Relax, Oregon

Oregon just made it legal to have self-service gas stations. Much of the rest of the country is probably simply surprised that there was anywhere where you had to have a service station attendant pump gas for you. A few Oregonians are freaking out at the change.

“I don’t even know HOW to pump gas and I am 62, native Oregonian…..I say NO THANKS! I don’t want to smell like gasoline!” one woman wrote in a comment on a survey the new station posted Dec. 29.

You put the nozzle in the hole and you squeeze the handle. You’re welcome!

Of course, I have some special expertise here. When I was a kid, my dad worked at a gas station — just a gas station, no mini-mart, just a bay where you could get your oil changed or tires rotated, with a row of pumps out front, and I’d help out on weekends. You’d pull up, roll your window down, and I’d come running out with a chipper smile, and you’d tell me what you’d want — “fill ‘er up with $5 worth of premium!”, which, actually, would be enough to fill up a big tank — and I’d ask “Check your oil? Wash your windshield?”. I guess it was convenient for drivers to have someone tend to your iron chariot for you, but it was kind of soul-deadening for the attendant. Also, it was just required that we do that stuff, it’s not as if anyone ever tipped you for great window-washing or oil-checking.

I don’t think anyone should mourn the loss of jobs, or the rise of old people dousing themselves with gasoline. The former: those are lousy jobs. The latter: what kind of klutz are you? Also, everyone in Oregon who has driven out of state is totally familiar with self-service.

Although, I have to say, here in Minnesota in January I wouldn’t mind if could sit in the car and have someone else stand out there in the bitter cold and fierce winds and fumble with cold metal. But then that would be an even crappier job for someone than what I experienced in temperate Washington state.

All over a stupid video game

BoingBoing has a good summary of yesterday’s lethal swatting incident. It’s a messy and really stupid story, so I’ll give my even more abbreviated summary:

Party 1 (going by some dumbass pseudonym) gets into a dumbass argument about a video game with Party 2 (another dumbass pseudonym). Party 1 dares Party 2 to swat him, and sends him an address of another, innocent party. Party 2 then asks Party 3 (dumbass pseudonym, you get the drill) to phone in a kidnapping/murder story to the police, because he has a history of pulling dumbass stunts like that. Cops roll up to innocent house, innocent, unarmed man answers, dumbass cop murders him on the spot.

Parties 1, 2, and 3 are all accomplices in murder, and deserve lots of jail time. Trigger happy cop is an incompetent who must at least be fired, but also deserves jail time, as does the entire police force that fosters this kind of hyper-violent form of ‘peace-keeping’.

Actual predictions: Party 3 is such a flagrant ass that he’s going to get a long sentence. Parties 1 and 2 will get slapped, but probably not as much as they deserve. Trigger-happy cop will get a paid vacation and the respect and honor of his fellow thugs. Players of violent video games will continue to be dumbasses, and violent video game publishers will make more profits selling games to dumbasses. And the world will continue to spin about its axis.

Innocent man will still be dead.

Slogging through the sludge-pit of YouTube

I’ve been experimenting with making YouTube videos (I’ll put up another one this weekend!), in part because it’s a fun challenge, but also because I’m constantly horrified by how atheism is represented in that medium. I expect creationists to be nattering dinglebats, but when atheists come along and be raging assholes, it’s always disappointing. In the last few days, an unpleasant example has shown up in the comments to this video.

SwolllenGoat: why do you disable ratings like some creotard?

I ignored him for a bit — that “tard” construction is a pretty good indicator that he wasn’t worth engaging — but I’ll tell you why.

Ratings systems are evil. Old timers may recall I mentioned them as an option on blog comments some time back, and most of you were horrified at the idea. All it does is foster tribalism, and then the stupid little stars become a tool for factions to anonymously snipe at one another.

I’ve seen it on YouTube. The ratings on YouTube videos are often useless — they’re only used for virtue signaling by one group or another. When we did some FtB videos a while back, it was obvious, since we’d have these hour-long videos, and within minutes of putting them up, the anti-SJW kiddie campers were clicking madly to downrate them. So I don’t use them.

I didn’t feel like explaining that to this guy, so I gave him a short answer.

PZ Myers: Because of people like you.

You know he wasn’t going to be satisfied.

SwolllenGoat: what kind of person am i?

I ignored him.

I did look at his YouTube page, though, and the “related channels” for this guy include Atheism-Is-Unstoppable:

Devon Tracey, or Atheism-is-Unstoppable (channel name) is a moderately popular YouTube atheist. Most of his content consists of Anti-SJW/Regressive screeds common amongst YouTube atheists. Occasionally this manifests itself in extreme rhetoric, which can sometimes be argued to be mildly racist, and is occasionally too much even for TheAmazingAtheist. He is also notorious for blocking people who disagree with him and for doxxing a couple of those he didn’t like. Due to these antics, many YouTube atheists, even those who share his general views, have denounced him.

And Bearing:

Bearing, or Patrick Connolly, is an Australian anti-feminist who, after failing as a musician, actually thought it would be a good idea to quit his dayjob as a real estate agent in order to focus on his next scam on how to get money without working: a shit YouTube ‘career’. Which basically, in traditional Aussie fashion, consists of nothing more than calling people cunts while producing the anti-sjw community’s equivalent of low-effort clickbait.

Hard pass. Case in point why YouTube atheists have such a shitty reputation.

But he was persistent.

SwolllenGoat: C’mon PZ

What ‘kind of person am I?

Why so butthurt when I pointed out you’ve disabled ratings just like one of those sad creationist dipshits?

Maybe you should block me next?

Shut down the comments entirely?

You know whats funny?

Answers in Fucking Genesis does not disable ratings,and they are flat out retarded

YOU do disable em

How things change…………….

That a clear demonstration of exactly the kind of person I want to just fuck off. So I thanked him for being so obvious.

PZ Myers: Thank you for answering your own question so effectively.

Now the fun begins. He starts raging at me. Note: he posted this while thinking I had blocked him. I don’t quite understand why he’d bother if he thought he was blocked, or how he reconciled the fact that all of his comments appeared on the video with his martyr complex, but he did go scurrying off to use an alternative login to get past his imaginary ban.

SwolllenGoat’s AudioBook Archive: Bwaaaahaaaaahaaaa

You sad little man

You blocked me for daring to ask a question

C’mon PZ

Tell us

What ‘kind of person am I?

Why so butthurt when I pointed out you’ve disabled ratings just like one of those sad creationist dipshits?

Maybe you should shut down the comments entirely?

You know whats funny?

Answers in Fucking Genesis does not disable ratings,and they are flat out retarded

YOU do disable em

How things change…………….

He typed it twice in two accounts, to be sure!

SwolllenGoat: Im sure that made some sort of sense to you,inside yer head,before you typed it

Rest assured it makes no actual sense,eh?

So,come on,what kind of person am I?

The question asking kind?

The atheist kind?

The liberal kind?

You have ratings disabled like some garden variety creotard because of atheist liberals who ask questions?

I remember the good old days of YT…………back when we atheist types would mock creotards because they disabled ratings and closed comments sections,or blocked users and whatnot

LOOK at yourself PZ

You are them

How sad

I don’t know. I might end up disabling comments if this is the kind of irrational atheist dork who’s going to show up and posture like an ass. I’ll keep ’em open for at least the next few videos, though.

It’s unfortunate that these gomers are unable to LOOK at themselves.

You didn’t really want to read Milo Yiannopoulos’s book, did you?

You may recall the scandal: Yiannopoulos got a $250,000 advance from Simon & Schuster, which was then cancelled after it was revealed that Yiannopoulos was saying all these nice things about pedophilia. Yiannopoulos then turned around and is suing Simon & Schuster for $10 million over that cancellation, which is probably a terrible mistake for him, because the publisher’s defense is that it was a very bad book, unsuitable for publication, and that it wasn’t just his endorsement of pedophilia that got him canned.

To that end, their defense in the lawsuit was to include the entire draft of the text, with the editor’s comments. They’re hilarious. You can tell the editor hated the book. Some of the highlights are included in this twitter thread.

Apparently, you can download the whole thing via the New York county clerk’s website, where it is filed. I didn’t, because goddamn, Milo’s 15 minutes are totally up.

Bah, humbug

It’s cold and dark. My wife has appropriated my robe and my slippers, so I’ve been shuffling about the house in bare feet. I got up at 5am despite having no kids running about. I’m coming down with a sore throat. Donald Trump is tweeting about his major accomplishment of removing the world-wide prohibition against saying Merry Christmas.

The only good Christmas greeting is

Bah, humbug.

The world is run by fools and venal idiots, and I don’t want to hear about no fucking joy.

Snowflakes! Snowflakes everywhere!

I’ve already expressed my opinion on Star Wars: The Last Jedi: it was a movie. It was OK. I’m not as enthused as some.

But still, there were some excellent notes in that movie that only sunk in after a while. It did a great job of inclusion. As we all know, representation matters, and also, it’s silly to assume that the science fiction future (or in a galaxy long ago and far way) would be a little bubble of contemporary American culture.

Also, the heroes of the story were all women who were representing caution and restraint and careful planning, while the bad guys were all paragons of toxic masculinity. Look at Kylo Ren, with his temper tantrums and his obsessions; Snoke, who could have been Tywin Lannister for all his greedy scheming; even the two good guys, Poe and Finn, were impulsive dumbasses whose half-baked ideas for sudden victory all failed and almost wrecked the brilliant, well thought out plans of Leia and Holdo.

And now there is the predictable petition to strike Star Wars Episode VIII from the official canon. You have got to be kidding me. Someone is taking Star Wars way too seriously.

This is not a chapter of your holy books. It’s a movie that a lot of people liked very much. There is no inviolable body of dogma; Disney did not slap an official label of “Sacred Precepts of the Prophet George Lucas” on the title screen that you can have scraped off. People will decide whether they like it or not without regard for its sanctioned status in some imaginary list of “real” Star Wars movies.

Over 35,000 people have signed this inane petition.

I should start a petition to damn all the people who signed that petition to hell. It would have as much effect.