You may vaguely remember Sargon of Akkad’s petition to “UNIVERSITIES” to shut down all “social justice” courses. It’s been three months since Mr. Of Akkad — actually a dude named Carl, who lives in Swindon — launched the thing, and up until two days ago the only real effect it’s had in the real world was garnering Carl a supportive shoutout from the racist street thugs of the English Defence League.
But Carl of Swindon’s dopey petition has finally accomplished something he can be proud of. Well, kinda. It’s inspired a somewhat belated yet still quite hilarious response video from Youtube’s esteemed Hbomberguy — you know, the guy that did that classic “measured response” to the Sarkeesian Effect. The FIFTEEN THOUSAND DOLLARS one. So enjoy!
And if you can’t bear to hear another word about the petition, you can always skip ahead to the part of the video (about nine minutes in) in which Hbomberguy discusses Carl’s less-than-glorious performance in an online debate with one Kristi Winters, a feminist who embarrassed poor Carl by exposing just how little he actually knows about feminism.
Wow, no wonder he’s so grumpy; I actually feel sorry for him now.
All you need to know about Swindon is that the town’s only landmark is a roundabout (it is pretty funky, you can go round it either way)
@Alan : in France, it would be a random town in Picardy. They all look the same and all could depress an anti-depressant pill.
A small city I lived in was a mountain city close to several ski resorts, so it could not be in good faith be called boring. But I still fondly remember the fact you had indications to go in the downtown, the upper town, the square center, all several kilometers before the village. The fun part is that there is 1000 permanent inhabitant. More than a bit overengineered :p
Swindon sounds like it should be good pig country.
Yay! I love Hbomberguy. Was very happy to see a new vid in my sub box yesterday evening, aha
Wasn’t there a documentary a few years ago about how it’s the most miserable town in Britain??
Even the sign for the roundabout is crap
You’d be miserable if you lived next to Sargon of Carl, too.
Oh gods. Prepare for more Sargon fans to come in here with their tedious sealioning.
A pentagram made of recycling signs? That would draw protests here.
This is a genuine extract from the official “Guide to Swindon” webpage.
That last paragraph is almost poetic in its underwhelming optimism.
That letter tho…
Well, I’m convinced
I work in Swindon, and am now worried that I might run into this guy on my lunch break.
HAH! I absolutely LOVE hbomberguy’s videos. They’re really entertaining and it’s great how much he deconstructs the bigots’ videos to get to the heart of the matter.
One other visual thing he does, that I saw as a video maker myself talking about such issues, is that he does not put himself in his videos as often as he used to. He lets the material do much of the talking, even as he talks about it.
@Alan
Is that a roundabout with 5 little roundabouts inside it? And I thought the 2 roundabouts in a row on my commute were excessive, especially considering the side street the first one connects to never has any traffic that I’ve ever seen.
Well it makes sense that a place where Sargon lives is excessive and tedious.
Hbomb is a treasure, isn’t he? He takes the wind out of anti-feminists and the alt-right while still being immensely entertaining.
Now, if SomeGreyBloke would start making his Graham Murkett cartoons again, Youtube would improve immensely.
I get motion sickness just from looking at that roundabout sign. o_o And I thought the roundabout made up of three lanes near where I live was bad.
@ kupo
Yup. You can do all sorts of weird things with it though; like you can be turning left but go anti-clockwise round the big roundabout but clockwise round all the little ones. It’s like a huge Spirograph really.
@ zesty
It’s ok, they do a handy diagram to make it simple.
http://www.gpsdrawing.com/gallery/land/magic_roundabout/roundaplan.gif
I understand how Swindon’s Magic Roundabout works… but I don’t understand how anyone thought that it couldn’t have possibly been designed any simpler.
Nice to get back to laughing at the idiots after a lot of very distressing things happening – Aurini in a suit in the middle of a forest in that first video cracks me up every time.
@ David
It was designed by a guy called Frank Blackmore. He was a bit of a pioneer in junction design. There’s even an award in his name now for people who come up with innovative road traffic layouts (one of the criteria is that it must have been thought daft at the time). He’s credited with saving thousands of lives. In all fairness the MR is pretty intuitive when you’re at ground level. In the one example where they replaced the MR layout with a simpler design accidents shot up so they’re changing it back again.
https://web.archive.org/web/20151016101225/http://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2008/jun/21/6
(The roundabout is proving more interesting than I originally thought; I feel guilty for maligning it now)
So, apparently MRA lawsuits against the Universities that disciplined them for sexual assault are a hot new trend. http://jezebel.com/student-disciplined-for-sexual-assault-will-sue-columbi-1784647739
I guess it’s anti male bias to not be allowed to rape.
pitshade:
No, you’re thinking of Camelot.
Ehhhh there’s a similar road concept out here where I live, but it’s called a “traffic circle” and driving on it makes one feel like they’re playing chicken with death-by-semi truck. When most people can barely drive while it’s sprinkling here, those complex traffic patterns have to come from a sadistic traffic deity. That’s the only somewhat reasonable explanation – evil deity of traffic stuff decided “yes, here we will have a ‘traffic circle’, won’t it be fun?? Muahahahahahahhaha!”
Hbomberguy is always great.