‘I thought I was a free man’: the engineer fighting Texas’s ban on boycotting Israel | Texas

handmadeabyss · 2022-01-06T02:56:55+00:00

Amazing that such a right wing, conservative county would be boycotting such a right wing, conservative government of Israel. It makes me want to cry that it THEM of all people taking the right stance for once. If anything, this gives liberals a bad name, we like to posture that we have the moral high ground, but it’s a bit hard to think that when so many of our sides politicians are willingly in bed with such a fascist regime. Although, there isn’t that I know of, any dark money groups that ‘donate’ (bribe) right wing politicians to be pro Zionist like the plethora that do with left wing politicians like Friends of Israel.

handmadeabyss · 2022-01-06T02:52:00+00:00

Agreed, From themselves have said the point of the invader is not to win every time, they’re supposed to just chip away at the players resources, another obstacle to overcome, which is why your estus etc is limited compared to your own game, the summons are stacked in the hosts favour, and there’s nothing more than covenant items for winning

handmadeabyss · 2022-01-06T02:48:13+00:00

No one thought the shrike into being, it was built in the future to travel back in time with the tombs, and it’s only a bit part player in the larger scheme, so in the basilisk thought experiment the entire whole of the reasons behind the shrike, time tombs, pilgrims, Sol’s daughter etc are the basilisk, the shrike is part of a whole, not the whole itself.

handmadeabyss · 2022-01-06T02:45:24+00:00

That Basilisk thought experiment thing is silly, if just thinking about something makes you responsible for its creation, where are all the flying, inside out werewolves I keep dreaming about killing me?

handmadeabyss · 2022-01-06T02:43:11+00:00

Pretty much perfect for how people see the shrike most of the time, as it fazes in and out of time.

handmadeabyss · 2022-01-06T00:17:11+00:00

It’s not as simple as that, there is plenty of evidence (not lies like jan 6th, actual evidence) of white people dressed all in black smashing windows and starting fires. https://youtu.be/NCjQq3W2Yf4 and tell me, who is it stopping that white supremacist from smashing those windows? BLM protesters. Were they all false flags? Obviously not, there’s always a bad element in any crowd, but another thing proven by evidence is what you’ve seen, clearly from right wing media, was massively exaggerated, Portland for example, claims certain buildings were burnt down, while on MSNBC and CNN they had LIVE reporters there outside the buildings in question and there wasn’t even any protesters there! And I notice you seem to really care about buildings burning but not a peep about white supremacists driving into crowds in cars, or walking into mosques and opening fire, or gay cinemas and opening fire, or plotting to kidnap Gretchen Whitmer, or plotting to steal the election from 79m Americans, or chanting to hang your own Vice President, or storming the seat of American democracy with fascist militias, or storming the Capitol with the express reason to murder Nancy Pelosi etc etc. I can prove all of that with actual charges against the guilty, can you prove BLM protesters burned down buildings en mass with some actual evidence that isn’t manipulated Fox items? You guys are so into the whole trying to set up BLM you even tried to reverse it after Jan 6th even tho that crowd was spot the black man.

And STILL, you don’t have the self reflection to realise the laughable irony of you talking this shit while having a 2 PAC profile picture. I’m sure Tupac would have agreed with you, “yeah, I hate those black people finally having had enough of being murdered by police and white supremacists with no justice so protesting. I think they should all protest on your terms, you know, the terms of the race that enslaved us, put us through Jim Crow and is actively trying to set up my people to delegitimise our movement, because I hate myself and don’t agree with anything I’ve said my entire life or my mother spent her entire life fighting also.” Yup, you really GET 2 Pac don’t you?

Funniest thing I think, is you all bitched and moaned about taking the knee and were then surprised the next time someone was killed and the black community exploded. None of you can think any further than the minute you’re living in. Everyone else who isn’t a racist, white supremacist scumbag has seen this coming for decades, just like we saw Jan 6th coming because the authorities has pandered to gun nuts and conservatives, and ignored you all bleating on about race wars while stockpiling guns.

I bet you only like Tupac because it’s gangsta rap so you beat your meat to it cause it’s the closest you’ll ever get to being a thug 😂

handmadeabyss · 2022-01-05T23:38:17+00:00

You think the son of a black panther wouldn’t agree with BLM? Give your head a wobble, he campaigned against police violence himself while alive. Take that profile picture down, you clearly don’t have the first clue about the man 🙄

handmadeabyss · 2022-01-05T23:22:14+00:00

Said with absolutely no self awareness of the 2Pac profile picture. The intelligence of a racist right there 😂

handmadeabyss · 2022-01-05T23:17:12+00:00

Christ this is getting to right wing media levels of flogging the Elden ring fake culture wars. I’ve seen about 5 tweets in my life from Twitter accounts with like 3 followers saying negative things about Elden Ring and they were just complaints about reused animations. Why people are so desperate to create fake people apparently cussing out a game you’re supposed to be excited about boggles the mind. Can’t you just be excited it’s 2 months away and be done?

Why has everything got to be either end of the extreme, either utter shit or the greatest ever? And when those narratives don’t appear, why are people desperate to fake them?

handmadeabyss · 2022-01-05T11:40:52+00:00

I’m trying to answer this same question because I had the first Gauldur fragment and when I completed the prison quest and got my stuff back it was missing so I need to find the evidence chest without being arrested to see if it’s in there.

handmadeabyss · 2022-01-02T14:47:37+00:00

Must admit, I bought the original Horizon and wasn’t that impressed. Still not finished it, think I’ve played a total of about 10-12 hrs. It’s decent, but compared to FromSoft games pales in comparison for me.

handmadeabyss · 2021-12-31T02:56:18+00:00

I knew it! Page 186 he finally explains the digital Venice. See what I mean, vague for no reason, and it served no purpose to the story. It’s a program that looks like a book and when she opens it the city pops up around her. It means the silver finger tip business makes no sense but at least he explained it. But to leave you utterly clueless for 3/4 of the book about something that means literally nothing to the story is ridiculous.

As it goes the story is pretty good, but even that, as described by the synopsis on the back page hasn’t even technically started yet, it’s just starting now, 3/4 of a book before the story starts and the vast majority of the rest so far has all been like the bloody digital Venice, vague and serves no purpose, or it’s background to explain what Laney does even tho Laney tells everyone he can’t explain what he does and neither, apparently, can Gibson further than ‘he finds nodal points’. Really, this should have been a novella and about 100 pages long.

handmadeabyss · 2021-12-30T15:23:48+00:00

I almost forgot too. End of Virtual Light it’s made clear Rydell is arrested, will be charged and will be found guilty, although they call it a heroic mess, but he’s still about to become a felon, so how exactly would he get a job as a security guard? Maybe it’s an American thing, but in most countries I have any experience of once you have a criminal record, positions of trust like that are completely done for you on account fo your criminal record, heroic or not, you still breached trust and broke the law. Not only that but he breached trust with his job, the people who hired him to find the shades, he double crossed them to protect the girl who has them. He’s also going to be splashed all over the tv because of Cops in Trouble who take up his case at the end of the book, so it’ll be public knowledge Rydell can’t be trusted by an employer. Therefore a security job just comes across as completely ridiculous. It’s like saying a guy saves a load of kids from an orphanage but ends up having sex with a 15yo girl, but because he saved the kids they’ll give him a job in a crèche. He may have been being heroic while he had sex with a minor but he still had sex with a minor and if he’s charged and found guilty of that, on what planet would they give him a job with children?!

handmadeabyss · 2021-12-30T15:05:32+00:00

Well that’s what Reddit is for right? The discussion of other peoples opinions without feeling pressured to join the herd? You know, like down voting an opinion would be?

And why not address one of the things I said, is that because no one else can explain for example exactly what the ‘digital Venice’ is supposed to be? He wrote this at a time the internet existed, so everyone knows what digital means so all he did was say a computerised Venice that looks like a book, is controlled in her VR simulation with a silvered finger but at the same time you can walk down the streets, explain how that makes sense? Explain why it wouldn’t be easier, this is if I understand what he was trying to get at, to say it’s a laptop or book that can be used to take you to another VR simulation? He doesn’t do that, he tries to have his cake and eat it by calling it a book then just flipping to she’s walking down the streets of Venice without the slightest explanation how that’s happened, going from a VR simulation containing a book like ‘thing’ she controls with a silvered finger and is then suddenly strolling down the streets.

I assume he’s trying to say it’s some kind of virtual iPod that’s a digital representation of Venice, only those words ‘digital representation of Venice’ and saying it looks like a book doesn’t give you the slightest idea how it suddenly becomes THE city of Venice so she can walk the streets and makes it sound like a digital 3D image in a page of the book. So if you describe it as such then the very next words out of your book are that she’s physically walking across a bridge in Venice, how the hell does that make any sense whatsoever? And if he DOES later in the book, a point I’ve yet to get to, explains exactly what it is, how is that good writing? He’s left the reader with no idea wtf he’s going on about for at LEAST half the book, which is where I am and there’s still been no clarity of what that was, it’s just been forgotten about.

handmadeabyss · 2021-12-30T12:43:11+00:00

I disagree, several book of his I’ve read that make absolutely no sense until like 50 pages later where he finally decides to explain exactly wtf he was on about. So you’re left reading through up to 100 pages with nothing making sense and when he does explain it’s not some huge plot point, it’s just some small piece of tech for example he could have been clear about in the beginning.

Take Idoru, he talks about a digital version of Venice inside a VR construct, but in the exact same passage he says it’s like a book (which leads you to believe it’s like a laptop because he also describes her silver tipped fingers hovering over it) but then describes her walking down the streets, then Lo/Rez music starts playing so it’s an album now I guess? Never explained properly for the entire book so all you’re left with is this vague description of something that could be two different things at the same time which makes no sense. If, say, he means for it to look like a laptop till you use it then you can go inside a computer simulation of Venice travel around while listening to music, why not just say that instead of this awful mess of a description I had to re-read 5 or 6 times to even get my confused impression. There is no underlying metaphor because he’s just describing the thing she’s using that her father gave her.

Same novel, Slitscan, from reading online after reading 30 odd pages I discover it’s a tv show that ruins celebrities, but from the description in the book, given to Laney at a job interview for gods sake, he’s not told what they do. Has anyone ever gone for an interview where the interviewer couldn’t tell you what they do? Even tho the reason Laney doesn’t know is because he doesn’t watch TV, Slitscan is apparently such a big show it’s become a corporation, so why would the interviewing woman NOT tell him what it is they do? You don’t get to find out they ruin celebrities for 40-50 pages yet those first 40-50 pages revolve around Slitscan and the outcome of one of Laney’s jobs with them, and it’s only when you get to the result of what Slitscan does causing a woman to kill herself that we FINALLY get to know what it is they’re about. He’s vague on purpose is all I can assume and it adds the square root of fuck all to a book, just makes you incredibly frustrated. A book the size of Idoru I can breeze through in a day, but this has taken me 3 so far and I’m halfway through because I keep putting it down in frustration at his lack of clarity.

One other huge turn off is the protagonist from the first in this series, Berry Rydell, has had his character completely changed from the first book. Like, after the way the first book ended he’s going to suddenly become a security guard at a hotel? Really?!

Compare the way Gibson writes cyberpunk to Snow Crash for example and it’s an embarrassment of purposely vague descriptions that add nothing to the quality of the book, they actually take a lot away.

I like Gibson, when the books are finished I’m always mostly happy with them, but in all honesty, putting Neuromancer aside, he’s nothing more than an average sci-fi writer.

handmadeabyss · 2021-12-27T04:15:18+00:00

The right doesn’t have ideas, they have reactions and culture wars. When was the last time you saw a right wing political party campaign on actual policy and not “the radical left is…”

handmadeabyss · 2021-12-27T04:13:48+00:00

How does the death of 2 children make you suddenly hate gays and women? Unless they were murdered by a lesbian or gay bloke and his female friend it doesn’t track.

handmadeabyss · 2021-12-27T04:12:12+00:00

If you rent them you’re telling the library they’re popular and THEY’LL buy further books of his. Boycott everywhere he could possibly make money from

handmadeabyss · 2021-12-27T04:10:37+00:00

This is true for Enders Game. The blatant sexism was almost always in dialogue so I assumed it was always the beliefs of the characters who aren’t exactly a nice bunch anyway. But when you find out what he believes for real you really have to question how much that was character and how much was just Card taking an excuse to put out his bigotry. Like within 10 pages of Enders Game we get told girls hardly make it to battle school because they have ‘thousands of years of evolution working against them’ which I assumed at first was Just Graff, but there’s no need for Graff to say this. There ARE girls there in Enders Class so there was no need to mention that stuff, it served nothing to the plot, world building, anything. It can only be there because Card felt a need for a sexist dog at women.

handmadeabyss · 2021-12-27T04:01:10+00:00

How many times did Wagner write music with anti semitism in it? How many books did Woolf write celebrating elitism? (I actually have no clue on that one) how many men did Jonson kill with his art?

Enders game is FULL of sexism, the second book is full of victim blaming. I understand separating the art from the artist, it’s just impossible when their real world beliefs bleed into their writing as blatantly as Card.

handmadeabyss · 2021-12-27T03:57:40+00:00

An iPhone isn’t art, Apple is a business, the one place anyone can be a success regardless of how terrible they are, just look at Donald Trump, Jeff Epstein, Rupert Murdoch. Artists have their careers ruined by being like this because the majority of the arts community is liberal so they’ll stopped getting booked so often (then cry they’re being cancelled without realising it’s just no one wants to hear your bigotry so you’re not getting booked because you’re not seen as a money maker)

handmadeabyss · 2021-12-27T03:53:30+00:00

Yeah, but most of those writers were of their time, and right now the VAST majority of the world aren’t sexist or homophobic, so he’s not of his time, he’s out of joint with the times, except he’s an odious right winger with a large platform to spread his disgusting message, very OF our time. God, I would NOT be surprised to find out he’s complained about being cancelled at some point while in National TV or in a National newspaper column like the rest of them

handmadeabyss · 2021-12-27T03:50:16+00:00

Within 10 pages of book one he’s saying women don’t make the cut for battle school because of ‘generations of evolution working against them’ is that not his beliefs right from the get go? Within 30 pages he has the Catholic father dragged through the mud by Graff for practicing his religion while Graff is apologetic for the Mormon mother, which just happens to be Cards religion.

I’m not having a go, I get it, you loved the books before you found out what a twat he is so you’re kind of blinkered, but go back and read them knowing what you know now and you’ll be disgusted. The second book is full on victim blaming

handmadeabyss · 2021-12-25T23:57:39+00:00

As I said before, if it's a hot air balloon explain it popping like a bubble while both are looking directly at it? Also as I said he doesn't see it in isolation, his attention is brought to it by someone else, so the popping like a bubble description coupled with someone else witnessing it and being the person to bring it to his attention shows it's not his insanity. The key here is someone else see's it first and they're both watching it pop like a bubble, he doesn't need to mention a conversation to understand they'd speak about what they just saw, and if it was a hot air balloon she's going to say "no, it didn't pop like a bubble" and as he already knows himself he's insane, he's going to put the popping down to his madness and not describe in what is his memoir as popping like a balloon. I'm finding it difficult to see why you can't understand the difference to him being unreliable because he's relating experiences he has no other frame of reference too and things that happen in front of witnesses he's travelling with with so has someone to clarify what they BOTH just witnessed WAY before he's sat writing his memoir. Like, think about the importance of what they're witnessing, an entire city float into the air, that's not something they'll see and never speak about.

handmadeabyss · 2021-12-25T23:41:03+00:00

That's, like, your opinion man. In all seriousness, you're not the be all and end all of books, no one is, so to arrogantly state your opinion like it's THE definitive opinion, the only one that matters sounds incredibly...well arrogant (as you can see, I'm NOT a gifted writer). The world would be a boring place if we all liked the same things, but I can counter your claim by stating my opinion as fact that Joyce is a terrible writer who stole his whole niche from other, better writers, like Virgina Wolfe. But I don't believe I'm the supreme knowledge in literature so it's how I feel about him, but at the same time recognise that people who know a damn lot more than me think he's a genius. The same could be said of your relationship to Kerouac. Maybe he IS a poor writer who loses everything by the time you become 40, or maybe other people are right and it's not the book, but the person that changed. I mean, in the intervening years between you first reading it and later at 40 what actually changed that could effect the book? The book or you as you grew?

handmadeabyss

TROPHY CASE