Selected Research From SLEEP 2023

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - We hope you have a good night after reading about these seven studies.

In honour (or dishonour) of my total lack of sleep due to the recent reaction log deep into the night with the disappointing Grasshopper Manufacture Direct, let's turn our attention to SLEEP 2023, which was a conference that took place this year during June 3–June 7 in Indianapolis, Indiana. SLEEP is brought to sleep professionals every year by the Associated Professional Sleep Societies (APSS), a collaboration of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM) and the Sleep Research Society. The names of those should tell you that SLEEP is where professionals in sleep medicine—both researchers and practitioners (and students of those)—come together to share learnings and best practices. Oh, and to network!

There are hundreds of abstracts involved in the meeting and there were many sessions, including an advocacy session ran by our friends in common cause, Save Standard Time and Dr. Karin Johnson. Here is a sampling of seven studies that SLEEP's news section highlighted and my thoughts on them. ...Note that I didn't actually attend the conference.

Teens with irregular sleep patterns have higher risk of school problems

The first study suggests that the keys to a good sleep for teenagers are sleeping for long enough (8–10 hours), at the right time every time, and not being interrupted. When teenagers have a greatly varying sleep schedule or habits, they are much more likely to perform poorly in school, such as being 42% more likely to be suspended or expelled or 29% more likely to receive a D or F as their course grade. Researchers therefore believe that teenagers ought to get a stable sleep schedule in order to perform better in school and be better behaved.

Ash Ketchum Failed His Torterra as a Pokémon Trainer

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - He definitely wasn't Pokémon Master material. (And still isn't.)

After waiting for most of World Turtle Day 2023 for The Pokémon Company International to do something for the special day, it really does seem like they went and celebrated World Turtle Day a whole month early in honour of Terapagos and its little buddy. Whatever, KoopaTV will still stick to what the calendar says, since World Turtle Day is very special, in honour of turtles, tortoises, and Koopas everywhere.

Turtles, despite their natural protection on their backs, are also common targets for harm. Mario has a big role to play in that. But for World Turtle Day 2023, I'm going to write about a different world like I said I would a month ago: The Pokémon world, and specifically Ash Ketchum's Torterra (once a Turtwig). His Torterra, as a Grotle and Torterra, were notoriously mishandled by the twerp, and I have a lot of issues with it.

If you observe Ash's usual battle style, he really likes trying to overpower his opponents with speed, momentum, and the occasional clever novel use of the environment or his Pokémon's sometimes overlooked traits. His Turtwig was notable for being able to run around, especially inspired by Gardenia's even faster Turtwig. But when his Turtwig evolved into Grotle in Aiding the Enemy, Grotle could no longer run around, and Ash was completely ignorant as to why. Ash failed to adapt his battling style to fit the reality of his newly evolved Pokémon and its different physical characteristics.

The average weight of a Turtwig is 22.5 pounds.
The average weight of a Grotle is 213.8 pounds, or 9.5 times heavier.
(Technically, Grotle has five base speed faster than Turtwig.
It's also notable that Turtwig's 31 base speed makes it the slowest starter Pokémon; that 31 is also the lowest base stat out of any starter Pokémon for any stat.)

IQ Bell Curve, Ukraine, Russia, and World Peace

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Why Miss USA and Donald Trump know better than FAKE NEWS CNN and the military-industrial complex.

On May 10, 2023, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump went on FAKE NEWS CNN for a wide-ranging town hall with favourable voters in New Hampshire, moderated by combative CNN employee Kaitlan Collins. There is a lot of chatter about things like the former President being indicted and arrested. But in terms of the substantive discussion I care about (especially as a foreign national), there is this five to six minute discussion about Ukraine, Russia, and the war between them and how Donald Trump would like for there to be a peace deal, which seems to really bother CNN's nasty, stupid, and rude Kaitlan Collins. (The embed below starts at the relevant point and stops when it stops being relevant.)

Whether or not Donald Trump is correct about being able to make peace in 24 hours isn't that important. What is important is his approach—similar to his theoretical approach between Israel and the Palestinian territory when he was a candidate in 2015 (see below). (His actual peace plan as president abandoned his own principles, which is likely because he had the wrong people working on it who didn't share his own values.) It's been a foolish and widely held stance in America's two main parties and its mainstream media that, since the United States of America is a global superpower, it can just dictate what it wants to the rest of the world, and the rest of the world will just obey and accept it and enjoy being dictated to. Rather than America making demands that are clearly one-sided, America would work best as a neutral power between the conflicting nations. Otherwise, why would both sides agree to sit down and negotiate?

For some years, many years ago, more members of the Democrat Party believed in being the peace party, while the Republican Party was more into military adventurism. Those roles have somewhat swapped, especially when Russia is involved in the conversation, because the Democrats have become completely deluded when it comes to the nation of Russia and its authoritarian ruler, Vladimir Putin. They're further deluded into believing their own debunked conspiracy theory that Donald Trump is a “Russian agent.” Ironically, that perception makes Donald Trump more qualified than any other American presidential candidate to be a neutral negotiator that would get Russia to the negotiating table. But while he wants to negotiate for peace, Democrats seem to believe risking a nuclear war with the end goal of regime change in Russia is their goal. They want Ukraine to “win” and Russia to “lose” and be severely punished for its aggressive posture. They want to look like a tough guy, punching the bully in the nose. That is a different goal than peace. Observe:

The Truths About the FAIRtax

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Answers to some common (often bad faith) objections.

The start of this calendar year had probably the most press and political attention put on the FAIRtax plan (promoted by Americans for Fair Taxation) in many years, as part of agreements made with the ascension of the House of Representatives speaker Kevin McCarthy. (You may remember him getting memed on for his endless votes to get enough Republican representatives to agree to choose him as the Speaker of the House.) One of the things that certain Republicans wanted was a vote on the FAIRtax, which is in legislation this session as H.R.25 - FairTax Act of 2023.

The FairTax Act calls for a national consumption tax of 23% of new retail sales, which includes both goods and services. That tax will abolish the existing income, business, payroll, capital gains, and estate taxes. It will also abolish the abusive Internal Revenue Service, with states collecting the sales tax from businesses and then remitting it to the Treasury. (And both the state and the business get to keep 0.25% of the money as a thank-you, referred to as a “taxpayer administrative credit”.) The rate is chosen to be “revenue neutral”, which means that it is supposed to theoretically raise the same amount of money as all of the taxes it is replacing. If that means the government ends up in a deficit, that's because it was going to have a deficit anyway due to spending too much. Each qualified family will also get a “family consumption allowance”, also known as a sales tax rebate (it's a “prebate” in that you get the money at the start of the month before you spend it) equal to the monthly poverty level (as already determined by the Department of Health and Human Services) multiplied by the sales tax rate. The prebate will be provided by the Social Security Administration, which are already pretty decent at giving people money they're entitled to.

Over the past several months, I've seen a lot of questions about the FAIRtax plan, as well as a lot of outright lies from the media (including from Semafor, which is the “Project Coda” I mentioned over a year ago as the supposedly unbiased media outlet founded by a former FAKE NEWS Bloomberg CEO—in other words, the guy founded a group just as bad as the group he managed and left, who could've guessed?) and politicians (politicians lying and smearing their opponents? Who could've guessed?!). I'll address some of those questions and lies in this article.

The #LockHerUp President Got Arrested

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - To be fair, he hasn't actually been locked up. (Yet?)

After posting FAKE NEWS by being two or so weeks off from his promise of “THE FAR & AWAY LEADING REPUBLICAN CANDIDATE & FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, WILL BE ARRESTED ON TUESDAY OF NEXT WEEK.”, former President Donald John Trump was indicted and arrested in the Manhattan Criminal Court today under thirty-four counts relating to falsifying business records.

You can tell that FAKE NEWS CNN is very excited about this moment.
You can also see the former president waving to a crowd of Secret Service agents.

The crux of District Attorney Alvin L. Bragg Jr.'s claims and statement of facts is that the non-disclosure agreements were done for the purpose of candidate Donald John Trump's first run for president in 2015–2016, but the payments were done in the name and ledger of his non-political business, the Trump Organization, and the candidate directed this all to happen in that way. Campaign expenditures and business expenses aren't supposed to mix.

Two Great Web Tools: summarize.tech and Indie Wiki Buddy / BreezeWiki

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Never watch a video essay or suffer from a Fandom Wiki ever again.

This isn't... normally the type of thing I'd write an article on, but it's definitely adjacent to the topics we'd talk about on KoopaTV, and makes your life as a videogame fan engaged in gaming culture much better. So I'd like to share TWO tools in ONE article that are amazing, useful, and you'll want to start incorporating into your web browsing experience right away.

summarize.tech

There are lots of people out there—and they are probably correct, unfortunately—that tell me that KoopaTV shouldn't be a text-based blog. The days of most people READING things are long over. People watch and listen to people talk, influenced by “video essays” on platforms such as YouTube. I detest video essays. They're a reason I was on Team Book instead of Team Film. Video essays are inefficient at conveying information. They most often don't take advantage of the times where video is the most useful medium of conveying information, since they're more like lectures or podcasts than real videos. And because of how YouTube works, content creators make their video essays artificially lengthy, beyond the fact that it just takes longer to listen to someone talk than it is to read what they have to say.

Enter summarize.tech, a free AI-powered video summary tool powered by ChatGPT and created by Pete Hunt. You put in the URL of your YouTube video and it'll spit out a summary, with an option to see section summaries in five-minute increments, useful for very long videos.

For example, you can quickly get the plot of Mekkah's 22:29 “Fire Emblem Fandom has a Problem with Archetypes” YouTube video in a couple of minutes of reading the summary. The summary gets to the point that Mekkah is saying archetypes are useful for quickly communicating ideas, but often the fandom gets bored and tries to invent new archetypes that don't communicate anything useful, or try to force a square character into a circular archetype hole, which devalues what archetypes are trying to convey. Boom, you just saved twenty or more minutes of your day, and if you think from the timeslot detailed summary that it's worth watching the whole video, you can of course still do that.

American Legislators Would Rather Save Daylight Than Save Americans

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - The priorities aren't aligned, much like your circadian rhythm after switching to Daylight Saving Time.

The worst day (or up there as one of top three worst) that (United States of) Americans must face was this weekend: the day they must switch to Daylight Saving Time. And despite living in Koopa Kingdom under a sane leader, KoopaTV sets itself to Daylight Saving Time standards to align with what goes on in the United States of America, because y'all are our main audience and we're customer(?)-centric. So your pain is my pain. And that makes me extremely sleepy.

Quite frankly, it's ridiculous that the people of America, the land of the free and home of the brave, hasn't gone and rioted against their idiot and hostile legislators for imposing Daylight Saving Time. It's true that no one likes twice-a-year clock changing, so what to do to change that has people divided into two camps. Legislative proponents of permanent Daylight Saving Time keep trying to pass the Sunshine Protection Act, as they did in the Senate in March 2022. This never went anywhere in the House and never became law, and that passing in the Senate is no longer valid in the current session of Congress and has to happen again. So now there is a fresh start to promote Standard Time, which is closest to the natural time that the sun follows. Your body also happens to follow (or want to follow) the sun's movements, as opposed to what the government, school (often ran by the government), and/or employer tells you when to wake up.

When Daylight Saving Time finally ended in 2022, I wrote about the Save Standard Time advocacy group's video series on The Science of Clock Change. (Funded by American Academy of Sleep Medicine Foundation.) Back then, the video series was just... one video, but now there is a playlist of NINE videos. You probably don't need to watch the whole cumulative hour or so of content to get the point, and this article will have some particularly interesting screen grabs that should catch your attention (and are backed by studies). Here's one:

The First Positive Case of COVID-19 on a Koopa!

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - That's... me! ...Oops and oof.

All I really need to do is present this photo and that's the whole article:

Unlike the “Ludwig tested negative!” article linked below, I'm wearing a mask here because I tested positive.
...Though this mask likely isn't useful for protecting other people from me. Makes for a good photo, though.

COVID-19—also known as the Chinese Communist Party Virus, or CCP Virus—has been around for three years now. I'm not sure who gets to decide when it's mutated enough to become COVID-23 or whatever. Perhaps that's the coronavirus family's collective new years resolution.

I've managed to avoid it all this time, as has all of Koopa kind (though maybe some Koopas have gotten it and haven't reported it to any Koopa Kingdom government officials), even after trying out the coronavirus tests. I've gotten a negative result earlier this year! But this time, this is the exact opposite kind of article. My symptoms include chills (Monday night into Tuesday morning involved me being unable to sleep as a result) and high fevers (not hyperbole, but the medical use of the term high fever), along with some coughs, sneezes, stuffy/runny noses, and decreased mental performance. Not that I've had to actually use it, but my fire breath isn't working as it should, either.

Acetaminophen at least helps with the fever, which is the most serious symptom besides the chill (which is caused by the high fever, so there you go). I also acknowledge that I've been drinking a lot of water. The Koopa Kingdom doctors don't have any supply of Paxlovid (a drug by Pfizer that allegedly treats COVID-19), nor do they think that's necessary because I'm not at a high risk for severe (deathly) COVID-19 (though no one knows what Koopa-specific risk factors are). Their recommendation is to keep taking acetaminophen and see if things get better or worse. Of course, Paxlovid hasn't been tested on Koopas. (And it hasn't been tested extensively in humans, for that matter.) And it's been linked to worse outcomes than if you haven't taken it. Sort of like the vaccine itself, in some people's view.


Ludwig feels quite chilly as he's writing this footer, so he's going to take some medication and go to bed. He still hopes to write some quality content for the few remaining days of 2022, but he might not be able to due to being plagued by this virus. Please understand. Also, please refrain from speculating why or how Ludwig got the virus. He has behaved quite responsibly, but even those precautions can't stop a bioweapon invasion. He will stay away from others to avoid infecting them until he tests negative.

Twerp Ash Ketchum Getting Cancelled in 2023

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - And that rodent Pikachu is coming with him, too! ...Right? ...And Goh.

Here is something to look forward to in 2023:

Twerp and world champion Ash Ketchum is fighting his cancellation for another eleven episodes for “the final chapter in Ash and Pikachu's story.” And THEN... a new Pokémon animated series featuring two brand-new protagonists (a girl and a boy) surrounding by the Paldean starter Pokémon, Sprigatito, Fuecoco, and Quaxly. However, these protagonists might not necessarily be limited to just the Paldea region, since they are, according to The Pokémon Company International's news release, “set[ting] off on action-packed adventures across the Pokémon world.” The world is a bigger place than just Paldea, after all.

Those eleven episodes featuring the twerp, whose master Jewish Sirfetch'd helped him defeat Leon in the Pokémon World Championships to become the strongest Pokémon trainer ever, will apparently also have his gaslighting companions, Misty and Brock, reappear in some capacity. So will at least some of Team Rocket's members. The news release further alleges these episodes will “celebrate” Ash Ketchum's victory and status, as well as existing as “an expression of gratitude” for his fanbase.

I'm not a fan of Ash Ketchum. If it was up to me, his Pokémon would be in a Team Rocket dungeon many times over by now. If it was up to me, he'd be blown up to smithereens by island-destroying bombs.

If only Arceus hasn't favoured him so much in his life. I remember they even declared September 15 to be National Ash Ketchum Day. He's had impossibly lucky and fortunate things happen to him, despite being a stupid pre-teenage impulsive ignoramus. But at least it seems like in later 2023 he'll be off the air!

A dream that never ends means it's an infinite path, not just a long one. But what more is there to do?
More importantly, what will happen to Team Rocket?! We don't want them disbanded or lost!

This new series won't be of much cheer to Ludwig if these new kids are as twerpy and dumb as Ash Ketchum was. He is certainly not needed. The anime has been trying to prove it can be good without Team Rocket or similar antagonists, and that mostly has not been a successful endeavour.


Another reason to dislike Ash Ketchum? He treats his turtles poorly!

Is Cash Really Out of Favour Among Kids These Days?

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - What I wrote five years ago remains true today.

According to this Wall Street Journal article, “Kids Don’t Want Cash Anymore–They Want ‘Robux’”, my advice from my Need a Present for Teenagers? The Ultimate Holiday and Birthday Gift Guide article published five years ago is out of date. Having just reread my article, it's as spot-on today as it was then. I advocated for giving cash as a gift, especially for tweens and teens. I also said to not give gift cards as a gift unless they are cash-equivalent Amazon gift cards or prepaid Visa/MasterCard debit cards.

(Round 47 of the KoopaTV Loyalty Rewards Program, which ends when 2022 does, gives a prepaid Visa debit card as the top prize for the first time ever. You should try to win that.)

According to the Wall Street Journal article, which only interviewed one child and the rest were parents and marketing executives from various companies trying to financially exploit children, the only thing that teens want to spend money on are useless virtual trinkets in the game platform Roblox, which functions as an Internet minor-containment zone. In other words, without Roblox, tens of millions of stupid, annoying children would instead spend their time infesting areas of the Internet you enjoy today—it's really important that these exist. Anyway, Roblox is free-to-play but also lets world-builders offer micro-transactions that you'd buy with "Robux", their virtual currency. You can load up on Robux with gift cards, which you can purchase in stores (see photo below) or online with PayPal or a credit/debit card.

All Online Game Servers in China Shutdown For Communist Dictator's Memorial Service

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - They're fine with this. Hopefully, you wouldn't be.

Remember how mainland China implemented scary bans on minors (under 18) playing online videogames, enforced by dystopian privacy-violating surveillance on game-playing devices? And, reportedly, parents within mainland China thought this was a great idea because now they don't have to parent their own children, but the Chinese Communist Party can do that for them? Must be very boring being locked in your house without access to videogames during the government's totalitarian zero-COVID policy. But, hey, adults can play, at least.

Well, not anymore. According to reports, all of the online game servers residing in mainland China were shut down today in “honour” of former Chinese Communist Party leader Jiang Zemin, who died last week. Earth is a better place without this very bad guy around, between his sweeping away of the Tiananmen Square incident, his very antagonistic posture towards Hong Kong and Taiwan, and his absolutely brutal, genocidal treatment of the religious minority group Falun Gong.

But with regards to the gaming, that means no one in mainland China—adult or minor—could play online games on December 6. Now, I myself wasn't planning to play online games today either, between my work as a prince of Koopa Kingdom and following the Georgia run-off election results. (Looks like Raphael Warnock the Warlock won, just as I advocated for!) But I made sure to play—I mean, work—at least a few shifts of Salmon Run in Splatoon 3 upon reading about this news. You know, just to express my freedom to choose whether I want to play videogames on a given day or not. I don't want a government forcing me to not be able to do that!

And this isn't equivalent to Queen Elizabeth II dying and a lot of things shutting down in the United Kingdom as a result. A lot of businesses gave a day or more off for their workers out of choice—often the wrong choice, but their choice nonetheless. The Chinese Communist Party just flipped a switch on their game operators (which are really agents of the Party) by force. The United Kingdom didn't turn off access to their citizen's personal leisure products. Nintendo chose to release their Nintendo Direct an hour late. Sony delayed nothing. They chose their responses and it wasn't forced.

You may think it's inappropriate for people to play games instead of respecting the death of a horrible and repressive dictator like Jiang Zemin. But that should be left to each individual's own judgment. Their own free will. Besides, what's the point of a social credit system if you don't give people the opportunity to lose it?


Ludwig would never want to live under the Chinese Communist Party, and neither would you. He sees absolutely no contradiction between that statement and then supporting the re-election of Democrat Party Senator Raphael Warnock the Warlock on the exact same day, and you're probably dumb and lack critical reasoning skills if you do think there's a contradiction there. (That's not a strawman. These kinds of imbeciles exist.)

Run-off Rematch 2022: Walker versus Warnock!

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Or, why you should vote for Raphael Warnock the Warlock.

One of only two things different between Election Day (November 8, 2022) and Run-Off Election Day (December 6, 2022) is that the only state with a run-off is Georgia. The only election going on is for senator: Herschel Walker versus Raphael Warnock the Warlock. Blame Georgia laws on what happens when people don't get 50%+1 on Election Day.

There wasn't any additional debate (the only one that happened should be more than enough to make a decision) that has happened in the month since the main Election Day, so what's that other different thing? Well, back in Election Day, it was believed that the Republican Party, if Herschel Walker won the Georgia Senate seat, would be able to control the Senate by having a majority. However, Republicans underperformed so much that now even if Herschel Walker wins, the Democrat Party will still control the Senate—which means that Herschel Walker's biggest argument for voting for him is irrelevant.

So that just leaves Herschel Walker running as Herschel Walker, not as a potential Republican country-wide saviour. And Herschel Walker as a person is... very stupid, and Georgia can do much, much better. Raphael Warnock the Warlock ain't a perfect politician (though he has a very interesting backstory), but he isn't a national embarrassment.

Even Republicans should be cautious about voting for Herschel Walker. (Maybe just stay home and listen to former President Donald John Trump's rants about how elections are rife with fraud and it'll be stolen regardless of your vote, so why bother voting at all?) The fact that the United States Senate does not have term limits should be an incentive for political parties to nominate capable, competent, and electable (young) people to office. Once they get into office and get an imcumbency advantage, they can stay in the office for many decades by easily staving off challengers. Herschel Walker, if he wins but then runs again in 2028... will not have such a powerful incumbency advantage. Assuming he's actually able to win in a primary election, he'll be one of the weakest incumbents in your country. He's a liability with no principles, no intelligence, no values. He's not running based on any issues. He doesn't even understand them. He's a pawn for a class of elite people—or one specific person, a former president of the United States—who don't have Georgia's best interests at heart.

Georgians who are registered to vote should find their polling place here, and make the right (or left-of-centre, in this case) decision!


Ludwig usually stumps for Republican Party candidates, but Herschel Walker is such a problem that he can't bring himself to do it. He also is a fan of Raphael Warnock the Warlock as a memetic figure. Come back to this article's comments section for a discussion of the results of this run-off election!


Looks like the correct guy won!

United States of America: Vote in Election Day 2022!

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - KoopaTV's endorsements!

Last month, I wrote very in-depth write-ups of two United States Senate debates, the only debate of their kind in that race: Raphael Warnock the Warlock versus Herschel Walker for Georgia Senate, and John Omega Fetterman versus Professor Mehmet Oz for Pennsylvania Senate.

Today, November 8, 2022, you get to vote for those candidates... or an entirely different set of candidates (or questions/ballot initiatives/propositions) if you're in other states. Usually, my perspective on United States elections is supporting whomever the peace/anti-war party/candidates are, on the basis that Koopa Kingdom really doesn't want Earth's nations to interfere in our affairs.

It's a fact that, in 2022, the Democrat Party is the pro-war party. Even the supposedly peaceful progressive faction had to apologise for wanting advocate a policy of peaceful negotiation. Unfortunately, the Republican Party isn't the peace party in 2022, either. Perhaps the... less-war party? They're quite interested in “showing strength” to who they perceive as dictators, whatever that means. Certainly not something I'd want them to do with King Bowser Koopa.

My ideal scenario would be for the Republicans to take control of both the House and the Senate... while Raphael Warnock the Warlock wins in Georgia. That'd require Professor Oz to win in Pennsylvania and for the Republicans to pick up a Senate seat from an incumbent Democrat somewhere else, such as if Adam Laxalt defeats incumbent Catherine Cortez Masto in Nevada. Republicans should be voted on for governor everywhere except maybe in Pennsylvania. I think it's really funny for me to support Raphael Warnock the Warlock and Brian Kemp in Georgia while supporting Prof. Oz and Josh Shapiro in Pennsylvania. Though it's hard to support the latter with a straight face because Josh Shapiro has very few appealing policies. Josh Shapiro also refused to have a debate with Republican Doug Mastriano, which I don't look favourably at. However, you can also read that story as Mastriano refusing to have a debate with Shapiro because he thinks the moderators are biased. Doug Mastriano is a bit of an off-putting nutjob, so I won't judge you for not wanting to vote for him.

Don't vote if you haven't looked into candidates or ballot questions before going to the voting booth, though. Uneducated voters are a scourge on voting, and it's a big reason why we don't do elections in Koopa Kingdom.


Do Republicans actually have plans to tackle problems like crime, inflation, and a looming recession? Most don't, or don't have plans that make sense. That's still better than what the other party brings, though!


For a list of reasons to vote and what politics affects, read KoopaTV's Election Day 2020 article.
Ludwig doesn't want Herschel Walker to win so much that he wrote an article just about the Georgia US Senate run-off election.

Daylight Saving Time is Over in 2022. Why Scientists Hate It (you should too!)

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Normally I don't demand you trust the science, but this is intuitive.

Hey, Americans: How did you wake up this morning? Was it nice to rise with the sunlight instead of in the darkness? Did you feel more refreshed versus a week ago? While a good morning's wake won't replace the value of how you get a good night's sleep, it is the last step before getting up, and it's commonly overlooked.

When the awful Daylight Saving Time first began in 2022, I wrote an article advocating for year-round Standard Time. Immediately after that, the United States Senate passed a bill—without any debate and seemingly by accident—to make Daylight Saving Time year-round and permanent nation-wide.

Fortunately, the House of Representatives hasn't done the same thing, so the bill is stuck in limbo and will expire at the end of the legislative session at the end of the year. People reflexively dislike lobbyists and the thought of lobbyists doing their job, but it's thanks to the American Academy of Sleep Medicine lobbying the House and actually sharing facts on the dangers of Daylight Saving Time and the superiority of Standard Time that America isn't in a worse time right now (or would be next year). Lobbyists aren't inherently bad—though there are some business interests who ARE on the pro-permanent-DST side, and they're much better-funded than scientists. With that written, check out this video from the Save Standard Time advocacy group:

(The video promises it's one of a series, but the rest of the series doesn't seem to have been uploaded yet.)

It turns out when you there is more daylight in the morning hours and when kids get on the school bus and are able to see in front of them, things are better off. The key is that Daylight Saving Time is a government-invented concept to try to time travel and shift the fabric of society away from the natural circadian rhythm of your body in accordance to when the sun actually goes up. The body is affected by that (and can't adapt to it), and the disparity causes a number of health issues.

Once upon a time, in 2019, Europe voted to ditch Daylight Saving Time to go into effect in 2021. That still has not happened. That's because they're working on allegedly more important things, like dealing with war on their continent and Brexit. Perhaps they would have more time to deal with issues if they stopped “springing forward” with Daylight Saving Time. As for the United States, states already can live in Standard Time without federal approval... so more states should do so. Here's some draft legislative language to help make that happen on the state level.


Your life should feel better under Standard Time. Some things will change besides the clock and your sleep, however, including that Splatoon 3's two-hour rotations will also occur on a different hour. Whether you like that or not is a matter of preference, but in terms of the science, there's a clear winner.


Here is KoopaTV's post-DST-ending article in 2021.
The Sunshine Protection Act of 2022 went nowhere, but the Save Standard Time video series has gone up to nine videos by Daylight Saving Time beginning again in 2023.

Bayonetta 3 Released, and Hellena Taylor's Fourteen Recommended Charities

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - A follow-up. As usual, the mob won't like my take.

Congratulations to character action game aficionados: Bayonetta 3 exclusively for Nintendo Switch has launched, and I see a lot of positivity around the game. Here's the age-restricted launch trailer, followed by a screen capture from it to get around that issue.

If I wore glasses and needed to push them up, I'd use my limbs, not my gun. (I think this one is called Orange Blossom, of the Colour My World set.)

I'm never going to get Bayonetta 3, since I'm not interested in the genre. Instead, I want to follow up with the story about Bayonetta's bitter former voice actress, Hellena Taylor. (Jennifer Hale is the new voice actress in Bayonetta 3—if you listened to the age-restricted launch trailer, Ms. Hale did a decent enough job that no one should be upset.)

As a quick timeline, she initially asked every Bayonetta fan to boycott Bayonetta 3 because she chose not to take the job to voice-act Bayonetta 3 out of an exaggerated sense of self-worth. My first reaction was skepticism of her claims (coupled with disgust at her clingy attack on Jennifer Hale and the weird Biblical condemnation of PlatinumGames and Nintendo), and the fact that even if they were true, boycotting the product still doesn't make sense. But many people who base their life views on hating corporations and supporting “the little guy” or “the struggling artist” leapt to Hellena's cause, without applying any scrutiny to her story, looking over any evidence, or hearing and evaluating the opposite point of view. (This, of course, meant that my skepticism and labelling as Hellena as having petty grievances that she wanted to weaponise through Bayonetta fans was... unpopular.)

Eventually, “journalists” who work at misinformation media outlets claimed they actually saw the details from anonymous PlatinumGames employees of Hellena's proposed contract and negotiations, and according to those, her sob story was filled with lies and lies of omission. Hellena Taylor rejected that she lied, but in the process, confirmed the journalists’ sources were correct, so she really confessed. (She also answered the question that I had e-mailed her on how much she was paid for the first two Bayonetta games, which is far, far less than what she was being offered for Bayonetta 3.)

Lost in this discussion was the line near the end of her first video (which currently has 11.1 million views on Twitter), which, by the way, is way more than the entire Bayonetta series has cumulatively sold in copies. (The subsequent video parts are all between 100,000 and 500,000 views, which is why my initial article published transcripts of all four videos. The people that didn't hear both sides of the story didn't even finish hearing one side of the story before making a judgment!) Anyway, the “I am asking the fans to boycott this game, and instead spend the money that you would have spent on this game, donating it to charity.” line. What charity? Well, nearly two weeks later, and after lots of people doubted that she would actually name any charities, she has named fourteen charities. I'm going to go over all of them and provide my thoughts. Note that I'm not a charity expert. I refer to Charity Navigator ratings when available, but since Hellena is British and Charity Navigator is for American charities (and I haven't been able to find equivalent rating systems for United Kingdom charities), they're often not available.

Mehmet Oz vs. John Fetterman: October 25, 2022 Debate Write-up

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Pennsylvanians, are you informed having listened to your candidates directly?

It's a mess, but unfortunately for the United States of America, a very impactful mess. I'm talking about the very high-profile United States Senate race in Pennsylvania between Republican Professor Mehmet “Doctor” Cengiz Oz (formerly of The Dr. Oz Show) and Democrat John “Omega” Karl Fetterman (current Lieutenant Governor of Pennsylvania).

Prof. Oz has been trailing Omega Fetterman the entire time they've had polls, given accusations that he's a quack doctor and is also an opportunist carpetbagger from New Jersey who doesn't know Pennsylvania. (His fellow Republicans in the primary also attacked him for the same reasons, as well as that he's quite moderate for a Republican and changed many of his previously liberal opinions upon running for office.) Omega Fetterman has had an Alpha-level meme game on Twitter against Prof. Oz. Prof. Oz's rebuttal is that Omega Fetterman is a socialist (his middle name ain't Karl for nothin’) who is outside of the Pennsylvania mainstream. Despite having the word “meme” in his name, Prof. Mehmet Oz is also losing the meme game. And then Omega Fetterman got a stroke, and Prof. Oz's campaign pivoted to mocking him for that and questioning whether Omega Fetterman is fit for the United States Senate because he has a (pre-)existing condition that impairs his brain.

It's because of that stroke that Omega Fetterman has only agreed to ONE debate, which is quite a bit late in this election cycle, given that Pennsylvanians could have submitted mail-in ballots already. It's sort of the same idea for why Herschel Walker only agreed to one debate in the Georgia Senate Race—which KoopaTV also covered—because he has his own brain issues. As a result, outlets like Fox News have already panned the debate as “unwatchable” due to Omega Fetterman's performance. But was it really that atrocious? I decided to watch the video-on-demand below and offer my own thoughts in another debate write-up:

Herschel Walker vs. Raphael Warnock the Warlock: October 14, 2022 Debate Write-up

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - One hour. No commercial breaks. One on one.

Once upon a time, in the 1990s into the 2000s until the early 2010s, Georgia used to be known as an intellectual bastion of talented conservative thinkers. Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, a Georgia man, revolutionised the Republican Party across the country by making it a party of actual ideas. Like, he constantly came up with a new innovative way of approaching something and tried to sell Americans on policy. And other freedom-inclined reformers in and out of government made Georgia proud, like John Linder, Rob Woodall, Neal Boortz, and Herman Cain.

And then Donald John Trump became President and Georgia lost all of its intellectual underpinning, with the state being taken over by sycophants of the former president without an articulated policy. (Excluding governor Brian Kemp and secretary of state Brad Raffensperger.) The Georgia Republican Party is now filled with corrupt grifters and personal buddies of the former president, which is how we now have Herschel Walker, who is only notable for playing football at the University of Georgia many years ago, as the Republican nominee for senate. He is quite clearly damaged in the brain, has no understanding of policy or even basic English sentence structure, and he also is a failure in terms of morality. His Democrat Party opponent is Raphael Warnock the Warlock, who is the incumbent as of 2021 after defeating one of those corrupt Republicans, Kelly Loeffler. And thanks to that article and how awful a candidate Herschel Walker is, I'm inclined to support Raphael Warnock the Warlock, despite his party affiliation.

Still, before publicly declaring that, I might as well watch the debate between the two that happened tonight. This was the only debate between Herschel Walker and Raphael Warnock the Warlock, because Herschel Walker wanted to avoid more debates (because the more people hear him talk, the less votes he gets). Raphael Warnock the Warlock wanted three of these, since he's quite confident in his oratory prowess. These are high stakes, because whomever wins this could decide which party is in power in the Senate. And even if I want that party to be the Republican Party, I still believe that Georgia voters should make the decision that's best for them, not best for the country. So the rest of this article are my impressions of the one-hour debate. (And the debate-on-demand is also available.)

Truth vs. Illiberal Murderers; Salman Rushdie and Jeff German

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - They never forget. Why should you?

I don't know what appetite there is on a September 11-related article, but this is actually a sequel to two articles: Never Forget: Muslims around Earth actually rioted and killed over "Innocence of Muslims" (from September 11, 2021); and Humour Under Assault and Battery (my take on Will Smith slapping Chris Rock from earlier this year).

I'm writing about the relatively recent attempted murder of fiction author and speaker Salman Rushdie, as well as the murder of investigative journalist Jeff German. Both men tried to use their powers of free speech to tell the truth... and both were victims of brutal and vicious attempts to silence them.

I knew I was going to write about Salman Rushdie the instant he got stabbed.
The fact that his name sounds similar to the Salmon Rush event in Splatoon is a total coincidence.
Also, this is the only non-text media you're getting in this article.

Some background on Salman Rushdie: He's a fiction writer and a citizen of the United Kingdom, but born in India to a Muslim family. He wrote a 1988 fiction book called The Satanic Verses with several references to Islamic lore. As usual, many Muslims got upset over it. However, this extended to the highest levels of the Iranian revolutionary government, and their leadership and many followers called for the murder of Salman Rushdie on the basis of blasphemy, and have extended millions of dollars in a bounty that continues to this day. As you... might expect, that's a powerful incentive, and for the past several decades, Salman has had a rather secluded life. (Though sales of The Satanic Verses skyrocket whenever angry Muslims raise their voice against him.)

Unofficial Statement on Death of Queen Elizabeth II

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - I'm only speaking for myself, not for Koopa Kingdom.

Queen Elizabeth II of the Commonwealth realms has peacefully passed away today at the age of 96. Her son, Charles III (73 years young), is now King of the United Kingdom and those realms, and is currently the shortest-reigning monarch on Earth.

This comes exactly two months after the very non-peaceful (or “mostly peaceful” if you're FAKE NEWS CNN) assassination of former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzō Abe, which KoopaTV published an official statement about on behalf of Koopa Kingdom due to our involved relationship with him.

Our history with Queen Elizabeth is more contentious and less relevant, so you get the following unofficial statement instead.

Koopa Kingdom Statement on Assassination of Shinzō Abe

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - ...We didn't do it! And it's sad that someone did!

In extremely upsetting and disturbing news, former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzō Abe was assassinated last night by fatal gunshots while trying to hold a rally/speech for fellow Liberal Democratic Party member Kei Satō's re-election campaign for the House of Councillors seat from Nara Prefecture. While Shinzō Abe wasn't the Prime Minister anymore and didn't have the best health, you can figure that he's still quite popular among many of his countrymen, and certainly moreso than his successor (who also left), Yoshihide Suga. When Shinzō Abe speaks... people listen. The suspect, who is currently a guy named Tetsuya Yamagami, allegedly had an homemade double-barreled shotgun and shot and killed Shinzō Abe with it due to disliking the former Prime Minister.

I oughta note that the suspect's name is Tetsuya Yamagami, not Hideo Kojima (and certainly not any Koopas), like some FAKE NEWS claimed. (While that links to Kotaku, Kotaku is reporting on FAKE NEWS by others. ...Though it is still Kotaku, so there are many things wrong with that article, like the laughably shameless last paragraph where piracy-promoter Zack Zwiezen asks the media not to use 4chan or Twitter trolls as sources, while he's using disreputable forum ResetEra as a source in that same sentence.)

Anyway, speaking on behalf of all of Koopa Kingdom and the Royal Koopa Family, we are in mourning at the loss of Shinzō Abe. He was a great patriot for the nation of Japan, and Koopa Kingdom and the former Prime Minister had similar desires and goals to rid the universe of Cappy, who had captured the Prime Minister and permanently changed the course of history. Shinzō Abe was really the first sign that Mario's hat is big trouble. He wanted help. We wanted to help him. I've always wanted to meet him, but I didn't have the opportunity to while I was in Japan (despite the former Prime Minister's alleged influence over that trip). Ultimately he fell to non-Cappy forces (well... I guess we can't rule out what the suspect's motivations really were) and the universe is still threatened. Big shame. Shinzō Abe also was a foe of the Chinese Communist Party, which we (and everyone else) share an animosity with.

We're very saddened and wish the best for his widow, Akie Abe, and for all of Japan! And we wish the worst for his assassin.


Rest in peace, Shinzō Abe. Feel free to share your own condolences in the comments section below.


Exactly two months later, Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom died. Naturally.