So one of the arguments in favor of Atheism is that Atheism is the default of the mind. If atheists are the default, then that means atheism is primitive. Religion and those that gravitate towards it would indeed be smarter because it is evolutionary novel, not evolutionary normal.
Given books and literary rates would not have been very high in its time frame, those that were able to read religious scrolls would have been of a higher intelligence. Granted, by today’s standards, the Bible is written at a 7th grade level, so it’s not a high of a standard to set for more intelligent people, but given that the average US adult is barely at a great literacy level, just being at to read the bible is still too high of a burden for most. Source
If we also factor in that most arguments against the Bible are based on informal hearsay, not actual biblical text, the literacy rate of the average atheist is just as bad as a person of low literacy rates in a religious context.
Let’s look at one argument that permeates the atheist preview and that is how incest-y the Bible is. If one had bothered to actually read the text, they would have noted two things. 1. Incest is considered sexual immorality. 2. Two of the parables, which are noted in the Bible as parables, deals with the negative consequences of what would happen if one engaged with such negligence. A lot of atheists depend on informality to make such erroneous, non sensical claims, so the swamy narrative of the atheist movement is an insidious tactic, use to undermine peaceful people. That’s borderline narcissistic personality disorder as well, but so digress.
While not 100% true of all atheist, enough of them are leftists. If we look at the fact that using your government to take from others to give to others, that is one more tick on the evolutionary normal scale. Hard work would be evolutionary novel. Theft is primitive and less intelligent people engage in such.
Already we have two major factors that would see atheist as less intelligent than religious people. They’re two of the biggest elements, though. Are there less intelligent religious people? Of course, everything has its blind spots, but much like actual blindness, that too, comes in different levels. When a majority of people do even know Jerusalem is technically Africa, and all that separates it from that is an arbitrary line, can you really see Atheists are smarter than their religious counterparts?
Not knowing where Jerusalem is, borderlines anti-semitism.
As far as I am concerned, not knowing where Jerusalem is, borderlines antisemitism. Antisemitism is often associated with less intelligent beings.
When one looks at the facts, and I’ve barely even scratched the surface of primitive trains of thought that atheism delves into, I think one can conclude for themselves that Atheism is filled with less intelligent people.
So we have all seen the videos for the most part, someone, normally a man, has his camera running and records a celebrity signing an autograph or multiple of. Maybe he has a kid nearby and ask little Jimmy to help secure the autograph. No harm, no foul, they knew what they were asking for the second they signed the dotted line. Except for one little problem, everything leading up to the signature is a criminal act on the part of the fan.
So let me break this down as to what we just witnessed happening before us. First we have causing an individual distress. You’re a stranger, stopping a fellow stranger to ask for a signature. I’ll give you this, the distress part is part of all of our daily lives. You never know who is who, which is why I conceal or open carry my gun.
That said, though, how about false pretenses? Asking for an autograph with intent to sell is a false pretense. If I went up to a random stranger and said I was homeless and needed money, this is a crime unless it was true, because I got the money under false pretenses.
How about we up the ante. Extortion by cellphone. You think it’s crazy, but how about going viral for being human and not having time for autographs. Next up on TMZ, celebrity refuses poor kids request for an autograph. This is no different from robbing a bank with a gun in today’s day and age.
Speaking of children, besides false pretenses again, you’re violating child labor laws. You’re making them wait in line or dealing with someone they don’t know, causing the child distress. If it is your own child, you’re still an asshole.
So already we have three potential crimes happening at once and with anyone else, like your or me, these are indeed crimes and prosecutions could be possible. Yet, if you’re famous, it’s another day at the office. No one says that about police work, if they take care of a criminal off duty or an emt saves a life at the bar.
Why do we make this distinction between the famous and non famous alike? I think we as a society would be far better off if we all took a step back and saw the autograph as a criminal act and an impediment to someone’s day.
I’m not saying that none of these people could be genuine in getting the autograph, but the lack of respect for a fellow human being, by making them sign a dozen things at an airport, is making me think otherwise.
I’m not saying autographs should be banned entirely, just that it should be illegal to ask for one outside of a signing event. If you go to wizard world conventions and get one, good on you. If you got VIP tickets and it comes with those, cool. But on the street corner, at airports, restaurants, hotels or otherwise, I think you’re over stepping your bounds and it should be considered a crime.
INTRODUCTION: So I have zero recollection of this movie coming out in 2008. It seems like a cheesy b movie flick, that ripped off the SAW.
PLOT: Dude gets sent to prison, gets out and hunts down the jury that placed him in jail.
ACTING: Very good, but still not at the A liist potential. You’ll remember most the faces from various other movies and tv shows, but not a single actor is a major notable.
WRITING: Not bad. Not a single bit of cringe.
FX: Nothing new under the sun
STYLE: Works for the film but looks dated
TENSION: enough to work for the movie and keep you intrigued, but the payoffs aren’t there.
CONCLUSION: This movie has and interesting premise and when it works, it works. Sadly, it relies too much on being a cliche horror movie that wasted it potential to be a really great movie. The ending is especially anti-climactic.
Disclaimer: The views expressed here my mine and mine alone. I’m just opening up about how I did at gambling. I don’t recommend following me or anyone else’s advice, because there is no substitute for your own thinking and there is no such thing as an expert in this ”field”.
INTRO:
If you’re reading this, good on you. You’re already a gambler! I don’t like to gamble much, it’s never overly been my thing, but every once in a while, there was nothing like a fun bet, such as wearing a tshirt that says loser or some other lite bet that made the fuss around sports a little more interesting. Well, DraftKings is now THAT fun little bet you and your friends made, but more often. Since DraftKings has been allowed back in Maine, I decided to give it a go. I’m pretty good at picking winners in sports when I have no investment, just a random tweet, but will that translate onto DraftKings for fiscal gain?
INTRODUCTION TO GAMBLING
The first time I ever played the lottery, other than my mom allowing me to occasionally scratch her tickets for her, was when I was 18. We went back over to New Hampshire and I picked up the power ball for $1.00. I played 4 12 7 8 6 or something similar to that since it was a combination of mine and my ex girlfriend, from when I was about 11-12 ish, birthdays. Spoiler alert, I lost, hence the website and being a writer still at nearly 40. The relevance of this story is that sports gambling and lottery are very similar and a lot more than you think. If you understand the lottery, even poorly, you’ll understand this.
The basic bets you’re going to place are money line bets. This gives you odds for two teams and a number that will be negative or positive.
A negative number is an odds on favorite to win. The lower the number the more likely.
A positive number means that the team is less likely to win.
I know this is confusing, so let’s go back to pre algebra in middle school. If you recall, your teacher most likely gave you a worksheet that had a number line on it. 0 was a neutral number. Much like money, if you add +2 to +5 you get +7. Conversely if you add -2 to -5 you get-7. If you add -2 to +7 you get +5
Sports betting uses this simple principle to let you pick a team. The more you place on the long shot, the more you win. Why? Cause the house always wins.
Palays are like pick three that allow you a round robin option, but cost you more since you’re placing more bets. A parlay can be two outcomes or more, but both have to come up in your favor to win. I’m not a big fan of these, especially because my first time on the app, I accidentally made a parlay bet, thinking I was saving my receipt of my bet. Lost out on $30 dollars.
One of my favorite teams when I was younger, The Carolina Panthers, lost. They ruined my accidental parlay.
This is all we’re going to focus on. Since a lot of the other stuff is mostly bs in my mind. Like bidding on who gets the first touchdown? That’s like asking who made rain. You’ll drive yourself mad at the philosophy surrounding it.
The other reason to ignore it is that, even though being Pete Rose is frowned upon, players still probably play attention to the odds against them. All of them? No, but I’m sure more than enough. You also have to remember that these people get paid to play, not make us gambling folk rich. Tom Brady doesn’t care if he tossed to Gronk or someone else, so long as it gets in the end zone. If someone was to have told him he often tossed to Gronk more often than not, this could provocate Tom to reverse his strategy and put someone else in the end zone. Not because he doesn’t want you to double your money, but because he wants to double his own. Betting on these bets is like asking a random chick on the street to flash you. The majority of us are getting shut down.
So since we got those two things out of the way, let’s look at my record. I’m evenly matched at about 18 loses to 20 wins. It’s almost a 1:1 ratio. Given this is sports betting, I probably should not be this neck and neck. We’re going to go over what constitutes a win vs a lose and how to treat sports betting as a decent way to make money.
Winning means, traditionally that everything went in your favor. That said, in sports betting a win can be a short term gain, even if the team doesn’t pull out. DraftKings gives you the option to cash out before the outcome of the game. One such time I should have did this was with the Vikings. last minute and the other team wins by one point. Seriously? I cashed out too early on another game and left a small amount of money on the table, but still more than I like. Unlike your typical minimum wage job, unless you’re fired or die, you’re not going to miss out on an hours worth of work due to a dickhead misshap like that.
So, my personal thoughts on cash out is two fold. First, don’t treat it like stocks and cash out cause your team isn’t winning. It’s difficult, given it’s your money that you’re losing.
Second is to wait until it’s worth pulling out.
These seem to conflict, so I’ll elucidate on it.
The SA Spurs play well, but they have a record of choking at the end. This habit has cost them and me too much. Since DraftKings let’s you cash out, keeping this in mind would be a good Idea not to get greedy and wait til the end. If you doubled your bet, you’re winning.
The other is that in certain games, like the NFL, you’re not down until it’s 1:51 in the fourth quarter and the other team is at your 5 yard line. Then you’re probably going to want to cash out. Could your team turn it around? Sure, the 2004 Red Sox did, but you don’t know your team is the 04 Sox’s until you know it’s Tessie time.
TL;DR Basically don’t get greedy. It’s ok to just double your money after two quarters and pay the safe bet tax of leaving some money on the table instead of losing it all, just don’t do it out of fear.
A long shot bid that I’m glad I could not cash out of.A long shot bid I did cash out at the last min as a precaution, leaving about 0.30 cents on the table. Small price to pay to walk a winner.Other times you cash out because the refs were in the pocket of the other team and cheating by Michigan state should not have been tolerated.
PICKING TEAMS:
When it comes to picking teams, we all want to cheer our favorite, but our favorites aren’t always the best and don’t yield a result. Case in point, me bidding on the Orlando magic over the home region team with the best record.
When I was younger I didn’t like really watching sports. I didn’t like the home region teams either. My favorite part of sports was shooting hoops in my backyard or tossing a ball around with family. I also liked collecting sports cards to make money on.
DraftKings is like collecting sports cards for adults and much like in my youth I don’t want to just settle for the home region teams because they’re very good teams outside of your region.
Most my alternate teams were southern when I was a kid. Loved the panthers, loved Orlando. My taste changes with the NHL. Liked the Sharks and the mighty ducks based team. When it comes to the MBL I was pretty much a Red Sox only guy, but I did rock a Cleveland Indians jersey in my teens, but mostly as a Drew Carey Show reference.
As an adult, we can’t be petty localists. We have to accept that some teams are, actually better than our own. It’s more likely to rain diamonds before most sports fans will admit this fact, but those of us that want to get a consistent payback from sports betting can be better than that.
My teams in Football this season
Cleveland Browns
C. Bengals
These teams were always meat and potatoes in my youth. Nothing special, but they played well, just never likely to advanced to a major game. In the last couple of years, they have drastically pulled around and look great. Except for one weekend, Ohio has been very good to me when it comes to payoffs.
The Bears and Packers each gave me a win and much like Ohio, they are solid teams that win.
My NBA Teams
Orlando Magic has been my best team so far. I like the Cavilers, who would have won me a good amount had I bet on a few games that I could not, due to financial restrictions. I also like the Bulls, who are having a horrible season, but have historically been a very successful team, along with the lakers. Also, obligatory “Go Boston!”.
My NHL Teams
NJ Devils
B. Bruins
SJ Sharks
Ann. Ducks
While not playing the best this season, each team has always been solid.
MLB Teams
B. Red Sox
Yankees
Cle. Guardians
As three of the best teams to look at. Yankees suck over heah if you’re a New Englandah. They always play well though. Personally, I think Ohio gonna hit the 2024 series this year.
TL:DR when gambling look for teams that play well and have had an overall brand that has been well established for years.
WHAT TO GAMBLE ON:
Even though the devil’s won me 22 bucks, hockey has become terrible. When I was a kid, games were often like the NY Rangers. 7-12 games more or less always happen. Now it’s nothing happening until quarter three and someone gets lucky. Sports betting should not be like your high school sex life, when you get lucky that one time. I don’t like hockey betting. Would not recommend it.
NFL is good. Games are tough, but give yield to less random results, barring injury. It’s possible to build a strategy on gambling here.
NBA is great for quick games and making money early on, but so far, while I’ve done well enough to keep playing on DraftKings, my NFL bets have produced better money.
POINT SCORES:
I personally do not like point bets. Yes there is a pattern and I have made those bets, but let’s look at one of my best days for sports guesses.
Called 7 out of 13 that is about a 70% hit ratio
If we look at me trying that in basketball with scores, which are typically under 225 total points, well…
Worse than the Hindenburg disaster
I got absolutely zero right. Thankfully it was just a buck. I highly do not recommend that.
SPREAD
I’m not experimenting much with this, so I don’t really have an opinion on this.
CONCLUSION:
Gambling can be exciting and rewarding. With some luck, maybe you can turn it into a full time job. These are just my personal opinions on where I think I dropped the ball with my own and maybe someone out there can benefit by catching themselves before hand. Always play responsibly and remember that it is about fun at the end of the day and bagging on people on Twitter.
So I read this book in middle school, nearly 30 years ago and I read up til number four in the series. My reason for stopping was that, on average, the books took about three years to release. Calculating that I would be in my early 20s by the time the series ended, that didn’t sit well with me.
A couple years ago I bought the book in German to help foster my German language skills and it got me to think about the series from an adult point of view. Harry potter is far darker than people realize.
So the story goes that Harry’s parents were killed in a crash and only he survived. He goes to live with his aunt and uncle, both big ole assholes. His cousin is a dick as well and Harry is stuck under the stairs, an abuse victim, until a dude named Hargid informs him that he is a wizard and takes him off to Hogwarts.
Now, if you’re familiar with me and my writing, you know where this is going. If not, buckle up mutha fuckers, it’s going to be a bumpy ride.
So being abused from the age of infant to eleven cannot be good for anyone, I’m sure. What makes this even worse, is it is family abusing him. Harry is depicted as petite, not a strapping young lad. He is borderline emaciated from the Dursleys. Factor in isolation, which for most people isn’t good and you got the making of a Netflix serial killer documentary. It would seem to me that hogwarts, which sounds a lot like hogwash, is a hallucination, to protect Harry from self destruction. At some point, Harry gets out from under the stairs and slaughters all three of his family members. Harry probably never remembers doing so. The REAL ending to the book, is Harry being led away in cuffs, surrounded by reporters and he is brought to the police station and questioned.
Think about this, Harry Potter’s world is devoid of any technology, not even a tv. You have no clue what year you’re in and you wouldn’t, if you were kept under the stairs since birth and knew nothing of the world or its technology. Not even a phone is mentioned in the original novel as I recall. How the fuck does this world communicate?
Hogwarts runs itself like it’s the 15th century, Not a single bit of technology in that school or in the muggle world. Again, that’s not normal.
So the next novel is called The Chamber of Secrets. This is clearly figurative for Harry having to look deeply inside himself to come to terms with his crimes.
At some point, Harry stands trial and the edvidence shows the Dursleys were at fault for criminal abuse. Harry gets sentenced to 25 years in a psychiatric ward, leading to The Prisoner of Azkaban.
The rest of the series is Harry still dealing with personal delusions in his life, up until book seven, in which Voldemort, a hallucination of his torment, is finally vanquished, leading to an epilogue that has Harry, now much older, outside platform 9 3/4 with Ginny and his children. Ron and Herrmonie are there too, but as figurative ghost of his past life, still mildly haunting him, but still not the worst that his mental state had ever been. He’s taken his meds and returned to society a far better man.
That’s a unique take on the series, I think and I only scratched the surface of edvidence to support this.
Edit:This should have been posted 01/01/24 but I didn’t get around to it. Enjoy it now!
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It’s New Year’s Kage. Yay! Felix cupñemanos to 2024. My barley literate, middle school level Spanish from the 90s seems to imply a steady dose of alcohol was drunk last night, yet I’ve been sober. Going back to a long standing tradition of mine, of no drinking on holidays. Which used to be, no drinking in general, but that changed in 2011.
I never liked alcohol. Closet I come to a genuine pleasure is whiskey. While I enjoy Budweiser and a few select beers, I find beer to be pretty much, overrated, as almost none are satisfying.
So what changed in 2011? Good question! One I’ve been trying to find the answer to since then. At least cigarettes were accidental. I had a conversation with a woman in 2010 or so and they expressed that they had issues with quitting clove cigarettes. I never had any serious vice at this point and couldn’t really relate to the situation. Anyways, they got pissy with me and rage quit my life for it, thank Christ for that. So I go out and buy Djarum blacks. Well for all the research I put into before buying them, I missed the whole “contains nicotine” part of it. After smoking one, I might add and then it kinda made sense. Had she said cigarettes, it might of been more understandable, even without me having touched one, but saying it’s just cloves is like saying painkillers are just Tylenol. clearly a nonsensical statement. Anyways, I easily gave those up for a year. Then back to it in 2011. My bestie and I meet in 2007. We spent a lot of time drinking, something I never did prior to this, barring maybe a sip of water ne here and there, finding it foul. According to one of the hobby shop owners, who were only a decade older than myself, assuring me that beer is an acquired taste. Well, I wasn’t interested in acquiring it, cause it tasted like shit. So 2011 I started drinking, drinking.
We started with Rum, and cola in that winter and I ended up moving to hurricanes. Yes, the beer that annoying country song is about. Fun fact, I nearly kicked it twice that year. Once was because of wild Irish rose and not realizing that it’s not really wine, but a spirit infused booze. The second was idiotically thinking I created something called a “New England Ice Tea” which was simply vodka and cider.
I made sure that never happened again though.
2023 marked 12 years since I decided to start drinking. Even though I only drink about once a month, it’s still something that I could not wrap my head around. Why take so long to it and why continue something that was never that enjoyable?
I think I got my answer this year and it was two different things. One of which is my hatred for this horrible town I live in.
After 18 years of payment on an apartment, my parents were removed as occupants. 18 years of documentation of all on time payments. As such, I was technically homeless from July to October. Much like that time this happened in 2004, which got me stranded here in shitville USA to begin with.
Funny part about all of this, besides the landlords atrocious pill habit and her alcoholic partner, which incidentally was a similar reason we had this happen in 2004, was that the landlords wife, according to my parents, kept frothing at the mouth, in a frenzy, over myself and my 2A advocating. Mind you, this cunt is a self proclaimed GOP member. She continued to do so, even after the judge reprimanded her, since it wasn’t about me. Seriously! I plan on getting the transcript at some point to post here. One of the exact reasons I hate Biddeford. Meanwhile, child molesters and drug addicted shit heads run rampant and are highly employable. You can’t make this shit up! She even fucking stocked me on Facebook, which I had long since stopped using for the most part and even submitted a printed off picture of it, because I believe in people’s rights. Not me being a gang member or something like some of the people that lived in the house, since the husband loved renting to criminals, but PEACEFUL DISSENT on anti gunners.
Regardless of a geriatric piece of shit hating on a peaceful, nearly middle age man, I learned something about myself. That is being around such toxic people can be equally as bad for your health. Shit, my drinking was virtually non existent. Half a beer got me lit as fuck. My drinking habit in this town was majorly caused by being around such horrible people.
Begrudgingly I moved back because there are benefits to living in a shit infested town, in this barely developed thing they call a state, which is a nearby hospital. So, it has that going for it, if nothing else. So I came back for my family.
Which brings me to my next point, good thing I’m not, nor have I ever been married and have never had a child with any. children. Imagine having to also deal with having kids and a wife? I would be fucked!
Only one person ever got me to change my mind on the whole having kids thing anyway.
Which brings me to my second point on my drinking, is that, being a relatively successful person in my life, I mean, I was a predominantly A student for most my life. My first score on the SATs was better than 99% of people in my age, which was 1390-1400. Thanks to the abysmal failure of most people in my age range, would have secured me Ivy League status, never mind the fact that the average person on their second attempt gains an extra 200 points. So even if I was simply average, I would have gone up to 1590/1600 and been Ivy League as fuck at that point.
Then I “worked “ for about 2 hrs a day in my 20s and managed to do quite well with EBay, on zero experience running anything resembling a business, only to start bestinyourgirl.com and make it top 18 on average in Google search and also have pre-crime, an algorithm that, with luck, could get me a PHD one day. So overall, I’ve been fairly “lucky” in my life so far. To defer to Joe Walsh, “life’s been good to me so far.” A far better guitarist and probably man, than I.
Regardless, nearing 40, even with all that, success is practically worthless without family. I could have a lot of money and a house, I would still feel like I have nothing to show for my life. I mean, I have nothing to show for it now. Good thing I never cared to own a house anyway. I would have rather built one with my own two hands, exactly why I took an architect course in high school. I would settle for a shit ton of money and a trailer. Not the point, which is, family. It’s the most valuable thing a person can have, so never settle for less than. I’m a big believer that family is not something to enter into lightly. To do so causes bad parents. If you don’t appreciate the woman in whole, when those traits show up in your kids, you’ll resent them. So a lack of good life choices /sarcasm, leaves me with a worthless group of “ eligibles” that think they’re epic for being illiterate, drug addicted shit heads, that either stupidly had kids with the wrong mates or if they didn’t have kids, must of been even worse than I even suspected.
So that’s were my head has been at, which is a man’s ultimate success, should be his family. I could not appreciate the sentiment in my youth, but I’ve come to appreciate it now. Something for the young adults that read my blog to consider, those that share my flair for rebellion, still, into my middle age.
Look at this from the day before we went homeless,
Rolled off the bed, drunk, in my sleep hit the radiator. Kinda subtexual for everything I think. Little too late to have sense knocked into me, but never too late to learn from such.
And this was the booze that caused it. Made sure to take a picture of it for a review. Also, Shipyard Export beer.
I have about 10 shots left of my Jack Daniel’s, which I’ll probably finish. (Edit 01/16/24: yes, I finished it)
Now the reason I bring all this up and want to tie it altogether, is that addiction has been a pandemic on par with COVID. It’s probably the biggest driving force for the destruction of the world. I know my reasons, now, that contributed to my drinking. Good thing it never lead to me being addicted, but maybe now, I can better appreciate something’s that might contribute to these people’s problems. For me, understanding why I chose to change was necessary in potentially coming up with a solution to the problems. Whilst I have no solutions yet, will still maybe contribute to future articles of interest.
I find it amazing how, for a man whom, short of cigarettes, which ironically saved my life, never seemed to develop an addiction to anything, has still had too much intersectionality with my life from others self destruction. which are all stories for another day.
Anyways, I was working on a short film that, before all of this. It unintentionally invokes the zeitgeist. I intended it as a psychological horror film.
Also, need to rewrite the updated version of Pre-Crime.
