Grrr!

I just accidentally closed my editing window, so I'm now writing this a second time. My BME-related plans for today include editing some video (which I did yesterday, but lost in a software failure) and then posting it along with an experience update some time later today.

I did have one story that I wanted people to read. Many of you are involved in protest groups, and commit minor crimes… In the past, these would at best result in nuisance arrests for minor charges, but the new trend may well be to tag people protesting the government as “enemy combatants” — you are afterall proposing overthrowing the current regime, making you a direct enemy of the government.

Habeus corpus has already been suspended.

I saw it written very concisely written. They pointed out that we can say two things about Padilla and the other American “enemy combatants”:

  1. They are American citizens with rights.
  2. They may have committed or conspired to commit crimes against America.

We know that the first is true. It is a fact. The second is speculation for which, so far, no evidence has been presented to any courts (and none has been planned). Now, maybe it's easy to say, “well, I'd never be a terrorist, so it doesn't matter,” but realize that there were drafts of various anti-terror bills, including some still pending that classify both political protest (ie. going to an anti-globalization rally), software development for internet casinos, certain forms of hacking, and so on, as terrorist acts.

So don't be surprised when you get disappeared.

Treasonous.

I'd like to start this off with an unpleasant fact: Among the other Western and first-world nations, by every measurable statistic, America is at best a second-rate nation1, far behind the rest2. It is spiralling into deeper and deeper debt, and recent political moves have put it at odds with nearly every nation on the planet. If this trend continues, within fifty years America will be a third-world country with a massive poor working slave class underneath a monstrously wealthy and powerful ruling elite aristocracy.

American people — you have a holy duty. You must insist that your state demand their right of secession. When that right is denied, either by your state leaders or your federal masters, you must overthrow your masters by any means neccessary. Execute them. Find out where the bankowners live and “terminate with extreme prejudice”. Find out where the Walmart owners live. Strike at the top. Blow up the cars of corrupt politicians on their way to signing away more of your rights and giving away everything you work hard for. Send the message that you will not tolerate their crimes. Search out the roots and burn them into oblivion3. As Thor said to Gjalp, “A river must be dammed at its fountain-head!”

Oh, and let me quickly interject — if you're not liking where this is going, let me just have you read this and save you the trouble of complaining to me.

On to the news.

The latest best seller in France is a book called “The Horrifying Fraud” which reveals how extreme right wing elements in the US government planned and orchestrated the September 11th attacks in order to acheive their oil and weapons spending agendas. Personally I think it's largely a load of crap — this is from the same publisher that puts out “the moon landing was faked” and similar bunk. That said, I think at this point we all know what really happened — right wing elements inside the US government, aided by Israeli forces, “forced” and “allowed” the event to happen, basically using al Qaeda dopes as tools.

As far as Israeli involvement, there are more and more claims that Israeli agents operated (and manipulated) at high levels inside the FBI, and we all know about the “White Van” full of Israeli agents taking photos of themselves cheering as the towers went down. Not that there's a damn thing anyone in America can do to stop Israel from using America as its pawn — the recent speech by Bush makes it very clear that it's Sharon that's president of America, not Bush. If America is at active war with anyone, it's Israel. Oh, wait, no, America lost that war…

“War… what is it good for?” Absolutely nothing might be the answer for most of us, but obviously it is not for the ruling class — the ruling class reaps the benefits of war, while the working class shoulders war's burden. America is a war economy that now spends, what, 51% of its money on “the (everchanging) war effort”. Ask yourself why. It's not to keep America free. It's to keep you enslaved, and keep you a good frightened quiet slave that works hard for their master.

This is from the “Hello? Humans? This is God. You're really fucking things up — I have a message for you” department: As if we don't have enough to worry about, we've narrowly missed two major asteroid strikes this year so far (one and two4). Neither of the asteroids was that big, but they sure would make 911 look inconsequential in comparison. And if we're doing comparisons, how many people die a year from junk food? How many children are given life-long crippling illness because of it? I think we need to start putting warnings on it: “WARNING: Chocolate bars will kill you” along with photographs of dead morbidly obese people.

Finally, I wanted to comment on a TOS issue. Many people think that the rules here against using terms like “gay”, “fag”, and “homo” as an insult, even jokingly are too extreme. When you do this, you help create an environment where it is normal and acceptable to demean homosexuals. It's weird, because it is one of the most acceptable forms of discrimination around… I've got activist friends who would freak out if you called someone a “nigger” or “towelhead” even in jest (that might put it into perspective — if a friend did something stupid, you must realize that saying “oh, you're such a nigger” is fundamentally wrong), but don't blink at calling each other “gaylords”. Why? Because when we use these terms as lighthearted insults we validate them.

There are over half a million elected officials in America. Do you know how many are openly gay? 218. Homosexuals make up ten to twenty percent of the population (suggesting there should be at least 50,000 homosexuals in office), and probably control at least that percentage of the economy, yet they are unable to get elected or even get hired for many jobs if they are out of the closet. Again, when you allow yourself to use homosexuality as an insult, you directly support this kind of discrimination.

Sort of like how when you buy gasoline, you support terrorists.


1 The only characteristic on which America “wins” is military size, but this is a bloated military used primarily for poorly disguided corporate tax spending scams. America has been wholly unsuccessful in any war against an even vaguely “matched” enemy, and consistently loses at international military Olympics.

2 Among the top-20 Western nations, America is number one in firearms deaths, beef production, per capita energy use, Co2 emissions, per capita waste production, per capita hazardous waste production, oil and gas consumption, debt per capita, number of recorded rapes, road injuries and death, teen pregnancy rates, child executions, child gunfire deaths, caloric intake, child poverty, and, by far, in military spending. Additionally, among these nations, America spends the least money on its citizens, generates the least tax revenue per capita, has the lowest voter turnout, has the least number of represented political parties, has signed the least human rights treaties, and has the lowest grade eight math scores. And so on…

3 If you do, don't even think about “blaming” me afterwards.

4 Notice how CNN uses the same clip art in each article? Did they think they could fool us by cropping and recolouring the picture?

Wired

First of all, I've sorted out the bug in the distance engine that wasn't letting you track properly between international and North American addresses (and that is required, because of the proximity of Mexico and the US and things like that). I'd just reversed north and south or something lame like that. Anyway, I'm rebuilding it now and will get it done by day's end.

Now for the BBQ stuff. I've rewired my back yard properly for sound… There are four big speakers mounted around the yard. It actually sounds really great; way better than the old crappy speakers (if anyone wants them, take the old ones home after the BBQ; three of them are mostly working). The back yard now has a nice balanced surround sound feel to it:

I've also done what I always do: TOO MANY FIREWORKS. (Oh, wait — NO — you can never have too many). As always, expect a good show in that department. I've made sure to include Leeta in the picture below so you can see how big the boxes are:

Finally, on that note, I should say that while the Beer and Liquor stores are closed on Monday (so if you want some, get it on Saturday or Sunday, although Sunday is limited hours), KABOOM is open on Monday until quite late, so if you want to launch, please do bring fireworks. The more the merrier (just play safe).

Feel free to quote me: "I'd rather be a warlord than a politician."

(Sorry, I just said that in a conversation regarding alliances and my past experiences with them, and I wanted to write it down so I didn't forget saying it…)

First of all, I have completed yesterday's image update, adding another nearly 700 images to the site, including a lot of cool stuff… BME, especially BME/HARD has been what I'd consider a “guy's magazine” (in that it was mostly pictures of guys), and when it came to multi-person play, a gay magazine. To my surprise, it's starting to swing the other way — an incredible number of heterosexual submissions as well as submissions from women are starting to come in. I'm going to write some bots when I get a chance to track how many submissions of what type are coming in… sort of a “bodmod trendtracker” for lack of a better term. I'm sure it will be interesting…

Anyway, we've been talking about “dream features” all day in the forum, so I thought now would be a good time to show you my current to-do list for IAM features (this is just partial, and leaves out the little housecleaning type stuff). Those of you who recommended the following, you know who you are — thank you:

  • Add (#) in IAM.alive when you have more than one message from that user — ie. glider (3) or something like that
  • Add nesting to iam.code (ie. {function {function}} etc.)
  • If color is set to +, then make it transparent (allowing one to underlay backgrounds across multiple page elements)
  • Add complaints / TOS violation reporter to forum delete dialog and to IM viewer and main page
  • Add “more…” button to pages so people can quick-add to buddy list, etc. (optional; via user settings)
  • Undelete forum messages by the person who deleted it and/or forum owner
  • Bring back invisible mode
  • Solidify fget/fset in iam.code
  • Make it so (aborted) message doesn't happen when you visit a buddy's page
  • Make sure FORUMS OVERVIEW list can't access banned forums
  • IM icon is not affected by Events Broadcasting (needs to increment counter)
  • Top forums list (hmmm….)
  • Buddy list renaming and sorting
  • Delete confirmation for iam.alive buddies
  • IM Buddy list should show when page was last updated
  • IM Buddy list should show when offline members were last online
  • Forum index buttons at top AND bottom
  • View forum posts in reverse order (user settings)
  • Turn on custom layout
  • PIXFULL should work for more than one picture
  • Increase size of ban lists (forms must be fixed)
  • Ability to add comment forums later
  • Edit names of sections in Mod-Tracker
  • Integrate MPEG support
  • Integrate BME submissions engine
  • Show favorite forums as drop-down menu
  • Include forum owner name in favorite forums list, and/or give the option of renaming them (management menu perhaps)
  • IM broadcast to everyone in your buddy list
  • IM broadcast via comma'd list
  • Email submission of diary entries (from PDAs, cell phones, etc.)
  • Do something a little better than xxxxxxx for deleted users
  • Clear IM buddy list on add so people don't get dummy lists
  • Add flags to Person type (so personals-esque searching is fast and easy)
  • Reset button on layout options
  • Ability to embed polls into diary entries
  • Create TOS panel option
  • Bring back option of non-archiving forums
  • Allow users to look at their own log files (logins, postings, etc.)
  • Search engines of all sorts (hmmm…)

The above has some obvious omissions… I'm trying to get IAM to the point where I'm happy with it as a “version 1.0″ level product. When that's done, I'm going to start making it so I can compile variations on it for potential licensing, as well as writing real documentation for it… After all, if I can do some sales on the IAM software (although I'd likely force them to let me host it for simplification of tech support), then this place can stay as free as possible.

As a few of you know, the new BMEshop software is a part of the IAM engine as well, so expect unbelievably creepygood service that only a Big Brother-esque entity could offer you. That said, you know my policy on “full disclosure” — as I am developing the BMEshop software, I'm setting it up so you can always look at your own log files, and know exactly what we know about you. In addition, you'll be able to delete anything you'd like from OUR logs, with the exception of the minimum amount of data we need for tax filing of course (how many companies let you do that?)… So… Yes, it will know a lot and will do a lot with it, but it will be with your consent (and it will stay in-house — no selling your data or anyhting like that). I'll talk more about that in detail in about a week.

Now… For tonight at least, as they say in the movies… “I'm done, stick a fork in me, it's been grand. This is Happy Harry Hard-on saying sayonara, over and out.”

Work Work Working…

I'm working on another image update today. I don't think it's a huge update (we'll see in a couple hours), but it's got some really cool stuff… Maybe I'm getting delerious from lack of sleep and food, but I got a big kick out of this surface piercing project (I'm assuming it was done with a sense of humor). The full pix are in the update and I assume that the owner will be joining IAM soon, so if you want to talk to them about the project, watch the new members lists over the next week.

Also, I just wanted to quickly comment on the new Israeli plan for dealing with suicide bombers: blowing up the homes of their family members and throwing the survivors out of the country. Now, obviously suicide bombing is a problem that must be solved, and obviously there are many (but definitely not all, or even close to all) cases in which the family supports the bomber. That said: haven't we moved past the “by any means neccessary” stage in our political evolution?

I'm surprised that any Western nation would tolerate this type of stance — it's no better than a mafia thug, who when on trial vows to kill the family of any jurors if he is convicted. You can't punish a person for crimes committed by people they know as a deterrant if there was no direct involvement by that person. What's next, torturing the families of political dissidents? Oh wait, that's happening too in this wonderful world we've created.