by Blender Dumbass

Aka: J.Y. Amihud. A Jewish by blood, multifaceted artist with experience in film-making, visual effects, programming, game development, music and more. A philosopher at heart. An activist for freedom and privacy. Anti-Paternalist. A user of Libre Software. Speaking at least 3 human languages. The writer and director of the 2023 film "Moria's Race" and the lead developer of it's game sequel "Dani's Race".

In 2014 Ridley Scott made a very controversial, seems to be - religious movie - called "Exodus: Gods and Kings" about the life of Moses and his subsequent adventure of saving the Jewish people from slavery in Egypt. Religious people were mad about the movie, since it tried to show a plausible, realistic way the entire thing could happen. It didn't show God, for example, simply appearing in front of Moses as a burning bush. There was a burning bush and there was God. But before Moses saw those he got hit in the head very severely. So you have a possible explanation for why he saw God in the first place.

The scene where the sea comes apart was shot as a drought. It's possible in the climate region where the whole thing took place for the sea to just vaporize under the sun. The scene is of unknown length. And they could be sitting there for a day or even few days. So the sea could just dry out in-front of them. For the sea coming back he used a basic tsunami. The odds of one happening right after the other are scares. But it technically could happen. And people with low education might have thought that it was a miracle of some kind.

The thing that he didn't touch upon too much was the 40 year long journey between the Egypt and Israel. Any reasonable map reading of that region will show you that this distance is nowhere near large enough to walk it for 40 years. You could do that, by foot, in a few days. Perhaps a week. Perhaps two if you have children on you. But 40 years?

This article is not about religion. It's not about Moses, really. But it's about why, I think, the fact that they walked for 40 years, is the most actually realistic part of the whole story.


Sub-Podcast OGG Sub-Podcast MP3

I'm dumb!

For the few last streams I felt the absence of people. The most comments and supports for the last few day I got from @Nasikla who said to me in the live-chat:



He still hanged out with me on the stream and still was commenting and supporting, but he didn't do that because he was interested. And that was a clue for me. I have no views on the streams because those who might be interested do not know about it. And those who came thus far came because of me. Not because of what I'm doing on the stream.

My followers, I suppose, are people interested in Free Software and / or Politics. And Blender is Free Software. But I'm not streaming about my arguments for Blender against Maya or 3Ds Max. I'm using the program to do something completely unrelated - a kids movie.

This is what makes this stark difference between my subscriber count and the people that actually end up on the streams themselves. Or at least that's my current theory. Maybe I'm just naturally boring.

Yesterday I had nobody watching the stream at all. This is when I took a few minutes out of the stream to open this thread on blender-artists. Almost immediately I've got people liking renders from the movie. And in few minutes after I posted I've got a boost of viewers in the livestream. I suppose that I just had to publicize myself in a platform where people care.

Blender-Artists use Discourse as their base. It's a Free Software forum server type thing. And therefor the site is almost okay. But they put so much bullshit on top of that, that I do not want to use it. Like for example, now the website features bat decorations that eat GPU. They have ads. Quite frankly it seems like the ads are administered by the website itself, since all of them are related to blender and no ad-blocker catches them. But alright. I'll suffer though those inconveniences if that will increase interest in the project.

... COME TO THE LIVESTREAM !!! ...

Click on my dumb face to get to the livestream

40 Years Spans a Generation

By the time Jewish people reached Israel those who were not born yet when they got out of Egypt were 40 years old. They were middle aged grumpy men and women. And they never seen the slavery of Egypt themselves.

People before them, those now old people, seen the slavery. They were the slaves. And because they were the slaves it took them a generation to get to their land of Freedom.

Even if the story of Moses is complete nonsense imagined by some science fiction writer two and a half thousand years ago, it still has it's moral. For example, a lot of people today find immense meaning in George Orwell's 1984. By no means, non of what happened in the book actually happened in 1984. But the story is no less important. The ideas in the book are so powerful that the book holds value.

The story of Moses could be real or not. But the moral is very real. It takes a generation to pass before slaves can become free men. Think about it. It should be absurd that it took them 40 years. Who ever wrote it knew that it was absurd. They still did it. They still wrote 40 years. Why?

Imagine being born in a family of slaves surrounded by slaves and being a slave yourself. You will only acquire the skills that are useful for a slave. Things like picking up heavy things. Or working with materials. But not things like thinking. Or figuring out what to do next. Or problem-solving. Those thinking things are done not by slaves but by their masters. The master is telling the slave what to do. The master is the one thinking, problem-solving and so on.

When a person with no skill to solve problems confronts a situation where a problem needs to be solved... When a slave from Egypt confronts the question of where he needs to go to reach Israel, you get a confused man who doesn't know what he is doing.

This past-slave is not going to find the correct way. There could be a genius among them that somehow, magically figured it out. But that's rare. Most slaves will be stuck with confusion.

So alright. There are thousands of slaves that come out of Egypt. Non of them knows where to go to get to Israel. And their leader, Moses, is slowly going mad himself ( remember the hit on the head that made him see burning bushes and Gods ). So nobody knows where to go, but they all go somewhere.

They do not have navigation, they do not know how to read the stars. They do not have compasses. And they are all dumb. They never learned problem-solving to be able to figure it out.

But they still have plenty of sex. And while they are in the desert they have children. New children. Children that never seen the slavery. Children who never had nobody telling them what to do. Children that had to figure things out for themselves. Children that acquire the skill of problem-solving.

Those children grow up. And just one generation later they arrive to Israel. Those children are the ones who brought the slaves to the land of freedom. The slaves didn't become free people truly. They became past-slaves. Nobody will tell them what to do. But they cannot tell themselves what to do either. They still rely on other, smarter people to make the decisions.

The story of Moses is not about a group of people gaining freedom. This group of people who left Egypt never got their freedom fully. Maybe a few could adjust and maybe the younger ones could lean the ways of the free. But most didn't change.

This is a story about a Nation becoming free. And the transformation from slave to free didn't become overnight as the Jewish people stepped out of Egypt. It was ongoing for 40 years. While the new generation, those born in Freedom, could finally learn how to be free.

Free Software

Just so there will be more than one chapter, let's talk about it from the perspective of Free Software. Here we got a generation full of imbeciles. All addicted to a brick. None can learn nothing. Why learn? You can ask Siri or Google...



This is a quote attributed to Albert Einstein. Even though it's numerously debunked that he had said that. Nevertheless, the quote is genius. And one genius thing is that this quote apparently originated on Facebook of all places.

If devices become too convenient, people using those device become stupider. People need experience with solving problems to be able to solve problems. This is the ultimate catch 22 of the universe. If people are handed the solution without a need to do anything. They do not become smarter. They might memories the solution ( and even this is unlikely ). But they never learned the process of finding this solution in the first place. If you take the smartphone away from any modern person, they will be scared to shits. They will not be able to function what so ever. They know nothing on their own. The need the bloody thing for nearly everything.

People are the slaves of technology. They can turn the tables around and become the masters of their technology by using freedom respecting technology, by using Free Software. But this is usually harder than we think. When Free Software is convenient enough so a proprietary software user will move away from their master, they treat the Free Software as the new master. They do not want to control it. They do not know how. And then they freak out if something is going wrong. And it will go wrong. Remember Jews were walking around in circles for 40 god damned years.

Conclusion

I don't know if you could be saved. Perhaps you could and it's not that big of a deal. Perhaps you are still young enough to have a plastic enough brain to learn still. Maybe you are professor of some kind, or a person where a certain skill at problem-solving is a necessity. And therefor you can still learn. And therefor you can still save yourself from the tyranny of proprietary software. But most people can't. They would find themselves in a desert where nothing is possible if you take the phone away from them.

But!

Your kids could be saved. The next generation could be saved. We should not make proprietary software illegal. Or you should not simply stop using it all at once. It will be impossible. If you are a slave you need the master to think for you. But you, at-least, can give the opportunity to be free to those who can still be saved.

If you have kids. Think about it.

Happy Hacking!!!



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