Coming on the heels of my last essay on Atheism and intelligence not being corroborated, I have a new underlying thought, which is that those who prefer action movies are more intelligent than those who do not.
If you know anything about intelligence, it is thought that those that have it, tend to handle complexity better. A complex thing is defined as 1. More than one part. 2. Something more difficult to comprehend. We’re going to use both to make my point.
Anyone that knows even a small bit about directing knows that a scene is comprised of multiple shots. Usually a master shot, on tv this is the hard camera and then multiple shots around that, which on tv is floor men walking around that you cut back and forth between.
Most movies would therefore have a small amount of complexity and consistently keep a similar pacing. An action sequence can contain up to a thousand micro shots all compiled to make up a few short minutes of film. Therefore we can conclude that if only intelligence people can handle complexity, action movies would be preferred by more intelligent individuals.
Furthermore, less intelligent individuals often have people bents. So something that is more character driven, would be preferred by less intelligent people. These movies often feature more exposition, also known as “talking”. Essentially, the movie with excess speaking is doing your thinking for you. There are exceptions to this rule, though. World building comes to mind so that we understand a world rules, so we believe it better.
To follow up with the above, if a movie features more exposition, it’s no longer a visual movie and movies are a visual medium. A part of full literacy is understanding context, especially visual context, also known as emotional intelligence. If lower literacy rates equate to lower intelligence, then that, too, would suggest that people who prefer action movies are more intelligent.
So the next time you feel guilty about putting in that Micheal Bay 4k transfer, remember that it just might make you more intelligent.
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.
“Just because it’s a love story doesn’t mean it can’t have a decapitation or two.”
Robert Englund, Wes Cravens’ New Nightmare
Horror movies. Love them or hate them you most likely have a hardline opinion on them. Few have apathy for the genre. Some love gore, some love to be scared and some find those things to be damning to the soul and would much rather see these movies never be made again. Can we find a universal redeeming quality for one of my favorite genres? Maybe and that is what we’re going to look at. I believe Horror movies are really romances at heart, from the male point of view.
Obviously, what we’re seeing onscreen is “real” in terms of the world these characters are living in, So we’re dealing with this from the point of subtext and not a literal interpretation.
The typical killer in these movies are normally male and pretty masculine. They’re representative of the id and all the primitive instincts that make it up. Sexuality, Aggression and instincts. There is no ego or super ego to keep them in check, they couldn’t care less. Their driving force is satiety.
The typical survivor girl is almost always female, hence the term, and more akin of the ego and superego. They’re the ones struggling to keep control against the ID. This is why they’re often virtuous and innocent in the beginning.
Now that we set the tone for what I’m arguing, we can start to examine the micro aspects of the genre, like the weapon almost always being subtext for a phallus. Normally it is a blade of some sort, be it a sword, knife or machete. Why? Because at some point the survivor girl is going to be penetrated by the knife or cut somehow and this is subtext for sexual penetration. Masculinity and femininity combined as one, occasionally resulting in the monster themselves being impaled later on by their own weapon, in role reversal. I’ll elude more to this below.
The friends or other victims are almost always shallow and that’s because the ID isn’t friendly to what it wants. I know a lot of us critics will point out that these characters need development and while I stand by that, the killer’s perspective couldn’t care less. When they’re men, they represent competition for what the ID wants and need to be dispatched and when they’re woman, they’re just “sexual” fodder, due to not satiating the unbridled carnality.
The endings usually see the survival girl “kill” off the monster, which is subtext for the lust being quenched by the object of desire and as stated above, the monster being penetrated, normally in the heart area, as subtext of falling in love, which juxtaposes with the females often being stabbed in the uterus area, as if being impregnated.
So why monsters as analogy, vs aggressive men? Men are often vilified for their desires and what they would do to achieve those ends. This is the enteral plight of the individuals fight with the ego, albeit not exhibited onscreen, but rather in how the villain is perceiving themselves and showing us who they feel as if they are.
Horror and romances even have similar plot points within the story structure. Meetcutes for instance, when the future couple meets for the first time. Halloween where Michael is standing behind the bush is an example of this.
While not exhaustive, when you examine these main points, all of this makes the horror-slasher genre really a love story from the point of the male libido.
Trolling is an ancient art, passed on from Leet (1337 for the layman.) forum user to Leet forum user for eons, or circa 1997 A.D. whichever way you want to see it, it’s been around for a while and will not go away.
You’ve most likely seen the occasional celebrity or others bitching about them, but they provide a valuable service. In fact, saying “troll” is just an ignorant way for a person to shield themselves from intellectual responsibility. If you understood the fine art of trolling, then you would realize that you’re also a troll.
Anyone with any internet presence, what so ever, is a troll. Simply put, trolling is either a comedic act or arguing. Let us, for the sake of argument, assume that trolling is simply pointing out the flaws in a person’s argument or engaging someone in lively debate.
Said person has the balls to stand up to someone and assert that the person is wrong. Perhaps, more harsh than the mark (to use a wrestling term.)would like. Simply saying “LOL, you sux” Or “I hope you die of cancer” is not trolling. They are simply, assholes. Regardless of how someone has gone about pointing out that you’re wrong, you shouldn’t be obstinate in thinking you’re 100% right.
The catch is, though, that not every person has the time, nor should be required to shift through hundreds and hundreds of tweets, post, e-mails or other digital data. How does one rectify this? Harsh language, use of special characters (Leet-speek) or some other form of communicative pea cocking. In other words, much like a peacock uses its bright tail to attract a mate, so too does it attract predators.
When you send something out to into the world, say a thought or argument, a point of view or even just musings, expect to invite replies, retorts, counter arguments, fatuous statements and even the vulgar comments. You are not the U.S.S. Enterprise with Sulu driving you away from danger, you’re Han Solo with C-3PO giving you the odds of navigating an asteroid field, successfully. In other words, you open yourself up to whatever your post merits.
Now, while calling you an idiot (Layman) for lacking that technical knowledge or special knowledge about something, isn’t the best way for giving criticism or expressing that your point is wrong, it is a way to get the intended point across.
The first thing we need to do is stop trolling were it starts, celebrities. You know the old saying “Any press is good press?” That is exactly what trolling is. Any bit of notice is good notice. Oh, sure, you might lose your show or two, but your short term loss will be long term gains, when the ire of the consumers dies down and then it’s back to business as usual. Just look at R.Kelly and others to see what an apology can do. In other words, lead by example if you want what trolling has become to evolve. Everyone, celebrity or not, could afford to reign in their trolling for the better.
Arguing on the internet, it was once said, is like winning the Special Olympics. Even if you win, you’re still retarded. Arguing is a brilliant form of communication that is intended to change people’s views by pointing out flaws in reasoning, logic or ill-gotten facts. To argue is actually a politeness. It expresses concern for the intellectual welfare of our species. To allow you to go off half-cocked is funnier, but degrading. Tougher love, so to speak. In other words, be happy that someone is willing to help you see what is wrong, so that your mental space is less cluttered with rubbish.
Arguing on the internet is spontaneous, instant, engaging and fun. These pros often lead to negative cons that we’ve all been guilty of more often than not and should be wary of in the future. Here is Kage’s rules for optimum trolling.
1.Define what it is you’re expressing. Few words have one definition and as such, we all have a preconceived concept in our head as to what we think it is that we’re arguing about. If it’s about capitalism, define what it means. There are a number of things that capitalism could mean to anyone. It helps to express it to the best of your ability. Make sure no one can misunderstand you.
2.Avoid pea cocking your reply. It will get noticed, sure, but it won’t change things. A concise and to the point retort is worth more than the 146 characters you’ll use to express such.
3.Think before you send anything. Are you expressing yourself as eloquently as possible? Where are you wrong? Are your arguments solid? Are you expressing fact or opinion? There is room for all, but make sure each is defined. Such as, all these rules are merely guidelines based off my experiences and in my opinion, will suit you well in engaging people in person or online debate.
4.Do not jump the gun and attack. You need to understand your potential opponents position, in order to better counter the argument and
5.Never be afraid to agree with someone or point out were a person is right. Few people are rarely 100% wrong. Sometimes they get things half right, but not entirely. If they’re right on something, say so.
6.Humor will cement ideas and diffuse a situation that might otherwise be a tad bit tense. No one likes to be wrong, but we sometimes are and that is OK. Most people have a sense of humor and to use it when needed will allow for more enjoyment in your debate.
Keep these in mind when trolling the internet and you’ll have a much better go at it, as well as argue more efficiently than you would have otherwise and might even change some minds. If you cannot change the mind of someone who is wrong through thoughtful and humorous discourse, than they will most likely never budge. Even if the intended mark doesn’t agree or get it, you might have changed the minds of any lurkers reading the conversation.
If you’re one of those lurkers, please express such, if you happen to change your tune and never be afraid to share anything that has opened your eyes or mind.
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*Edited to remove slight errors
Best in Your Girl 