How talking about the new Marvel movie can combat extremism

Seriously, some people just need to chill out. Like half of the population of the US who voted on hatred-driven politics. But I digress... Today we are going to talk about how superheroes can save us in real life.

You can hate particular superheroes

Superheroes are fictional characters. So you can hate them. That's okay.

However, if I notice that you have a strong tendency to hate only superheroes played by POC (people of color), women, and other oppressed groups, I will begin to think that you are a fascist.

As long as you don't do that, it is okay to hate particular super heroes.

Find the Nazi at the dinner table

Talking about super heroes is not only good to help extremists get their extreme hatred out of their systems and start being more centrist again, but it is also good for identifying who has extremist tendencies.

Thanos sympathizers need to "randomly" remove themselves from Internet conversations.

Us against Them

It seems that identifying with some team or tribe is part of human nature. As if life wasn't already hard enough, many people turn to the internet to simulate killing each other in video game. We've already discussed sports in an earlier post.

Why do people want so much conflict? I remember when I was signed up for sports as a young boy that my favorite part of match ups wasn't winning (which entails the other team losing). I liked the snack bar. Similarly, I never felt drawn to playing video games that involve defeating other human beings. I preferred RPGs.

Maybe that helps explain why I enjoy LARPing now. But I digress.

What we need to do as a society is to put non-competitive CENTRISTS in charge. Tribal idiots like to make two sides out of everything. Centrists seek peace, compromise, and outcomes where everyone wins.

Stay woke,
Virtuous Centrists

I don't need to learn to code, you need to learn empathy

Recently, morons on the political right have been spreading a lame-ass meme, "Learn to Code". Centrists (the best of humanity 😎) and leftists helpfully suggested that people in careers that should become obsolete (e.g. petroleum engineering) learn to code—shorthand for get with the times. Right-wingers are mocking journalists who have lost their jobs and other productive members of society using this phrase.

Here is why these trolls are stupid. Miners losing their jobs and journalists losing their jobs are two different cases. Journalists do important knowledge work. Miners will soon become replaced by robots. Journalists can't be replaced by robots because they do knowledge work that requires human empathy. Mining doesn't require empathy, but writing stories that inform people does.

Who do we want more of in society, empathetic human beings or NPC robots? I think reasonable people will agree on an answer to this question.

Stay woke,
Virtuous Centrists

The problem isn't "fake news"

Recently, Microsoft, in partnership with NewsGuard began warning users of its Edge mobile browser about untrustworthy "news sites" [1]. NewsGuard, on their website, describe themselves as

...us[ing] journalism to fight false news, misinformation, and disinformation.

While I personally am not an Edge user, I applaud Microsoft's efforts here to manage the normies. We know that their brains are like sponges, ready to soak up cute cat videos, cooking tutorials, and conspiracy theories. I myself don't mind cute cat videos and enjoy it with my friends watch cooking tutorials and then make me delicious food. The conspiracy theory stuff, however, needs to stop.

I am aware of some other good initiatives on the Internet to help fight misinformation. For instance, Twitter verified accounts (signified by a blue checkmark badge on one's profile) make it easier to determine who is for real and who is a troll. Not that I would have any problems identifying who is a troll to begin with—I am born and raised on the internet.

Some people opposed initiatives like Microsoft's partnership with NewsGuard and Twitter verified accounts as a form of "internet censorship". Anybody reading this blog knows that this is utter bullshit. First of all, to all you capitalist dip-shits, aren't you all about corporate "rights"? Why can't Microsoft and Twitter do as they please? Oh—you only want freedom when people act "freely" in ways you like?! AHAHAHAHA. Maybe u should get off ur lazy butts and make something comparable to Microsoft or Twitter yourselves before complaining about all the "surveillance".

Okay, I'm going to drink another bottle of Soylent while catching up on some real news. There is a glorious future ahead of us, if only the idiots don't take control. Luckily, many smart people in Silicon valley are on our side.

Stay woke,
Virtuous Centrists

If you're going to read...

You might as well read a good book.

There is nothing like consuming deep, well-thought out prose. What do you want to know about? The origins of the universe? Why somebody else's explanations of the origin of the universe are utter bullshit? How to make a delicious vegetarian meatloaf? All of these things can be found in books.

Yet, there are also many stupid books. I don't know who lets these things get published and why there are so many of them. (Note: A sign of an intelligent person is admitting what you don't know.)

I thought about how we might come up with laws to reduce the number of stupid books. For example, we could elect an assembly of book-reviewers that could give anonymous ratings to books that are to be published. One problem here is that we had have to waste some very smart peoples' time reading many stupid books. They might even become corrupted! There are too many stupid books and not enough smart people. It seems to me that stupid is contagious, too.

This is not a time for pessimism, however. With the Internet, we can become smarter.

For now, bring any stupid books you have to your next bonfire party and help reduce the number of stupid books over s'mores. Then, when we go to buy books, the chances of finding a smart book will gradually increase. Simple and logical.

Stay woke,
Virtuous Centrists.

I'm not sure if sports are stupid

Why would anybody pay hundreds (or even thousands) of dollars to watch a bunch of people running back and forth throwing or kicking around some piece of rubber? On one hand, I can see how many friends of mine consider sports stupid. Looking at the big picture, winning doesn't matter. Losing doesn't matter either. Are the real losers the people that waste so many hours watching these games?

On the other hand, my doctor told me that I need to get more exercise. He has a point. Switching from regular Coke to Diet Coke (and now hopefully to water) isn't enough. Living a healthy life requires exercise. Until we succeed at becoming cyborgs at least. Let us await the trans-humanist revolution.

Seeing my classmates that are into sports, I can't help but be a little bit jealous. Same for my religious friends. They derive so much enjoyment over something so simple. Me, on the other hand? I usually enjoy myself learning about science and politics.

It is not my job to judge whether or not people are wasting their time with sports. I can only focus on what I know is true. It can be hard being right about so many things and watching most people around me running around like confused lemmings though.

If a "dictator of the world" position opens up, let me know. I'll even promise to return a reasonable amount of power to people that disagree with logic as a nice gesture. There will always be bread and circuses too.

Stay woke,
Virtuous Centrists.

Linguistic hegemony is not okay

Linguistic hegemony? What the f--- does that mean? Is this some fancy made up word to make reasonable people feel stupid and confused?

Linguistic hegemony is a form of power wherein some type of language (usually English, as spoken by wealthy cis-gendered white males) is perceived as better than some other type of language (for instance, Spanish-accented "ungrammatical" English speech).

People that enjoy benefits from linguistic hegemony often think that they are objectively more skilled verbally and that they deserve their privilege. For example, a white store manager may claim that they do not want to hire South Asians because of "language barriers". In reality, that store manager may be expressing their thinly veiled racism by speech policing.

We can see through such lies.

Nonetheless, it is still difficult to resist embracing linguistic hegemony at times, particularly when arguing with morons online. Seriously, if you are going to try to rebut my well-crafted arguments, why don't you at least you proper spelling and punctuation?

As a centrist, however, I realize that to act as a "Grammar Nazi" is subtly acknowledge the legitimacy of extremist right-wing view points. That's the last thing I would want to do.

so 2 show u that i am ok with diversity of speech, even me who is a very reasonable well educated guy will write like this from time to time lolkay?

Stay woke,

Virtuous Centrists.

Fighting hate with reason ...and the system!

We are living in a world of increasingly political polarization. It is a good thing that social media companies like Facebook and Twitter are finally taking more social responsibility and applying their engineering expertise to do more than just optimize profits as they did during the 2016 election of Donald Trump.

This brings us to today's topic making hate mongers feel unwelcome.

Since the election of Trump, hate has been out of control. Whereas in the past, friends that disagree on political things might stop, listen, and reconsider their hateful beliefs over some take out Chinese food and a couple of light beers, now even tofu is political.

That's right! Tofu is apparently a staple food in the diet of "Soy Boys", a derogatory expression used by Alt-Right extremists to insult male feminists, vegans, and other people that value compassion over killing cows.

Now is the time to fight back for the victory of rational discourse, humanism, and diversity. Our best tool is logic. Unfortunately, idiots don't do a good job listening to logic. However, by mastering the natural world (through science and technology), we can control the resources that everyone depends on. In this way, logic will surely win.

Making sure that hate mongers are unable to use platforms like Patreon or PayPal is a good start. Growing up, you probably heard that "tattling" wasn't cool. That's just hate monger rhetoric for wanting to suppress whistle blowers with authoritarian tactics. Use the means that are available to you to make sure that virtue wins.

Now, some of you readers may have qualms about "suppressing free speech". Well, what if you can see where some speech is leading? Nearly everybody will agree that it is not lawful to yell "fire" in a crowded movie theater. In the same way, if we hear somebody referring to some group as inferior to another our Nazi-detection radars should go beep beep beep!

Note that we should never, ever, advocate for violence. That's why we have the police. And gun control. But that's a topic for a different day.

Stay woke,
Virtuous Centrists.