Year: 2016 Page 6 of 19

Playing with your idols

On June 27, 2016

A lot of people laugh at the idea of eSports. Playing a video game professionally is a scoff-worthy idea but is it so different from other sports?

Someone spent thousands of hours practicing and playing a game and now they’re extremely good at it. My brother and I poured far too many hours to count into NBA Jam when we were growing up. We kept records of our point/steals/block totals in games.

We could try to blow out the computer-controlled team or hold them scoreless, if we could. We had a blast playing and that was with a Super Nintendo in our living room in the country.

Today, it’s possible to play games with people from all over the world and I’ve made friends in London and Australia. I have friends all over the United States and Canada. I never would have found these people if it weren’t for video games.

Video games are fun. I play to unwind. I play to blow off steam. I play to escape from the real world and emerge myself in someone’s else’s reality. The game maker’s reality.

There’s something about eSports that levels the playing field unlike other professional sports. The ability to play with or again your idols.

Reading my Destiny Twitter list, I saw this tweet:

Everyone check out this video. It’s the cutest most hilariously humbling thing I’ve ever seen. Ty for sharing ❤️ https://t.co/3438FXTPtb
— Ms 5ooo Watts (@Mrs5oooWatts) June 27, 2016

So I had to check out the video. (Embedded below.)

It’s so much fun to see kids freaking out and having so much fun playing a game against someone they admire. Ms 5000 Watts is a Destiny gamer who streams her videos and she posted a video of the match against the Pint Sized Guardians.

One of the many reasons I love Destiny is because of the inclusive, caring community. The big names are good-natured folks who love the game and love their fans.

Amid all the bad news and uncertainty floating around online and in the world, it’s good to know my refuge is still a place where things like this are happening.

Jason’s Journeys

By Carl

On June 17, 2016

In Links and Quotes

Jason is a curious wanderer and good human. I enjoyed this podcast as he talks about his travels around the country.

“I’m too curious to let things be as they are. So I have to probe, I have to explore, I have to ask why of everything that comes my way in order to determine that it’s what I should be doing, or where I should be going, or somebody I should be involved with.”

Listen to Episode 53 – Enjoying the Journey and the Destination with Jason Rehmus

From Unsplash - https://unsplash.com/photos/KGRZFB1U25I

Why I Need an AR-15

By Carl

On June 16, 2016

In Links and Quotes

I came across this well-written, reasoned piece explaining why someone would own an AR-15. The part that really hit me was this:

The AR-15 is less a model of rifle than it is an open-source, modular weapons platform that can be customized for a whole range of applications, from small pest control to taking out 500-pound feral hogs to urban combat. Everything about an individual AR-15 can be changed with aftermarket parts — the caliber of ammunition, recoil, range, weight, length, hold and grip, and on and on.

It’s less a gun and more a framework for a gun. That made a lot of sense to me. It’s a firearm that can be configured and used in a number of different ways.

So cops and civilians “need” an AR-15 because that one gun can be adapted to an infinite variety of sporting, hunting, and use-of-force scenarios by an amateur with a few simple tools. An AR-15 owner doesn’t have to buy and maintain a separate gun for each application, nor does she need a professional gunsmith to make modifications and customizations. In this respect, the AR-15 is basically a giant lego kit for grownups.

I still don’t agree with it. But I can see the reasoning behind owning them. Why I need an AR-15 is worth a read. Even if you don’t agree with the position. It explains why the weapon is so popular.

Credit: https://unsplash.com/photos/O4O7TFe32N0

Barely a day

By Carl

On June 14, 2016

In Observations

Barely a day goes by without a mass shooting.

It’s terrifying. It’s exhausting. It’s a problem native to the United States. It’s a mentally unhealthy population that knows no way to express their feelings other than violence.

It’s a country where you can buy an AR-15 in 7 minutes. With that kind of speed, any impulse to murder can be acted on and carried out without any time to cool off and have your cooler head appeal to your better self.

Guns are accessible. That’s a fact that won’t quickly change. Most guns used in mass shootings are purchased legally. It’s so easy to buy them legally, why go through the extra trouble of illegal sales?

But why are so many people purchasing them and acting on their emotions in mass violence? What makes someone wake up and decide to shoot up a school, night club, movie theater or church?

I wish more of these shooters were captured alive so we could ask them.

Recipe for a shooting

By Carl

On June 14, 2016

In Observations

Men are unable to deal with their emotions. We’re taught from an early age to man up and be tough. No one is going to see you cry.

And it’s garbage. Men are emotional people too. We cry. We hurt. We have emotions but it’s not allowed for us to display them.

So we pick up guns.

We go online and scream at people to make ourselves feel better. We form hate groups. We harass women and minorities. We act out violently towards anything we don’t understand or disagree with.

We don’t know any better. We were never taught any better.

Chuck Wendig wrote what I wanted to say so go read his words.

It begins with men. Young men, usually.

(This is a recipe that simmers a long time on the stove.)

>You teach them that the world was made for them. That they own it and can do what they want and take what they desire. You also teach them that they are not allowed to express themselves. Doing that is to be like a woman, and men are told that they are very explicitly not women. Men own everything, remember. It is their right to own and to want and to take. Women are lesser, for they do not own the world. So to be like a woman — to cry and to manifest other feelings — is to be lesser. It’s not that they don’t have feelings. It is that they are taught to keep them inside. In boxes and bottles. In lead-lined trunks locked tight lest they ever escape.