Tyranny! Anarchy! Humanistic!

Kevin Swanson is railing about movies, again. This time, he’s linking the Austin bomber with Superhero flicks. Once again, I’ll note that Mr. Swanson seems to be very familiar with all these evil movies which spell the end of civilisation as we know it. Mr. Swanson spends a bit of time going on about how the Avenger flicks are all anarchy vs tyranny, which never represents a solution for society. Well no, they don’t, because that’s not what they’re about. They are always about some sort of imminent threat, which requires superheroes to deal with, and they get to do much fighting, and rampaging about in the process. Superheroes don’t sit around, form committees, and pretend to get something done. And of course, there’s always another threat around the corner. Did you never read a comic book, Mr. Swanson?

Anyroad, after the rantiness of anarchy vs tyranny, he moves on to Batman, and he has a very specific complaint:

“This is what happens with the Batman movies as well,” he added. “Batman himself is an anarchist, he is a vigilante setting against other forms of anarchy, as in the Joker … Batman is an anarchist, he is setting himself against other forms of anarchy in an attempt to prove man as God.”

“That is the essence, the very essence of the Batman movies. It was humanistic to the core,” Swanson said. “What they wanted to do was prop up faith in people, they wanted to prop up faith in man instead of turning man to God and submitting to the true and living God. So, again, my friends, these forms of anarchy, these forms of vigilantism, et cetera, et cetera, very much advocated by the chaotic forms, the anarchical forms found in the Batman movies, the Avenger movies, many of the superhero movies.”

Humanistic to the core! Oh no, woe is us! There’s the worst thing of all to a fucking fanatical christian: someone is behaving in a humanist manner. Someone has faith in humankind. Wow, just couldn’t be worse, could it? As the Austin bomber was raised a christian, I’m not altogether sure how this ties in, but Mr. Swanson never has any trouble frothing out over movies, and he’ll use the thinnest of threads as an excuse. As for Batman being a humanist, eh, I don’t know about that. I expect you’d get a lot of people arguing otherwise, Mr. Swanson.

You can read the whole rant at RWW.

TNET 16: A Wee Bit Crowded.

Map created by Reddit user iBleeedorange.

The map above supposedly shows all the public saunas in Finland.

According to Statistics Finland, the total number of saunas was estimated to be over 2 million at the end of 2016 out of a population of just 5.5 million people.

Via Brilliant Maps. Open thread, don’t be an asshole. Thanks. Previous Thread.

Jack’s Walk.

From Voyager: Hooray! Today Jack saw the first sure sign of spring. The maples have been tapped and the sap is flowing. The weather remains cold and dreary, but Jack is contentedly dreaming of pancakes and sausage with fresh maple syrup. Click for full size!

This is Jack.

© Voyager, all rights reserved.

Nazis & Satanists: A Match Made In Hell.

Oh the drama! It’s just tearing the murderous Atomwaffen apart, which is not a bad thing in itself, but unfortunately, there are too many places for murderous nazis to go upon pronouncing Atomwaffen bad because satanists.

White nationalists are disavowing the murderous neo-Nazi group Atomwaffen Division—not because of the murder, but because the group can’t shake persistent rumors that it’s a gateway organization for a satanic cult.

Atomwaffen is an extremist group that received national attention after being implicated in five murders from May 2017 to January 2018. But even before the most recent slaying, Atomwaffen was under fire from others on the far right who claimed the group was actually a mouthpiece for the Order of Nine Angles, a satanic group that encourages members to infiltrate extremist political movements, whose members might be susceptible to conversion.

It doesn’t help that, until recently, Atomwaffen pushed the satanic group’s literature on one of its websites.

Atomwaffen claims to have been founded in 2013, although its membership surged after a deadly white nationalist demonstration in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August, ProPublica previously reported. The group now has approximately 20 cells across the U.S., according to ProPublica.

The whole thing is a tangled mess, which confirms the impression that what murderous nazis are best at is infighting. Kelly Weill at The Daily Beast has the whole sordid story.

New Game: Foundation.

Foundation is a grid-less, sprawling medieval city building simulation with a heavy focus on organic development, monument construction and resource management.

The game features in-depth resource management akin to the Anno (Dawn of Discovery) series, expertly mixed with city building elements from Settlers, SimCity, and Pharaoh all topped with narrative encounters inspired by Crusader Kings II to create the ultimate medieval ant-farm simulation!

In this strategy city-builder economy simulation game, players must create a prosperous settlement as the newly appointed lord of a region untouched by man.

Setting to redefine the city-builder genre, Foundation puts the emphasis on the organic aspects of urbanism in the cities of old, powered by Polymorph Games’ in-house game engine, Hurricane, which allows for full mod support and is optimized for the thousands of moving parts that come with building humongous cities.

Among other things, the engine provides the player with robust building tools to create countless unique monuments that can then integrated into your settlement.

With medieval architecture and urbanism at the forefront of its design, Foundation’s vision is to allow players to recreate cities of that period as they envision them or even as they really were.

You can read and see more about Foundation at Medievalists, or just head straight to the Kickstarter, which has garnered much more than the initial ask.