get welfare to live on while at this thing... I wish I'd known how much better not being an adult was before I became one (allegedly).

 

 

 

 

* I wont bore with the details, but this is the good kind that teaches valuable knowledge. Not the cheap slavery kind.

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I've been offered a place on a sort-of-like-an-unpaid-internship-program* where we're gonna make some short films, woop!

Now I just need to check if I can still get welfare to live on while at this thing... I wish I'd known how much better not being an adult was before I became one (allegedly).

 

 

 

 

* I wont bore with the details, but this is the good kind that teaches valuable knowledge. Not the cheap slavery kind.

Try and get them to set it up as a jobs bridge? Probably totally dodgey to do it in that order though! Also, you know if you don't check, the dole office might never find out and since you aren't getting paid nobody is really loosing out...

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