<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" media="screen" href="/~d/styles/rss2full.xsl"?><?xml-stylesheet type="text/css" media="screen" href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~d/styles/itemcontent.css"?><rss xmlns:content="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/" xmlns:wfw="http://wellformedweb.org/CommentAPI/" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" xmlns:sy="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/syndication/" xmlns:slash="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/slash/" xmlns:feedburner="http://rssnamespace.org/feedburner/ext/1.0" version="2.0">

<channel>
	<title>Superluminiferous</title>
	
	<link>http://superlumi.nl</link>
	<description>Adventures in Internet Conquest</description>
	<lastBuildDate>Wed, 25 Apr 2012 17:25:59 +0000</lastBuildDate>
	<language>en</language>
	<sy:updatePeriod>hourly</sy:updatePeriod>
	<sy:updateFrequency>1</sy:updateFrequency>
	
<xhtml:meta xmlns:xhtml="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" name="robots" content="noindex" />
		<atom10:link xmlns:atom10="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/Superluminal" /><feedburner:info uri="superluminal" /><atom10:link xmlns:atom10="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" rel="hub" href="http://pubsubhubbub.appspot.com/" /><item>
		<title>On Making Games in 48 Hours and Not Being Able to Make a Game in 48 Hours</title>
		<link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Superluminal/~3/1QpSbHhuQzs/</link>
		<comments>http://superlumi.nl/making-games-48-hours-ludum-dare/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 25 Apr 2012 12:48:49 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Jeremy</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://superlumi.nl/?p=1379</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Failure is a funny thing. We&#8217;re programmed to avoid it, and yet it&#8217;s the single best way to learn anything ever. For most everyday things, failure is not some kind of doom. The only person who really can&#8217;t ever fail is John McClane, and you and I will never be John McClane. So it was [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Failure is a funny thing. We&#8217;re programmed to avoid it, and yet it&#8217;s the single best way to learn anything ever. For most everyday things, failure is not some kind of doom. The only person who really can&#8217;t ever fail is John McClane, and you and I will never be John McClane.</p>
<p>So it was with a great chance of failure that I attempted <a href="http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/about-ludum-dare/">Ludum Dare</a>. A ton of people each making a game based on a single theme within a 48 hour period. Sounds simple enough, if you know at least one programming language. It becomes quite more difficult when you kinda sorta know ActionScript 3 a bit. Still, it seemed like an interesting challenge, so I went for it. I was going to make a game in a weekend.</p>
<p>Now, I had dreams of making games ever since I was an idiotic teenager. This was before the indie scene blew up, and I had always seen myself as just a small part of a larger theme. That&#8217;s why I went to the Utrecht School of the Arts to learn how to design games and other interactive bullshit. Those were pretty much 3 wasted years of my life, but I won&#8217;t blame all of that on the school. After a bit more of soul searching I abandoned that career path and so far haven&#8217;t really replaced it with anything. However, in between then and now, I created <a href="http://physics-games.net/">Physics-Games dot Net</a>, which is still by far my most successful creation (not saying much). One of the best ways to promote a Flash game arcade is to have your site&#8217;s logo slapped on a game which is then spread to the billion other arcades that exist. Usually this requires buying the rights to a game or making some other kind of deal, but some arcade owners are game developers themselves, so they create their own games. Since I don&#8217;t have any money whatsoever, I decided that I should try to make a game myself to promote the website. Gathering the knowledge I did have of programming, art, and game design, I eventually managed to make <a href="http://physics-games.net/outer-space-hot-rod/">Outer Space Hot Rod</a>. My first game, technically, and not too horrible if I do say so myself. But there&#8217;s a hitch. I didn&#8217;t make the game from scratch. It&#8217;s a heavily, heavily modified version of a game of which I acquired the source code. Not completely <em>my</em> game then. I have been working on new games since then, not to promote the website anymore, but just for my own enjoyment, with the help of <a href="http://flashpunk.net/about/">FlashPunk</a>, which has certainly made a lot of the technicalities a lot easier, but none of those are near completion yet.</p>
<p>This Ludum Dare game would be the first game I made and released which would be all my own, then, and it would have to be made within a weekend. Of course I failed.</p>
<p>It started out good enough, though. The theme was &#8220;tiny world,&#8221; and though I spent a morning coming up with a number of ideas, it wasn&#8217;t long until I thought I had an idea which fit the theme, was feasible in a weekend, and which wasn&#8217;t too complicated for me. I&#8217;m not gonna go too deep into it, because I do still want to finish one sunny day far into the future, but here&#8217;s a little screenshot to get you interested, and to make up for the wall of text I wrote about myself again:</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1388" title="After All" src="http://superlumi.nl/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/screen2.jpg" alt="" width="450" height="450" /></p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>Making the visuals wasn&#8217;t that difficult (it&#8217;s not like a weekend game has to look amazing) and programming the planet to spin was easy peasy lemon squeezy, especially since I was using FlashPunk again. But once it game to coding in the gameplay, I hit a bit of a roadblock. It&#8217;s not that the gameplay was particularly complicated or anything, but there were a few things keeping me back. First was the fact that on that Sunday I was working on this game with about 3 hours of sleep, as I had spent the previous night creating the look, finalizing my ideas, and coding in the basics. Second was the fact that I&#8217;m just inexperienced as fuck. I make a lot of mistakes, I take a long time to do simple things, and I had some weird problems with FlashPunk that took up a lot of my time. Very little sleep is of course normal for such a challenge, but combining it with my general inexperience was just too much. Near the end of the day I was just too tired to go on, and I didn&#8217;t believe that I would be able to finish it on time, so I gave up. Dreams were dashed, hopes were wrecked, and Shub-Niggurath has been unleashed to come and fill my soul with the darkest horrors. (<strong>EDIT:</strong> Just realized a potential criticism to my actions: Outside of the 48 hour competition, Ludum Dare also consists of a 72 hour jam with less restrictions. So you may ask &#8220;why didn&#8217;t you just work one more day?&#8221; The answer is simple: Thesis. I planned in the weekend only, and on Monday it was back to work. So the answer to your question is shaddup.)</p>
<p>So yes, I wasn&#8217;t able to do what I set out to do. I guess you can call that a failure. I&#8217;m not sad about it though. While I would like to have finally released a finished game, I have the patience to wait until my skills are actually good enough to do it the right way. Thanks to this attempt at Ludum Dare I have more experience and a pretty cool game idea. It&#8217;s certainly no loss. I only won <a href="http://www.nanowrimo.org/">NaNoWriMo</a> on the third attempt. I bounced around, through, and over the wrong schools before I finally landed at the University of Amsterdam (three courses and a thesis to go, woo!). I had no money until&#8230; wait, no, still don&#8217;t have money&#8230; I&#8217;ve gotten really, <em>really</em> good at amassing debt though!</p>
<p>So yeah, I wasn&#8217;t able to make a game in 48 hours. About <a href="http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-23/?action=preview">1400 other people did</a>, and some of those are pretty awesome. Maybe I&#8217;ll join them next Ludum Dare. Until then, I gotta put some focus back on school, and I&#8217;ll see how I can finish what I was able to make for Ludum Dare.</p>
<p>But first, this:</p>
<p><a href="http://superlumi.nl/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/progress3.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1392" title="In Your Face Interface" src="http://superlumi.nl/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/progress3.jpg" alt="" width="716" height="508" /></a></p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<div class="feedflare">
<a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Superluminal?a=1QpSbHhuQzs:waD4T5abSTU:yIl2AUoC8zA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Superluminal?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Superluminal?a=1QpSbHhuQzs:waD4T5abSTU:7Q72WNTAKBA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Superluminal?d=7Q72WNTAKBA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Superluminal?a=1QpSbHhuQzs:waD4T5abSTU:V_sGLiPBpWU"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Superluminal?i=1QpSbHhuQzs:waD4T5abSTU:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Superluminal?a=1QpSbHhuQzs:waD4T5abSTU:gIN9vFwOqvQ"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Superluminal?i=1QpSbHhuQzs:waD4T5abSTU:gIN9vFwOqvQ" border="0"></img></a>
</div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Superluminal/~4/1QpSbHhuQzs" height="1" width="1"/>]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://superlumi.nl/making-games-48-hours-ludum-dare/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
		<feedburner:origLink>http://superlumi.nl/making-games-48-hours-ludum-dare/</feedburner:origLink></item>
		<item>
		<title>Mercedes Slaps LED Camouflage on Car for Promotional Purposes, But that’s not the Interesting Part…</title>
		<link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Superluminal/~3/nTu4sTSLZZM/</link>
		<comments>http://superlumi.nl/mercedes-slaps-led-camouflage/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 05 Mar 2012 10:14:23 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Jeremy</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://superlumi.nl/?p=1371</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[This video is doing the rounds, exactly as its creators had hoped: A camouflaged attracts attention (which allows me to use the word ironic correctly, but I won&#8217;t), so I&#8217;m not surprised by the onlookers in the video, or the popularity of the video itself. What does grab my interest is what happens around the [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>This video is doing the rounds, exactly as its creators had hoped:</p>
<p><span class='embed-youtube' style='text-align:center; display: block;'><iframe class='youtube-player' type='text/html' width='640' height='390' src='http://www.youtube.com/embed/ZIGzpi9lCck?version=3&amp;rel=1&amp;fs=1&amp;showsearch=0&amp;showinfo=1&amp;iv_load_policy=1&amp;wmode=transparent' frameborder='0'></iframe></span></p>
<p>A camouflaged attracts attention (which allows me to use the word ironic correctly, but I won&#8217;t), so I&#8217;m not surprised by the onlookers in the video, or the popularity of the video itself. What does grab my interest is what happens around the 1:08 mark. The car is parked on a square. People see it, notice that they can project themselves onto the surface of the car and so stand behind it so that they can act like idiots. Assuming these are real people and not actorbots, what is it that makes them jump out of their I&#8217;m-outside-so-I-will-act-normal shell and jump around and make poses and whatnot so long as it&#8217;s not seen in real life, but projected onto a screen that&#8217;s literally only a car-width away?</p>
<p>Is this one of those virtual-reality things where people are fine with whipping out their dongs as long as it&#8217;s not &#8220;real.&#8221; Is it the same thing that makes people expose their hideous faces and even more hideous personalities in Vlogs? Hell, is it the same thing that&#8217;s responsible for the worst place on the public internet, that place that collects the absolute worst, most depraved aspects of the human mind, also known as YouTube comments (not /b/)?</p>
<p>Don&#8217;t get me wrong, I don&#8217;t think there&#8217;s anything particularly wrong with the behavior in this video, I&#8217;m just wondering what it is that flips the switch from &#8220;this is real so I should act normal&#8221; to &#8220;this is not real so I can do what I want.&#8221; Trolling on forums or multiplayer games is one thing, as you can still claim some form on anonymity, but that&#8217;s not the case when it&#8217;s not only your image projected onto a screen, but when you are actually standing right behind that screen. Is it some kind of acknowledgement that reality is not reality anyway? I have concluded that most of the strange behavior by the general public is caused by the individuals within that group living in an extremely complicated and hectic environment, but having brains and minds which evolved to hunt wildebeest and not die before 15.</p>
<p>Of course I&#8217;m reading into this too much, shut up.</p>
<div class="feedflare">
<a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Superluminal?a=nTu4sTSLZZM:2Riarnu9LWg:yIl2AUoC8zA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Superluminal?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Superluminal?a=nTu4sTSLZZM:2Riarnu9LWg:7Q72WNTAKBA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Superluminal?d=7Q72WNTAKBA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Superluminal?a=nTu4sTSLZZM:2Riarnu9LWg:V_sGLiPBpWU"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Superluminal?i=nTu4sTSLZZM:2Riarnu9LWg:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Superluminal?a=nTu4sTSLZZM:2Riarnu9LWg:gIN9vFwOqvQ"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Superluminal?i=nTu4sTSLZZM:2Riarnu9LWg:gIN9vFwOqvQ" border="0"></img></a>
</div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Superluminal/~4/nTu4sTSLZZM" height="1" width="1"/>]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://superlumi.nl/mercedes-slaps-led-camouflage/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
		<feedburner:origLink>http://superlumi.nl/mercedes-slaps-led-camouflage/</feedburner:origLink></item>
		<item>
		<title>Oh Yeah, I Forgot to Tell You, I Made a Game</title>
		<link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Superluminal/~3/lG0rGFUQRx0/</link>
		<comments>http://superlumi.nl/outer-space-hot-rod-sorry/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 01 Mar 2012 11:38:37 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Jeremy</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://superlumi.nl/?p=1368</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[It&#8217;s called Outer Space Hot Rod, you may have heard of it before. It took me about 2 years to make (on and off) and it&#8217;s not very good. Oh well, I apologize and will try better next time.]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>It&#8217;s called <a href="http://physics-games.net/outer-space-hot-rod/">Outer Space Hot Rod</a>, you may have heard of it <a title="Outer Space Hot Rod: The Logo" href="http://superlumi.nl/outer-space-hot-rod-the-logo/">before</a>.</p>
<p>It took me about 2 years to make (on and off) and it&#8217;s not very good. Oh well, I apologize and will try better next time.</p>
<div class="feedflare">
<a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Superluminal?a=lG0rGFUQRx0:fzPqbv73bJo:yIl2AUoC8zA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Superluminal?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Superluminal?a=lG0rGFUQRx0:fzPqbv73bJo:7Q72WNTAKBA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Superluminal?d=7Q72WNTAKBA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Superluminal?a=lG0rGFUQRx0:fzPqbv73bJo:V_sGLiPBpWU"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Superluminal?i=lG0rGFUQRx0:fzPqbv73bJo:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Superluminal?a=lG0rGFUQRx0:fzPqbv73bJo:gIN9vFwOqvQ"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Superluminal?i=lG0rGFUQRx0:fzPqbv73bJo:gIN9vFwOqvQ" border="0"></img></a>
</div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Superluminal/~4/lG0rGFUQRx0" height="1" width="1"/>]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://superlumi.nl/outer-space-hot-rod-sorry/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
		<feedburner:origLink>http://superlumi.nl/outer-space-hot-rod-sorry/</feedburner:origLink></item>
		<item>
		<title>Hey Look, I Made Another Website</title>
		<link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Superluminal/~3/_yuQMayR9Tc/</link>
		<comments>http://superlumi.nl/hey-look-another-website/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 30 Jan 2012 16:22:19 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Jeremy</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://superlumi.nl/?p=1358</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Well, remade, reall&#8230; check it out: Fience Sciction. I&#8217;m trying to take my writing &#8220;career&#8221; more seriously, and I figured instead of using this website (which discusses everything from homophobia to the troubles of late capitalism to that one time I pushed my French teacher out of a doorway) a central hub, I&#8217;d use a [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Well, remade, reall&#8230; check it out: <a href="http://fiencesciction.com">Fience Sciction</a>.</p>
<p>I&#8217;m trying to take my writing &#8220;career&#8221; more seriously, and I figured instead of using this website (which discusses everything from homophobia to the troubles of late capitalism to that one time I pushed my French teacher out of a doorway) a central hub, I&#8217;d use a place somewhat more focused on my topic of writing. For now that means I&#8217;m just posting interesting links, videos, articles, ideas, etc. that I find online or create myself. Once I actually have writing to post or talk about, it&#8217;ll gradually shift over to that, and once I have an army of adoring fans, it&#8217;ll be about that. Yep.</p>
<p>So enjoy, or something.</p>
<p>Also, the site design isn&#8217;t completely done yet, so those of you who know me for my failures in the world of WordPress&#8230; Just be patient, okay?!</p>
<div class="feedflare">
<a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Superluminal?a=_yuQMayR9Tc:gsraSM4lvLE:yIl2AUoC8zA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Superluminal?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Superluminal?a=_yuQMayR9Tc:gsraSM4lvLE:7Q72WNTAKBA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Superluminal?d=7Q72WNTAKBA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Superluminal?a=_yuQMayR9Tc:gsraSM4lvLE:V_sGLiPBpWU"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Superluminal?i=_yuQMayR9Tc:gsraSM4lvLE:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Superluminal?a=_yuQMayR9Tc:gsraSM4lvLE:gIN9vFwOqvQ"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Superluminal?i=_yuQMayR9Tc:gsraSM4lvLE:gIN9vFwOqvQ" border="0"></img></a>
</div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Superluminal/~4/_yuQMayR9Tc" height="1" width="1"/>]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://superlumi.nl/hey-look-another-website/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
		<feedburner:origLink>http://superlumi.nl/hey-look-another-website/</feedburner:origLink></item>
		<item>
		<title>Christian Homophobia has Nothing to do with the Bible</title>
		<link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Superluminal/~3/65ldZ02R6h0/</link>
		<comments>http://superlumi.nl/christian-homophobia-bible/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 22 Dec 2011 11:48:58 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Jeremy</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://superlumi.nl/?p=1333</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[[Note: This post is mostly regarding attitudes towards homosexuality in America. I'm Dutch, and while we are certainly ahead of the pack when it comes to the whole "treating gays as if they're human beings" thing, there's definitely still plenty of homophobia to go around here. But I want to focus on America because even [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="text-align: left;">[Note: This post is mostly regarding attitudes towards homosexuality in America. I'm Dutch, and while we are certainly ahead of the pack when it comes to the whole "treating gays as if they're human beings" thing, there's definitely still plenty of homophobia to go around here. But I want to focus on America because even though it's clearly an empire <a href="http://americancensorship.org/infographic.html">on the verge of collapse</a>, the rest of the west (who are similarly on the verge of collapse, but haven't been able to rule the world on the backs of slaves for a while now anyway so the effects are less) still look up to them. America still dominates Europe culturally as well, because while they give us this:<img class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-1342" title="Fringe" src="http://superlumi.nl/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/Fringe-poster1-200x300.jpg" alt="" width="200" height="300" />the best Europe can come up with is this:<img class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-1346" title="Barf" src="http://superlumi.nl/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/Jedward-Ireland-Eurovision-2011-81-300x195.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="195" /> Also to fully analyze the attitudes towards homosexuality accurately would require too much reading and research for me right now. I have a Forensic Linguistics exam in a few hours, and I just need to get some of these ideas out there. Nobody reads this blog anyway.]</p>
<p>Quoth the bible:</p>
<blockquote><p>Thou shalt not lie with mankind as with womankind: it is abomination.</p>
<p>-<a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=leviticus%2018:22&amp;version=KJ21">Leviticus 18:22</a></p></blockquote>
<p>Let&#8217;s leave out the fact that a  two thousand year old text that has been translated and retranslated, edited and re-edited, can&#8217;t possibly have retained its message over that time. We can&#8217;t even understand some of the things Shakespeare wrote down, and that stuff is technically modern English. Those who believe in the Bible consider it the word of their god. Fine. Good. That&#8217;s what faith is. Alright then, why leave out all the other things? Why is nobody raging about <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=leviticus%2019:19&amp;version=KJ21">blended fabrics</a>? Why aren&#8217;t the physically deformed <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Leviticus%2021:17-20&amp;version=KJ21">kept the hell away from churches</a>? Why is <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Leviticus%2025:44-45&amp;version=KJ21">slavery banned</a>?<span id="more-1333"></span></p>
<p>The Bible, like all successful religious texts, is so successful because it so easy to pick the things you like from it and ignore or bury the things you don&#8217;t. I mean look at it, it&#8217;s huge. You don&#8217;t really think that those who quote Leviticus to turn gays into subhumans have really read and studied the whole thing, do you? Ok then, fine, so why do they choose 18:22 over the passage that tells them <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Leviticus%2020:9&amp;version=KJ21">they should be executed because they&#8217;re pissed at their parents</a>?</p>
<p>Because it has nothing to do with the Bible. For most people who identify themselves as Christian, the Bible is in the background. It is the basis of their religion, and possibly their faith, but it isn&#8217;t more than that. Most Christians (and yes, I&#8217;m generalizing here, as indicated by my usage of the word &#8220;most&#8221;) are not Christian by conscious choice, but because they were raised Christians. Oh, there are plenty of people who may have doubted their faith at some point during their lives, and then still decided that they wished to follow Christ (whatever that may have meant for them personally), but it&#8217;s not really hard to decide  you&#8217;re a Christian after all in a culture which has historically always been, and still predominantly is, Christian down to its core. I will most definitely concede that many of the values which are dominant in western society have Christianity as a source. But keeping it at that would ignore both the moral and cultural elements that Christianity itself had taken from the Romans and the Greeks, both during its early days and during the various revivals over the centuries. It would also ignore the moral and cultural knowledge taken from other, non-western cultures over the millennia. Most importantly, it would ignore the increasingly rapid moral, cultural, and even technological developments of the last century. To say that the majority of Christians get their morals from the Bible is as ignorant as to say that homosexuals enjoying the same rights as any other human beings is a threat to the stability of society.</p>
<p>For the politicians it&#8217;s, well, political, of course. Repealing Don&#8217;t Ask Don&#8217;t Tell was a compromise for Obama. It was an easy way to convince those who voted for him on the basis of HOPE that he actually did have <em>some</em> form of power, however symbolic it might be. The current circus show of Republican candidates don&#8217;t believe in compromise or moderation, so they&#8217;re just screaming loudly over each other. Whatever active brain cells they still have remember that the gay marriage debate, much like the &#8220;debate&#8221; around evolution, riles up the base like a pack of howler monkeys, and more importantly gives the media something to distract us all from the real issues with, and confuse this with actual popularity.</p>
<p>Ok, so it&#8217;s an easy issue to distract people with. But what are we being distracted from? Lizard people? Donald Trump notwithstanding, no, it&#8217;s not the lizard people. Those screaming the loudest, the white Christian majority, are realizing what white supremacist racist dickshits have realized for a long time now: They are losing their monopoly. It&#8217;s not that their morals are actually being corrupted, it&#8217;s not that society is actually in any risk of decaying (at least for these reasons), it&#8217;s simply that they have always been the ones who were in complete control, and that&#8217;s now changing. Oh, sure, it&#8217;s still a ginormous majority. The western governments are still composed mostly of White Christian Males, after all, and a huge influx of poor non-white, non-Christian immigrants doesn&#8217;t change anything that much, as they would have to assimilate themselves into white Christian society to get anywhere anyway. But it&#8217;s no longer a monopoly. If 9/11 did anything outside of give the west excuses to invade the Middle-East, it&#8217;s that it put a big fat spotlight on the Muslim communities living in the Americas and Europe. Not always in a good way, as my pathetic excuse for a fellow Dutchman Geert Wilders so clearly illustrates, but we are no longer in denial. These people are here. They have been here for decades now. They are as much a part of our society as we are. This is an irreversible realization. That&#8217;s why you have people like Wilders proposing desperate solutions like &#8220;let&#8217;s just throw &#8216;em all out and go back to the way it used to be, please?&#8221;</p>
<p>And it spreads, of course. It starts with the Muslims. In the Americas, the realization that Mexicans are there to stay is leading to cognitive dissonance among hicks on a scale previously only reached by the Vatican. The idea seems to be that as long as they&#8217;re able to send the illegals back and prevent more coming in, all the legal Mexicans will stay quiet and not influence things too much. But more and more people are realizing that, hey, those Mexicans aren&#8217;t Mexican at all, they&#8217;ve been American all along! The majority Americans also realized that maybe it wouldn&#8217;t be such a bad idea to elect a black president after all.</p>
<p>Things are changing, and it&#8217;s scaring the hell out of the White Christian Majority. The funny thing is, of course, that the majority of the Majority doesn&#8217;t care. They couldn&#8217;t give two shits about the color of the president&#8217;s skin or the geographical origin of the country&#8217;s immigrants. So the Majority isn&#8217;t a majority at all, but they still have some power, and they&#8217;re screaming and shouting as if they&#8217;re going to lose it any day now.</p>
<p>So why target the gays? Aren&#8217;t most gays in the west white and Christian by default? Sure, but gay bashing is still morally accepted or at the very least ignored by a large section of the population. Overt racism just isn&#8217;t accepted anymore, which is not to say that <a href="http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-december-13-2011/newt-gingrich-s-poverty-code">all old white men get this</a>, or that it doesn&#8217;t happen in the background anyway, but at least we&#8217;re living in a time when saying &#8220;fuck dem niggas&#8221; would swiftly end anyone&#8217;s political career (luckily I don&#8217;t have political aspirations). Racism itself causes some form of moral outrage these days, which only supports my point, but gay, uhh, -ism, doesn&#8217;t. It&#8217;s therefore a great political tool. And this does not just apply to those who are running for or are already a part of government. Anyone who is in a position of power, or believes he should be, whether its political, religious, or someone in the media, can easily rile up anger at, well, anything, either to get people to follow him directly, or to distract from the real issues like their actual impending loss of power. You see this happening in some African nations too, where to increasingly educated populace gets misled into hunting down gays by those who can feel the power slipping out of their hands. You might as well blame this for a shitload of injustices inflicted on the people of Middle-East by their leaders as well.</p>
<p>This is the true source of all racism, populism, homophobia, nationalism, etc. It&#8217;s not the fear of the thing itself. It&#8217;s not people reading the Bible and then all of a sudden realizing &#8220;hey, God doesn&#8217;t like this after all.&#8221; It&#8217;s preachers, politicians, the media, (unfortunately) influential people in power who are ridiculously <em>desperate</em> to maintain that power in the face of a changing world.</p>
<p>So don&#8217;t worry, gays, there&#8217;s nothing about your behavior that these people <em>really</em> think is wrong, nor are they actually afraid of you. You&#8217;re just a symbol of a world that is changing, and has in fact never really ever stood still anyway.</p>
<p>And to you homophobes out there, reality is hard to face, isn&#8217;t it?</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<div class="feedflare">
<a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Superluminal?a=65ldZ02R6h0:404vvGL4aZk:yIl2AUoC8zA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Superluminal?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Superluminal?a=65ldZ02R6h0:404vvGL4aZk:7Q72WNTAKBA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Superluminal?d=7Q72WNTAKBA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Superluminal?a=65ldZ02R6h0:404vvGL4aZk:V_sGLiPBpWU"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Superluminal?i=65ldZ02R6h0:404vvGL4aZk:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Superluminal?a=65ldZ02R6h0:404vvGL4aZk:gIN9vFwOqvQ"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Superluminal?i=65ldZ02R6h0:404vvGL4aZk:gIN9vFwOqvQ" border="0"></img></a>
</div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Superluminal/~4/65ldZ02R6h0" height="1" width="1"/>]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://superlumi.nl/christian-homophobia-bible/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
		<feedburner:origLink>http://superlumi.nl/christian-homophobia-bible/</feedburner:origLink></item>
		<item>
		<title>A Blog Post Twenty Five Years in the Making</title>
		<link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Superluminal/~3/eTv1-t6I1kQ/</link>
		<comments>http://superlumi.nl/birthday-post-2011/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sun, 18 Dec 2011 17:24:24 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Jeremy</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://superlumi.nl/?p=1327</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Today I am 25 years old. I&#8217;m happy. Here&#8217;s a picture of a couple of cute, colorful birds.]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Today I am 25 years old.</p>
<p>I&#8217;m happy.</p>
<p>Here&#8217;s a picture of a couple of cute, colorful birds.</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1328" title="Chirp" src="http://superlumi.nl/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/noah11.jpg" alt="" width="700" height="542" /></p>
<div class="feedflare">
<a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Superluminal?a=eTv1-t6I1kQ:WiiOJfg6g5Y:yIl2AUoC8zA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Superluminal?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Superluminal?a=eTv1-t6I1kQ:WiiOJfg6g5Y:7Q72WNTAKBA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Superluminal?d=7Q72WNTAKBA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Superluminal?a=eTv1-t6I1kQ:WiiOJfg6g5Y:V_sGLiPBpWU"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Superluminal?i=eTv1-t6I1kQ:WiiOJfg6g5Y:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Superluminal?a=eTv1-t6I1kQ:WiiOJfg6g5Y:gIN9vFwOqvQ"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Superluminal?i=eTv1-t6I1kQ:WiiOJfg6g5Y:gIN9vFwOqvQ" border="0"></img></a>
</div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Superluminal/~4/eTv1-t6I1kQ" height="1" width="1"/>]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://superlumi.nl/birthday-post-2011/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
		<feedburner:origLink>http://superlumi.nl/birthday-post-2011/</feedburner:origLink></item>
		<item>
		<title>Jeremy Wins NaNoWriMo 2011</title>
		<link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Superluminal/~3/1dM0r3kyi6c/</link>
		<comments>http://superlumi.nl/jeremy-wins-nanowrimo-2011/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sun, 04 Dec 2011 13:52:58 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Jeremy</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://superlumi.nl/?p=1283</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A bit more than a month ago I decided to give National Novel Writing Month a shot again. The goal: 50,000 words in one month. I had tried NaNoWriMo twice before. In 2009 my total word count was an amazing 1748. More words of fiction than I had ever coherently written, but only a bit above the [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>A bit more than <a title="Jeremy does NaNoWriMo 2011" href="http://superlumi.nl/jeremy-does-nanowrimo-2011/">a month ago</a> I decided to give <a href="http://www.nanowrimo.org">National Novel Writing Month</a> a shot again. The goal: 50,000 words in one month. I had tried NaNoWriMo twice before. In 2009 my total word count was an amazing 1748. More words of fiction than I had ever coherently written, but only a bit above the daily average required to reach the total word count: 1667. In 2010 I tried again. I did better this time, beating my old record by writing a grand total of 1749 words. That&#8217;s right, exactly one word closer to the goal. Reading this, you may assume that I have had problems with completing goals. Looking back at my previous creative attempts and academic nonchievements, this was absolutely 100% most definitely true. <em>Was</em>.<br />
Because it&#8217;s 2011 now, and NaNoWriMo is over, and my final word count for this year&#8217;s attempt is: <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 20px; font-weight: bold;">50,183</span></p>
<p>Yep, not only did I win this year, I did it with a few days to spare. And now I&#8217;m going to explain to you how I did it.<span id="more-1283"></span></p>
<h3>1.  The Difference</h3>
<blockquote><p>&#8220;The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.&#8221; &#8211; <a href="http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein#Misattributed">Not Albert Einstein</a></p></blockquote>
<p>Now, I&#8217;m not going to claim that I&#8217;m not <em>insane</em>, but I did think it would be a good idea to try things differently this time around. Step 1: Get a support group. Nothing motivates me better than showing off to people, it&#8217;s the only reason I do, uhh&#8230; <em>anything</em>. So, I joined fellow NaNo&#8217;ers on a particular forum I&#8217;m not going to mention because I don&#8217;t want worlds colliding. I would say that posting my word count there (almost) every day and discussing my progress with other people really helped to keep me going. There is one thing that motivates me almost as good as bragging, though, and that&#8217;s <em>shame</em>. So I decided to post all my writing on <a href="http://ge.fiencesciction.com/">a public Tumblr</a>, letting everyone who would be interested know that I failed. I posted my progress on Twitter for extra attention/threat of shame.</p>
<p>Another change I made was not using an ordinary word processor. Distraction-free writing is very important to a hyperactive-procrastinating-oh-look-how-many-funny-pictures-and-videos-there-are-on-the-internet-and-also-look-how-many-unplayed-games-there-are-in-my-Steam-list kind of guy. So I started with <a href="http://www.ommwriter.com/">Ommwriter</a>, and boy did it help. A soothing background, soothing music, soothing typing noises, it was all very soothing indeed. Unfortunately it started acting up after a while, with the on-screen text lagging behind my keypresses by a microsecond. This may seems like nothing, but a microsecond lasts a lifetime when you have ideas bursting out of your brain, so I sought an alternative. I found one in <a href="http://writemonkey.com/">WriteMonkey</a>. It isn&#8217;t quite as polished as Ommwriter, but I set a soothing blue background and typey sounds, and replaced the music with Grooveshark&#8217;s Ambient radio station, and I was set. I could write without distraction&#8230; as long as I kept my fingers away from alt-tab&#8230;</p>
<p>So outside of software, how did I keep myself from being distracted too much? More software, of course, come on. For a bit more than a year now, I&#8217;ve been adhering to my own interpretation of the <a href="http://www.pomodorotechnique.com/">Pomodoro Technique</a>, using a simple little app called <a href="http://www.focusboosterapp.com/">Focus Booster</a> to measure how much time I&#8217;m actually spending getting work done. I plan all Pomodoros in a little notebook, and check them off whenever I&#8217;ve completed one. Keeping to this routine has given me great results both for school and work, so applying this to the writing of a novel seemed like an obvious choice.</p>
<p>Oh yeah, I kind of had an outline for the story. Not a real outline, mind you, I didn&#8217;t even have any idea what the ending of the story would be until about a day before I finished it, but I did have a setting, a few characters, and an idea of what kind of tone I wanted. This helped, but I do find that making shit up as you go along is, well, <em>fun</em>.</p>
<p>And lastly, I made sure to use <a href="http://db.tt/NTPZJzk">Dropbox</a> to keep a cloud backup of my text. This didn&#8217;t really increase productivity, but it did save my ass a bunch of times. My computer is a piece of shit that sometimes has random Blue Screen of Death attacks, and getting one of those while you are saving your txt files leads to, guess what, a blank text file. I almost had  heart attack when it happened the first time, as I was closing in on 25,000 words, but good ol&#8217; Dropbox keeps older revisions, so I was saved.</p>
<p>I&#8217;m sure there were some internal psychological thingamajigs going on which also made a difference, but they wouldn&#8217;t have been reinforced if I hadn&#8217;t taken action to be better prepared.</p>
<h3>2. Numbers</h3>
<blockquote><p> &#8221;I couldn&#8217;t think of a good quote for this section.&#8221; &#8211; <a href="http://superlumi.nl">Me</a></p></blockquote>
<p>Here&#8217;s my progress chart from my <a href="http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/participants/jeremyoled/novels/good-excuses/stats">NaNoWriMo profile</a>:</p>
<p><a href="http://superlumi.nl/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/nanochart.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1305" title="NaNo Chart" src="http://superlumi.nl/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/nanochart.jpg" alt="" width="370" height="329" /></a></p>
<p>As you can see, I kept a pretty steady pace with the benchmark in the first week, lagged behind a bit in week two, and then sat on my ass for most of the third week. I hadn&#8217;t given up, I was just very busy with school and such, and couldn&#8217;t find any proper time to write. But then I got over my slump, and used the last two weeks or so to gloriously sprint to the finish, completing the goal a few days before the end of the month. I&#8217;m not gonna waste time posting the daily numbers here, but you can find them on the top of every post <a href="http://ge.fiencesciction.com">on the Tumblr</a>.</p>
<p>Speaking of the Tumblr, I made sure to add some Google Analytics to it to see if anyone actually read it. I linked to it on the forum I was active on, my Twitter, and my Facebook, but of course I didn&#8217;t expect much. Still, I&#8217;ll post the some of the totals of November here for posterity. I had 111 Unique Visitors and 368 pageviews. This is much, much higher than zero, so I am happy.</p>
<p>Lastly, I want to take a look at how many hours I actually spent writing. This is easy because I recorded all the Pomodoros. Keep in mind that some of these I spent outlining, and every now and then I wrote on paper in the train or while away from home. In total I have 110 Pomodors of recorded work, which averages out to roughly 55 hours of writing.  Dividing my total word count by this number gives me about 912 words written per hour, which matches my observations. There were plenty of times where I was a writing machine, pumping out words like I was personally getting my ass slapped by Stephen King, but other times I just kind of stared at the screen and drooled.</p>
<h3>3. Results</h3>
<blockquote><p>&#8220;Planning to write is not writing. Outlining &#8230;researching &#8230;talking to people about what you’re doing, none of that is writing. Writing is writing.&#8221; &#8211; <a href="http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/E._L._Doctorow">E. L. Doctorow</a></p></blockquote>
<p>On my <a href="http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/E._L._Doctorow">Twitter profile</a> I describe myself as a &#8220;pretend writer.&#8221; This is because I had never really written anything, but loved to come up with stories in my head. Sure, I have one shitty story I put on <a href="http://fiencesciction.com">Fience Sciction</a>, but it&#8217;s nothing I&#8217;m proud of, just something I wrote so that I could have <em>something. </em>NaNoWriMo, of course, exists exactly to help people get over this hump, to allow them to say &#8220;sure, it sucks, but I wrote a 50,000 word novel. Suck on that, dad!&#8221; Did I expect to win? I&#8217;m going to be honest here, yes I did. I&#8217;ve changed a lot since last year, and I took the challenge seriously this time. I can definitely say that actually <em>writing</em> has started to allow me to find my voice, my own way of writing and describing things. I haven&#8217;t yet reread what I wrote (more on that later), but I do feel that the last 10,000 words are a lot more elegant and well-written than the first 10,000. They certainly came out easier. The whole experience really slapped into my brain what I knew before but never acted upon. It&#8217;s exactly what that quote up there says. I can come up with worlds, ideas, characters, storylines, etc. all I want, but unless I&#8217;m actually going to write them down they won&#8217;t exist anywhere but in my head. There is no worse place for something to exist than in my head. I would know, I live there. So I&#8217;ve learned to just write, and in fact I already got some ideas for the next edition of NaNoWrimo, though if things work out I can pump that novel out even sooner. Or short stories, or whatever. I&#8217;m excited about my newly unleashed abilities, is basically what I&#8217;m trying to get across here.</p>
<p>All in all, this accomplishment symbolizes a turning point for me. I have conquered NaNoWriMo, I will soon finish <a title="Outer Space Hot Rod: The Logo" href="http://superlumi.nl/outer-space-hot-rod-the-logo/">my first game</a>, I <em>worked</em> for <em>money</em> this past month (just a temp translation job, but enough to afford a nice holiday season), and most importantly, I am finally approaching the end to my academic career, making my mom proud and leaving me with a potential backup if this whole &#8220;make money on the internet somehow someway idk lol&#8221; plan doesn&#8217;t work out. This is important to me, because I&#8217;ve always been that guy who doesn&#8217;t really work hard enough or finishes his projects, but somehow still always lucked his way into reasonable success. Sure, being lucky is fun, but it&#8217;s not a reliable path to success, you know? And it made me spoiled as hell. Why try, when things always work out for you anyway? Well I want certainty, that&#8217;s why. And I have great, great plans for the future me, but I need to change this &#8220;shit just kinda falls into place&#8221; attitude to reach them. Changing this attitude has been hard, and believing that it can be done was even harder. But here I am, I have completed the First Challenge. To the rest, I say: Bring it on.</p>
<h3>4. FutureJer</h3>
<blockquote><p>&#8220;If you don&#8217;t think about the future, you cannot have one.&#8221; &#8211; <a href="http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Galsworthy">John Galsworthy</a></p></blockquote>
<p>So I wrote myself a novel. Now what? Well it has always been my intention to become a self-published author. It&#8217;s becoming pretty clear to me that the old <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TwenCen">TwenCen</a> concept of writing a manuscript, and then leaving the rest up to an agent and publisher who will compensate you as they see fit, will not work for me. We&#8217;re living in a time when being self-published is most certainly a viable option. This takes work, of course. I&#8217;m going to have to rewrite the whole thing so that it doesn&#8217;t look like it was hastily written in a month, edit it or get it edited, and do all the marketing, etc. That will all take time, and effort, but I&#8217;m willing to put those in to maintain control of my work. However, I think it&#8217;s a good idea not to touch the work for a while, to let it sit for at least a month, maybe longer, so that I can look at it with fresh eyes again. This is why I haven&#8217;t even read it yet, and why I&#8217;ve been trying my best to ignore all the possible improvements to it that have been popping up in my head for the past week.</p>
<p>So until I&#8217;m prepared to take a look at the work again, I&#8217;m going to have to keep myself busy with other things. School, of course. Finishing Outer Space Hot Rod. Finally getting some kind of WordPress theme production going. And most important, coming up with an interesting idea for a webcomic which I will write and <a href="http://masoot.deviantart.com/">my most talented sister</a> will illustrate. I&#8217;ll probably be doing lots of other writing in between. Oh, and there&#8217;s also the matter of a BA Thesis that has to be done before the summer starts.</p>
<p>However, if you are still interested in reading the very first draft in what will (un)doubtedly become the first of many bestselling adventures of Thomas Thing and his friend, then please, by all means, check out <a href="http://ge.fiencesciction.com">Good Excuses</a>.</p>
<p>Also I&#8217;m totally the first person to use the word &#8220;nonchievement.&#8221; Write it down.</p>
<div class="feedflare">
<a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Superluminal?a=1dM0r3kyi6c:EFlyA_Hv2wc:yIl2AUoC8zA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Superluminal?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Superluminal?a=1dM0r3kyi6c:EFlyA_Hv2wc:7Q72WNTAKBA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Superluminal?d=7Q72WNTAKBA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Superluminal?a=1dM0r3kyi6c:EFlyA_Hv2wc:V_sGLiPBpWU"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Superluminal?i=1dM0r3kyi6c:EFlyA_Hv2wc:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Superluminal?a=1dM0r3kyi6c:EFlyA_Hv2wc:gIN9vFwOqvQ"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Superluminal?i=1dM0r3kyi6c:EFlyA_Hv2wc:gIN9vFwOqvQ" border="0"></img></a>
</div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Superluminal/~4/1dM0r3kyi6c" height="1" width="1"/>]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://superlumi.nl/jeremy-wins-nanowrimo-2011/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
		<feedburner:origLink>http://superlumi.nl/jeremy-wins-nanowrimo-2011/</feedburner:origLink></item>
		<item>
		<title>Womanspace and Buying Stolen Goods</title>
		<link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Superluminal/~3/k2n-KMTHkx0/</link>
		<comments>http://superlumi.nl/womanspace-buying-stolen-goods/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sat, 19 Nov 2011 09:10:19 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Jeremy</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://superlumi.nl/?p=1276</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[So here I was, slowly waking up, still very much in the zombified state I&#8217;m usually in for the 3 hours or so post-sleep, running through my usual bloggy news sources, when I came across this nice article on io9 regarding a ridiculously sexist story called Womanspace, published in Nature, of all places. So I [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>So here I was, slowly waking up, still very much in the zombified state I&#8217;m usually in for the 3 hours or so post-sleep, running through my usual bloggy news sources, when I came across this nice <a href="http://io9.com/5860949/">article on io9 regarding a ridiculously sexist story</a> called <a href="http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v477/n7366/full/477626a.html">Womanspace, published in Nature</a>, of all places. So I read the story, and then I read it to my girlfriend, and we both laughed at the fact that, if it wasn&#8217;t for references to current technology, we would have guessed that it was a story from 1952 or so. But it isn&#8217;t. Nope, it&#8217;s a story about a couple of men who figure out that women do half their shopping in a parallel universe, and it was published (and presumably written) in 2011. Like io9, I&#8217;m not going to bother getting ripping into the awful gender stereotyping, because <a href="http://contemplativemammoth.wordpress.com/2011/11/17/womanspace-responses-to-rybickis-display-of-male-privilege-on-npg/">a ton of other sources have already done that better than I could</a>, but io9 did bring up  another valid criticism of the work, namely it&#8217;s pathetic excuse for a scientific process.</p>
<p>I would like to add another log of criticism to the fire, but first let&#8217;s run trough the ways this story is <em>stupid </em>(as an English literature student, none of my instructors would appreciate describing a work as &#8220;stupid&#8221; but this is my blog and I break academic boundaries, yo.)</p>
<ol>
<li>Men are brave scientists uncovering the world, women tell them to buy underpants. Understood. Not only that, but there is a biological divide between men and women so huge that women are able to access a parallel universe. This counts for <em>all </em>women, and <em>all </em>men Unless you&#8217;re still one of those aging men pathetically living in the past, or a heavily indoctrinated woman, or somehow transgender but still fixated on heteronormativity because you&#8217;re oblivious to the real world, it sounds pretty stupid.</li>
<li>Science is when a couple of biologists (?) come up with a very non-biology related theory of parallel universes while shopping for panties, blog about it a bit, and then let the real scientists work it out. But we&#8217;re still the ones who found it. Okay, I guess. The real scientists are just the computers who work it all out for you? It&#8217;s the idea that matters, not the enormous amount of work required to find <em>real</em> data (not @replies), test it a billion times over, and reconcile it with our current understanding of the universe? Alrighty then.</li>
<li>It&#8217;s poorly written. Look, okay, I&#8217;m not gonna go into it because I still am in that zombified state, and I understand that very short fiction has its limitations, and I still suck at writing myself (I&#8217;m about 10,000 words behind on my <a title="Jeremy does NaNoWriMo 2011" href="http://superlumi.nl/jeremy-does-nanowrimo-2011/">NaNoWriMo</a> adventure to boot), but how the hell did this story get published. Seriously.</li>
</ol>
<div>Here&#8217;s number 4, which I completely made up on my own. What do the women do with the objects they take back from this fluffy, pink, unicorn-and-roses-filled parallel universe. They <em>pay</em> for them. In <em>our</em> universe. Now, I&#8217;m not particularly anti-capitalist. I think it has it&#8217;s problems and gets abused, but I also hate hippies, so I&#8217;m somewhere in the middle. But how indoctrinated by the almighty [insert favorite currency here] do you have to be to write a story, a <em>science-fiction </em>story, where people are able to get an apparently unlimited supply of items whenever they please and somehow still always pay for it in our world? No mention of the economic imbalance such a thing would cause, women <em>not</em> paying for it (because their just Gatherers, right?), or any real effect whatsoever. Sure, the author tries to brush it off by saying that women <em>may</em> not be conscious of their &#8220;evolutionary advantage,&#8221; but then also comes up with the ridiculous notion that the barcode scanners in our world would recognize the items because quantum-herp-derp-deepak-chopra. Even so, this ability is only used while shopping. That&#8217;s what &#8220;gathering&#8221; has become in this world. Not just finding things, but shopping, paying, exchanging things.</div>
<div>To me (and, I&#8217;m willing to bet, to many others) science fiction is about the effects of change on the world. What would happen if we found a planet which was alive, and could mess with the human psyche? What would happen if it turned out that your entire world was fictional, and that the newspaper game you were always winning was just a way for the government to use you to find enemy targets to bomb?  This is why something like Star Wars can barely be considered science-fiction. It doesn&#8217;t ask questions. This author too, doesn&#8217;t ask questions. What would happen if women had the ability to hop over to a parallel world? Holy crap, that&#8217;s incredible, what would they do? Oh, they&#8217;d go and buy shoes and cleaning products, things a <em>man</em> wouldn&#8217;t have a use for anyway? They&#8217;d <em>buy </em>them? Even though the parallel owner would never get the money anyway, unless somehow cashiers have the ability to return money back to the universe it belongs in? Status quo is good, says Ed Rybicki, don&#8217;t <em>ever</em> change anything, because I&#8217;m too old to cope with it.</div>
<div>Oh wait, there&#8217;s one thing that <em>does</em> change. Women are now finding better looking replacement men from the alt-verse. Because that&#8217;s all women ever want, right? Better looking men? Does it ever end with this guy? He&#8217;s old and wrinkly now, he may think he&#8217;s satirizing himself and other old, wrinkly, self-loathing men, so his defense will probably be something along the lines of &#8220;look, the men are incompetent in this story, and the women are capable of great things!&#8221; Yep. Great things. Like going shopping. Good job, Ed.</div>
<div class="feedflare">
<a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Superluminal?a=k2n-KMTHkx0:LgRK98s_RZM:yIl2AUoC8zA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Superluminal?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Superluminal?a=k2n-KMTHkx0:LgRK98s_RZM:7Q72WNTAKBA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Superluminal?d=7Q72WNTAKBA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Superluminal?a=k2n-KMTHkx0:LgRK98s_RZM:V_sGLiPBpWU"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Superluminal?i=k2n-KMTHkx0:LgRK98s_RZM:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Superluminal?a=k2n-KMTHkx0:LgRK98s_RZM:gIN9vFwOqvQ"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Superluminal?i=k2n-KMTHkx0:LgRK98s_RZM:gIN9vFwOqvQ" border="0"></img></a>
</div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Superluminal/~4/k2n-KMTHkx0" height="1" width="1"/>]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://superlumi.nl/womanspace-buying-stolen-goods/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>1</slash:comments>
		<feedburner:origLink>http://superlumi.nl/womanspace-buying-stolen-goods/</feedburner:origLink></item>
		<item>
		<title>Jeremy does NaNoWriMo 2011</title>
		<link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Superluminal/~3/v2b7-zsbBng/</link>
		<comments>http://superlumi.nl/jeremy-does-nanowrimo-2011/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 26 Oct 2011 10:58:59 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Jeremy</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://superlumi.nl/?p=1265</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[It&#8217;s that time of the year again. The leaves are falling, the days are growing shorter, going outside requires multiple layers of clothes, and tons and tons of nerds are going to try and fail National Novel Writing Month. I am one of those nerds. Whether or not I&#8217;ll fail remains to be seen (spoiler [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>It&#8217;s that time of the year again. The leaves are falling, the days are growing shorter, going outside requires multiple layers of clothes, and tons and tons of nerds are going to try and fail <a href="http://nanowrimo.org">National Novel Writing Month</a>.</p>
<p>I am one of those nerds.</p>
<p>Whether or not I&#8217;ll fail remains to be seen (spoiler alert: I will) but it doesn&#8217;t hurt to try, right? The goal is to have a 50,000 words novel done by the end of November. Luckily for me the quality of the work doesn&#8217;t matter, but that wasn&#8217;t enough to motivate me last year: 2345 words. And it took me a week. So I&#8217;m trying something different this year. I&#8217;m gonna try to motivate myself by placing all of my writing on a blog, have it be open to critique, and so I can cry when I see that over the course of that month 3 people have visited it. Still, I feel it&#8217;ll get me motivated, and maybe something semi-good will come out of it. Can&#8217;t be worse than Twilight, right? And that shit sold bajillions.</p>
<p>I&#8217;m not going to spam this blog with (hopefully) daily posts, as I have other plans for this site, so instead I have made a little Tumblr, named it after the name of the novel, and prepared myself for incredible digital shame.</p>
<p>You can check it out, and learn more about the currently non-existent novel, <a href="http://ge.fiencesciction.com">here</a>.</p>
<p>Hopefully I can balance this with school, work, and girlfriend, because winning NaNoWriMo would make me feel pretty good.</p>
<p>Oh yeah, if you follow me on <a href="http://twitter.com/JeremyUBER">Twitter</a> or are one of my few Facebook friends, you will get spammed daily (maybe) by my updates. Deal with it.</p>
<div class="feedflare">
<a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Superluminal?a=v2b7-zsbBng:zYsl863m6FU:yIl2AUoC8zA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Superluminal?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Superluminal?a=v2b7-zsbBng:zYsl863m6FU:7Q72WNTAKBA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Superluminal?d=7Q72WNTAKBA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Superluminal?a=v2b7-zsbBng:zYsl863m6FU:V_sGLiPBpWU"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Superluminal?i=v2b7-zsbBng:zYsl863m6FU:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Superluminal?a=v2b7-zsbBng:zYsl863m6FU:gIN9vFwOqvQ"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Superluminal?i=v2b7-zsbBng:zYsl863m6FU:gIN9vFwOqvQ" border="0"></img></a>
</div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Superluminal/~4/v2b7-zsbBng" height="1" width="1"/>]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://superlumi.nl/jeremy-does-nanowrimo-2011/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
		<feedburner:origLink>http://superlumi.nl/jeremy-does-nanowrimo-2011/</feedburner:origLink></item>
		<item>
		<title>On friendships, social lives, and the lack thereof</title>
		<link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Superluminal/~3/SQFUZXeT9Gs/</link>
		<comments>http://superlumi.nl/friendships-social-lives-lack-thereof/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 31 Aug 2011 09:42:24 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Jeremy</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://superlumi.nl/on-friendships-social-lives-and-the-lack-thereof/</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Hey look, Jeremy&#8217;s writing again! I would tell you how seriously you should take the following text but that would spoil all the fun! Bloody well right I am a man of few friends. My Facebook friend count, the ultimate indicator of True Popularity in this increasingly retarded world, has hovered comfortably around the mid-70s [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Hey look, Jeremy&#8217;s writing again! I would tell you how seriously you should take the following text but that would spoil all the fun!</p>
<h3>Bloody well right</h3>
<p>I am a man of few friends. My Facebook friend count, the ultimate indicator of True Popularity in this increasingly retarded world, has hovered comfortably around the mid-70s for years now. Of these 70-ish people, I have daily face to face interactions with exactly 1, weekly to monthly face to face interactions with exactly 2 more, see about 5 others a few times a year, and I&#8217;m lucky if I see 3 others once every half decade. Beyond those persons, it would be difficult for me to find more than a handful of the remaining 60 who I actually like and are deserving of existence. Basically, I use my Facebook to spam imgur.com links and show off my superior grades. Clearly, then, I may just have less social interaction than Joran van der Sloot, and he probably meets at least 3 Peruvian prisoners face to crotch every day.</p>
<p>The question is why. Why does this intelligent, hilarious, huge-donged dude not have many friends? The long answer is, well, long, complicated, and not always comfortable to accept, and will be elaborated on right after this next punchline. The short answer is that none of you are worthy.</p>
<h3>Take the long way home</h3>
<p>Let&#8217;s list potential reasons for social isolation, shall we?</p>
<ol>
<li><strong>I am diseased.</strong> A common explanation for social awkwardness is some light form of autism like Asperger&#8217;s. Clearly I don&#8217;t have Asperger&#8217;s, or I would be bragging about my &#8220;alternative condition&#8221; and I certainly wouldn&#8217;t call autism a disease. Also, I&#8217;m socially awesome, not awkward, just ask all those hordes of people who are my frie- Uhh, just ask anyone but all those morons who don&#8217;t like me because I tell them they worship false gods and smell bad.</li>
<li><strong>I smell bad. </strong>Factually incorrect, just ask my loving girlfriend who I&#8217;ve been with for six years and who TOTALLY DOES EXIST MOM.</li>
<li><strong>I don&#8217;t know how to make friends. </strong>False. I&#8217;ve had friends, I&#8217;ve had friends, sometimes even multiple ones at the same time, ok? Don&#8217;t tell me I don&#8217;t know how to make friends!</li>
<li><strong>I don&#8217;t know how to keep friends.</strong> Ok, uhh, you might be on to something there, but you&#8217;re getting ahead of yourself, alright?</li>
<li><strong>There is a global conspiracy to keep me friendless. </strong>Come on now, don&#8217;t be silly. If there was a conspiracy I would surely know about it because the conspirators are less intelligent than I am. I&#8217;ve played Deus Ex, alright, I know all about conspiracies.</li>
<li><strong>A combination of random chance and attitude. </strong>Ooh, I like this one. Let&#8217;s delve deeper!</li>
</ol>
<h3>Give a little bit</h3>
<div>If I&#8217;m gonna be rational for a minute, and I promise you it will <em>only be a minute</em>, then I could tell you that, just like most other things in life, things are more complicated than they seem, and a combination of both historical factors and good old fashioned personal responsibility contributed to my current situation. I moved around a lot as a kid and therefore had trouble latching on the social group, language and cultural factors interfered (those MOTHERFUCKERS) and by the time I returned to the place I had so long considered &#8220;home&#8221; I was too old to whore out for another social group. Oh yeah, that&#8217;s the thing, I don&#8217;t whore out. I&#8217;ve seen too many people (who won&#8217;t be named because I don&#8217;t remember their names) whore out for a social life. They hang out with people they would otherwise abhor simply because they are afraid to be alone. That ain&#8217;t my thing, so rapidly finding new social groups wasn&#8217;t and isn&#8217;t really and option for me. Strangely, my older brother, who &#8220;suffered&#8221; through the same historical forces as myself, has always found it easy to be socially accepted. Did I just call my brother a whore? Maybe, I&#8217;ll leave that up to you. He&#8217;s too far away to hit me anyway.</div>
<div>More stuff: I&#8217;m a homebody. Always have been, always will be. While all the cool people were out partying I was home playing on my Nintendo-powered Entertainment Systems, <em>and I loved every minute of it.</em> Sure, dorks who stay at home and play videogames don&#8217;t get a lot of chances to make friends, but they do eventually learn how to make their own blogs and can write blog posts overtly insulting everyone they&#8217;ve ever met. A whole <em>half-dozen</em> people will read those insults. So take <em>that</em>!</div>
<div>So there, my life has been a troubled one. Historical forces + my addiction to GoldenEye 64/Perfect Dark/Counter-Strike/Team Fortress 2 means that I no longer require belonging to a social group to function. Pity me. Pity me, because that makes you weaker than me, and then I can get the upper hand in case we are stuck in a post-apocalypse scenario and I need to take leadership of our rag tag group of survivors because that way I probably won&#8217;t die maybe perhaps.</div>
<div>Oh, and there&#8217;s another thing. I have this thing I do&#8230; I cut toxic relationships out of my life like a tumor with a 1.21 Jigawatt laser. This is another one of my superpowers. I know I&#8217;m one of the few people with this power, because I keep seeing people get stuck, not being able to shake off someone that is obviously of no benefit to them. They stay in friendships, romantic relationships or in contact with family members not because they love or care for the other person, not because having that person in their lives is of any benefit to them, but because they&#8217;re used to that situation and are too pussified to change it. Here&#8217;s my advice to you: Is there no benefit to your relationship with someone? Ignore it, and let it fester like a forgotten house cat trapped in the shed. Is the relationship old and does it have too much momentum to just expect the other person to understand that they need to step the fuck off? Hack that shit off with an atomic chainsaw. When you burn your bridges, you have to burn them to the motherfucking ground. That way, when you&#8217;re drunk, or tired, or lonely, or sick, or in a particularly stupid mood, there&#8217;s no way back. Delete all records, leave no stone unburned, and for the love of all that is holy and precious, do not, I repeat, DO NOT accept any friend requests from that person on any social network under any circumstances. Just turn your back. Your future self will appreciate it, while the inferior alternate universe version of you who did not heed my advice will suffer.</div>
<h3>The logical song</h3>
<p>Here&#8217;s the thing, right&#8230; <em>society&#8230; </em>in other words, all those assholes who keep telling you what to do because it&#8217;s what they do, and who will throw you in a prison cell just because you hacked every appendage off that annoying loud neighbour of yours and fed his remains to the local seagulls&#8230; society is bullshit man. Especially when society&#8217;s opinion conflicts with my own. Because here I am, in 2011, with a very small, very strangely constructed social circle, and I&#8217;m <em>happy. </em>Because fuck you guys, you don&#8217;t know what&#8217;s good for me. You hardly know what&#8217;s good for yourselves! My delusion is much better, shinier, and sexier than your delusion, and I have no regrets whatsoever.</p>
<p>Though I do kind of miss that blonde chick whose life I saved back in high school&#8230;</p>
<div class="feedflare">
<a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Superluminal?a=SQFUZXeT9Gs:bCcf63_bcGU:yIl2AUoC8zA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Superluminal?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Superluminal?a=SQFUZXeT9Gs:bCcf63_bcGU:7Q72WNTAKBA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Superluminal?d=7Q72WNTAKBA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Superluminal?a=SQFUZXeT9Gs:bCcf63_bcGU:V_sGLiPBpWU"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Superluminal?i=SQFUZXeT9Gs:bCcf63_bcGU:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Superluminal?a=SQFUZXeT9Gs:bCcf63_bcGU:gIN9vFwOqvQ"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Superluminal?i=SQFUZXeT9Gs:bCcf63_bcGU:gIN9vFwOqvQ" border="0"></img></a>
</div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Superluminal/~4/SQFUZXeT9Gs" height="1" width="1"/>]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://superlumi.nl/friendships-social-lives-lack-thereof/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>1</slash:comments>
		<feedburner:origLink>http://superlumi.nl/friendships-social-lives-lack-thereof/</feedburner:origLink></item>
	</channel>
</rss>

