Killing Time

History's greatest monster.

Another flatcar has jumped the track in the trainwreck that is the Republican presidential primary. Jeb "Can Fix It If It's An Election" Bush was boasting that he sure as hell would go back in time and kill Baby Adolf Hitler if he ever got the chance. And this isn't a case where some dimwitted reporter decided to ask a presidential candidate a dimwitted question. Jeb himself raised the matter, so the only dimwit involved is Jeb.

Now, I don't mean to boast, but the fact is that I am uniquely qualified to discuss this question, because I have actually killed Baby Hitler. Admittedly, I used my mad alternate-history skillz rather than a time machine, and I didn't murder Baby Hitler so much as I posited an accidental death for him, but a dead Baby Hitler is a dead Baby Hitler, and I'm prepared to put my claim to expertise up against anyone else's.

The dead Baby Hitler question is complicated by the temporal nature of the problem. Time, as others have noted, is not so much a linear progression of cause to effect as a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff. The human consciousness exists in the present, and it remains in the present whether the human involved lives in the year 2015 or travels back to 1889. For the time traveler, being in 1889 cancels out all subsequent events. To the person-in-1889, there is no Nazi Germany, no World War II, and no Holocaust. There's just 1889. And this baby lying in his cradle hasn't done anything wrong; he's just a newborn baby.

On the other hand, the person-in-1889 has, simply by appearing in 1889, created a new reality. Every die that rolled and coin that flipped in the history that led up to our 2015 now has to be re-rolled and re-flipped, with the outcomes yet to be determined. Thus, our time traveler has eliminated the existence of everyone who will be born in the 20th century, an act of mass-murder that makes the Holocaust pale in comparison.

So, it's basically a trick question. The only way to kill Baby Hitler is to snuff out the existence of billions of people,* which pretty much negates any possible positive results from removing Adolf Hitler from history.

Bottom line: Hitler only killed Anne Frank. Jeb Bush would eliminate her from history altogether.

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*Unless you do it the way I did it, via a thought experiment.

The Short Goodbye

Mark Bernstein is one of the Grand Old Men of the internet, and an editor at Wikipedia. However, despite being both old and white, he has been on the side of the angels on the subject of GamerGate, chronicling the 'gaters attempt to turn Wikipedia into a weapon in their endless, mindless war on women.

Since Clare Hooper has done an outstanding job of summarizing what's happening there, I might as well just steal her summary wholesale:

A very, very brief summary is that the entry on Wikipedia about Gamergate has been the subject of weeks (running into months) of edit wars. It culminated in a decision from ArbCom, the highest user-run body of the site, to ban the five editors who were trying to prevent the page from being rewritten with a pro-Gamergate slant. According to Bernstein’s analysis, sanctions were also applied against some of the pro-Gamergate accounts — but only against a few accounts, and throwaway accounts at that.

Basically, Wikipedia has decided to hand over the keys to the henhouse to the foxes.

I myself have been contributing to Wikipedia for ten years. However, this is just too fucking much. Either the ArbCom is suffering from a massive case of the stupids, or the ArbCom is carrying water for the 'gaters. It doesn't matter which, because either one is reason enough for me to stop contributing.

So that's what I've done. Unless Wikipedia shows a sudden rush of good sense and both completely reverses this decision and issues a sincere apology that actually acknowledges wrongdoing and offers genuine contrition to the many injured parties involved, I won't be back.

The psychopath factories

The internet is abuzz about this story by Sabrina Rubin Erdely in Rolling Stone about Jackie, a freshman who was gang-raped at the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity at the University of Virginia in 2012. The university administration, and even Jackie's own friends, discouraged her from going to the police, and in the end, none of her assailants suffered any consequences.

The reason why is simple. Assaulting women is the whole point of college fraternities. These organizations exist to shape the characters of the future business leaders of America, and the way to succeed in business is to be a psychopath. Raping women teaches these future corporate executives and Wall Street traders that they are the untouchable elite, and that everyone who isn't part of their elite is a commodity to be used and discarded as they see fit.

In a follow-up story, Rolling Stone reports on UVA President Teresa A. Sullivan's announcement that the university's fraternities have been suspended until the beginning of the spring semester in January 2015. And what will happen then? In a word, nothing. The frats perform a vital function in our society, and that function requires them to train their members to be monsters. The fraternities will continue to operate as they have always done, and women like Jackie will continue to be used to teach the brothers how to become America's psychopathic business elite.

In a way, Jackie's experience was an important learning experience. It has given her a foretaste of the life she will live in a country run by her assailants.

Gamergate: Attack of the Douchebros

Two of the core principles here at the Johnny Pez blog are supporting social justice and trying to bump up our meager pageviews, so any time we can combine the two, we will. Longtime readers (assuming there are any) will remember our (unsuccessful) attempt to attract the attention of the online misogyny crowd by invoking the dread name of Rebecca Watson.

Well, if at first you don't succeed, try try again. A phenomenon that's currently making the internet even more terrible than it already was is Gamergate. As Kyle Watson (no relation, AFAIK) notes in this piece at Deadspin, Gamergate is basically a vortex of misogynistic internet gamer trolls who spend their time harrassing women and intimidating various other targets in response to an imaginary grievance. Watson points out that the 'Gaters real grievance is that video game producers, might, possibly, spend slightly less time pandering to the traditional gamer demographic of young white straight guys.

In a way, the Johnny Pez blog is in an ideal position to make a stand against the 'Gaters. It's completely obscure, and thus unlikely to attract their attention in the first place. It doesn't rely on advertising, so it can't be shut down by having its sponsors intimidated. And blogmaster Johnny Pez isn't a woman, so he can't be silenced by online sexual harrassment and rape threats.

If by some remote chance some 'Gaters do manage to find their way here, I'd just like to take this opportunity to point out what utterly worthless sacks of shit they are. They are cowards who hide behind the anonymity afforded by the internet to attack targets they know won't be able to fight back. They are overprivileged crybabies who can't stand the thought of a gaming universe that doesn't revolve around them. Being a white straight guy myself, I can state with total assurance that these assholes not only have no legitimate grievances, it would do them a world of good to suffer through some real adversity and be taken down a peg or three.

Any 'Gaters who wish to respond in comments should be aware that I will delete any that I find to be of no value. And the ones I don't delete, I will relentlessly mock.

Ami's Safe Space Project

Ami Angelwings is a Toronto feminist blogger best known to readers of this blog as the creator of Magyc: The Gendering, on which my recent Second Gender War stories are based. In real life, she's a consultant for various Toronto social service agencies, and in the course of her consulting work, she's noticed that many domestic violence and rape crisis centers that were originally created for cis women and their children have now expanded their services to include cis men, trans men & women, and genderqueer people.

Unfortunately, due to bureaucratic inertia, many of these centers have documentation or websites, or even names, that still indicate that their services are directed solely at women. Ami has therefore decided to launch a project she calls Ami's Safe Space Project, which will gather together information on agencies in the US and Canada that support cis and trans men, trans women, and genderqueer people, and create a comprehensive list of such agencies.

Ami's blog does not have an extensive audience, so she is calling on her friends and readers to spread the word, and learn what they can about agencies in their own areas. Hence, this post, and the below list of member organizations of the Rhode Island Coalition Against Domestic Violence:

Blackstone Valley Advocacy Center
Serving: Northeast RI -- Albion, Central Falls, Cumberland, Greenville, Harmony, Lincoln, Manville, Mapleville, North Providence, and Pawtucket.

Only open to cis women and children.

Elizabeth Buffum Chace Center
Serving: Central RI -- Coventry, Cranston, Garden City, Greene, Hope, Johnston, North Providence, Warwick, West Warwick.

Does not accept men. Only accepts trans and genderqueer on a case-by-case basis.

Sojourner House
Serving: Northwestern RI -- Burriville, Centerdale, Chepatchet, Clayville, Fiskeville, Fortsdale, Foster, Glendale, Greenville, Harmony, Harrisville, North Scituate, North Smithfield, Pascoag, Scituate, Woonsocket.

Does not accept men, trans, or genderqueer.

Women's Center of Rhode Island
Serving: Greater Providence, RI -- Barrington, Centerdale, East Providence, Greenville, Harmony, North Providence, Providence, Riverside, and Rumford.

Only cis women and children.

Women's Resource Center
Serving: Eastern RI -- Barrington, Warren, Bristol, Little Compton, Tiverton, Portsmouth, Middletown, Newport, and Jamestown.

Does not accept cis men or trans men, but will put them up in a hotel and provide services. Accepts trans women and genderqueer on a case-by-case basis, depending on comfort level of other clients.

If you would also like to help increase the reach of Ami's Safe Space Project (and I encourage you to do so), please call around your area, and post the results on your blog (if you've got one), and/or in the comments section of Ami's blog, and/or email Ami at ami_angelwings at hotmail dot com.

This has been a public service post of the Johnny Pez blog.

How to offend everyone (and get arrested)

South Park creators/producers/voice actors Trey Parker and Matt Stone are in trouble again. This time, a two-part episode that depicts Mohammed, Prophet of God and founder of Islam, in a bear suit, has prompted a previously unknown group of religious fanatics in New York City called Revolution Muslim to issue a death threat against the pair.

However, we here at the Johnny Pez blog think that offending the world's billion Muslims doesn't go far enough. That's why we wish to make the following suggestion to Parker and Stone: what they need to do now is air a cartoon showing Mohammed having sex with his nine-year-old wife Aisha. That way, in addition to offending Muslims by depicting the Prophet of God, Parker and Stone can also offend Christians by depicting a fifty-two-year-old man having sex with a nine-year-old girl. As an added bonus, by producing a cartoon that "depicts a minor engaging in sexually explicit conduct and is obscene", Parker and Stone would also be liable for criminal charges of child pornography under Federal Law 18 U.S.C. 1466A, which would be particularly badass.

So think about it, guys. There's a perfect storm of offensiveness (including blasphemy and lawbreaking) just waiting to happen, if you've got the nerve.

Shorter Chief Justice John Roberts

Ian Millhiser, The Wonk Room:
In 5-4 Decision, Conservative Supreme Court Denies DNA Evidence to Potentially Innocent Man

• If we let this wrongfully convicted person use DNA testing to prove his innocence, we'll have to let every wrongfully convicted person do it, and that's just too much trouble.