Through this program the government is able to retrieve and store e-mails, pictures, video, documents, you name it. They’re also building a massive facility in Utah, five times larger than the capitol, to house all this data. If knowledge is power, then the real seat of the government is in that secret facility in Utah. 

Imagine for a moment that you’re in a scenario where you are able do something ethically wrong and are guaranteed not to be caught. Would you do it?

Obviously the responses you’ll get depend on whom you ask and what the unethical act is but, regardless of those factors, the people who say no are saying so because they feel a sense of moral duty to do the right thing.

Now take that same question and ask the government, a beast that is immoral at its core.* Would you expect the government to do the right thing?

This is exactly the situation we have in front of us. The government has the potential to do something deeply unethical: destroy privacy and freedom by watching everything you do. Without a higher power to punish them and without empathy to guide them, how can we expect a fundamentally immoral creature to do the right thing?** 

We can’t. They say they are only using PRISM to spy on foreign nationals, but nothing is stopping them from turning those same powers in against those they see as internal threats to their existence.*** There will come a day when they are using this powers un-apologetically against their own people. I promise you.

What really infuriates me is how people still buy into this absurd notion that the government is the “good guy” and that you are thus doing the right thing by complying with their laws. A tech podcast I listen to, Security Now, is guilty of this. When talking about privacy and security they are practically tripping over themselves to declare how much they want to be in compliance with the law and help “the good guys” catch the “bad guys.”

What if the government are the bad guys? Just try to imagine it for a moment. What would the implications be? Trusting the government to do the right thing with your privacy and personal freedom is like handing the key to your liquor cabinet to a kleptomanic alcoholic and trusting they won’t drink all your booze. If you do then you’re a fucking idiot and deserve the consequences. 

Also, in regards to everyone being shocked by these new revelations of government abuse, I’ve just one thing I want to say:

I told you so.

*If (A), It is immoral to force your will on another person though violence and (B), A government derives its power from having a monopoly on socially sanctioned violence, then (C) the government has a monopoly on immorality.

** Yes I am brushing up against on the religion/morality thing on purpose. I’m referencing that tired old debate on “does morality come from a higher power.” No, morality comes from empathy and the government is unable to empathize and thus unable to do the right thing. Individual people within the government might be able to empathize, but they are only a small part of a much larger and powerful organism with a collective conscious that is unable to empathize.

*** Historically, as government abuses grow worse, the population becomes more irritated and eventually enraged. The population is then seen as a threat to a government’s power. This coincides with the militarization of the police. The police are “supposed” to protect the people, the military is supposed to protect the state from its enemies. When the police become the military, then the people become the enemies of the state.

Back in the start of April I got a new job. I left the old one I was working at, the one I couldn’t stand, and started this new position closer to my house. I’ve been busier than I’ve ever been in my entire life. I regularly work 50 hour+ weeks. Despite all this, I love it. I love it because the people I work with are really amazing and my boss makes me feel valued and important. It’s the first time I’ve ever had job satisfaction like this. I just hope it lasts.

The job has kind of taken over my life for the time being. I was hoping to finish my atheism book by the start of April, but that didn’t happen. The whole project is on hold right at the moment. I have some more certifications I want to get, but I barely have any time when I get home to study. Outside of 1 weekend, I haven’t played any video games in a month. We’re looking at hiring more IT people at my job, and getting new servers, so my life should calm down considerably once that happens.

I’m still dating Kelly. She’s finally finished with her semester now. She’s got one more to go until she graduates! Oh, we planted a garden too:

She and I have been talking, and we’re thinking of getting married after she finishes school in December. We have a lot of the same life goals and values. We’re both atheists who want to move out of the US, travel, and don’t want kids. We really seem to “get” each other and I’d like to have her as a partner on journeys. She’s not too keen though on moving to Australia like I was planning. She made the point that, while it would be fun to visit, it’s a bit like a bigger Texas. Sure it has Melbourne and Sydney (and Perth), but other than that it’s pretty open and barren. I’m fine with that as a single guy, but she was hoping to live somewhere a little more urban and connected while she is still young. That’s fine. I just want out of the US. We can move around later. I’m thinking the most realistic and quickest way out is to Vancouver or Toronto. Personally Canada isn’t my first pick since it’s America lite, but at least they have healthcare.

But this is all stretching a bit. We’re going to finalize plans more as December gets closer. In the mean time my life has just been taking off. Three years ago I had no prospects and no friends. Now I’ve got an exciting job as a system admin (funny because I was running from that for the longest time) and an amazing woman to share life’s ups and downs with.

Ok, now that that disclaimer is out of the way…

I’m so excited! I just completed my first week long water fast! I had dinner with my folks on Sunday the 10th and we finished around 7pm. From that moment on I started a timer and consumed only water, tea, black coffee, and powerade zero until 7pm Sunday the 17th. Each day I took two doses of  25mg of ephedrine and 200mg of caffeine, along with one multivitamin. The ephedrine and caffeine, known as an EC stack, raised my resting metabolism.

So how did I feel throughout all of this? Amazing! The first two days are a little tough. You get hungry in the normal sense where you’d like to eat something, but I never got the feeling of OMG, I’ve got to consume everything around me!!! I just kept busy and drank water throughout the day. I did not get any headaches, low blood sugar, nor did I feel weak. After day three I stopped getting any physical urge for food. This was extremely liberating. I just went about my day and the idea of eating just became like another chore, but one I didn’t have to do. I went on jogs with the dog, and even did a couple of pull-ups each day.

Previously my record was 4 days. That fast was a lot more difficult because I allowed myself chicken and beef broth throughout. I’ve found that it’s a lot easier if I abstain completely from calories. If I don’t, my digestive system never really goes dormant and it makes everything more difficult. At the end of that fast I made the colossal mistake of breaking it on an all you can eat steak dinner. My digestive system really didn’t like that. This time I’m trying to take it slow with live culture yogurt, soft fruits, and juice. I’ll slowly work my way back up to more solid foods.

This whole thing has provided me with an opportunity at a lifestyle reset. I feel it’s easier to start eating health now that I’m starting from zero. I also reset my portion size. I feel full faster and thus can be happy with much smaller portions.  Weight has always been an issue for me since I graduated high school. Everyone’s body and genetics are different, so what works for one person won’t always work for another. Over the years of trial and error I’ve come to the conclusion that the only thing that really works for me is limiting calories and trying to avoid sugars and carbs. I made my first real losses when I adopted a routine of oatmeal, a granola bar, a cup of tuna, and a small dinner. That was back when I was working my first real job. I cut out the granola bar and lost even more.

When you’re fasting you begin to realize how everything in our society is completely saturated in food. Eating is how we socialize. You’d be hard pressed to go out with friends and not consume something, be it a movie snack or a beer. I drove down to the hardware store the other day and was just amazed by how many places there are to eat. Seriously, look around. Most people never notice it, but you can hardly look in any direction while driving down a main road without seeing a plethora of fast food joints or sit down restaurants. Walk into a store and there’s food everywhere. It doesn’t even have to be a store focusing on food! The hardware store had shelves with soda and candy in the checkout line. It’s no wonder Americans are so obese.

Part of the reason I was successful in this week long fast was because I just removed myself from food as much as possible. My girlfriend was out of town for the week and it was just myself and the dog. I taped the fridge up to remove any temptation to open it (though in reality I never was tempted at any time) and I stayed at work while my coworkers went off to eat. It was impossible for me to lose weight at college and living with my parents because easy food was just there all the time. I was also required to eat when it was the designated time because that’s how we socialized.

Doing my research for this fast was a little challenging. It’s difficult finding good, authoritative sources on what exactly to expect and how to come off the fast. Fasting is unfortunately also associated with a lot of “woo” bullshit new age crap like detox. There are a lot of people out there that buy into this idea that your body is full of “toxins” (whatever that is, it’s never clearly defined) from all the bad genetically modified food we eat and the chemicals we use. To get rid of these nondescript toxins, people fast to detox. It’s all a bunch of bullshit because your body normally gets rid of “toxins” in normal bowel movements and whatever other “toxins” exist are never actually clearly defined in a way that they can be scientifically tested.  It’s the same bullshit as the vague notion of “energy” in new age circles. I had to wade through a lot of this to find good information.

So how did I do on this fast? Well I didn’t check my start weight because I’ve been avoiding going by the scale as a measure of success. Instead I’ve been going by what pant size I could fit in and how I felt physically.  Before my fast I fit in a 40 really comfortably, a 38 snugly, and couldn’t fit in a 36. This was back up from 6 months ago when I fit in a 36 nicely. Well after my fast 40 is loose, 38 is comfortable, and 36 is snug. I did check my weight and I’m back down to 215. The best I ever got at one point was 205, but then I got excited about getting so close to my goal, I fell off the wagon and went right back up. My short term goal is to fit comfortably in a 36 since that’s the size of most of my jeans. Ultimately I’d like to reach a 32, but I’ll be ecstatic if I hit 34.

Where do I go from here? Well I’m considering looking into doing a combination of keto (no sugar/carbs) and IF (intermittent fasting). This will help me keep my calorie intake low and make the calories that I do consume good calories. What I really don’t understand is my willpower. There will be times when I can just decide to make big lifestyle changes and then there are times when I feel like I have no willpower at all. For example: I’ve quit soda for several months now. I just decided one day “Hey, I’m not going to drink soda, not even diet” and I just stopped cold turkey. There will be other times when I’m doing fine and then I see a bag of chocolate and I just think to myself “fuck it” and I demolish the whole thing. I’m really not sure what’s going on with that. I would say that it’s an issue of being presented with temptation, but I’ve been presented with the opportunity to have a soda plenty of times, but I always never feel the urge.

Anyways, that’s something I’ll have to look into, but for the time being, I’m happy and feeling great.

I would periodically make trips to department stores and thrift stores, but it was hard to find something when I didn’t have a good concept of what I was looking for. I’d collect inspiration albums of outfits I thought looked really sharp, but often I feel that the outfits look good only because the models wearing them look good. It’s true that if you look good without clothes, you’ll look good with clothes. The opposite is true too: If you look horrible without clothes then there isn’t too much clothes can do to conceal it. Sure there are some things, but generally it’s best to be in shape. I’ve been working on that and my wardrobe at the same time.

One of the best fashion discussion communities I’ve found is the Male Fashion Advice community on reddit. They have lots of really great guides designed to help someone move from just throwing on whatever is in the clean pile to actually dressing like a well put together adult. When you start to learn a little about how clothes should fit and hang on the body, you’ll quickly become aware of just how poorly the majority of people dress themselves. You’ll also start to notice and appreciate those who take the time to do it well.

One of the areas I’ve really wanted to improve upon is footwear. There’s something distinctly American about wearing sneakers everywhere. When traveling abroad you can usually pick out the American tourists by their shoes. Lots of people also tend to wear boxy, ugly, square toed shoes that don’t compliment the human form. Slip-ons are also a common sin. Over the years I’ve been really guilty of this. For a long time the shoe I wore everywhere was a Merrel Moc:

They were easy to put on and take off and were extremely comfortable. While they were great shoes, I wore them primarily as a teenager. My wardrobe didn’t go beyond jeans and an ill-fitting t-shirt.  My first big improvement after reading up on fashion was a pair of Bucks:

These shoes are great for casual wear around town. You can even wear them sock-less in the summer if you want, though I’m not too overly a fan of this. The only downside is that the sued darkens really quickly. Mine have gone from tan to a chocolate brown. The next improvement I had my eye on was a pair of wingtips. Wingtip shoes have little design patterns on them like this:

The dilemma now was to what shoe to get. There are plenty of wingtip shoes out there but most of them are cheaply made shoes by either Bostonian or Johnston & Murphy. All the research I did into which shoes to buy always said to not skimp on the shoes. A good pair of well constructed shoes might cost 5-6 times that of a cheaper pair, but they age much better and can last several decades if you take care of them. If I was going to try and get a genuinely nice pair of shoes I needed for them to be flexible enough to be worn with most anything. Brown is usually more flexible than black as far as shoes go, and lighter brown even more so.

The pair I had my heart set on was Allen Edmonds McAllister. I went to the fine clothing store downtown and place an order, but since I have such wide feet I had to wait a for a custom pair to be shipped in from the factory. Well after a month of waiting they’re here and they’re stunning.

I’m so excited that they’re in, I’m giddy. I wore them around a little bit yesterday, but I’m being supper careful with them as they’re my baby. I know this might sound stupid, but I feel a big confidence boost by just wearing them. I still have a long way to go with both weight and wardrobe, but I imagine my confidence will continue to rise as I get better with both.

I’ve previously defended r/atheism as a necessary community, despite all that goes on there. It’s important for a minority to have a “minority space” apart from the general public space where they can exist freely. Think of it as a sanctuary. (Pun intended) Other people on reddit might lament r/atheism’s prominence, but reddit is not a mirror of American society where atheists are in the minority.

Despite the need for a place like r/atheism, that place is still shit. Long ago I unsubscribed as it was nothing but memes and people posting “facebook pwnage” wherein they post pictures of them alienating and offending their religious friends. Thoughtful discussion is nowhere to be found. Just anger, obnoxious pictures, and circle-jerk cheer-leading.

I made the mistake of going on there and asking a research question for my book. I wanted to see what other atheists were interested in when they began to be interested in religion and atheism. I was trying to better focus on my audicence and what I should cover in the book.

Instead my post was instantly downvoted into the ground. If you don’t go on reddit, there are “upvotes” and “downvotes.” People are supposed to use upvotes to signal that they think something is a good submission, regardless if they agree or not, and downvotes to signal that they think something is a poor submission. In reality people just use it as an agree/disagree button. You might type up a well reasoned response to something, but people will still downvote you if they disagree. There’s often a brutish tribal aspect to it that we refer to “the hive mind.”

I thought perhaps someone had set up a downvote bot against my account (something that automatically downvotes everything you post) so I erased my original post and posted again under another account. That got downvoted into the ground too and someone asked me

“why do you keep posting these fucking stupid questions then deleting them?”

To which I responded about the downvote bot. I got in reply

“no, you fuck.

My first attempt was a disaster. I made the flashcards to be printed out on paper and then attempted to piggy back my templates onto a third party flashcard application for smart phones. The user experience was abysmal. After getting some helpful input from people who bought my flash cards, I decided to try and make a stand alone smart-phone application. I spent the next month to two months of my life focused on writing this application. I had no coding experience and no idea about writing apps. I stumbled upon PhoneGap, a site that lets you drag and drop items in a graphical interface to build an application. This application could then be ported onto any smart phone. The downside (that I realized only after spending a month on this app) was that PhoneGap doesn’t create a finished stand alone program. It creates a “web app”. It looks and acts like a stand alone app for a smart-phone, but it’s not. It’s actually a cleverly disguised webpage. As such, you need a constant internet connection to use it. I got as far as having a working app on my phone, but the disappointment of not having a stand alone app after all that work (and the daunting task of trying to learn to program) combined with life events to kind of side-tracked me after that point.

It was while working on that phone app that my project began to change. It was no longer about just creating a smart-phone version of debate flashcards. I realized that what I was working on had the potential to be something much more. There was also just so much information that I was having trouble fitting into a flash card format. Furthermore, the flashcards seemed kind of arbitrary given that they weren’t tied to anything. Usually when one creates flashcards it’s because they’ve read or studied something and are making the flashcards based off of what they’ve studied. Well without something to study, there was no way anyone could get the flashcards right the first time through. The only way to begin to get the flashcards right would be to get them wrong over and over again.

Well fast forward a few months till now and I’ve started thinking about picking up the project again. I started watching more courses on how to program specifically for smart-phones and pulled some more books out of the library. It was at this time that my girlfriend suggested that perhaps an ebook would be a better format for the information I was trying to convey. I could always follow up with flashcards if I really wanted to. This got me really excited. I could do an ebook. I could get all my information across much more easily that way, and I wouldn’t necessarily have to learn to program an app.

The biggest problem I’m having right at the moment is that I don’t know what the focus of the book should be. I’m not entirely clear on what I’m trying to accomplish, and what the scope should be. I’m also not entirely sure of my target audience.

Originally I thought I would focus on orienting “new” atheists (or anyone for that matter) to the atheist community/movement/whatever. Whenever anyone becomes interested in something for which there is a community, there’s always this difficult period of orienting one’s self and discovering who’s who, what’s what, and what the current issues are and where the community is headed.  At the time I felt really connected to and current with the atheist community and figured I could use this in my project. However, it was a few months after I started this project that I decided to stop listening to the news and politics because I was just in a constant state of rage. Incidentally, I stopped really listening to atheist podcasts too since many of them talk about infuriating news reports relating to atheism. I kind of dropped out of the community then. I hadn’t done anything since the Reason Rally, and I stopped going to my local atheist meetups. I feel like I’m really out of touch with what’s going on in the community at the moment, and that kind of scares me when trying to write this book. So maybe orienting people in the community shouldn’t be my main focus.

Instead I think I’m going to try and orient them to religion and atheism in general. Sure I’ll point them to community things, but my main focus is going to be closer to the original intent of the debate flashcards, education.

I would like to direct my book at people who either just left a faith, or who have always been non-religious, but never took an interest until now. I would like to give them a good foundation of things they should know to in order to be a well rounded person when it comes to religion. I’m going to expand on the topics in my debate flashcards and cover things like general religious terminology, the well reasoned argument, logical fallacies and argumentation structure, the scientific method, a general overview of philosophy and the various fields, comparative religions including how the religions are structured, core tenets and beliefs, sacred texts and their history/characters/themes, and religion in a modern governmental/societal context. (Just to name a few)

The biggest issue I’ve run into so far is trying to keep the right scope. There are volumes and volumes of books written about everything I just mentioned. I’ve really got to fight the researcher in me that wants to write 20-30 page term papers on each subject. I’d never get my book done that way. I need to force myself to be general. This book is meant to orient people, to make them aware of things they might not be aware of, and to point them in the right direction if something in particular interests them. At the same time I’m worried about making it too general. I want to make something of value, something I won’t feel wrong asking people to pay for.

CNN was having a segment on “Atheism in America.” TJ was their atheist, and then they had a panel of hostile guests there to rebuke the atheist. After the first guest started going on about how much he respects the soon to be ex pope for fighting against secularism and radical Islam, I put on some jazz and turned up my headphones.

Listening to that fake discussion with TJ as the representative of all atheists was just going to make me rage. I also really don’t want to have the religious discussion with my coworkers. I’ve long since realized it’s not productive to try and have conversations with them on religion, the intricacies of foreign politics, or anything for that matter. They’ve never really been outside of South Carolina and they get all their news from CNN and Fox.

Anyways, so CNN picks the most combative, scruffy looking atheist they could find, put him in front of a camera and then has a panel of respectable looking, family loving, wholesome adults attack him and how his views are a danger to your children. It’s almost like attacking a strawman. Then CNN’s viewers just eat it up.

I feel the same way about anarchism. People’s mental image of an anarchist is probably some punk kid with a bandana over his face, throwing rocks at storefront windows and just “making things shit for the hell of it.”

Either way, I’m tired of having to live with these stereotypes. The sad thing is that I feel the public would be hostile even if we did have some “respectable, family loving, wholesome adult” person to represent us. The news agencies would most certainly frame the discussion in a negative light for the atheist or anarchist. You could have someone like Daniel Dennet or Noam Chomsky on as the representative and they’d still be hostile.

There’s really just this temptation to embrace the stereotypes out of exhaustion of having to fight them, but that’s not productive.  The only way it gets better is to continue to fight them over and over again. It’s a war of attrition. That’s the only way anyone gains acceptance in a hostile environment. Ex. Black pilots in WWII or women in the workplace.

Still sucks though.

See all those bullet holes in the back of that truck? The LAPD pulled up behind this car and just started shooting. The victims in the car were two women delivering morning papers. Both have been rushed to the hospital. The police gave no warning and did not identify themselves as police. For all the women knew, assuming they had a second to think when the bullets started ripping through the back of their car and their bodies, this could have well been a gang shooting.

But it wasn’t an underground gang of armed thugs, it was the socially approved kind. The “official” users of violence and guns. These women were not the only victims that day. The LAPD did the same thing to another man driving a similar vehicle. They were hunting people down and opening fire, without warning, without checking first, and endangering neighborhoods. Local news outlets warned people to stay out of blue pickup trucks because the police were shooting first and asking questions later.

Think about that for a moment. People were told to stay off the streets because the police, their “protectors” would summarily execute them on site without notice, cause, or trial.

Before we get to the “why” they did this, I want to make something clear. “Why” is really a secondary issue here. There is no excuse for police to ambush people and start shooting them. It doesn’t matter what the “why” is. The “why” can only be used as an attempt to excuse the inexcusable. Nonetheless, “why” will be used as an excuse by everyone from the police officers to the apologists who can’t comprehend the idea that their police could do anything so horrible. To the apologists, the police will always be given the benefit of the doubt. They are their protectors after all, the “good guys.”

There will be no reasonable consequences for the attempted murders.

When the police officers tried to murder the occupants of this vehicle, and the other one they shot up, they were not acting as police officers. They were acting as vigilante thugs. Despite this, they will not be prosecuted as vigilante thugs. They will be shielded and protected by the powerful institution they belong to.  Their punishment will be administrative leave with pay. Paid vacation.

Why? The law is applied differently to different people.

We are not all equal before the law. That is a naive myth, a comforting lie we like to tell ourselves. People in positions of power and/or fame are treated differently than the average citizen. The worst part? For the most part, people are ok with this. It’s expected that powerful people are treated differently. Bush and Cheney will never be tried for war crimes, lying to the American public, and illegally spying on our own citizens. Obama will never be punished for continuing and expanding upon those exact same crimes. There will be no real punishment for the BP executives responsible for the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf. Not a single wall-street executive or banker will be prosecuted for crashing the economy and destroying the lives of millions. There will be no punishment for the Catholic church that systematically enabled and protected child rapists. Likewise, there will be no punishment for these police officers.

There is no justice for the powerful, only punishment for the powerless.

Sure you might point out this case or that, but that does not change the overwhelming trend of injustice and corruption in American society. Things have always been this way. Things will always be this way. You can’t change it. You can’t ask the powerful to punish themselves; likewise, you can’t appeal to them to police themselves.

This is the only way the powerful experience justice:

Sic semper tyrannis. The only time the powerful experience justice for crimes like murder, extortion, torture, corruption, persecution, destroying the economy, etc., is when their citizens fall upon them and lynch them.

No doubt this is probably unsettling to you, but think about it. What is usually the worst that happens to these people entrusted with so much power and privilege?

They lose their job. Whoopie fuckin do.

Could you imagine committing a crime and the worst thing that happens to you is that you lose your job? To an average person, losing their job is pretty terrible because they lose their income. But we’re not talking about average people, we’re talking about the powerful. How many poor powerful people are there? None. So what punishment, what suffering do they endure as a result of losing their job? Only their ego suffers.

How is that fair? How is that justice?

You know what would be fair? What would be justice? If the punishment fit the crime.

Indeed this is (supposedly) the standard to which we hold all other individuals in society, but the powerful get a fee pass. If society entrusts you with extraordinary power, privilege, authority, and responsibility, you should face extraordinary punishment whenever you misuse and abuse that trust. I’m talking life in prison without parole or the death penalty.

I imagine some people might object to having an equal standard for both the powerful and the powerless. I imagine the knee-jerk reaction to the thought of life in prison or the death penalty for our leaders, protectors, priests, and executives might be “no, that’s not fair. That’s not how things work.” Yet if you think about it, it is fair and it is how things should work. I believe this immediate gut instinct against equality and justice is the result of societal conditioning. Things don’t currently work like this and so to consider the opposite is alien and strange.

All I am asking for is equality under the law. If you commit murder, you go to jail. If you rob a bank, you go to jail. If cause the death of thousands, you should go to jail. If you rob a country, you should go to jail.

“But GP! what if doing these things are part of their jobs?” I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about doing illegal things. If a police officer pulls over a car and the occupant starts shooting and the cop shoots back in self defense, that’s one thing. These cops ambush two women in a truck and shot them up. If you believe someone is a terrorist and plans to kill innocent people, so you gather evidence, go through due process, have a trial, and convict them based on that strong evidence, then you kill them, that’s one thing. If you just decide, with little or no evidence, no due process, no trial, and no transparency that you’re just going to drone strike someone, that’s another.

These police officers should be tried for attempted murder, but they won’t. They should get the same sentence you or I would get if we shot up two people in a truck, but they won’t.  Equality and justice for the powerful and those protected by the powerful are myths. Punishment and consequences are for us peasants.

PS. I never got to the irrelevant reason “why” the police attempted to murder the people in that car. It’s because they’re on a manhunt for an ex-military, ex-cop who’s hunting them down after being fired for fighting, of all things, police violence and corruption.