[0:12] Actually, no. But whatever. Apparently motivated by this petition, the Australian shops “Target and Kmart have decided to stop selling the game, GTA5. Target and Kmart stores pulled the game after a petition launched by three female survivors of violence gained more than 40,000 signatures. Target said the decision “was in line with the majority view of customers” (http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-30328314)
[0:39] Yeah. Let’s ignore the fact that there is no more evidence that videogames with a sexual element to them cause real-world sexual violence, than games with violence in them cause violence in the real world. After all, as many will tell you, it’s actually quite easy to tell the difference between the fantasy of a computer game, and reality:
[1:00] Total Annihilation: “What began as conflict over the transfer of consciousness from flesh to machines escalated into a war which has decimated a million worlds”
[1:09] Thunderf00t: And, just because someone has experienced sexual violence in their life—which I’m sure is a traumatic enough experience—that doesn’t give them a blank card to veto any media that anyone else might want to watch.
[1:24] I mean, look, there are plenty of war survivors out there—which is also very traumatic. But oddly enough, Target didn’t seem to have a problem with selling war games where you can kill thousands of- men- in brutal and gruesome ways. WHY the selective outrage?
[1:54] And what do you know, it’s already got more signatures than the petition to ban GTA5. And with good reason. ANYthing in GTA5 is vanilla compared to the Bible. A book that not only advocates burning witches—it commands it and in real life. A book that advocates killing all men, women, and children, but keeping the virgins for yourself:
[2:21] “And Moses said to them, ‘Why have they saved all the women alive? . . . Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him. But all the women and children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep for yourselves.’”
[2:41] Thunderf00t: DAMN the selective outrage of you social justice warriors just has to be seen to be believed.
Many thanks to Linda for supplying this transcript!
[0:00] Ray Comfort: “Behold the atheists’ nightmare.”
[0:07] Steve Sanchez [?]: “Now, your nickname is “The Banana Man”.”
Comfort: “Yeah . . . Evolution comes from the imaginations of man. It’s very nebulous. It’s as big or as small as the imaginations of man, and you can see it by the language they use, the language of speculation: “we believe”, “perhaps”, “maybe”, “could’ve”.”
[0:21] Thunderf00t: Well, you see, this is where you and I fundamentally differ, Ray. My understanding of reality is contingent on reality; whereas yours is not.
[0:31] Yup. Given the right observations, I will correct my views to make them congruent with reality. And if that involves jettisoning the theories of Newton, Einstein, and Darwin, then so be it. Now let’s compare this to Ray.
[0:45] Ray’s understanding of reality is not contingent on reality because he already deems himself to have divine insight.
[0:53] clip, “The Thunderf00t – Ray Comfort discussion”: “I’m gonna stop you there because I know what was in the beginning. You don’t know. I know what was in the beginning. In the beginning, ‘God created the Heavens and the Earth’. You don’t know, I do.”
[1:03] Thunderf00t: That’s right—there is NO evidence that could be presented to Ray to make him change his mind because HE KNOWS. The irony is of course is that Ray, who is so proud of his absolute knowledge of the origin of the universe, has a less than impressive track record when it comes to the origin of—oh, I dunno, let’s pick a subject at random. Let’s say the origin of BANANAS.
[1:28] Comfort: “pointed at the top for ease of entry. It’s just the right shape for the human mouth. It’s chewy, easy to digest. It’s even curved toward the face to make the whole process so much easier. Seriously, Kirk, the whole of creation testifies the genius of God’s creative hand.”
[1:43] Thunderf00t: (Heh) Yeah. Ray initially used his absolute knowledge to say that ‘bananas speak to the glory of God’s creation’. Then Ray released a video saying that he was ‘misquoted’ and that he accepted that bananas were selectively bred by man.
[1:59] clip: ““Banana Man” is a reference to an illustration presented by Comfort, in which he compared the complex design elements of a Coke can to the complex design elements of a banana in order to demonstrate that thoughtful design by a designer is required for both examples. However, atheists removed the Coke can from the video version and sent it across the internet saying that ‘Comfort believed that the banana was conclusive proof of God’s existence’, missing the point of the illustration completely.”
“They also said that the banana had been modified over time by man to fit in the palm of the hand, and not by God.”
“Comfort apologized for his mistake about the banana saying, “My apologies for not explaining myself more clearly. I was not aware that the common banana had been so modified through hybridization.”
[2:46] Thunderf00t: And then in his latest interview he says that there is ‘no evidence that bananas were genetically engineered’:
[2:52] Comfort: “Especially the guy that made that banana video and using a modern, weird shaped banana and saying it was genetically altered when there was NO—absolutely no credibility to his claims at all. It’s bogus.”
[3:05] Comfort: “I know what was in the beginning. ‘In the beginning God created the Heavens and the Earth’. You don’t know. I do.”
[3:10] Thunderf00t: There’s a famous quote from a famous scientist that adequately sums you up here Ray: “Ignorance more frequently begets confidence, than it does knowledge” (Darwin). Yep. That’s right, Banana Man, your bitch ass just got served by Darwin.
[3:24] I guess these are the differences that make me a scientist devoted to building a better understanding of reality, whereas Ray is verbatim, repeating a script that he prepared some three years ago.
[3:35] Comfort: “You can see it by the language they use, the language of speculation: “we believe”, “perhaps”, “maybe”, “could’ve”.”
““We believe”, “perhaps”, “maybe”, “could’ve””
[3:44] Thunderf00t: And even back then his ace-in-the-hole was asking a bunch of, well, with all due respect, greasy high school students on what their understanding of evolution was, and then crowing when they couldn’t give a cogent explanation of something they didn’t understand. Braavo Ray, bravo. Truly showing the caliber of your creationist arguments thereby quote mining teenagers. I mean, I’m surprised you didn’t ask these, uh, experts about long division as well. Then you could’ve disproved mathematics at the same time.
[4:16] Now, Ray recently staged a cheap publicity stunt where he put a creationist’s introduction into the seminal work of Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species.
[4:27] Sanchez: “How many Origin of Species books did we get onto the university campuses last Wednesday?”
Comfort: “170,000.”
Sanchez: “170,000. And how many campuses?”
Comfort: “100 top campuses across the U.S. That was the main point of the whole thing. I don’t wanna turn people AGAINST evolution. I want them to doubt evolution enough to reexamine or examine the claims of the gospel.”
[4:49] Thunderf00t: What are you on, Ray? Evolution at its simplest is that in iterative self-replicating systems more successful patterns, by definition, propagate better than less successful ones.
[5:02] But how on earth in your mind do you get from expecting people to question what is true by definition, to examining the claims of some 2,000 year old stories about goat herders and magic men in the Mediterranean? Stand back, Banana Man is about to try logic:
[5:21] Comfort: “Richard Dawkins says I’m an ignorant fool, so what I’ve written must have been ignorant foolishness. So why was he telling them to ‘rip it out’? He should be saying, ‘READ the ignorant foolishness of Ray Comfort and see what an ignorant fool he is and, well, strengthen your faith in evolution.’”
[5:36] Thunderf00t: Uuuh, no, Ray. Reading junk constitutes a waste of time. Yes, it’s true that by reading your introduction you can come to this stunning conclusion that a man who thinks he knows—with absolute certainty—the origin of the universe (something that has eluded the minds of the smartest people on the planet) that doesn’t know where bananas come from, is, mmm, intellectually challenged.
[6:01] But DAMN, that bastardization of logic makes me cringe.
[6:04] Comfort: “‘READ the ignorant foolishness of Ray Comfort and see what an ignorant fool he is and, well, strengthen your faith in evolution’.”
[6:11] Thunderf00t: No. Determining that Ray is a moron does not impact on the veracity of evolution any more than it impinges on the credibility of atomic theory. And Ray, faith is belief in something without evidence. Evolution stands on its ability to describe the facts. You know, the evidence that we have in reality.
[6:32] Comfort: “-strengthen your faith in evolution’. But he’s afraid of the gospel that it contains.”
[6:37] Thunderf00t: Hmm. That’s an interesting conjecture, Ray. But where are my manners? Let me let Banana Man field the answer to that one:
[6:44] Comfort: “-blog to hundreds of atheists each day who are waiting for anything that comes out of my mouth so they can rip it to shreds. But they hang around me like—someone says, ‘why do you call those atheists centralists?’ Because atheists hang around me like bugs hang around a campfire. I can’t get rid of them! I slap ‘em and say, ‘go away’. ‘No, we’re staying here’. It’s like a train wreck. ‘We wanna see what’s gonna happen next.’”
[7:03] Thunderf00t: Yep, that’s right, Ray. This is the reason why people hang around you; because you’re a clown. It’s not because they fear anything you have to say. They hang around you for the LOLs.
[7:14] Dawkins suggests that you rip the introduction out because Dawkins ISN’T in it for the LOLs. He’s an educator. And your introduction is comparable to putting an introduction in a book about leprosy, saying that it’s nothing to do with bacteria and that god describes how to cure leprosy in the Bible by killing a bird, and then dipping another bird in the blood of the first, and then letting it go. And then getting all surprised when healthcare professionals of one sort or another kinda get pissy at you.
[7:43] Comfort: “I wanna thank that lady that put the “Origin of Stupidity” video on. They got over well over a million views advertising the book.”
[7:52] Thunderf00t: By ‘that lady’ I assume you’re referring to the fiery sex-bomb goddess of ZOMGitscriss. Yeah, I’d like to thank her too. Nice one, Crissy.
[8:04] Comfort: “I really appreciate it ‘cos that was free publicity, and they’d done a great job.”
Sanchez: “So in an essence, the atheists have catapulted Way of the Master—your ministry about Evangelism, Jesus Christ, God—to the next level, haven’t they?”
[8:18] Thunderf00t: Yeah, right. I love the desperate attempt to put a positive spin on it. But face it. It was free advertising for, as you put it, ‘a train wreck’.
[8:27] I guess another fundamental difference between us Ray, is, I would not be happy for free publicity as ‘Banana Man’ or, Mr. Moron-performs-another-unintentionally-funny-intellectual-train-wreck. However, you have stepped up to the plate, and in this role both of us seem to be happy.
[8:45] Regrettably, we lost PCS. But I’m perfectly happy for Banana Man to succeed him in all of his offices.
[8:52] clip: “But in their efforts to make him look foolish, atheists gave Ray Comfort an international platform for his message.”
[8:58] Comfort: “Behold³ the atheists’ nightmare.”
[9:02] Thunderf00t: Yeah, that’s almost right. Ray is famous for being an idiot. But even if this did somehow transfer as publicity for the Bible, ANYONE in product promotion or brand image would projectile vomit exorcist-style at the idea of having this sort of promotion. You know, it would be kind of like having a lead paint manufacturer endorsing a line of toys for children.
[9:27] Ray is aware of his train wreck persona too. And you have to look no further than his attempts to rewrite history to realize this, firstly claiming that his banana argument was ‘valid but misquoted’:
[9:40] clip: “However, atheists removed the Coke can from the video version.”
[9:44] Thunderf00t: And then, of course, acknowledging that bananas were selectively bred.
[9:47] clip: “Comfort apologized for his mistake about the banana saying, “I was not aware that the common banana had been so modified through hybridization.”
[9:55] Thunderf00t: But not wanting to disappoint his loyal fans, train wrecked Tim then gives us this gem:
[10:01] clip: “However, the truth remains that God gave man the knowledge and ability to modify it so that it perfectly fit into his hand. He did the same with big dogs, so they can fit into his car.”
[10:13] Thunderf00t: Yeah, sure, Ray. 30,000 or so years ago when man first started selectively breeding the domestic dog (Wikipedia, ”Origin of the domestic dog”) he thought, ‘you know, we should breed a small dog such that in 30,000 years’ time when we invent the car, our dogs would fit in them.
[10:27] Anyway, sometime later Banana Man gives up trying to justify his ‘bananas prove God’ argument as ‘valid but misquoted’, and happily performs the routine as ‘legitimate humor’:
[10:40] Comfort: “The banana and the hand are perfectly made, one for the other. You’ll find the maker of the banana, Almighty God has made it with a non-slip surface. And as out would indicate inward contents: green, too early. Yellow, just ripe.”
[10:56] Thunderf00t: Yeah, this is the champion of creationism performing his argument for god as ‘legitimate humor’. Way to fill PCS’s shoes, Ray. I mean, to make a “Why do People Laugh at Creationists?” video you need someone of the caliber of PCS. But to make a ‘Why do Creationists Laugh at Creationists?’ video, that requires a Banana Man:
[11:20] Comfort: “Notice the pointed top for ease of entry, just the right shape for the human mouth. Chewy, palatable, good for you, and the Maker has even curved it toward the face to make the whole process so much easier. That’s if you get it the right way around.”
[11:43] Thunderf00t: Way to represent, Banana Man. Way to represent.
Many thanks to Linda for supplying this transcript!
[0:00] Thunderf00t: You know what’s fantastic about the new Feminist Frequency video—I mean really, REALLY fantastic—is it dispels in an instant the entire Anita Sarkeesian victimhood narrative—you know, the one where she’s only being targeted for being A WOMAN:
[0:19] Anita Sarkeesian: “-it’s actually men going after women in really hostile, aggressive ways. THAT’s what GamerGate is about. It’s about, like, terrorizing women for being involved in this industry.”
[0:30] Sarkeesian: “-you know, we have this larger culture in gaming. We’re a subset of—mostly male gamers have been viciously going after women and attacking them.”
[0:41] Sarkeesian: “-again, what I’ve described to you today is not unique to me in my experience. Every day, many women voicing their opinions online deal with a similar flood of slander and defamation designed to undermine their careers, their credibility, their resolve, and their confidence.”
[0:55] Thunderf00t: Remember, the reason she turns off comments is because of the harassment she receives as a woman:
[1:01] Anna Akana: “As unsettling as all of this is, the thing that disturbs me the most is the kind of personal backlash that Anita and her channel have faced. She’s had to turn off her comments and hide her like/dislike ratio. This is not okay. Please watch this video, and share.”
[1:15] Thunderf00t: But of course, if a man were to make exactly the same video, he would get no, um, harassment, right? Because only women get, uh, harassment, because they’re women, and it’s nothing to do with the outrageous dishonesty or the utterly stupid things that they say:
[1:33] Feminist Frequency: “We must remember that games don’t just entertain. Intentional or not, they always express a set of values and present us with concepts of normalcy.”
[1:51] Thunderf00t: Yeah, of course. If a man said something completely stupid, everyone would instantly take it “seriously” because he’s got a penis:
[2:00] Rick Perry: “I’m not ashamed to admit that I’m a Christian. But you don’t need to be in the pew every Sunday to know that there’s something wrong in this country when gays can serve openly in the military, but our kids can’t openly celebrate Christmas, or pray in school.”
[2:13] Thunderf00t: Which is exactly what FullMcIntosh says at the end:
[2:19] Jonathan McIntosh: “Because it was created by a straight, white man, this checklist will likely be taken more seriously than if it had been written by virtually any female gamer.”
[2:27] Thunderf00t: No, if a moronic man says something stupid, it’s taken no more seriously than if a moronic woman says something completely stupid. DEAL WITH IT. Cute thing is though, apparently Jonathan here so strongly believed that he would get no harassment for being a man and saying stupid shit, that he also took the precaution of disabling comments and ratings. After all, someone’s got to keep the world safe from the horror of free expression.
[2:56] Oh, and, by the way fellas, if you’re gonna herd people up to read stuff off an Autocue, at least move them far enough away from the Autocue that you can’t see that they’re READING IT OFF AN AUTOCUE. ‘Cos that kind of dispels the whole idea that these are, ‘honest people who really believe what they’re saying’.
[3:13] Then the fact that they all look like they’ve been selected and dressed by a PR company to represent a ‘white demographic’ of Joe everyman—I’m sure is pure coincidence. That said, I did recognize this guy who writes songs about feminism.
[3:29] Now firstly, I gotta give the guy credit. He does leave his ratings and his comments open, which does show a degree of maturity and honesty. And just like FullMcIntosh said, the message becomes instantly credible when it’s delivered by a guy. Right? . . . Oh.
[3:47] Nope, apparently a dumb message typically gets a bad rating no matter what your chromosomes are. You know, it’s almost like the flak that Anita Sarkeesian gets is nothing to do with the fact that she’s a woman, and it is in reality due to the fact that her premise that “videogames cause sexism” is about as bogus as Jack Thompson’s premise that “videogames cause violence”:
[4:15] clip: “-game industry lobbyists are quick to point out a total of nine federal courts have rejected so-called “studies” that videogames cause aggression.”
[4:23] Thunderf00t: which it turns out FullMcIntosh also believes: “Scientific consensus is that playing violent videogames increases aggression and aggressive behaviors. Amazing so many people are in denial” (radicalbytes).
[4:35] Yeah, right. Sure, people will just instantly take you seriously if only you’ve got a penis:
[4:42] McIntosh: “-because it was created by a straight, white man, this checklist will likely be taken more seriously than if it had been written by virtually any female gamer.”
[4:50] Thunderf00t: You muppets. But hey, I guess it’s a hard life spending a $160,000 on a project that raised 25 times more money than it needed:
[5:01] Sarkeesian: “I actually raised 25 times [applause] what I initially asked for.”
[5:09] Thunderf00t: Which is already years past its due date, and you haven’t even made half of the videos that you said you would.
[5:17] Akana: “This is not okay. Please watch this video, and share.”
Many thanks to Linda for supplying this transcript!
[0:00] Thunderf00t: What’s that? Anita Sarkeesian was invited to talk at a conference on digital ethics? Really? Are we talking about the same Anita Sarkeesian who says this about piracy:
[0:13] “Why we need you Veronica Mars”: “That said, you should go out immediately and BitTorrent, pirate, rent, buy—whatever you have to do to watch Veronica Mars.”
[0:20] Thunderf00t: -and the one who laments that third parties cannot flag things as harassment—which means that it was Anita who saw these tweets and thought they were so offensive that they warranted flagging someone off Twitter, and it couldn’t have been third parties.
[0:37] Thankfully, after I was initially suspended, Twitter very quickly saw the light and reinstated my account.
[0:44] Look, Anita, let me explain why random third parties cannot flag stuff for ‘harassing’ someone else. First and foremost, it’s a blank cheque for flagging campaigns.
[0:57] Now I know you like to change the rules such that the internet is just one giant echo chamber for your opinion:
[1:03] Sarkeesian: “How are their forums allowing conversations to happen or not happen? What are—there’s so many things, right? We could brainstorm a million ways that we could create these structural changes. And creating structural change means people have to follow those structures.”
[1:17] Thunderf00t: And I hate to break this to you, but if it does come down to this flagging war that you seem to be itching for, it will be minorities and batshit crazy groups like your own brand of feminism that will be crushed.
[1:31] And even if by some miracle you win, and convince Twitter to turn itself into an echo chamber where only your particular brand of feminism will be allowed:
[1:42] “Feminism in Focus – Anita Sarkeesian”: “But one way that I personally deal with comments is to moderate them, because I really want to create a space where people can come and engage with feminist ideas, where they don’t have to risk being harassed or ridiculed.”
[1:54] The Colbert Report: “That’s right. It’s a safe space where like-minded folks can hear things they already agree with from someone who’s opinion they already know.”
[2:01] Thunderf00t: All you will achieve is to create an opening in the market to be filled by someone who actually does value the robust and level playing field of free speech.
[2:12] But surely, someone with such profoundly thin skin as Anita, feeling that she is entitled that society treat her in a privileged fashion—at least compared to everyone else—would at least treat others as she expects to be treated. Right? After all, she does spend a lot of time composing her tweets:
[2:33] Sarkeesian: “Sometimes I feel this double-edged sword because I’m very careful about what I say. I’m very careful about—I spend hours trying to compose a tweet.”
[2:41] Thunderf00t: Nah, for Anita, she was quite happy to say this about the formidable Christopher Hitchens about two days after he died. Yeah. Smearing a man who’s been dead for only about two days by calling him “a racist, a sexist, and a warmonger” (femfreq).
[2:58] But that wouldn’t be ‘harassment’ now, would it Anita? Oh, but if someone points out that you lied through your teeth in your video series—oh, that’s outrageous criti—sorry—that’s outrageous harassment! But oh if someone blames feminist actions for a feminist’s PR problem—that’s gotta be hatred of women. That’s gotta be misogyny.
[3:20] Got news for you, Anita. Hitchens will achieve more dead than you will ever achieve by being alive.
[3:27] Christopher Hitchens: “If you want to get good people to do wicked things, you need religion. What do I mean by that? I mean to say that, who, when they see a newborn baby arriving in their life—if anyone’s ever thought, even myself, ‘Well, maybe there is something to this. Look at the perfection of this little bundle . . . but they say, ‘I tell you what though, before we go any further we need to get a sharp knife or a stern from somewhere and start hacking away at the genitalia of this little bundle; because if we don’t, we won’t be doing god’s will. Now, where is—no moral person would do such a thing unless they thought it was divinely warranted.”
[4:03] Hitchens: “Is it not the case that the spread of Christianity—about which you spoke so warmly and affectingly in your opening remarks—attributing it to the innate truth of the Bible’s story was spread by that means, or because the Emperor Constantine decided to make Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire? Which in your view contributed more to the spread of the faith?”
Frank Turek: “The Holy spirit.”
Hitchens: “I rest my case.”
[4:31] Thunderf00t: Or blaming ‘toxic masculinity’ and ‘patriarchy’ for a school shooting less than 24-hours after that school shooting.
[4:40] Sarkeesian: “Sometimes I feel this double-edged sword because I’m very careful about what I say. I’m very careful about—I spend hours trying to compose a tweet.”
[4:48] Thunderf00t: That wouldn’t be offensive or harassment, now would it? Yeah, Anita, you might be happy now that Twitter allows people to be offended on other people’s accounts and flag them as such. After all, that is what you and Women, Action & the Media wanted.
[5:05] But damn, you should be careful what you wish for. ‘Cos don’t you know that many people would regard YOUR tweets as ‘harassing’? I mean, don’t ya think that calling someone a racist only two days after they died would be deemed as ‘harassment’ by at least the relatives? And don’t you think that blaming a school shooting on ‘patriarchy’ before the bodies are even cold would be deemed as harassing and offensive by the parents of those children?
[5:38] By your lack of vision, and your lust to be able to control what people are and are not allowed to say, you have been petitioning for the tools of your own demise.
[5:50] And, like I say, even if by some miracle you get Twitter to give you all the privileges that you think that you’re entitled to—you know, like you have on Wikipedia—yeah, not a single word on there about Anita Sarkeesian’s dishonesty. And the fact that her project raised 25 times as much money as it needed:
[6:09] Sarkeesian: “I actually raised 25 times [applause] what I initially asked for.”
[6:18] Thunderf00t: -is now two YEARS overdue, and still hasn’t produced half of the videos that it said it would. Not a mention of these facts on Anita Sarkeesian’s Wiki page.
[6:30] Nah, even if you manage to get Twitter to give you all this special treatment, it will not change the fact that in your own terms, you are just Jack Thompson with boobs—no, I take that back, ‘cos that’s not entirely true. You’re Jack Thompson on steroids, with boobs. ‘Cos not only do they claim that videogames cause violence, Feminist Frequency writer Jonathan McIntosh on Twitter, “Scientific consensus is that playing violent video games increases aggression and aggressive behaviors. Amazing so many people are still in denial” (radicalbytes).
[7:06] Thunderf00t: But they also believe that they cause sexism:
[7:09] “Women as Background Decoration: Part 1”: “In other words, viewing media that frames women as objects or sexual playthings profoundly impacts how real life women are perceived and treated in the world around us.”
[7:18] Thunderf00t: Yeah, Anita. Rich, middle class, white women—the most persecuted class of people in history. And surely, if only you had a penis, then men would take you seriously. Oh no—wait, not they wouldn’t. ‘Cos newsflash, Anita. A bad argument is a bad argument, no matter how many times you tell someone you’re a persecuted woman who finds everything offensive.
[7:44] Hitchens: “If someone tells me that I’ve hurt their feelings, I say, ‘Well I’m still waiting to hear what your point is’. I’m very depressed how in this country you can be told, ‘That’s
offensive!’ as if those two words constitute an argument or a comment. Not to me, they don’t. And I’m not running for anything, so I don’t have to pretend to like people when I don’t.”
[8:05] Thunderf00t: This is why people like me have always argued for the open marketplace of ideas and a robust and level playing field, ‘cos if you can’t convince anyone in an arena like that, then there’s a good chance that you’re talking crap. I guess this is what I’m trying to tell ya:
[8:22] The Avengers: “You’re missing the point—there’s no throne. There is no version of this where you come out on top.”
[8:28] Thunderf00t: But back to the digital ethics. Is this the same Anita Sarkeesian who, if she was judged by her own standards would be blatantly racist and homophobic and transphobic, and even normalizes white supremacy? ‘Whooa’, I hear people say, ‘surely there’s no way you can justify that?’ Actually, using social justice warrior reasoning—or more specifically, feminist reasoning, it’s trivial.
[8:54] You see, you don’t judge work by its content, you judge it by, say, the number of black people in the work. So, when it comes down to the new Star Wars trailer, FullMcIntosh tweets this, and Anita retweets it: “3 faces in the Star Wars trailer are those of a black man, white woman, and Latino man piloting an X-Wing. That matters more than you may think” (radicalbytes) and, “Let’s take time to consider that the first trailer for the biggest most anticipated movie of the decade features zero white dudes” (radicalbytes).
[9:27] Thunderf00t: Now, for me, I really didn’t care about the gender profile of the film. I just sat there scratching my head like, ‘Hang on. Aren’t all the stormtroopers meant to be clones of Jango Fett?’
[9:37] Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones: “Your clones are very impressive. You must be very proud.”
[9:40] Thunderf00t: So, w-why is the stromtrooper black? And why is this woman so small that she can ride on RoboCop 2’s shoulder cannon? And then FullMcIntosh thinks that this guy is a Latino and not some white dude. Personally, I’m surprised that they didn’t tweet how the only woman in the trailer was wearing Islamic-type garb and was therefore promoting the idea that women must cover up their faces to avoid being raped or something.
[10:07] Nah, for me, I found the spoof trailers ripping one Abram’s use of lens flare and the, ‘it’s a new Star Wars movie means you gotta have a new novelty light saber type stuff’, far more relevant, and far more entertaining. Yeah, I know, Anita. Come on, tell us how Abrams’ friends and supporters should be able to flag ALL of this media as ‘harassing Abrams’.
[10:30] But whatever. You get the point. In social justice warrior terms, you judge if a work is sexist or racist by the number of minorities in it.
[10:39] Let’s look at Anita Sarkeeian’s ONLY creation. You know, the proposed videogame which is gonna show us how to free ourselves from the stereotypes, clichés, and tropes in computer games by essentially a verbatim retelling of Prince of Persia: “The player must lead the game protagonist out of the dungeon and into a tower. Doing so requires bypassing traps and fighting hostile swordsman” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_of_Persia_(1989_video_game)
[11:07] Apart from it’s a woman in the leading role—which is totally not a man with boobs trope—‘cos, you know it’s only a sexist trope when men do it. Yeah. Let’s see. ‘No black people, not even a stereotypical person of color, let alone one which is a very interesting character that’s NOT beholden to stereotypes. Therefore, RACISM.’
[11:28] And for those who think that’s harsh, let’s check out Anita’s criticism of “True Blood”:
[11:33] “Beyond True Blood’s Sensationalism”: “-no other black men and no other queer men on the main cast. So, he’s really all we get in terms of alternative sexuality and as far as black male masculinity.”
“We see Lafayette working in the kitchen of Merlotte’s but on the side he’s also a prostitute, and he runs his own porn website, and he’s a drug dealer. I mean, really, could there be any other stereotypes thrown in here?”
“He is every stereotype about black queer men all rolled into one pretty package and it constantly infuriates me because we don’t want to reinforce these stereotypes. We want to dispel them and break them down and make very interesting complicated textured characters that are beyond stereotypes—but NO. True Blood can’t do that.”
[12:20] Thunderf00t: ‘Let’s see, no gay people. Check. Homophobic. No trans-people. Check. Transphobic. Only white people in the entire game. Check. Normalizing white supremacy.’
[12:35] Now, I wonder if FullMcIntosh will tweet about this outrageous racism, sexism, transphobia, homophobia, in this game concept? I mean, he was quite happy to break down a one minute or so trailer with only three people in it along ethnic and gender lines. I wonder if he’ll do the same with Anita’s game concept? Which, apart from the man-with-boobs lead role, ALL of the characters are white dudes.
[13:02] ‘Yes, this regressive, all-white casting must stop. We need righteous people like McIntosh to lead us in condemning writers of this white supremacist crap. People like Anita Sarkeesian and Jonathan McIntosh’. Oh.
[13:22] But let’s keep going. Let’s see. ‘Promotes violence against men. Check. Man-hating and promoting domestic violence. Normalizes the concept that the only way to deal with men, is through violence, institutionalizing feminist supremacy theory’. Oh, and of course, let’s give it the Bechdel test:
[13:44] “The Bechdel Test for Women in Movies”: “The Bechdel test, or the Mo Movie Measure, is a type of litmus test to assess the presence of women in movies.”
“When I call it a systemic problem, what I mean by this is that it’s not just a few people here and there that don’t like women, or don’t want women’s stories told, but rather that the entire industry is built upon creating films and movies that cater to and that are about men.”
“Next time you go to the movies, just ask yourself these few questions: are there two or more women in it, and do they have names? Do they talk to each other? And do they talk to each other about something other than a man?”
[14:18] Thunderf00t: Yes, Anita’s game concept would fail EVERY SINGLE element of the Bechdel test, a test which notably films like The Bikini Carwash Company would pass with flying colors.
[14:31] And yes, this is the same, um, ‘test’ which Sweden has decided to introduce as a film rating in a bid for gender equality (http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/06/swedish-cinemas-bechdel-test-films-gender-bias). ‘Cos, you know, where there was a load more films like the Bikini Carwash Company that would sure be one hell of a step toward gender equality.
[14:50] But let’s see, ‘The lead character is neither fat, or disabled. Well, that’s fat-shaming and ableism! Has she no empathy for the special snowflakes on Tumblr with headmates and otherkin?’
[15:04] ‘The lead character is not a dribbling retard, programming the audience through media exposure that dribbling retards cannot, say, break out of jail and achieve things. Dribble-shaming! And retardaphobia.’
[15:19] ‘The main character is heteronormatively beautiful, a purposeful effort to institute game mechanics that undermine the confidence of ugly women. And this is done exclusively to promote and maintain the, uh, privileges that this girls’ club of normatively beautiful women think that they’re entitled to.’
[15:40] Thunderf00t: And what’s with the giant eye-to-head ratio? Did Anita sit there and say, ‘No, I don’t want the women in this game to look like adults. We need to pedomorphize them to give them this really big eye-to-head ratio because we need to normalize and institutionalize pedomorphic sexualization of women in this game while simultaneously portraying the men with appropriate adult proportions, implicitly encouraging the ageist and discriminatory concepts that young, beautiful women are more sexually valuable then old, wrinkly, ugly ones.’
[16:15] ‘And let’s be real, this whole game from start to finish is just one superficial excuse to indulge in armor porn. The lead character is wealthy, normalizing the narrative that rich people can do whatever they want without consequences. And seriously, what message is this game sending our children? That all you need to do to become a rich, happy, white woman is violently assault and kill a load of men. Is that not the narrative that this videogame is promoting? Have you not read this book about how games become reality and influence our behavior? Should
we not prosecute these people for the murders that they are responsible for? Or at least prevent them from spreading this narrative of hate speech at a minimum. Should we not institute structural reform that will prevent them from proposing these hateful things?’
[17:13] Sarkeesian: “And creating structural change means people have to follow those structures.”
[17:16] Thunderf00t: ‘‘Cos once we’ve ejected these sexist, racist, homophobic, transphobic, fat-shaming, retard-shaming, dribble-shaming, white supremacist bigots—then we can finally have an open and more FREE form of gaming, a more INCLUSIVE gaming community where finally, once and for all, no one will EVER be offended.
[17:41] Hitchens: “If someone tells me that I’ve hurt their feelings, I say, ‘Well, I’m still waiting to hear what your point is.’”
“I’m very depressed how in this country you can be told, ‘That’s offensive!’ as if those two words constitute an argument or a comment. Not to me, they don’t. And I’m not running for anything, so I don’t have to pretend to like people when I don’t.”
Many thanks to Linda for supplying this transcript!
[0:00] Eric Hovind: “Now understand, evolution is NOT a science. It is a world view, just like Christianity is a world view. So how is somebody that looks at the world through the lens of evolution going to view life? How are they gonna answer the basic questions of life?”
“Who am I?”
Hovind: “Evolution tells us we’re just an accident, the result of random chance.”
[0:25] Thunderf00t: (Haha) The product of random chance, you say? Heh, yeah, sure the same way it’s random chance that day follows night.
[0:34] Well, for certain, both I and you are unique. But what is it that makes you unique? Is it your property, your technology, your spouse, or your siblings, your children? Or is it something more intrinsic like your DNA?
[0:50] Well it turns out your genome will fit, uncompressed, on about a gigabyte. But that’s not the part of the genome that’s unique to you. Virtually all of this is identical to that of your neighbors. The bit of the genome that’s unique to you is only about 10 megabytes. That means that your typical iPod with maybe 30GB of memory can store the genetic uniqueness of about 3,000 people on something that will fit in the palm of your hand.
[1:17] Now let’s follow that thought for a moment and say that the potency of a system is related, in a loose way, to the information within that system. Well, to be honest, the genome is basically only the instructions, if you like, for the ‘make-human’ process. And part of that make-human process includes the brain.
[1:36] Now, it’s kind of fuzzy to work out how much memory the brain has. But it’s typically estimated on the order of terabytes. Now the design of an informational storage device that can hold more information than that design itself is, not exactly an earth-shattering concept.
[1:51] For instance, the blueprints and design specs for the make-hard drive function are probably only on the order of a few gigabytes or so, and that’s massively smaller than the storage that these devices have.
[2:04] So is it your brain that makes you special? Well, it’s certainly a big part of it. But as individuals, humans are unimpressive creatures. They really only come into their own when they start to work in groups.
[2:18] For instance, one man versus a tiger is: one well-fed tiger, 100% probability. 10 coordinated people versus one tiger, is one nice tiger skin rug, 100% probability.
[2:33] This change in group behavior is doubtless due to tiny changes in the genome that promotes communal behavior. But this has a very large effect on the survivability of the individuals.
[2:44] For instance, 10 specialists, you know—the farmer, the farrier, the blacksmiths—that sort of thing, will carry significantly more knowledge than 10 individuals who do not work as a coordinated group. That is, they have better informational potential as 10 people all trying to remember specialized information than 10 people all trying to learn 10 times as much as will fit into their soft, squidgy human brains. You know, it’s that you do better with 10 specialists than you do with 10 jack of all trades, master of none types.
[3:19] But there’s more to it than working in teams. People die. And when they do, their knowledge is lost, via what’s taught to the next generation. However, when one of those individual’s immense stored media—you know: writing, disk drives, the internet, that sort of thing—everything changes. Knowledge from that point on is essentially accumulative AND exponential in nature. Knowledge enables large groups to coordinate and work together, and it enables machines that can do the work of thousands of men. It enables health care, clean water, understanding disease, and so on. So you see from these miniscule tweaks in the DNA, massive effects can ensue.
[4:02] Those relatively modest changes that promote group formation can greatly increase the potency of a community. After this genetic selection plays a diminished role, its selection criteria that determines who dies and who doesn’t is essentially down to the stored knowledge of societies. Communities that can treat small pox will survive better than those that cannot. Communities that can treat water survive better than those that cannot. Societies with WWII era weaponry simply cannot challenge modern military equipment on the battle field.
[4:35] But it’s the pace that this knowledge can be gathered at that’s the real knee-weakening factor. I mean, merely over the last few decades I’ve seen vast changes in our civilization. When I was young, there was no such thing as a personal computer. And now, just over one generation further on, it’s difficult to find ANY aspect of our lives that does not benefit from this technology.
[4:59] Our genetics are now essentially in a state of stasis when one considers the growth of the knowledge of mankind. Looked at in such terms, the potency of mankind is a product of several factors which contain elements that could be described both as genetic and group survival terms.
[5:17] However, one thing is overwhelmingly clear. And that’s for mankind, knowledge is the principle factor. Knowledge is the enabler of both society’s and the species. Knowledge is now the prime factor in deciding the survivability of individuals. Knowledge is the future, and intentionally, intellectually corrosive muppets like this:
[5:40] Kent Hovind: “I believe the Bible is the infallible, inspired, inerrant word of the living God. I believe it from cover to cover. Amen. And I believe the evolution theory that’s being taught in our schools is one of the dumbest and most dangerous religions in the history of humanity.”
[6:00] Thunderf00t: -just cannot be ignored.
[6:03] Presented with such arguments, it’s baffling that so many politicians do not have education; that’s the propagation of knowledge. And research, that’s the acquisition of new knowledge. And countering the disinformation sewn by pseudoscientists, that’s the top items on their agenda.
[6:22] Now let’s compare this previously presented perspective to that of a creationist:
[6:27] clip: “Who am I?”
Hovind: “Evolution tells us we’re just an accident, the result of random chance. But the Bible says we’re fearfully and wonderfully made in the image of our Creator.”
[6:40] Thunderf00t: (chuckles) Well, fundamentally, no. We are a hierarchical, social, species. Something an individual god can never be. It’s tautological that a single individual cannot form a hierarchical social structure.
[6:56] clip: “Why am I here?”
Hovind: “Evolution leaves us without an answer. There IS NO purpose to life.”
[7:03] Thunderf00t: Well, again—no. You HAVE a purpose AND a vested interest; and the benefit of the society that raised your living standards and life expectancy beyond any ramblings from any Bronze Age myth book.
[7:18] I mean, really it’s a direct challenge. Present anything in the Bible or similar that conveys what we are and how our species functions better than I have shown in this video. But again, it shows this harsh contrast.
[7:34] I could concisely and comprehensively convey complex concepts, clear of the confusion of convolutional clouding. But the Bible bombastically and bitterly bombs, as belied by its bleakly bad bungling. [Extra points for alliteration!]
[7:50] clip: “Where am I going when I die?”
Hovind: “Well, if evolution is true, don’t worry about it. You got nothing to lose. But if creation is true, you have everything to lose by not considering this fundamental question of life.”
[8:03] Thunderf00t: Well all this seems a pretty shallow and manipulative play on the sense of self-preservation that we must necessarily have. Well, at least why it’s those who don’t have one are unlikely to have lived long enough to watch this video.
[8:16] However, everyone watching this video does have a brain, and now that brain has been introduced to an overview of mankind and your position in it.
[8:26] Immortality is an elusive concept for volatile genes, organisms, organs, and ideas. Self-preservation is merely the introspective fear of the termination of an organ. But for those who perceive they’re part of an individual in the grand scheme of things, they gain an enhanced potential to shape the thoughts and behaviors of things long after their brain ceases to function.
[8:51] In this sense, for the lesser, as for the greater, the footprints of the individual in the sands of time will echo into the future. But ultimately, for reasons that should be explicitly clear in this video, Bronze Age religion is an inhibiting influence on the progression of mankind.
[9:08] Thankfully, in the open and free global forum of ideas this intellectually erosive concept is progressively more unviable, and I believe we serve the coming man, society and ourselves, in challenging it by decree of open contest.
Many thanks to Linda for supplying this transcript!
[0:00] “As You Remember It: The Lift-Off of APOLLO 11”: “T-minus 60 seconds and counting”
[0:02] Thunderf00t: You know, risk comes to us in many forms, and sometimes death doesn’t even bother to wear a mask. And sometimes, if you wanna achieve great things, you’ve just gotta accept that dance with death.
[0:19] This is the mighty Saturn V rocket. It weighed about 3,000 tons—almost all of which was fuel. And that fuel had about the same energy density as high explosives.
[0:32] clip: “20 seconds and counting”
[0:34] Thunderf00t: That is, this beast was a barely controlled, 3,000 ton BOMB. Let me just throw that into perspective for you.
[0:45] This, on the same scale, is the B-17 Flying Fortress. It was the mainstay heavy bomber of the United States in early WWII. And it could carry about three tons of bombs to a distant target. And about a 1,000 of these guys could lay waste to a city. A thousand bombers at say, three tons a piece—that’s 3,000 TONS of explosives. That’s about the same energetic content as the Saturn V rocket.
[1:15] clip: “T-minus 15 seconds. Guidance is internal”
[1:18] Thunderf00t: And man, [dramatic music] as frail as you or I, ascended ALL the way to the top of this rocket, which was essentially a 3,000 ton BOMB
[1:30] clip: “12, 11, 10,”
[1:32] Thunderf00t: -enough energy to lay waste to a city
[1:36] clip: “9, ignition sequence start”
[1:39] Thunderf00t: -and fully aware, at exactly what they were sitting on
[1:43] clip: “6, 5,”
[1:45] Thunderf00t: -they said, ‘Let’s light this candle’
clip: “4, 3, 2, 1, 0. All engine running. Liftoff! We have a liftoff! 32 minutes past the hour, liftoff on Apollo 11 . . . Tower clear! Tower clear!”
[2:03] Thunderf00t: And even with all those insane risks, I would’ve still changed places with them in a heartbeat, for the wonders that they saw.
When they pulled the plug on their poll, the word ‘feminist’ had almost 50 % of the entire vote. Indeed more that 10x as many people thought the word we should ban in 2015 should be ‘feminist’ as those who thought ‘bossy’
Naturally I don’t approve of banning words, however in this case I’m willing to make an exception just to see the incensed outrage of the feminists who think only THEY should have the right to ban words!
MANY thanks to Linda for supplying the transcript for these videos!
[0:00] news clips: “Well it’s a simple idea with big potential, turning polluted air into actual products that most of us will use every day.”
“Absolutely! Here in a Southern California plastics factory you are NOT gonna imagine WHERE this comes from. Just wait until you see this story.”
“We connect to a Newlight through our technology innovation funnel at Dell . . . who’s doing, of all things, making plastic out of carbon in the air. It almost seemed like it was too good to be true.”
[0:26] Thunderf00t: WOW. So the solution to global warming is here:
[0:31] clip from “Plastic made from air may help solve carbon emissions crisis” (CBS): “This building in Costa Mesa, California, looks unremarkable. And what’s happening inside sounds unreal.”
“So that’s plastic? That was literally made out of thin air?”
“We would be breathing this right now.”
[0:46] Thunderf00t: A way of turning carbon in the air into plastic. And the GREAT thing is, it’s gonna be CHEAPER than regular plastic. And it’s been featured on USA Today, The Guardian, The Weather Channel, CBS, and of course, Fox News, and the computer company, Dell, is promoting this AMAZING new technology, hard—so it can’t be complete bullshit. Right? I mean surely, someone must have fact-checked this. Right?
[1:16] So, firstly they claim that they’re gonna be making this plastic out of exhaust gases:
[1:21] clip from The Weather Channel: “-supposed to be a big game-changer for climate change, and Dave, you were telling us earlier about how they take the carbon out of the atmosphere and turn into plastic. How exactly do they do that, and Stephen our producer said, ‘well, why don’t they just hook up kind of a vacuum to, you know—smokestacks—and just get it right like that?’
[1:38] Thunderf00t: Well, that’s great. So now we know what we’re talking about: carbon dioxide.
[1:43] clip from The Weather Channel: “Yeah, that would be the way to do that. And they ARE doing that. In the future they hope to get it from a concentrated source. Right now they’re taking it from the air and they’re taking it from concentrated sources. But everything you see here—the cups, the bag, the plates—even, in fact, the chair that I’m sitting on right now, it’s all made from this plastic that comes from the air, and it’s one man’s dream.”
[2:07] Thunderf00t: And here’s their CEO saying that, just like trees take carbon dioxide out of the air:
[2:13] clips from Weather Channel, Dell: “pull Southern California’s polluted air from the roof and make something with all that carbon coming from cars, power plants, and farms.”
“Plants do this every single day. The way a tree grows is by pulling carbon out of the air.”
“Every single thing that you see that’s green—that’s ALL produced by pulling carbon out of the air. So we do precisely the same thing. It’s all around us. We just found a way to pull it out of an airstream and then turn it into a plastic molecule, and that plastic molecule we can then turn into shapes and things like that.”
“The environmental impact has the potential impact to be massive.”
[2:47] Thunderf00t: Yeah, that’s mostly right. Trees take carbon dioxide from the atmosphere AND water and a load of energy from the sun, and turn that into sugar—which is then polymerized to make things like cellulose, which is essentially wood.
[3:03] Now, plants GET that energy from the SUN. They are solar powered. Where’s he gonna get his energy from? Solar Roadways [LOL] , thorium-powered cars? Because the one place he can’t get it from is burning fossil fuels, ‘cos that would dump about as much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as he’s going to be sequestering.
[3:24] As of rough chemical compositions, most plastics are basically petroleum-based polymers. And their chemical composition is basically that of oil; which is approximately this:
[3:37] Sugars and their polymers, which is cellulose, make up things like wood. And can, at a simple chemical composition-level be looked at as partially combusted hydrocarbon. That is, IF you could simply transform these petroleum-based polymers into wood, it would release a load of energy. And then of course you can simply finish off that oxidation in a very simple manner just by burning wood, which everyone knows releases a load of heat. I mean, it’s basically turning wood, into carbon dioxide, water, and a load of energy; effectively reversing what photosynthesis did in the first place.
[4:16] But energy is conserved here. There are no free lunches. If you wanna turn that carbon dioxide back into wood, you gotta put a load of energy in from somewhere and it will cost you AT LEAST as much energy as you got out from burning it in the first place.
[4:34] And the same thing is true if you’re trying to turn carbon dioxide into hydrocarbon-based plastics. WHERE is this energy going to come from?
[4:46] Secondly of course, this would just be a drop in the ocean. I mean from my last video you’ll recall that humans breathe out about 1 kilogram of carbon dioxide per day. That’s just your carbon footprint for being alive. And then you have all these people from CBS just gasping with awe at how someone has maybe sequestered 50 or so grams of carbon in a cellphone cover:
[5:13] clip from CBS “Plastic made from air may help solve carbon emissions crisis”: “So I know this sounds more like magic than science, so I wanted to make sure you guys could actually touch and feel this . . .”
[5:35] I mean, seriously, that’s only about 1/20th of their personal daily metabolic carbon footprint and they’re impressed by it!
[5:43] news clips: “Newlight is selling its plastic to companies such as furniture maker KI, which uses it to create chairs. There are also air carbon cellphone cases, soap dishes, and even plastic bags.”
“a big game-changer for climate change, and Dave, you were telling us earlier about how they take the carbon out of the atmosphere and turn into plastic.”
“At a recent Fortune Magazine event, Michael Dell announced he will use Newlight’s air carbon bags to wrap his Dell computers.”
[6:17] Thunderf00t: And just a personal metabolic carbon footprint is peanuts compared to the total carbon footprint. I mean, like I was saying, this is a drop in the ocean AT BEST. I mean let’s keep this in perspective:
[6:32] clip from Weather Channel: “2011, the U.S. alone generated almost 14 MILLION TONS of plastic. Only about 8 percent was EVER recycled.”
[6:39] Thunderf00t: 14 million tons might sound like a lot. Until you realize that the U.S. carbon footprint is about 5,000 MILLION TONS, which was achieved by burning about 2,000 million tons of oil. Yeah, ALL of the plastics that you consume are give-or-take only take about 1 percent of your ENTIRE carbon footprint. If we were talking about carbon dioxide, he’s simply talking crap.
[7:12] Buuut it turns out that all that speak about basically doing what trees do—not entirely honest. Turns out that this process is actually gonna run on methane. That’s right—it’s basically turning hydrocarbon into plastic—which sounds exactly like what the oil industry is currently doing.
[7:32] So, what’s the difference? Well, they claim that they’re gonna get the methane OUT of the air:
[7:38] clip from Dell: “We connect to a Newlight through our technology innovation funnel at Dell . . . who’s doing, of all things, making plastic out of carbon in the air. It almost seemed like it was too good to be true.”
[7:48] Thunderf00t: And I simply call BULLSHIT on that. Well you’ve gotta understand that there really isn’t much methane in air—and for good reason—it gets oxidized away in our atmosphere really quite quickly with a half-life of about 10 years.
[8:01] Now, while it’s true methane IS a very big greenhouse gas, it’s also true that its concentration in air is very low—only about 1 part per million. There is just bugger-all methane in the air.
[8:16] So, I mean, just some ballpark numbers, the cubic meter of air is what this girl is essentially sitting in, weighs about 1 kilogram. So if you wanted to make about 1 kilogram of plastic, you would need to harvest the methane of 1 MILLION cubic meters of air with 100 percent efficiency. I mean, look, this is the tube they claim they’re sucking all our air through to make this plastic:
[8:41] clip from Weather Channel: “pull Southern California’s polluted air from the roof and make something with all that carbon.”
“This plastic comes from the air.”
“And this is it right here, more than 50 percent of THIS plastic right here came from the air on top of this building.”
[9:01] Thunderf00t: So let’s do a real simple back-of-the-envelope calculation. For a TRIVIAL task of say, producing 1 kilogram of plastic per hour—that means they’ve gotta suck 1 MILLION cubic meters of air through that tube. That tube, if you’re generous, is about 0.1 meters by 0.1 meters. So if they’re gonna achieve the paltry task of making 1 kilogram of plastic per hour, iiit turns out they’d have to be sucking air through that tube at about 100 TIMES the speed of sound. And that’s just the flow problem. Unless they’ve got some magic method for extracting the methane out of the air, it’s simply pointless.
[9:41] Now, 100 times the speed of sound—about a 100 times the speed of a bullet—might not sound impossible to some people. So let me put this into more human dimensions. So, we basically need about 1 million cubic meters of air to create a single kilogram of plastic. Well, by happy coincidence, the volume of the Empire State Building is also about 1 million cubic meters. So the bare minimum you would have to do is pump a volume of air the size of the Empire State Building—ignoring all the stuff about extracting the methane and turning it into plastic.
[10:20] But just for the moment, let’s just take a look at the costs of pumping that sort of volume of air. It’s actually going to take a sort of industrial pump that can pump about 2 cubic meters per second, and it runs on about 2 kilowatts. So this pump would take about one week to pump that million cubic meters of air. And just the grid electricity to pump that volume of air would generate about 200 kilograms of carbon dioxide—the equivalent of burning about a 100 kilograms of oil to generate 1 KILOGRAM of plastic.
[10:58] And just to put that into some perspective, the petrochemical industry basically works by taking about 1 kilogram of oil and turning it into about 1 kilogram of plastic.
[11:08] clip from “Dell AirCarbon Plastic – Made from Air, Not Oil”: “Gone from doing less harm, to do no harm, to ‘let’s make it better than we left it’.”
“Newlight’s technology is such a great partner for that, but they’re making it better.”
[11:22] Thunderf00t: This really is the problem that you face, that you have essentially 1,000 tons of air, and you’re trying to extract from that 1 kilogram of methane, which can maybe be converted into about a kilogram of plastic.
[11:36] Look, this is the thing—you can get methane from the petrochemical industry fairly cheaply. But these ‘air carbon’ people claim that their process is cheaper than the petrochemical industry:
[11:47] clip from The Weather Channel: “although Mark truly believes he has found a way to make air plastic cost less than oil plastic.”
[11:55] Thunderf00t: In which case, the obvious question, if your air methane is cheaper than petrochemical industry methane, why not just sell it as ‘fuel’? You know, just for burning. It would be incredibly bio-friendly, as methane’s about 30 times as bad a greenhouse gas as carbon dioxide.
[12:15] I mean there’s just something about this that REALLY stinks. That is, I simply don’t believe that there would EVER be a cost-effective way of extracting methane from the atmosphere like this.
[12:27] Now if you were doing this with BIO sources of methane—weeell, now that’s a little different. But that’s MUCH more what the petrochemical industry is essentially doing at the moment. And calling it “air carbon”, you know, pulled out of the air:
[12:40] clip from The Weather Channel: “Right. So this is actually air carbon.”
“Air carbon is the product name they use for this white powder.”
“How does this become plastic though?”
“Heat it up, and air carbon becomes a plastic called, PHA.”
CBS clip: “So that’s plastic that was literally made out of thin air?”
“We would be breathing this right now.”
[12:58] Thunderf00t: -seems to be ENTIRELY misleading.
[13:01] So, in summary, if they’re talking about making plastic from the carbon dioxide in the air, then they’re simply talking crap, as it could NEVER be cost-effective unless you can find a cheaper source of energy than fossil fuels. If he’s talking about methane in the air, then he’s MORE full of crap than the Empire State Building is full of air. And if he’s talking about bio methane created on a farm IN A BIOLOGICAL REACTOR—you know, to generate the methane in the first place—he’s talking about bio methane generated on a farm and he’s not talking about pulling it out of the air. And all those claims about ‘carbon out of the air’—not really true.
[13:47] clip from Dell: “Almost all plastics today come from fossil fuels. So, the difference with air carbon is, air carbon is made from air and carbon that we would otherwise be breathing right now.”
[13:56] Thunderf00t: Look, there’s ONE polymer that is the UNDISPUTED claim to call itself ‘air carbon’. It’s the most abundant biomolecule on Earth: cellulose, created by plants and the key structural component of trees—you know, wood. You wanna use ‘air carbon’ to wrap your computers, use paper. THEN at least the carbon GENUINELY came from the atmosphere and not some fraudulent claims about being able to make plastic cost-effective out of thin air. But I still just wail with despair at just how much scientific illiteracy there is throughout the mainstream media.
[14:38] clip from CBS: “So I know this sounds more like magic than science, so I wanted to make sure you guys could actually touch and feel this.”
[14:45] Thunderf00t: And just how a large company like Dell can promote this pseudo-science without even a cursory look as to if those claims are even remotely possible.
[14:57] clip from Dell: “We connect to a Newlight through our technology innovation funnel at Dell . . . who’s doing, of all things, making plastic out of carbon in the air. It almost seemed like it was too good to be true.”
Many thanks to Linda for supplying this transcript!
[0:08] Thunderf00t: So what if I were to tell you that there’s quite literally a way where you can lose 1 kilo—that’s like 2 pounds—per day? With no fuss, no tricks, no dieting—just literally breathing the weight away.
[0:24] ‘Crazy!’, I hear you ask, ‘you’ve got to be selling me something!’ I hear you say. Actually, no; not even close. This is using knowledge gained through the Apollo space program.
[0:36] You see, if you can put three men in an oversized Coke can and fly them off into space for a week or so, the one thing that you REALLY need to remember is to pack enough supplies before you leave. And the supply that you’ll miss the most the first, is air.
[0:52] clip from Garbage, The Trick is to Keep Breathing
[1:02] Thunderf00t: -specifically, the oxygen in the air. So NASA really needed to know how much oxygen they should put in their space capsule. Now it turns out you need about a kilo—that’s about 2 pounds—of oxygen per day to survive.
[1:17] Or looked at another way, you breathe out about a kilo—about 2 pounds—of carbon dioxide per day. Now just think about that for a second. If you breathe out about a kilo per day that means that you’re breathing about 365 kilos per year. That’s a THIRD of a TON of carbon dioxide is how much [Equation] your breathing out PER YEAR. That’s FIVE times my own body weight. And just so you know, this chemical reaction is doing what your body is doing EVERY single day. It’s essentially burning sugar and it’s releasing about how much energy your body releases per day. And that’s about how much carbon dioxide your body is producing PER DAY.
[1:59] Which does bring about this really quite odd question that if I excrete five times my own body mass of carbon dioxide per year, is there really anything left of me that was there at beginning of the year? I mean, just ignore for a second the water that you take in and put out. The majority of the mass that you actually excrete comes out as carbon dioxide. That is, if you’re going to lose weight, it’s gonna come out of the same hole that it went in through.
[2:25] clip from Garbage, The Trick is to Keep Breathing
[2:29] Thunderf00t: This has a very global impact. I mean YOU—just you—your metabolism alone is producing about a THIRD of a ton of carbon dioxide per year. That’s HALF the mass of a small car, and there are 7 billion other people doing almost exactly the same thing. How that carbon footprint compares to your total carbon footprint, and how the energy dumped into the atmosphere from your burning metabolism compares to the total amount of global heating that you’re gonna get from that extra carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, are points that we’re going to address in an upcoming video series called “The Universe in Perspective”.
Many thanks to Linda for supplying this transcript!
[0:00] Thunderf00t: You know, Anita Sarkeesian has recently found herself in some goood company. According to her, just like Jack Thompson and Glenn Beck, games are actually a direct and significant influence on people’s behavior.
[0:14] So Glenn Beck was convinced that just merely pushing the buttons on the gaming control in the game Watch Dogs was actually teaching people how to hack mobile phones and computers!
[0:24] clip from “Glenn Beck: Violent Video Games”: “Watch Dogs allow the players to hack into cell phones, ATMs, drawbridges, even helicopters, to wholly envelop the lives of others . . . the idea here is they’re teaching you to hack, and then become the ultimate voyeur in other people’s lives—including their bedrooms—by hacking into their phones, and everything—everything that we talked about.”
[0:51] Thunderf00t: And Jack Thompson was declared by Machinima to be the number one enemy of gaming for his long history of claiming that video games actually teach people how to become school shooters.
[1:03] clips from “Jack Thompson on Nightline”, “Top 10 Enemies of Gaming”, “Women as Background Decoration: Part 1 – Tropes vs Women in Video Games”,: “Though the 130 million dollar suit was dismissed, Thompson is still convinced that these images inspired three murders.”
[1:10] “NUUMBER OOONE! Jack Thompson! Disbarred attorney Jack Thompson has long been an advocate against obscenity in pop culture . . . But this Jack Thompson fella, he sees obscenity as something different than you or I. Basically ANYTHING that offends his own delicate personal sensibilities. Over the years he’s sued or threated 2 Live Crew, N.W.A, MTV, Madonna, and recently he’s turned his attentions towards the video games.”
[1:36] “To him, this is not entertainment. It is a murder simulator.
[1:41] “Once a person is reduced to the status of objecthood, violence against that object becomes intrinsically permitted.”
[1:47] “You’re kicking, punching”
[1:49] “Violability occurs when, as Nussbaum points out, the objectifier treats the object as lacking in boundary-integrity, as something that it is permissible to break up, smash, break into.”
[2:01] “Ultimately shooting, cutting the heads off of people with machetes of people you don’t even know and don’t have a motive to be violent against.”
[2:07] “Since these women are just objects, there’s no need or reason for players to have any emotional engagement with them. Meaningful relationships or interactions are not even possible.”
[2:16] Thunderf00t: Indeed, not only did Machinima declare him the “number one enemy of gaming,” they claim that he was the ultimate end-game villain:
[2:24] clip from “Top 10 Enemies of Gaming”: “He is the ultimate level-boss to the gaming industry. Using videogames as scapegoat for tragic school-shootings, he said: “In every school shooting, we find that kids who pull the trigger are video gamers.
“He even suggested that the PS2 controller’s vibrations help condition gamers’ minds to enjoy killing.”
[2:42] Thunderf00t: Now Anita Sarkeesian must have watched all of this with a deep sense of envy, because she has declared herself to be the ultimate villainess—ah, sorry—correction, she claims that gamers have declared her to be the ultimate villainess.
[2:59] clip from TEDx Talks, “Anita Sarkeesian at TEDxWomen 2012”: “So, in their minds, they concocted this grand fiction in which they’re the heroic players of a massively multiplayer online game, working together to take down an enemy; and apparently, they casted me in the role of the villain.”
[3:12] Thunderf00t: Oh, I know, vanity and aspirational victimhood in one package. Yeah, damn straight, Anita Sarkeesian is pretty much exactly what you would expect from an unholy hybrid of Jack Thompson and that crazy woman from Amy’s Baking Company:
[3:29] clip from “Kitchen Nightmares Amy Bouzaglo Season 6 Episode 16 Part 1”: “I have issues with customers that are trying to be online bullies and say horrible things.”
“Online bullies?”
“I told them, I thought he was a loser, he was a moron.”
[3:38] Thunderf00t: So Jack Thompson claims that video games CAUSE SHOOTINGS. Glenn Beck claims that videogames CAUSE HACKING. And Anita Sarkeesian claims that videogames CAUSE SEXISM. Hey fellas, got a great question for ya: did the game Batman make you wanna dress up like a bat and fight crime as a vigilante?
[4:01] clip from “Jack Thompson on Nightline” “Centuries ago, it was the pamphleteers who were scolded for dragging down society. In the 50’s it was comic books, in the 60’s it was The Beatles.”
[4:10] Thunderf00t: However, meanwhile in reality with the sheer number of computer games played, the one thing that we CAN say with surety is that if there IS any link between behavior and playing computer games, it’s BLOODY weak.
[4:28] clip from “Jack Thompson on Nightline”: “Game industry lobbyists are quick to point out a total of 9 Federal Courts have rejected so-called “studies” that video games cause aggression.”
[4:35] Thunderf00t: But just so we’re clear how dishonest Anita was willing to be to come to this conclusion: she claimed that in the game Hitman: [Absolution] men were meant to get their rocks off to beating up the dancers and then controlling their dead bodies:
[4:49] clip from “Women as Background Decoration: Part 1 – Tropes vs Women in Video Games”: “Players are meant to derive a perverse pleasure from desecrating the bodies of unsuspecting virtual female characters. It’s a rush streaming from a carefully concocted mix of sexual arousal connected to the act of controlling and punishing representations of female sexuality.”
[5:05] Thunderf00t: The problem was that no one who played the game DOES that. Trust me, I watched at least 40 playthroughs and none of them attacked the dancers, ‘cos in Hitman, you’re not meant to kill innocent people. Indeed, you get penalized for it. So how can Anita then claim that this game is making people sexist?
[5:26] Well, obviously she’s gotta go beat the living crap out of these virtual women herself, then drag their bodies around in a big circle—and you know it’s her doing it, because the body starts right by the body locker that she’s eventually going to put it into, and then she drags it around in a BIIIG circle over the other body to make it seem as nasty as possible. That is, in reality the only people who play Hitman as a fantasy to kill women and desecrate their bodies, are feminists like Anita Sarkeesian. Indeed, it’s kind of ironic that if you actually listen to what she says:
[6:01] clip from “Women as Background Decoration: Part 1 – Tropes vs Women in Video Games”: “-derive a perverse pleasure from desecrating the bodies of unsuspecting virtual female characters. It’s a rush streaming from a carefully concocted mix of sexual arousal, connected to the act of controlling and punishing representations of female sexuality.”
[6:16] Thunderf00t: Anita’s footage of this part of Hitman is quite literally the only footage that I’ve seen anything even remotely like this. And quite how Anita’s strange fetish for violence against women in computer games proves that games cause sexism—I’m not quite sure. But yeah, with arguments as rigorous as that, it’s quite CLEAR why she’s got the same winning ratio as Jack Thompson. I mean, Anita’s arguments here are about as convincing as suggesting that team games encourage team killing. And just to prove it, here is some POWERFUL footage of Anita going on a team killer killing spree.
[6:55] clip
[7:08] Or it’s like her going griefing in Minecraft—that’s the practice where assholes go and destroy worlds which took people DAYS to make—simply so she can claim that the game is there to encourage and reward people for going griefing in Minecraft.
[7:24] clip from “Jack Thompson on Nightline”: “And it makes him an object of scorn in the gaming world. Kids who wear ‘I hate Jack Thompson’ t-shirts can trade blows with his likeness in the game Mortal Combat.”
[7:37] Thunderf00t: Interestingly though, while Jack Thompson was being inserted into videogames as a character who could be killed in numerous, violent ways, like having his body fed through grated, grinding, bloody wheels of one sort or another—that really didn’t offend Anita’s sensibilities. Apparently men being fed into thrashing machines doesn’t count as sexism, or harassment, or online bullying. However, when someone made a much simpler version of that game with Anita:
[8:07] clip from “16×9 – Dangerous Game: Tropes vs Women bullying”: “The games are not meant as a threat. They’re not meant to intimidate. He goes on to say he was criticizing your project as a person in the media.”
“To make a game to beat me up and then hide behind this idea of ‘we’re just trying to have a conversation’—I mean, I don’t think anyone would buy that. Or anyone would think that that was an acceptable form of communication.”
[8:28] Thunderf00t: Oh no! This must be a unique hatred of women in gaming! Because remember, if there’s one thing that Anita has taught us, it’s that it’s ONLY sexist when it happens to WOMEN. Well, I’m done. Can I have another $160,000 now?
[8:45] “This videogame character is dressed too sexily. I don’t like it! Change it!”
“I’m dressed too sexily and you don’t like it? STOP OPPRESSING ME!”
Thunderf00t 