The time has come that the end is nigh. The next three posts will reflect on the cumulative year and the horrors of the stress that bad computers make. I say the end is here because this is the last week and I am three posts away from completion.
The time that I have spent blogging has been a personal Hell that I can not describing in English. In German it would be "Feuer pinkeln" meaning to pee fire. It was only like this because of the way my schedule works. My divorced parents only complicated the mess, but the fact that I only have one computer that is good for writing blogs and I got the least access to it meant a lot of frustration was waiting. I work a lot. 20-25 hours a week. On top of 35 hours of school a week and activities on the weekend resulting in about 10 more hours gave me no breaks in my 65-70 hour weeks. When I had breaks, I slept. No exceptions. When I had time to write, my mind was blown up. I just worked six hours on top of seven hours of school, why would I want more work? I bit my metaphorical bullet, to only realize that it was anthrax pill, because it made me resent blogs to a point that each blog's theme was about how education was terrible and how blogs are worthless (which I maintain).
The only days that I always had off were Sundays, for good reason. I had church in the morning and in the hours between 12 and 4:30, I did home work. At 5, I was at Upward Bound at Coe College, doing more home work and getting help along with socializing with friends (which my dad and his gf think is something punishable by death). I usually got home with about an hour of home work left. I was tired, but I dragged on to go to bed at about 12 or 1. I then slept till 5:30 whereupon I took a shower and started my week.
Usually, each week, I maintained and increased a massive sleep debt. accompanied by those nights where I was forced to stay up till 3am doing blogs (like tonight/this morning). It really wore me down, especially when all of my friends were doing fine, where as, I was struggling. It wore me down so much that at one time I was in such a severe depression that I did nothing for a week but sit in my room thinking about how absolutely terrible I was and going to work, putting on the false bravado that men must at all times. I sat and listened to how I was stupid and how inconsiderate I was or how I wouldn't "open up." I sat around for those times where my mind would relent on my words that I used and I hurt someone on this very blog. I still feel like I'm a terrible person, but it is easier to maintain my suit of armor now with sleep.
Showing posts with label Biography. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Biography. Show all posts
April 30, 2012
The Knowledgable Free Speech of the Internet
| 1. | 1326 up, 208 down | |
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Reddit, it's like 4chan with a condom.
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| 2. | 5638 up, 1201 down | |
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A user generated web 2.0 news website with a
lefty, libertarian and geek slant. Tends to be slightly more upmarket
than its larger competitor digg.
The comment system at reddit actually works unlike the broken system
over on digg. This results in (usually) more intelligent conversations.
One issue with Reddit is that a number of users have installed bots
which automatically down vote or up vote specific topics. In 2007, it
was known for its support of Ron Paul (and then later Obama), its anger
at George W Bush and Cheney and its opposition to the invasion of Iraq
and its opposition to any potential attack on Iran. Reddit users are
also overwhelming against organized religion be it Christian, the Cult
of Scientology, Islam or Judaism.
One annoying or endearing feature of reddit that is also unique is "theme" usernames who behavior in stereotyped fashions usually occuring to their chosen username (eg. CAPTAIN_OBVIOUS.) These can be fun, but they usually wear pretty thin after a few days. In general, reddit is a smart forum than digg, although everyone is always saying that slowly reddit is becoming digg while digg is becoming 4chan.
From Urban Dictionary
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Reddit
In June of 2005, two 22 year old graduates of the University of Virginia, Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian, created the social news website of Reddit. Reddit features various and ample amounts of information that users post on the website to garner "upvotes" and "downvotes" from other users that determine the "karma" of the user and the popularity of the post itself. The more comments, upvotes and general votes that the post has, the more likely that it will show up on the site's frontpage of posts.
There are many different subreddits that contain information on certain topics that the subreddit has, ranging from solely pictures to gifs to politics to atheism. The users or redditors can obtain karma from their posts and comments as a way of showing how they symbolically are loved by the community.
Research done by Google's DoubleClick suggests that the main audience are males between the ages of 25 and 34 years old with some college education and are in the lowest income bracket.
Wikipedia's description of reddit is that,
Unsurprisingly, this ability of mass audience convinced that the site only has meaningful news on it has raised thousands to charity and has helped a lot for the worldwide community at large. Wikipedia explains some special numbers: Its popularity has enabled users to take unprecedented advantage of such a large community. Its innovative socially-ranked rating and sorting system drives a method that is useful for fulfilling certain goals of viewership or simply finding answers to interesting questions. User sentiments about the website's function and structure include feelings about the breadth and depth of the discussions on Reddit and how the site makes it easy to discover new and interesting items. Almost all of the user reviews on Alexa.com, which rates Reddit's monthly unique traffic rating 125th in the United States, mention Reddit's "good content" as a likable quality. However, others raise the negative aspects of the potential for Reddit's communities to possess a "hive mind" of sorts[47], embodying some negative aspects of group interaction theories like crowd psychology and collective consciousness. Unsurprisingly, this ability to raise a lot of money has done bad too. Reddit is endowed with a strong sense of personal freedom and especially freedom of speech. Their have been many subreddits dedicated to controversial issues such as r/jailbait and other disturbing things such as pictures of corpses or obscene material. Usually labeled NSFW/L meaning Not Safe For Work/Life, these things can be easily avoided. The only initial rule of the website was that you could not post personal information on the website, but after threats were made to the site, they banned suggestive or sexual content featuring minors in 2012. Reddit is considered to be a knowledgeable source of group wisdom and hysteria, but is very biased with a political agenda toppling on the left but does have influence from the political right. Reddit is a good case of mob mind set, but it still needs refinement to be perfected. -The Observer | ||
April 25, 2012
Where the Internet's Ideas are Born
| 4chan | 1823 up, 439 down | |
An image board in which jaded and cynical internet users compete to see who can be the biggest asshole.
Imagery on 4chan ranges from funny and clever, to "shocking" gore and morbid type imagery, to paedophile humour and other inanely retarted crap. 4chan users have invented their own language in an attempt to create a psuedo-culture, much in the same vein as the emo, and the lolcats people. You will typically see words like "Moar" and "newfag" plastered across the boards. Whilst those of us looking objectively at 4chan might think "Stop slaughtering the English language you illiterate fuckhole", such words are apparently used to communicate within this E-community. Many users of 4chan are passionately defensive about the website, and often praise it as a tight knit global community and place for people to communicate whatever they want, uncensored. Others see it as a chaotic cesspit where people with no personality or ideals can vent uncreative cynicism and pretend they're clever.
Typical thread in 4chan:
User 1 posts a gif of a petite Asian girl smothering fecal matter all over her face. User 2 responds with "Sauce" User 3 responds with "Moar" User 4 responds with "fap fap fap" User 5 responds with "This is the first time i've been to this website... haha you douchebags are fucking lame as hell. User 6 responds with "must be newfag"
Courtesy of Wikipedia:
This post from Urban Dictionary pretty much sums up the horrors of what 4chan is. 4chan, created in 2003, it was originally intended for discussing anime and manga, but from there, it grew, launching out to spread, create and use popular memes and other subcultures. It has declared war on the Church of Scientology and started internet fads like pedobear, lolcats and rickrolling. The most notorious and popular thread is titled "Random" or "/b/" which has minimal posting rules and enjoys huge popularity. The title is a play off of the Japanese image board, 2chan and has only had one real employee while having many volunteers. 4chan is immensely popular and has been losing money for the costs of maintaining the site.
A large part of the popularity that has been associated with 4chan is that each and every person is anonymous and can stay anonymous as long as they want. If they want to, they can also post under names that they come up with or names that have already or are currently in use. Ideologically, the website maintains that anonymous is not a single person, but a group, mass or horde of people. The mods all can take down posts, images and sub-threads along with posting with a special cap code. They also have "mods in training" deemed janitors which can take out images and posts and suggest users to ban from the site but can't post with the cap code.
The creator, Christopher Poole, with the alias "moot" only had his real life identity revealed in 2008and in 2009, the people of 4chan attempted to and succeeded to hack the Time 100's most influential people list to place moot at the top with over 16 million votes. It was considered fairly obvious that it was hacked, because the initials of the first names of the people in the list in order spell out, "marblecake also the game."
Under the alias of moot, he has given speeches at Yale University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, but is having difficulty making money off of 4chan and has lived with his mom many times. He is quoted by many sources to be one of the most influential people of the 21st century and is thought to be by Fred Leal of the Brazilian newspaper Estadão, the creator of the anti-thesis to social networking itself.
This place has been considered the origins of the group Anonymous and has many associations with it.
The /b/ board has few rules. They have bans on certain illegal content, such as child pornography,
invasions of other websites (posting floods of disruptive content), and
under-18 viewing, all of which are inherited from site-wide rules. The second rule about invading other websites was adopted after the 2006 overflow of Habbo Hotel.
4chan created a massive culture and various fads such as calling each other fags. Poole has also stated that the websites traffic as of 2008, the website garnered an outstanding rate of 150,000 - 200,000 posts a day. This large amount of posts allows new memes, or internet catchphrases or pictures to be spread in days or hours
According to the Washington Post, "the site's users have managed to pull off some of the highest-profile collective actions in the history of the Internet."[49]. This has been proven multiple times after they have attacked Youtube more than once, a law firm, multiple film industries and have even helped police track down potential terrorists. The most famous work of internet tracking was done in 2009 when a 14 year old boy was video taping himself abusing a cat named dusty. After the 4chan users contacted the local police, he was arrested and the cat was treated by veterinarians.
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4chan can be a place of immense evil and horror, but it is also a place of internet intellectuals and sociopaths. The threads and posts of the various users with the anonymity of the internet has resulted in the antithesis to social networking and has done things that one can only imagine.
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April 22, 2012
The Story of a War Hero
What is courage and valor. When someone received a Medal of Honor, what are they getting? As a man not in the service without plans to join, I see the military not as the highest aspiration of what we should strive for, but also not as a place where evil men go to play out their desires. I've seen men that scream shouts of hatred and people who are quiet and reserved, but the people that I find the most surprising to be in the military are those who are normal. What surprises me more are those who go into the military and are full of ripe opportunities. I can understand when a man goes to war because he wants the money of the financial aid in the future, but what is hard to acquaint my mind to is when people go out to prove themselves or serve their country or feel obligated to fight. Trust me, I respect those men and women immensely, even when I feel like they are doing wrong. They are still helping the men and women back home to stay safe and healthy.
Heros of War are not those who play it safe or are the smartest about their own lives, but are those who embody what self-sacrifice is. Herbert K. Pililaau, Private First Class of the 23d Infantry Regiment, 2nd Infantry Division of the United States Army is a man of courage, valor and self sacrifice. In his participation in the battle of bloody ridge and the battle of heartbreak ridge where he departed this world, the United States Army has awarded him a Medal of Honor.
On September 17th, 1951, Company C and Pililaau's platoon were advancing on one of the two peaks of Heartbreak Ridge in North Korea. Company C stalled on a ridge line when two battalions of the North Korean Army started to draw the Company back which was running low on supplies and ammunition. After 10:00 pm, with very low provisions, the company was given permission to withdraw and join the main force of the army. Pililaau's Squad was given the task of covering the retreat and Pililaau offered to be left behind. The men retreated until it was just Pililaau and his squad leader who eventually left as well.
"Pfc. Pililaau fired his automatic weapon into the ranks of the assailants, threw all his grenades and, with ammunition exhausted, closed with the foe in hand-to-hand combat, courageously fighting with his trench knife and bare fists until finally overcome and mortally wounded"
Heros of War are not those who play it safe or are the smartest about their own lives, but are those who embody what self-sacrifice is. Herbert K. Pililaau, Private First Class of the 23d Infantry Regiment, 2nd Infantry Division of the United States Army is a man of courage, valor and self sacrifice. In his participation in the battle of bloody ridge and the battle of heartbreak ridge where he departed this world, the United States Army has awarded him a Medal of Honor.
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| Herbert K. Pililaau PFC |
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| A poorly drawn paint file of what was happening on the day that Pililaau earned his Medal of Honor. |
On September 17th, 1951, Company C and Pililaau's platoon were advancing on one of the two peaks of Heartbreak Ridge in North Korea. Company C stalled on a ridge line when two battalions of the North Korean Army started to draw the Company back which was running low on supplies and ammunition. After 10:00 pm, with very low provisions, the company was given permission to withdraw and join the main force of the army. Pililaau's Squad was given the task of covering the retreat and Pililaau offered to be left behind. The men retreated until it was just Pililaau and his squad leader who eventually left as well.
"Pfc. Pililaau fired his automatic weapon into the ranks of the assailants, threw all his grenades and, with ammunition exhausted, closed with the foe in hand-to-hand combat, courageously fighting with his trench knife and bare fists until finally overcome and mortally wounded"
-Medal of Honor Citation
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| M3 Trench Knife |
The Platoon retook the position the next day to see 40 dead Korean troops around him. It was said that as his squad was retreating they looked on helplessly as he threw rocks at the Koreans before charging them. It was found that he was killed by bayonet.
Posthumously, he was award the medal and had a cargo-ship named after him. He died at 22 and was buried in Honolulu.
He was the 9th of 14 children, born of Hawaiian parents in a "working class suburb" of Honolulu, and was a singer, ukelele player and a notable reader. After high school, he studied at Cannon Business School.
This man showed courage, but he didn't need to. I don't know why he offered to be left to die, but he did die. He had options and career choices. He had a family, he had hobbies, he had a life. He was young and he did die for the safety of not only his comrades, but for the people here in America.
-The Observer
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