It was recently pointed out to me that Blender can be used as a video editing tool. This is great news, since I thought it was only a 3D graphics application, and I like the idea of using fewer programs so I can learn the ones I do use more thoroughly. The following video provides the basic experience of using this program for editing videos.
It actually looks (relatively) easy to use. I am looking forward to learning more about this software. There are other video tutorials available, as well as loads of documentation. So look around for that stuff before getting too frustrated at its complexity.
Remember; I am just learning how to use this stuff myself. I want us to learn together. So throw up links in the comments if you know of other resources.
Technology is supposed to make our lives easier, and it does, sometimes. The big problem is that the new technologies keep on coming, and each new thing has a learning curve involved with it that actually slows us down, at least for a while, before it helps us to pick up speed in the end. And how long will we be able to use that before we feel compelled to chase after the next generation of gadget?
I'm very happy with the camera so far, and with all the junk I bought in order to use it. I got a full size tripod and a tabletop version, a shotgun microphone, light system with stands, carrying bags. I am quite sure that it can produce high quality images and videos because I accidentally get the settings right on occasion. It's less than ideal for a first camera, and probably not good enough for a professional. It's just about right for me, even though it's taking some time to learn how the menus work.
The camera itself is not where the greatest difficulty lies. The editing software is what has really bogged me down. I've never used it before because I haven't had good enough images to start with to warrant trying to improve them. For editing photos, I think GIMP is going to work out well for now. I haven't yet figured out what I will be using for video editing. If you have suggestions for a Linux user, let me know. It's got to be fairly easy to use, yet capable of handling 4k. I haven't looked too hard for this stuff though. I've been collecting some content so I'll have something to edit. Soon.
Wow. We had quite a few technical difficulties in this episode. But I feel like it was a pretty good start trying to tackle the questions we raised. We as a community still have a long way to go before we can work out how to work through this stuff.
I think there are many points within the conversation that could be delved into more deeply. I'd really appreciate some feedback on what other people believe are worth looking into in greater detail and why you see think it is worthy of discussion. We need to sift through it and focus our attention on key points in a framework that makes them more manageable.
I am in full support of efforts made by anti-feminists such as Milo Yiannopolous and many others in the YouTube community and Social Media generally. However, I do want to move past that in my own life. I continue to hear criticisms of Feminism or Social Justice Warriors, and that is good for the general culture, but many of us are ready to move to the next step, since most of what is being circulated is just re-hashing the same thing. But, then, what is the next step? Look at the labels being thrown around. The alt-right and cultural libertarian crowds call the SJW's the “regressive left,” which is meant to poke fun of the fact that they call themselves, “progressives.” What would it take to actually progress? Progress is not just change, though many lefties believe that any change is good. Even a moment of self-reflection should prove the case that this is false. Some change is bad. We want positive change. We want change for the better. But that requires that we know what is better and worse, and these kinds of evaluations come dangerously close to having an objective set of standards by which to judge better and worse. But Social Justice Warriors are cultural and moral relativists. They view any objective standards as intrinsically discriminatory, probably because by any reasonable standard, Western Culture is the most humane culture. That is not to say that it is perfect, or that it doesn't have anything left to learn. I should make a quick note here, that relativism invariably deteriorates into hedonism, and then to Nihilism. Nihilism has a couple of relevant meanings that can be applied in this context. There is the one side of it having to do with the non-existence of objective moral facts, and the consequence of such a belief, that life itself has no particular meaning. There is no way to save relativists from this fate. They must be reformed. Next I want to point out that Feminism has been described as a type of religion. Is it a fair characterization? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. And maybe this is not a dictionary definition, but we all know that practicing feminists do not subscribe to the dictionary definition when they mount their attacks on us. It would be better to describe it as a cult. So, if this is true, we need to start addressing it as such. Therefore, we need to look at how people have dealt with cults in the past; that is, how to help the victims of cults to come back to a healthy view of reality. Which means that we need to have at least some compassion for these SJW's, when seeing them as victims of an unhealthy ideology. Even though they may not treat their adversaries as human, we should not respond to them in the same fashion. Furthermore, it's not only Feminism that we have to confront with this. We have to be able to apply this to all manner of Social Justice Warrior insanities, now and in the future. So we are going to dedicate this episode of “Group Therapy” to the investigation of cults behaviors and the treatments utilized when treating their victims. This way, hopefully, we will be properly armed to dispelling whatever crap comes from their mouths. Anyone who understands what I am arguing for (and why), and who is willing to do minimal research into how cult victims have been treated clinically for those experiences, please help us out. We need to figure out how to adapt those forms of treatments to the SJW's. So look into it, if you can, and contact me if you feel like you have something to contribute to the conversation.
I'm forever trying to make sense of the Social Justice Warriors. It certainly feels like an exercise in futility, since it feels like they are waging a war on sanity as such. There's not always any visible point to the kinds of things they claim to want. And it's ever so frustrating to try to make sense of such irrational people.
It does seem at times that they don't want us to believe our own judgment, like some burly guy that suddenly decides he wants to use your little girl's bathroom, because he "identifies as female." What kind of crap is this? And they have gone to such elaborate detail in justifying their delusions that you run the risk of buying into the same delusions yourself if you try to sympathize with their cause. It's crazy town.
The thing is, they do need us to be gullible for their tactics to work on us. You have to actually believe what they are saying when they saying something so obviously stupid for it to have any effect on you. They say crap like "all whites are racist," when it's so obviously itself a racist statement that you start to wonder if your own judgment is going berserk. No really, you're not the one that going insane. They are. And they expect all of the rest of us to adopt their insanity as our own.
There's a book used by mental health professionals, at least here in the United States, called, "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders," used not only to diagnose patients but also used for the purpose of writing grant proposals so new research can be funded. That's right, if it's not in the DSM, it doesn't exist. Like the Gender Identity Disorder that got removed from that manual. It's not a mental disease because their holy bible doesn't say that it exists... anymore.
The cultural and moral relativists have convinced themselves that there is no objective moral truths due to the fact there do indeed exist a myriad number of cultures in the world, and because they have not arrived at any single standard by which to judge the merit of a given culture, there must not be one, not now, not ever. Because that would be racist. It's pretty clear they are working from some professional guilt given the Christian missionaries trying to export their religion all over the world. And now the pendulum as swung to the opposite extreme. Now we are expected to believe that every culture is just as good as every other culture. Never mind the fact that some of these cultures are strapping on suicide vests. We're supposed to overlook that fact. Or even blame ourselves for their behavior.
Oh thinking about these fools is so tiring. It's just so much insanity it wears a person down.
Let's reflect for a minute about Social Media. Many times we focus quite heavily on content creation. Maybe we want to start a blog or YouTube channel, but we don't know exactly what it is we want to create, let alone how to go about creating it. And there's lots of materials out there to try to figure that stuff out. But you're probably already creating some content of your own in the form of microblogging. Most people online have either a Twitter or Facebook account, if not both. And there's a ton of other platforms, too, maybe with LinkedIn or Instagram. The point is that you are already engaged with creating content, even if only shorter versions of what I am doing with this blog. If this is true for you, then you have already started your creative expression. So it's just a matter of lengthening it up a bit and maybe changing formats.
Yet there's another side to Social Media, something a little more passive. And it does happen in the same platforms. When you like or share somebody else's posts, you are doing what is known as content curation. It is another component to your overall branding. By sharing other people's content, you are expressing a type of editorial control. It does reveal to others what media you are ingesting. It tells the rest of the world what world you are looking at.
I assume that most people are doing a little creation and curation all of the time, but in a fairly unconscious way. I also assume that creativity is not always easy for people, especially when they are still learning how to use the technology to create their own content. In my opinion, curation has a value unto itself, and I believe there's a place for it in that arena. I suspect that thinking of curation first may be easier for users to find out for themselves what most interests them and what they might be most familiar with so when it does come time to create more, they might extrapolate some kind of theme from the stuff they have liked or favorited on their other platforms.
Have you ever heard of the Horseshoe Theory of politics? I don't know that it's actually a real theory, or just something the Internet throws around. But the idea is that the more extreme you get in either direction, the more you end up looking like the opposite political profile.
It's hard to know where to align yourself these days. The media is probably lying, the politicians are corrupt, and the people are getting really upset about things they probably know little about. It's all one giant emotional reaction, with little sense being spoken by anyone. It's like we're all being lumped into one ideology or another, easily managed, like cattle. How is a person not to see it as part of a grand design?
People are being reduced to simplistic points of view on either extreme rather than cultivating more sophisticated and diversified opinions. Then they invest more and more emotional energy and become defensive whenever confronted by a different ideology. People end up hating each other rather than taking the time to understand what is happening to them.
It's time to take a step back and re-evaluate the situation. Just breathe.
I'm thinking I will try to do a Group Therapy hangout every week, probably Fridays. I just did one with Ad Verdisiesen from the Netherlands that I thought was great. I hope that in the future we have more guests on simultaneously to better serve the mission of it being a group setting with a therapeutic effect, however for this one it may have been better that it was just the two of us. It did get a little deep in terms of theory, so it may not appeal to a wide audience. I'd actually like to dig in even deeper to that stuff, but I worry that most people will not have the patience or discipline to come along for the ride. On the other hand, the material certainly does warrant a further investigation, so I'm going to have to think about how I should proceed with it.
The topic in question has to do with the fact that there are so many people online who complain about and mock 3rd wave feminism, but little appreciation for the underlying ideology that gives feminism it's foundation.
I had met Ad in a chat room during somebody else's hangout. Now I also follow him on Twitter and look forward to further collaborations.
I am so tired of talking about SJW's. I find the whole thing terribly boring at this point. However, they do have real power, somehow, in being able to get people fired and effecting institutional policy and the civil laws by which we all have to live. So we do have to address them. It will do us no good to just ignore them. Surely, we will have to take breaks from it on occasion. This kind of thing can really wear a person down. And maybe that's why they manage to get the presidents of universities to bend over backwards in order to appease them. Maybe institutional authorities just want the whiny little babies to shut up already. But as soon as you give them what they ask for, they invariably want more. The lesson to be learned is that they will never be satisfied, and it is a grave error to try.
It is bad enough that they want to be able to control our actions. But it's far worse than that. They want to control our thoughts and feelings, too. By controlling our speech, they control our thoughts. By controlling who we choose to interact with, they control our feelings. It's as if they want to peel back your skull and set up camp inside your brain, monitoring every little thing that is most personal and private about being a human individual. They keep clawing away, little by little. To what end? Why don't they want us to make our own decisions? You've got to wonder what their end game really is.
So the question is, "how do you the world to take notice of what you are trying to offer?" Right? Or maybe that's not the question at all. Maybe the question should be, "What does the world want that I have in my capacity to create for them?" I mean, I don't really know the right question. We're learning together, here. But if we can't figure out the right question, how can we figure out the answer?
We might look at a popular YouTuber like Sargon of Akkad and see what he's doing. Maybe we can learn something by following his lead. Some of his content is for laughs, some is for venting his anger and frustration at some particular issue of the day, some is his own arcane curiosities run wild. It's all over the board, really. It's hard to say what's motivating his production from one moment to the next. So I have to ask myself why I find myself following him. There's not a single reason for it. He scratches multiple itches, I guess. Eww, that sounds kind of bad. Oh, well. You know what I mean, right?
He does provide information, mainly from the point of view of what I take to be an average British citizen. He's a smart guy; he knows lots of things about history, and takes an historical view of the things that are happening in the news. So there's that. But he also tends to focus on a lot of contentious issues that don't necessarily have answers from within a purely historical view. Much of it seems to be about trying to discover what philosophical principles are even at play within current debates. And that's something I can relate to fairly well.
I think the point is that he is providing a stark contrast to what you get on mainstream media channels. Where the mainstream media is sensationalistic, he is calm. Where they are quick to hop around from one story to the next, he is dogged and sticks with the story until it is thoroughly digested. While they are somber and pretentious, he tends more towards a lightheartedness. So in short, he's the anti-media. At least, that's what I believe is a good way for us to think about what he's doing.
One of Sargon's guests at one point when he was trying to come to grips with the AltRight (linked article was written by Milo Yiannopoulos of Breitbart, and how I found Sargon in the first place) was Millennial Woes. Now here's a guy that I can relate to all too well in some ways, but he says some things that sound positively racist. And in that there's still the question of if he is wrong to do so. I don't know if my reactions against what he is saying is just a product of my own conditioning by liberal media. At any rate I know that the situation they are facing in Europe is a little more extreme than what is going on in the US, but then, for how long will that remain true?
Trying to figure out what is or is not the altright is not really something to get too deeply enmeshed in. What I can say that has benefited me in the exercise was understand greater nuance for my own case of how I fit in with he global political spectrum. And that's of interest in it's own right, the fact that the left has always been more internationally oriented and now that so many people are fighting against the extremes of left wing identity politics that they've found each other on-line in a desperate attempt to keep our sanity. What has become most clear is that the establishment right has failed to address the issues raised by Social Justice Warriors (SJW's). And what a great revelation that has been. It has led done some wonderful rabbit holes where you find some zany folks. And some that make scary amount of sense, when they're not talking about conspiracies on the grand scale. Check out Paul Joseph Watson for that adventure.
There's like a whole world of people popping up around Sargon. Some of those people he has inspired to become creators in their own right. You can look at Feminist Flow's Origins series that covers how YouTubers get started. But really, that's what we're trying to do here. We want to challenge the Big Media. And we're not big budget, so we need to rely on volunteer networks that help each other out. I can't leave this post without mentioning my absolute favorite YouTuber, SugarTits. She's so fun and talented, you've got to see it for yourself.
Some people react negatively to the idea of anonymity and its effects for online culture. There are at least a couple of reasons for this. One reason has to do with the idea that some will get online with their fake accounts and just go out trolling, which does happen, and they never have to pay for the trouble they cause. The other reason is that some people feel that if you believe in what you are saying, you should have the courage to sign your name to it. And both of these reasons have some merit.
On the other hand, some people will take offense to what you say and take real action against you. Sometimes it is fairly innocuous, just troll you for a bit and they forget about it. Then some will actually try to get you fired from your job, and even the best and most loyal employers have their limits, soon enough you will be too much trouble to keep you on. They've got actual business to attend to, so they don't want to spend all of their time reading hate mail about you. Maybe the company's public image is at stake, and of course they will take action at that point. The worst cases are when people you offend start campaigns to get you beat up, raped, or even killed. And obviously the instigators of these campaigns are not as guilty as those who actually pull the trigger. But there is a potential danger to be mindful of.
So do people have the right to feel offended? Of course. But do they have the right to not be offended? I think not. We as a society still have to work out the details of what would constitute hate speech if it actually were to be made illegal. Being offended at this point is so arbitrary. It could be anything. We can't always know what people will take offense to. Sometimes you do, and usually people of conscience will refrain on their own from saying needless things. Yet other times the offense really does need to be made in order to protect freedom of speech, and effectively freedom of thought. We should have the right to publicly critique bad ideas. And when somebody hides their bad ideas behind political correctness policies, offense does need to be given.
So protect yourself. Sooner or later you will say something that will offend someone, and it's better to take a few steps to avoid some of that if you can. Besides, if you believe that no one knows who you are, there is no reason not to tell the truth.
(for now we won't think about the fact that there is no such thing as real anonymity online)
Most people, when faced with someone who talks about conspiracy theories, dismiss them out of hand as a paranoid nut job. I do it myself when I hear people to start talking about the government covering up information about aliens and UFO's. But there's more to it, I think, because paranoia is a type of fear, and to entertain conspiracy theories is kind of scary. Or it can be, if you dig too deep too fast. And so rather than face the possibility of experiencing this kind of fear, it's easier to just say the one speaking is crazy so they can be dismissed and you can get on with your day.
At the same time, some of the issue is about familiarity with the narrative. Since many conspiracy theories aren't widely known, we can just laugh them off because they sound so outlandish to our ears. We laugh off those theories while we go back to munching on popcorn and believing what the nightly news tells us to believe. Because those stories are familiar. We are used to the propaganda that Big media pushes. And through constant repetition we have come to believe those stories ourselves.
But what if everything is not okay? What if something really is wrong with the way the world works? What if, for example, we are accustomed to listening to the news from a particular source and we are accustomed to that set of delusions, so when confronted with someone who is used to being indoctrinated by a competing set of delusions, we don't quite know what they are even talking about. We end up getting into a big tiff, arguing past each other mostly, defending our own delusions in order to attack theirs. This is not a healthy situation, and it just so happens to be the situation in which we find ourselves currently, at least so far as I can tell.
So is what I just said an irrational fear? What makes a fear either rational or irrational? Maybe we should start by looking if there is an actual valid threat, and if the way we have voiced our concerns captures the essence of that threat. For me, the biggest threat we face is a divided culture. The people are turning against each other because of what the boob tube has told them about their opposition.
And for what? Big Media may have its masters and some dark plot to control the minds of the masses. Maybe there's either an additional or alternative reason for this, namely that people tune in to the show that makes them feel justified in whatever forms of bitterness and resentment they already have towards the world, so networks find themselves catering to specific crowds with specific sorts of gripes, and they find that by being sensationalistic in the way they tell their stories it will attract more views, which translates into advertiser dollars. So maybe that's it, just a simple result of economic self-interest.
Maybe the Illuminati is pulling their strings. Who knows? It very well could be that some organization somewhere has figured out how to control us by directing our anger against each other, thereby safeguarding them from the attention we might give them if we had the attention to spare them. But the more we fear each other, the more we ask the government to step in to save us from those awful voters with the opposite political orientation.
Just one more thing I'd like to mention now. While it may be uncomfortable and scary to look at the possibility of conspiracies, you have to think there is at least the possibility of something bad that is actually happening. Unless you look into at least a little bit, how will you know that they are false? But at the same time, we cannot live inside that feeling of fear exclusively, so I do think we should keep such theories at arm's length, until which time they can be verified either true or false.
So I did my first Google Hangouts live stream using YouTube. I have to say the technological integration is not so seamless as you would expect, given that both pieces of software are owned by the same company. But at least it worked, so I shouldn't complain. The early parts of the video are pretty rough, but at some point we start to develop a rhythm in the conversation. So if you want to watch it, you probably want to just skip some of the earlier parts. Maybe the first third should be thrown out. I'm not too worried about it, though, since it was just a maiden voyage.
I look forward to doing this on a fairly regular basis. At this point, I'm thinking I'd like to do it about once a week. And I'll probably want to add a couple of people, but I won't want more than say 5 at a time in there. But it was fun to do, so why not. And it might even do some good, too, so sure. I'm in.
I figure that as I use the software I will get better at using it. Once I don't have to dedicate so much of my attention on what the software is doing I can focus on the conversation a bit better. So I'd like to think the quality will continue to improve over time.
Please let me know if you want to get involved with this stuff. It's an exercise in community building, so it's kind of by definition that I can't do it by myself.
I'm a fairly poor fellow, so I have to cut costs where I can. It seems the single best way to do that is to dive into the Linux operating system. There is quite a learning curve to this proposal, however. So, you should either just settle with Windows or OSx unless you are willing to do at least some work in learning at least some rudimentary things about operating systems. Probably the most frustrating thing about Linux to the new user is the sheer number of flavors it available. And to understand that, you have to put yourself into the frame of mind of an Open Source development paradigm. You see, anyone is free to modify the work done by someone else, so long as attribution is given. This is referred to as a 'fork,' and the resulting mod is known in the community as a 'distro.' The single best reason to get into Linux is that it can take a machine designed to run on windows and make it faster and more secure than what Windows OS achieves on the identical hardware.
There are literally hundreds of distros to choose from, however. Just tons of different options that can be useful for a more advanced user to get precisely the kind of optimization they are looking for. That being said, I would recommend that any first time users stick to either Linux Mint or Ubuntu. I use Linux Mint, myself, but I have modified it by adding in some Ubuntu packages. It's not really my objective to get into my reasons for that here. Specifically, the packages I have added to Mint come from a fork of Ubuntu known as Ubuntu Studio. It's probably the way to go to just get that entire distro if you've never tried Linux before. And I mention this in my blog because there's tons of advanced software for studio work that comes built-in to that version of Linux.
I don't know all of the ins and outs of the software I have managed to get for free. There's simply so much stuff to look through that it can be intimidating to get started with it all. It might not cost anything in terms of actual dollars, but there sure is a time investment required to go this route. Though, I can't imagine the stuff that you have to pay for in Windows or the stuff you get from OSX is all that much easier to learn how to use. At any rate, you probably owe it to yourself to at least check it out.
So I've started the blog. It exists. So something has been achieved just in that. All that this much success requires is a Gmail account and then setting up a blogger account and Blogspot address. So far, so good. I added a post that embeds a Youtube video. Quite simple to do, but that means you have to get your hands dirty with the blogger editor. Very minimal learning curve so far. Then I added a couple of static pages and modified the header so those pages can be navigated easily. So now I am free to write and do most basic things that I need a blog to do. Most of everything else I will do to modify this blog are just fancy effects. There may be a little functionality yet to be achieved, but that's probably more for my own benefit than what would be for the benefit of any audience I might have. And as I add more posts, the blog will start to develop a personality. Hopefully. And maybe some of the visual modifications I do to it may help to reflect that personality. But we shall see, right?
I'm very happy with the camera so far, and with all the junk I bought in order to use it. I got a full size tripod and a tabletop version, a shotgun microphone, light system with stands, carrying bags. I am quite sure that it can produce high quality images and videos because I accidentally get the settings right on occasion. It's less than ideal for a first camera, and probably not good enough for a professional. It's just about right for me, even though it's taking some time to learn how the menus work.
Let's reflect for a minute about Social Media. Many times we focus quite heavily on content creation. Maybe we want to start a blog or YouTube channel, but we don't know exactly what it is we want to create, let alone how to go about creating it. And there's lots of materials out there to try to figure that stuff out. But you're probably already creating some content of your own in the form of microblogging. Most people online have either a Twitter or Facebook account, if not both. And there's a ton of other platforms, too, maybe with LinkedIn or Instagram. The point is that you are already engaged with creating content, even if only shorter versions of what I am doing with this blog. If this is true for you, then you have already started your creative expression. So it's just a matter of lengthening it up a bit and maybe changing formats.
Yet there's another side to Social Media, something a little more passive. And it does happen in the same platforms. When you like or share somebody else's posts, you are doing what is known as content curation. It is another component to your overall branding. By sharing other people's content, you are expressing a type of editorial control. It does reveal to others what media you are ingesting. It tells the rest of the world what world you are looking at. 
I am so tired of talking about SJW's. I find the whole thing terribly boring at this point. However, they do have real power, somehow, in being able to get people fired and effecting institutional policy and the civil laws by which we all have to live. So we do have to address them. It will do us no good to just ignore them. Surely, we will have to take breaks from it on occasion. This kind of thing can really wear a person down. And maybe that's why they manage to get the presidents of universities to bend over backwards in order to appease them. Maybe institutional authorities just want the whiny little babies to shut up already. But as soon as you give them what they ask for, they invariably want more. The lesson to be learned is that they will never be satisfied, and it is a grave error to try.
On the other hand, some people will take offense to what you say and take real action against you. Sometimes it is fairly innocuous, just troll you for a bit and they forget about it. Then some will actually try to get you fired from your job, and even the best and most loyal employers have their limits, soon enough you will be too much trouble to keep you on. They've got actual business to attend to, so they don't want to spend all of their time reading hate mail about you. Maybe the company's public image is at stake, and of course they will take action at that point. The worst cases are when people you offend start campaigns to get you beat up, raped, or even killed. And obviously the instigators of these campaigns are not as guilty as those who actually pull the trigger. But there is a potential danger to be mindful of.
