Tag: government

Trolling the troll for the win

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

As I was driving to my car appointment, I drove past a house that had a massive display in their front yard that went to the trouble of spelling out, of all the things in the world, Let’s Go Brandon.  Which is basically the dog whistle phrase that hardcore baked potato worshippers have latched onto like ticks to an elephant’s asshole, for how they feel about the actual president of the United States.  And I feel stupid for having to explain but ticks on an elephant’s asshole seemed too accurate and good of an analogy to pass up.

Firstly, fewer things seem more pathetic to me than anyone, right or left, who is that into politics, that they pollute their properties with propaganda that they are so wanting everyone to notice.  Like, you have absolutely nothing else in your life to be passionate about other than politics, and to a degree that you just have to make sure everyone knows where you stand?  Quite saddening.

Second, the Let’s Go Brandon thing is about the stupidest shit I’ve seen emerge from political meme-licking over the last few decades, and between the last three presidents, we’ve definitely seen some declining bullshit over time.

The thing is though, if I’m the Democratic Party, counteracting Let’s Go Brandon should be the easiest thing in the world to do; as long as we were willing to stop trying to play so high and mighty and stop worrying about the perception of sinking to their level. 

Republicans haven’t been the least bit shy or tried to hide their willingness to capitalize on unethical shit like racism, memes, Twitter and racist memes on Twitter in order to have the upper hand in the political arena.

Plus what I’m about to suggest isn’t even unethical or underhanded, it’s just capitalizing on the opportunity that was dealt to them.

If I’m the Democratic Party, across the board, I’m pushing as many elected officials I can, whose name is Brandon.  Like, legitimately. 

Brandon Affleck for Senate in California.  Brandon Jablonski for Lt. Governor in Wisconsin.  Brandon Marshall for Secretary of State in Mississippi.  Brandon Wojchehowski for Superintendent of Education in Butts County, South Dakota.

Doesn’t matter how big or small the position is, if it’s an elected official, push out a guy named Brandon.

So when the baked potato idiots are all flapping their gums about Let’s Go Brandon or driving around with their stickers on their cars, or wearing shirts or caps with the message on it, or decorating their front yards with the message… they’ll now be supporting these actual politicians named Brandon. 

Preferably Democrats.  Or fuck, even third parties should consider capitalizing on this strategy.  I’m sure a Green or Libertarian party candidate would have more success in the ballots if their name were Brandon, solely based on voters who vote entirely on name recognition alone, which last time I checked is a legitimate reason and tactic behind why some candidates go so ham on signs and campaign awareness.

And that’s basically the point of this whole strategy.  Take the power of the message away from the baked potato’s buffoon followers and it will die faster than Kentucky in this years tournament.  But until then, let all these idiots basically be free advertising for aspiring politicians around the country named Brandon, and see just how much power at the polls name recognition alone does.

I’d wager some money that there would be a laughable amount of Brandons throughout the country who would find themselves in a job after election season is over.  Sure this bones most women and minorities from taking offices, but last time I checked it wouldn’t be illegal for Elizabeth Warren to change her name to  Elizabeth Brandon or Andrew Yang to change his name to Brandon Yang.

Fuck man.  I don’t even like politics, or ever wanted to have shared so many opinions on politics on my brog, but here we are. Fixing political scenarios for free, if I had any readership at all.

Peak America

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I read this story about how health care in America is so fucked up, that it creates a perfect scenario for billionaire Mark Cuban to swoop in and get to play hero to the country.  In short, Mark Cuban launched an internet pharmacy that offers more than 100 generic drugs at reasonable cost, which is a bigger deal than it might sound, because American pharmacists have been notorious for gauging the fuck out of the American people over the last decade or so.

Naturally, Cuban is being lauded with acclaim, in addition to people being refueled for their disdain for the pharmaceutical industry for being greedy and valuing profit over human lives.  The thing is, Cuban embarking on this endeavor is about as low-hanging fruit as they come; there are a number of billionaires, corporations, conglomerates or any other entities in the world that could have done this, a long time ago.  The fact that of all the random rich entities in there are, Mark Cuban is the guy that grasps the low bar, and is not only going to look like a modern saint, but make no mistake, he’s going to profit, massively.

I have no qualms with Mark Cuban, in fact I respect the guy tremendously, in spite of the fact that us pleebs are supposed to hate the wealthy.  He’s one of the guys that actually understands the need to give some shit away in order to make money, and such is the core strategy of how he basically transformed the Dallas Mavericks from perennial laughing stocks into eventual champions.

In fact, he’s basically doing the same thing all over again, but instead of basketball tickets, it’s common, necessary medicine.  Just because he’ll be selling generic medicine at a little over 15% over at-cost, he’s undoubtedly going to be raking in massive amounts of money on account of the likely million people who will all be shopping his online pharmacy; all while gaining their adulation at providing such a compassionate service.

It’s basic Wolf of Wall Street math here, sell cheap necessities to the lower classes, and there’s ridiculous amounts of money to be made.  And as much as I too think what Cuban is doing is a very good thing for the world, the sad reality is that he probably shouldn’t have been the party to have had the opportunity to do this; when it really should’ve been the responsibility of, fucking America, to do this for its own people instead.

But I guess without stories like this, America really wouldn’t be America.

That’s one way to approach the overpopulation problem

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Not sure how they’re going to make this work but ok: China, the country, has decreed that those under the age of 18 years are now forbidden from playing more than three hours of video games a week; an hour a day only on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, 8-9 pm local time

I’m going to go out on a limb and say that within those who will have to deal with transition, the suicide rate just might go up.  Considering the country is already facing an overpopulation crisis, this might not actually be the worst thing in the world to happen.  Clear way for a newer, fresher generation of Chinese, who weren’t raised and became video game-obsessed, mouth-breathing troglodytes.

All seriousness though, I’m very curious to know just how the entire country is going to enforce this mandate.  When it comes to online games and mobile games, I can kind of take some wild swings, mostly on account of a nation that’s extremely big brother-ey in the first place and can probably try to implement shit to try and prevent their minors from unauthorized gaming.  I’ve already heard things about how some games will require cameras in order to play so that facial recognition can be implemented, but I’m sure that’ll lead to legions of masked gamers to try and circumvent the measure.

But what about offline games, like consoles, arcade cabinets and shit like PSPs or 3DSs that can be played without an internet connection?  I’d have to take a guess that the console business is about to start doing very well in the near future if kids will be relegated to playing offline games by themselves or with their siblings, neighbors or with actual other human beings in the room.  There’s no way offline gaming can actually be enforced, and I’m going to guess most parents will be so desperate for their kids to get out of their hair that they’re not going to enforce this rule in the privacy of their own homes.

And then we get to China’s rich eSports culture, to where they’re always among the world’s best when it comes to all sorts of competitive gaming.  But as I’ve learned from my years of following the pro League of Legends scene, pro players often times are starting their careers as young as 16, which means they’ve been practicing and developing since they were way younger than that.  Sure, I’m sure there’ll be all sorts of exceptions for those in careers and professionals in gaming, but with an entire country now limited to just three hours a week, the well of future players is about to get very, very shallow real quick, and I’m curious to know what the future of eSports in China is going to be with this mandate in place.

Of course, another potential blowback to this law is that there’s absolutely nothing that says a guy can’t become a video game-obsessed cretin after they hit 18 and beyond, with the only difference is now that they’re adults and can act like dicks as adults as opposed to being shithead pre-teens and teenagers.  All of the educating and social graces they are believed to have developed from having their gaming being limited, all go flying out the window when 18-year old Xin Peng realizes the handcuffs are off, and then spends the next five years of his life glued to League of Legends, getting dominated by 14-16 year olds in Korea, Denmark, Russia and even maybe Americans.

In the end though, I don’t think much is going to be made from this.  If it doesn’t blow up in their faces from the onset, it’ll probably be a law that’s so loosely enforced that it might as well not exist at all.  And even if it is something that is enforced seriously, China is also one of the greatest cheating cultures on the planet, and no serious gamer would be above cheating over their own country’s laws in order to have a nice marathon session of Counterstrike, whether it’s manipulating their IP, wearing a mask to circumvent facial recognition, or any sort of measure in order to get around the law.  After all, this is a country where teenagers go to tremendous lengths to cheat during high school entrance exams, for something they don’t even want to do, so imagine just how far they’ll go when it comes to gaining something they do?

Anyway, it’s stories like this that kind of make me scratch my head and wonder why China is actually seen as this threat to the world when it comes to economics, business and general population.  They can barely keep their own population in check so much being a threat to other countries in the world outside of building Chinatowns all over the world.  But I could be wrong, and this could be a game-changer of a law that ushers in a generation of better adjusted, more mature and intelligent and successful Chinese citizens that are better than everyone else in the world that were raised on video games and other brain-rotting content.

Wouldn’t take that bet though.  I’ll keep my eyes on suicide rates among minors in China for the next year instead.

Even gainz take a backseat to safety

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Because of the timing that I’m raising a child now, I don’t think I’ve gotten nearly the cabin fever or feel that I’m missing out on as much as other people are when it comes to staying at home and doing my best to social distance.  Sure, I miss going out to eat, and occasionally getting in my car and going somewhere frivolous, but with a newborn in play, it’s not like I’d be doing such regardless of if there were a pandemic or not.

One of the few things that I do miss like crazy, is the gym.  For obvious reasons, the gym in my workplace is closed, and even if I wanted to pay another business, most regular gyms are closed as well.

For nearly the last 13 years, I can say definitively, that I’ve gone to the gym at least once a week, for at least 98% of that time frame.  I can probably count on one hand the number of times I went longer than two weeks without hitting a gym at some point, and it gives me great satisfaction in not being too overly sore from working out on a regular basis, because my body had become pretty primed to the feeling of lifting weights regularly.

But with Georgia (foolishly) reopening, gyms have been given the green light to open up for business as well, as long as “proper” social distancing protocols are put into place.  For a while, LA Fitness had opted to stay closed, regardless of the green light, and I kind of respected them as a company for doing such, even though I had less than fond memories of when I was a member for several years myself.

However, even LA Fitness decided to want to make money again, and has begun opening up their Georgia gyms as well.

Regardless, this is where I have to say that even though gyms are now once again open, and I could theoretically get back into a gym and start lifting weights again, the gym is about the last fucking place on the planet that I’d want to go to in the middle of this pandemic.

Continue reading “Even gainz take a backseat to safety” →

Welp, so much for flattening the curve

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I’ve long since stopped using the phrase “just when I thought people couldn’t possibly get any dumber,” because no matter what flabbergasting things in the world people do, they can always inexplicably find a way to do something dumber.  No. Matter. What.

In spite of the fact that Georgia, much less the rest of America is nowhere close to being on the path to being remotely similar to South Korea or Taiwan in terms of fighting coronavirus, our idiot governor Yosemite Sam, has decided that the stay-at-home ordinance is going to be lifted so that certain types of businesses can open reopen and get back to work; as in people go out of your homes into the world that has a potentially deadly airborne virus floating all over the place and get back to fucking work for the sake of the economy at the risk of your literal lives.

Before we even get to the list of approved businesses, let’s just opine about how recklessly horrible this decision is.

Despite the fact that Georgia ranks in the top-10 states in worst coronavirus numbers, they’re basically scrambling to get to the front of the line in regards to encouraging people to leave their homes, go out amongst other people and put themselves at increased risk; in order to get back to work.

Because the economy needs it. 

So go put yourselves in danger.  Because money

Anyway, let’s take a look at the businesses that will be opening within the next week:

Continue reading “Welp, so much for flattening the curve” →

Only in the south

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

What could possibly go wrong – Georgia senate panel approves legislation that would make it legal to “pull or show” your firearm during a dispute as long as you don’t “aim it offensively” at someone

In other words, Georgia is trying to make it completely legal to show that you have a gun in order to attempt to deescalate a conflict, but not necessarily point it at another human being.

Yeah, that’s really going to go over real well; especially when jobber A flashes that they have a piece during a heated argument over the last $16 waffle maker at Walmart on Black Friday, and then jobber B responds by flashing their larger, more powerful piece.  Surely, the hypothesis is that jobber A will immediately stand down and forfeit the waffle maker to jobber B and then everyone will resume what they’re doing peacefully.

But the reality is that the two of them will eventually reach this uncomfortable and tense stalemate before one of them inevitably breaks the law and flashes it at the other, causing mass hysteria around them, before the highly armed and concealed-carrying rest of Georgia all begin brandishing weapons all around and then Milledgeville ends up on the news for the first time since Ben Roethlistberger raped a chick way back when.

Seriously, this is some only in the south kind of shit logic, and if there were ever any more proof that industries like firearms have their hands in the pockets of old white men in political power, dry rubbing their flaccid old dicks, it’s stories like this, because in no scenario in the world involving people who are not law enforcement, does the introduction of firearms ever have a chance at hell at deescalating anything at all.

Digging deeper, I love how the impetus behind this ridiculous bill is that the previous punishment for brandishing a weapon is a 20-year felony, and a bunch of hicks decided that they shouldn’t have to go to prison for two decades because they have a gun and want to show it off.  So why not just change the fucking law?

Anyway, I look forward to the statistics that will never be published where gun violence actually goes down as a result of laws like this.  Or the amendment where it will not-so subtly exclude black people from this law and in fact make it a 25-year felony for the colored folks for even saying the word “gun” around old white people.

How to reflect on a decade

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

This year ending isn’t just an ordinary ending of a year, because it’s also the end of a decade.  Naturally, a sentimental person like me tends to want to reflect on an entire decade, because much like individual years, a decade is a nice round chunk of time that one might think it would be easy to reflect upon, but in the greater spectrum, it’s ten full years we’d be trying to look back onto.  Now I like to think I have a good memory, but even without the aid of my trusty brog, it’s difficult to really look back at an entire decade.

Regardless, that’s not going to stop all the self-important jobbers of the internet who will try their darnedest to speak with authority and copy and paste all the same milestones the major news outlets will when it comes to trying to summarize and reflect upon the entire decade.  The funny thing is that most of the internet savvy generations probably aren’t that much older or younger than I am, which means that in the grand spectrums of our respective lives, we’ve only really lived through 3-4 decades, whereas I’d probably estimate that 1.5-2 of them are pretty invalid, because we’re simply not articulate and/or educated enough to have the capacity to reflect on entire decades.

So combined with the advent and growth of the internet, and the notion that everyone has a voice, I’d wager this is probably, at the very most, the second real decade of the modern high-speed internet that people really care to really reminisce about; and I’m being generous by calling it the second, because DSLs and cable internet didn’t really flourish until nearly the mid-2000’s; I couldn’t imagine people trying to use streaming, auto-refreshing social media on a 56K modem, so frankly I see this more as the first real decade that everyone and their literal mothers on the internet are going to be writing about.

Anyway, I’m going to attempt to try to recollect from mostly just my own memories, and stick to things that are more relevant to my own little world, and not the big gigantic depressing one we live in.  If I had any readers, they can google any decade in review, and probably find more worldly and probably more high-profile shit than the things I have to say about the things going on in my own little life, like the start and finish of Game of Thrones, Pokemon Go, the sad state of American politics, all the endless mass shootings, and Bill Cosby being outed as a rapist.

And the reason that I disclaim the whole “if I had any readers” because one of the most devastating things that occurred for me is the fact that despite my WordPress going online in 2010, at nearly the very start of the decade, midway through the decade my brog went down indefinitely, when my brother relocated from one part of the country to another.  A lot of hardware changes meant no more place to host my brog, and despite having the supposed backups, I simply haven’t taken the time or allocated the funds necessary to get my site up and running again.

If I were the type to do New Years resolutions anymore, I think I’d resolve to get my site back up and running again in 2020.  TBD on if that will actually occur, and frankly with the things I have on my plate going into the next decade, I don’t want to commit and then fail to deliver.

In spite of the brog blackout, that hasn’t stopped me from writing.  Even to the day my site went down, I have been writing on a fairly regular basis, taking no more than two weeks off before the internal guilt gets my fingers flying across the keys again, and I’ve got at this point, hundreds of folders of dated and timestamped Word docs, all awaiting their day in which they can be posted retroactively to a brog.

Continue reading “How to reflect on a decade” →