Facebook Privacy Policy: Stop Using Facebook

If you want information to be private, then do not share it.

The New York Times writing an article about the recent changes to Facebook's Privacy Policy is the kind of thing which evidences a fundamental flaw in the human species. This is not dumb. This is not stupid. This surpasses any known measurement of retardation. This is simply insanity, plain and simple.

Facebook updated its privacy policy the result of which is that now the default setting is that all information is public. To make information private, one need navigate and click through 170 user settings, which is inconvenient. But to make the process simpler, the New York Times provides a flow chart which can be found here. That's right; in case you are too god damned stupid to navigate Facebook settings there is a chart.

Also, people are bitching about the length of Facebook's Privacy policy. It has grown from 1,004 pages in 2005 to 5,830 words in 2010. Apparently Facebook users hate reading, which you'd never guess if you spent any time on Facebook.

So why is this all insanity? Why does this anger up the blood? Well, there is the obvious problem of people sharing information they do not want to be shared, but that is just Cognitive dissonance. No, the larger issue, the feature most indicative of insanity, is the following mentality: I should be able to share any information I want on Facebook and be able to entirely control who has access to this information, because X.

The problem, you may note, is that THERE IS NO X; there is no foundation for an argument of why one ought be able to control access to one's Facebook account. People may want it, and people may yell about it, but there is no actual justification for the position, no foundation for the argument. Which, really, is the problem with any "ought" claim, unless you are Kant.

The problem with Facebook privacy arguments is that they truly make no god damned sense. A Facebook user is tossing personal, sometimes private, information onto some random server owned by other people, maintained by other people, and controlled by other people. The Facebook user then claims a right to ownership of the information, maintenance of the information, and control of the information. This is insanity given that the Facebook website, servers, etc. are all owned by Facebook, Inc., a privately owned company and are not owned by you, the idiot posting drunken, incriminating, pictures of yourself on the tubal interwebs.

I mean, really. Were Facebook, Inc. so inclined then, tomorrow, they could e-mail those pictures of you doing Jell-O shots out of your boyfriend's asshole to your boss and grandmother because, well, fuck you. And there really isn't anything you could do about it. Which, perhaps, is a point which need be considered.

There are numerous criticisms to be made about Facebook. But I think the more sensible criticism is to be directed at Facebook users. If you want to share a picture of your cat with everyone in the world because Lord Pussington is just so gosh-darn cute? Then go nuts. But do not post sensitive, personal, private information onto a server you do not own, to be accessed via a social networking site you do not control, and then get your knickers in a twist over privacy issues.

You lost any claim to privacy when you shared the information.

Iron Man 2: Review

So, I am compelled to write a review of Iron Man 2. But rather than actually review the movie I mostly just want to bitch about some things I did not like, and gush about some things I did like. So, here are some thoughts.

Scarlett Johansson is not attractive.

Yes, she has tits, but she is not an attractive woman. This is weird, because she's basically an odd mixture of Sarah Chalke, Hillary Duff, and, from the right angle, Uma Thurman. So pretty much every time she is on the screen I become confused by this mis-matched amalgamation of attractive sauntering about quashing my erection by her general unpleasantness.

Moreover, there is no reason for her to be in this damned movie. Her character provides nothing to the narrative, and she provides nothing to the character. If she did something or served as eye candy then I could understand her inclusion. But she generally just seems to be there to serve as a sexual alternative to Gwyneth Paltrow which is ironic given that Gwyneth Paltrow is entirely more pleasant on all counts.

Mickey Rourke needs to crawl into a hole and die.

Mickey Rourke is not pleasant, interesting, entertaining, or at all justifiable. Moreover, his character, Devo, makes no sense. He's supposed to be a vodka-fueled son of a Russian physicist who hates Tony Stark because, well, everyone hates Tony Stark. His character brings nothing to the narrative other than filling the required "we need a villain" role.

My main problem with the character is that if you look through a list of Iron Man Enemies you will see characters such as Doctor Doom, Fin Fang Foom, Grey Gargoyle, Immortus, Mandarin, and Captain America. Any of these villians would have been more appealing than Devo.

Why the fuck is there no Black Sabbath in the soundtrack?

Even a syphilis ridden bi-polar nutjob will understand that when making a movie about Iron Man it is obligatory to include the Black Sabbath song of the same title. So the question you need to ask when watching Iron Man 2 is why the fuck there are so many not Black Sabbath songs in the fucking movie.

Let's look through the Iron Man 2 Soundtrack: Shoot to Thrill, Highway to Hell, Should I Stay or Should I Go, The Magnificent Seven, Another One Bites the Dust, Groove Holmes. Ok. AC/DC is not Black Sabbath, The Clash is not Black Sabbath, Queen is not Black Sabbath, and the fucking Beastie Boys are not Black fucking Sabbath.

Let's now compare that list to the Soundtrack to Iron Man 1: Back in Black, Iron Man.

This shit makes no sense. Iron Man 1 has the song 'Iron Man'. Iron Man 2 has The Clash.

They got a new black guy.

It may be true that all black guys look the same, but not all black guys act the same. Or, well, ok; they do. But some of us non-racists can tell the difference between Black Guy A and Black Guy B, and between Iron Man 1 and 2 there is a significant difference between Black Guy A and B.

Black Guy A: Terrence Howard. If you watch Hulu then you know that Howard's mother died from colorectal cancer and his hope is that his heartbreak can be your wakeup call: So go ask a doctor to shove his finger up your ass.

I enjoyed Terrence in Iron Man 1 if only because I thought he was Cuba Gooding Jr. Once I realized he was not Cuba Gooding Jr. I enjoyed his acting slightly less. But, overall, he was a fine Rhodey.

Black Guy B: Don Cheadle. Alright. When casting a sassy, quick witted sidekick for Tony Stark in a fun-filled, action-packed romp of a super hero movie? Don't fucking cast the guy from Hotel Rwanda. I spent the whole moving feeling bad for not sending money to help those poor Rwandanese children. And, moreover, I was mad at Rhodey for not convincing Stark to go save those poor Rwandanese children.

So, yeah, they got a new black guy. And I wish they had stuck with Cuba Gooding Jr.

Sam Rockwell is pretty great.

Sam Rockwell has come a long way from being "Head Thug" in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie. And for this I am glad. A wealth of the pleasure I encountered watching this movie resulted from the interactions between Tony Stark and Rockwell's character, Justin Hammer. Rockwell does an excellent job portraying Hammer as an economic competitor with Stark continually striving to one-up his competition. Hammer is not a likeable character, but Rockwell artfully brings this character to life and genuinely seems to enjoy the role.

The movie does not suck.

Overall, I thought Iron Man 2 to be better than Iron Man 1. While Iron Man 1 serves as a sensible foundation to the movie franchise by articulating the backstory its virtue was found in the narrative. Iron Man 2 successfully movies forward from the narrative and does something with the characters, giving character development to Stark, creating a financial foil in Hammer, and generally progressing the cinematic narrative to a point where they can now do something with the characters.

Moreover, Iron Man 2 brilliantly sets up both Captain America, Thor, and The Avengers movie.

MAKE THE DAMN AVENGERS MOVIE ALREADY!

Here is my main thought on Iron Man 1 and 2: These movies are not very worthwhile on their own. I can watch them a few times and enjoy some parts, but overall Iron Man is not a character which can maintain its own series of movies and the films as stand-alone installations are lacking any sort of gravitas.

The virtue of the Iron Man series is that it serves as an excellent platform for Thor, Captain America, and The Avengers movie. There are multiple points in the movie, which I shall not mention here, which filled me with a level of joy I have not experienced in this past month. By including these nuggets of reference to the other series an excellent precident is set for the future Marvel movies.

The brilliance of Iron Man is that it was not created to be a stand-alone series like Spider Man, eventually degrading into nonsense and stupid so ending the series. Iron Man served as a platform to create a web of stories which shall eventually be told through the combination of Iron Man, Thor, Captain America, and The Avengers. All of this shit is going to come together in an epic orgasm of nerdy goodness.

And maybe, just maybe, once we go through all of this shit with stand-alones we'll get an Avengers movie the climax of which is Iron Man, Thor, and Captain America fighting Fin Fang Foom while Samuel L. Jackson nods his silent approval.

Batman 2012 [chat]

The Next Batman Movie is set for release in 2012. So, we need some baseless speculation as to which villians will appear.

Batman Beings: Ra's al Ghul, Scarecrow.
Dark Knight: The Joker, Two Face.
Batman 2012: Which Batman Villians will appear?

Community - Modern Warfare

Every week I say to myself "Community cannot get any better." Than Modern Warfare happened.

The "Bacon Meme": Torani Bacon Syrup

Bacon is delicious; this fact cannot be disputed. Unfortunately, it seems to be the case that bacon is no longer simply a food to be enjoyed by everyone but the jews but rather bacon has come to be something of a cultural icon. It is a well-known fact that I hate the term 'meme', for reasons I have already explained. So, I am not going to claim that there is a "bacon meme" out there infecting particular minds when people sneeze. However, it does seem to be the case that bacon is being utilized in a very problematic and unjustified way. Why problematic and unjustified, you ask?

Well, I recently came to learn that Torani makes Bacon Flavored Syrup. And I think the advent of Bacon Flavored Syrup has taken bacon too far. I have no problem with bacon qua bacon. And, hell, Beggin Strips were fine; dogs deserve bacon. But consider the following bacon products:

Baconnaise
Bacon Salt
Bacon Mints
Bacon Floss
Bacon Popcorn
Bacon Vodka
Bacon Explosion
Assorted Bacon Snacks

I take these products to be indicative of a problem.

First of all, bacon is not a spice; bacon is not a flavor additive. Salt, pepper, mint, cinnamon, and coriander are all kinds of food additives, spices and flavorings to be added to particular foodstuffs. Bacon is not a flavor additive; bacon is a food unto itself. So where garlic salt is a sensible product, insofar as garlic is a flavoring to be added to foodstuffs, Bacon Salt is not sensible given that bacon is not a flavoring, but rather is a foodstuff unto itself. Mint flavored floss? Fine, mint is a flavor. But bacon is not a flavor.

Second of all, bacon is not healthy. There are studies which articulate the negative health effects of bacon, in case you could not figure this shit out for yourself. So the question to ask, given the health issues associated with bacon, is whether or not it is problematic for bacon to be so prevalent in popular culture. If we can maintain that marketing cigarettes to children is problematic then why not argue that marketing bacon to children is problematic as well? Why promote bacon or place focus upon bacon when it is so detrimental to one's health?

It is one thing to consider bacon-flavoring as a problem. But when one considers items such as the Bacon iPhone Case or these Bacon Shoes I think a problem can be discerned given that we are taking bacon beyond being simply a food and have made bacon something more. Just as it would be problematic to have an iPhone case which resembled a pack of cigarrettes, or a pair of shoes decorated with used needles, I worry that embracing bacon in this way indicates a problem with how we understand both ourselves, our bodies, and the world in which we live. We have ignored both what bacon is and its health effects and turned bacon into something else, a perpetual referrent with a meaning and value somehow estranged from bacon unto itself.

Moreover, I am personally growing tired of bacon jokes. The Push Button, Receive Bacon joke was funny for a few minutes. I mean, man, those three red lines do kinda look like bacon...kinda. But we've crossed the damn line. And, sure, this xkcd bacon comic was kind of funny, and the Three Panel Soul, Bacon Ice Cream comic was good for a lol. But if we understand each of these particulars to be participants in a larger whole, that which idiots would label the "bacon meme", then what does that say about our species and its values? Or, well, our species minus the jews.

There is no such thing as a "bacon meme"; there is no such thing as a meme. Yet it does seem to be the case that "bacon" has come to be something more than just bacon. And you can argue that it is just a joke, or that this is a harmless bit of fun.

But when Torani suggests adding Bacon Syrup to whiskey in order to make a Bacon Manhattan? Something is fucked up.

Theodicy: Smile, Jesus loves you!

The term "theodicy" always confused me. Back in 1710, when things made sense, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz coined the term by combining θεός (theós, "god") and δίκη (díkē, "justice"), to make theosdike, theodicy, "the justice of god". The problem I always had was that I thought the term a combination of θεός (theós, "god") and (Ὀδύσσεια, Odýsseia) so theos-odysseia, a theo-odyssey, a God-adventure, which is entirely not what the term means.*

Anyway.

So, a theodicy is an attempted explanation to the problem of evil: Why bad shit happens if God is not a jackass. And while I've been aware of the fact that bad things happen my immediate situation is pressing me into a mindset such that I need contemplate why the fuck so much bad shit happens if
1) There is a God.
2) God is not a jackass.

This afternoon I was at Wal-Mart, which might be an explanation for why bad shit is happening to me, when some random person handed me a piece of notecard. One side presented a smiley face with the word "Smile" above it. The other side contained the message that "Jesus loves you!" followed by some Bible verses to serve as textual evidence of this love, a Prayer I need say in order to invite Jesus into my heart, and a helpful list of instructions (Read the Bible, go to Church) for what to do after I offer Jesus occupancy in my cardio-vascular system.

Given the apparent randomness of this event (no one else ever gave me a "Jesus loves you" card at Wal-mart before) as it relates to my life at the moment (everything is fucking terrible) this has me thinking.

I've always thought a deity to be a necessary component of one's ontology. I am something of a fan of the Quinque viae, Aquinas' five arguments for the existence of God. So I'll accept God's existence for reasons of unmoved mover, first cause, contingency, etc. But the notion of a personal deity, some invisible man in the sky hovering around giving a shit about me, never made much sense.

The thing I realized this afternoon is that I've always replaced the notion of a personal God with concepts such as Love, Truth, or Good as somehow being controlling, regulatory processes of reality. I've clung to the notion that, in the end, things will work out for the best; Truth will overturn Falsity, Goodness will triumph over Evil, and Love has the power to actualize any possibility. Polio is pretty shitty, but we created a vaccine. The Nazis were Evil, but they lost. And they never did make a sequel to that god-awful Golden Compass movie.

So I've, apparently, subconsciously based my life on this notion that things will get better, that there is some regulatory process controlling reality whereby, though things may become shitty, wrongs are eventually righted, evil is eventually triumphed over by good, and truth will overcome all falsity.

The problem is that I think I lost that a few weeks ago. And I'm not sure what to do without it.

Living makes sense when one can maintain hope, when one believes in a triumph of good over evil or can articulate a theodicy whereby one can reconcile the abysmal aspects of life with some consolation that there will be a better tomorrow, that there is an answer, a truth, which will make sense of reality. But when one loses that core component of their being and understands life to be simply a neutral, inert medium within which various things happen for no reason, to not end, regulated by only the laws of physics and whatever force particular beings exert...nothing really matters anymore; we're all just sort of here.

So I can reflect upon this little smiley "Jesus loves you" card. I can read my Leibniz and my Aquinas and cling to some notion of a better tomorrow, or a victory of Good and Truth over Evil and Falsity. But at the moment it seems to be the case that these are simply coping mechanisms designed to stave off a realization that the entirety of one's existence is simply a haphazard amalgamation of random nonsense the meaning of which is void and the purpose of which is null given that soul-less, viscous, self-centered, unreflective, terrible people are capable of performing unconscionable acts without ever receiving any form of comeuppance.

I would like for there to be a God; I would like for there to be a Good, a Truth, a Right, a regulatory process to reality which ensures that meaning and purpose are preserved. But I think that, in the end, that might all be bullshit. And while we can hand out little index cards at Wal-Mart and cling to our hopes...in the end Evil wins, Lies persist, and the entirety of existence is a meaningless void of pain and suffering within which we all delude ourselves until we just plain give up.

So maybe the whole project of a theodicy is flawed project from the beginning. Not only may there be no God, but perhaps there is no Truth, no Good, no Falsity, no Evil. Perhaps people just do shit and spout little contextual pseudo-truths which are simply linguistic articulations of perceived or understood temporary referents. Maybe we're just little biological machines fucking about for no reason. Maybe this whole thing of existence is a neutral, inert cesspool of dumb.

I'm not necessarily advocating nihilism; I'm not really advocating anything. I'm just saying that there are times when the events of one's life fundamentally challenge one's core beliefs; when one's faith and primary understanding of self are tested from without.

And, sometimes, the beliefs, the faith, and the self do not pass the test.


* This may have resulted from my having spent a wealth of my childhood watching Superbook

Marry Fuck Kill

Marry / Fuck / Kill