Just Let It Go

Religion is not something permanent or everlasting. While this is unsurprising, because nothing in this universe truly is, in the context of continuous human evolution, religion can be understood to be a tool developed by humans to facilitate its survival and growth as a species. In this respect, it's certainly played a monumental role in shaping our perception of reality today. It's irrevocably placed its stamp on our civilizations and cultures for a start, and we only need to look at our history as a species to see how we got here today. I've long said that the history of religion is written in blood, and I doubt anyone would ever be able to convince me otherwise. 

 

But, just like the journey from stone tools to electron microscopes, traveling by horse-cart to flying rockets to the ISS, or wearing skins to mass-produced synthetic clothing - or, in the biological sense of growing then shedding baby teeth - religion was something humanity needed and even found indispensable for a time - all in order to develop to a particular point... by which time it then grew out of it. 

 

Religion then, may be a necessary tool useful to a young developing child species still trying to get to grips with its own nature as sentient, thinking animals. That time however, is - or has, drawn to a close. Its demise is long overdue.

South Africa's Right Wing Has No Originality

 

 

So on Saturday morning I noticed the above screenshot of a poster put out by the local Afrikaner nationalist newspaper, "Die Burger", being circulated on social media. The poster makes it fairly clear that "Die Burger" are trying to encourage local right wingers to join in with the hate for Taylor Swift - presumably for the very same reasons that the US variety of right wing loons are doing it.

But this set me to wondering why the local right wing nutters would focus on Taylor Swift? Why should they even care about Taylor Swift?

What is it with Afrikaners these days? Is it something in the melktert? 🤔

Last I heard, the US singer really had nothing to do with South Africa, other than some of her music making its way out here, and I think it's really bizarre that the local right wingers have managed to put down their Klippies and biltong and have stopped arguing about rugby or singing De La Rey long enough to focus on sending hate towards a remote American singer who probably doesn't even know they exist, and whose music they have probably never even listened to, probably because it has no concertinas  or right wing icons in it.

Don't South Africans have enough problems of their own - closer to home, to be concerned about? 

More to the point, why is it that every time the red-cap brigade over the pond get their panties in a twist about something, the attention of the local right wingers seems to follow their example?

Don't they have any originality?

Breaking Into The Echo Chamber

  

Yesterday I wrote an article about the Dear South Africa petition post on Facebook against the implementation of gender sensitivity training for children at schools across South Africa.

Of course, sometimes I just can't help myself, and I happened to leave a comment on the Facebook thread as well - which naturally attracted the attention (and ire) of all kinds of nutters who are the sort of people who believe all the bullshit meme-like trash being put out there about LGBT+ people - you know the sort - that we're "groomers", that transwomen transition in order to molest children or women in public bathrooms, or because we find participating in women's sport so much less of a challenge.

The hate from people like this is palpable and tangible. This article will focus on the sort of propaganda-based arguments used by transphobes and homophobes to attack attempts to bring inclusiveness and understanding of diversity into classrooms that appear to be universal when it comes to their source - imported right wing propaganda.

Lock Up Your Schools, The Transgenders Are Coming!

There I was, just minding my own business, when an ad from Dear South Africa - that's right, the petition website portraying itself as a civic-minded action entity - crossed my feed.

Imagine my surprise when I noticed the heading "Have your say on the Department of Basic Education's gender ideology training programme".

The...what?

The actual FUCK did I just read?

Wait-a-minute... Why is this even an issue?

And if you're thinking "this is bound to be another case of hysterical screaming, and panicked arm-waving again", well - you'd be perfectly right.

Too Much Money, Too Little Sense

Y'know, the very furthest thing from my mind when I was finally able to buy my first brand new car some years ago, was to try and see whether it was bulletproof - least of all by actually taking a gun, and shooting it. Like, with a gun. Deliberately. For reals.

 

And people have been doing it - Americans, naturally, because this vehicle, the Tesla Cybertruck, won't be available anywhere else. The main reason for this is that no other country, apparently, has as low an appreciation for the safety of its citizens as America.

A Goose-Step Too Far

So J.K. Rowling is a Holocaust denier now.

Since she first kicked the door of her right wing closet open a good few years ago now to launch an unprovoked 'total war' against transwomen, Rowling started taking large steps - you might say goose-steps - up the staircase of fascism, and with each step, the sound becoming increasingly reminiscent of the ominous stomp of jack-boots.

Even before Rowling started crowing the anti-science TERF rhetoric which gathered to her a new base of transphobes to feed from the trough at her feet, there were those who had reservations about her anti-Semitic characterizations of the goblins in her stories, just as much as there were those who undoubtedly enjoyed and approved of them.

But as I watched over the past few years, I saw Rowling being increasingly fawned over by the sort of low-brow creatures like those who cheered on while Magnus Hirschfeld's institute and all his pioneering work in understanding and helping transgender women was fed to the incinerator of base national-socialist populism. 

So you see, for some time, I've had a pretty fair idea that it wouldn't be too long before she went full neo-Nazi.

As it turns out, I wasn't wrong.

Bonfire Of The Inhumanities a.k.a. The Great Israel-Gaza Shit-Show

I just got called 'anti-Semitic' for commenting on a shared quote by JFK in the 1960s (oddly enough shortly before he was assassinated) in which he criticized Zionism, for saying that I thought it was possible that it was why he was assassinated...

The quote was later found to be fake, but nevertheless, I feel my comment was relevant in the light of the information available at the time. Even so, my suggestion was taken to be 'anti-Semitic' and 'offensive'.

'Offensive' I understand - people are 'offended' by all sorts of things all the time. Most of the time, there's an increasing reason to be offended. Sometimes, though, that reason is that they're idiots.

"Anti-Semitic"...

I shit you not.

Let's take a closer look at this issue, shall we? Firstly, do the people using it even know what anti-Semitism is?

The Kids Are Alright

For the hundredth time this month, it feels like, I saw someone around my age posting a meme praising Generation X for being "the last great generation" - apparently "before all these sissies were born". That set me to thinking.

Yeah, us Gen Xers.... we're tough, but for all the wrong reasons.

Thoughts on Forgiveness

I've come to wonder why there is such a powerful emphasis on forgiving those who hurt us in modern society?

The answer, naturally, is religion - specifically Christianity, which places a disproportionate burden on the individual to forgive all transgressions committed against them, no matter what they were, or how much they were hurt by them.

These are my thoughts on the subject.

The Microsoft Challenge

Has anyone wondered why new computers are always so slow?

It used to be expected of older, physically slower PCs, but these days it's true even of brand new computers.

 

I mean, back in the day - when I first started working as a PC technician back in 1999, I had a 486DX 100mhz with 48mb of RAM using Windows 98 2nd edition, and that was faster than most of the newer PC's I've used since. Such was my expertise back then that I rigged up a live toggle switch to the jumper settings on the board so that - while the PC was running - I could overclock it to 120mhz - play my first-person shooters - and then set it back down to 100mhz again. I even managed to play Heretic and Hexen on it smoothly, and without any trouble. I even built a cooling duct over the CPU and heat sink that ran to a fan at the front of the case to improve cooling and stability, and occasionally augmented that by placing a saucer filled with ice cubes in front of the case so that chilled air would be sucked in!

But then we got newer, faster PCs - with more RAM, bigger multi-core CPUs - and much, much bigger Windows.