China Calls Out Clown World

It’s intriguing to see China officially adopting the rhetoric of Putin and other nationalists. This isn’t a mere coincidence.

The US long ago became an “empire of lies” as it continues to push false narratives about China and other countries to secure its position globally, Zhang Xiaogang, spokesman for the Defense Ministry in Beijing, has said.

Last month, the US Marine Corps released an unclassified version of an official doctrine titled Deception, which provides insight into the tactics it employs to gain an advantage over a perceived adversary and mitigate risks by relying on “deliberate distortion of reality.”

Speaking to reporters on Thursday, Zhang remarked that Washington’s “deceptive behavior” has gone far beyond the confines of military affairs and “has actually penetrated deeply into its bones.” The US “dares to invent falsehoods for its own selfish interests and has long become a veritable ‘empire of lies,’” he added.

It’s becoming ever more clear that while China rejected its opportunity to serve as the next seat of the Empire, and Ukraine is no longer an option, that India is plan C. Only I don’t think any of the clowns are particularly excited about relocating to Mumbai or New Dehli.

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Better Discredited than Dead

Remember this guy and his untimely demise the next time you feel inclined to mock someone for their non-mainstream opinions. He obviously would have been much better off if, instead of mocking Aaron Rodgers for his skepticism, he had listened to the quarterback’s well-informed advice.

Matt Driscoll, a 43-year-old columnist and opinion editor for The News Tribune (TNT), died unexpectedly at his Tacoma home this Sunday. Driscoll reportedly suffered an apparent medical emergency from which he could not be revived. The official cause of death is yet to be determined, according to TNT.

It was reported that he had received a COVID-19 vaccination.

In recent times, Driscoll had been vocal about NFL star Aaron Rodgers’ controversial views on COVID-19 vaccines. He accused Rodgers of engaging in “performance art” after the latter warned people about potential side effects of mRNA vaccines.

Rogers “repeated popular conspiracy theories about Covid vaccines, cited a number of discredited sources and claimed he was being ‘cancelled’ and ‘censored’ for ‘doing his own research.’” I swear to god: It’s like performance art at this point. — Matt Driscoll (@mattsdriscoll) January 11, 2024

It’s as dangerous to believe your own rhetoric as it is to smoke your own supply. In fact, it’s considerably more dangerous. No doubt Driscoll felt very smug about rejecting all those “discredited sources” right up to the moment that the vaxx took him out.

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A Tribute to Mr. Tubcuddle

This is, almost certainly, the greatest song ever written about a dedicated bathtub enthusiast. Booster Patrol was inspired by the intrepid saga of the man known as Mister Tubcuddle even before the peculiar revelations of the BathBookNeil blog. The full lyrics are at Sigma Game, for those who are interested. But click on the image below to hear the unforgettable audio experience that is Mr. Tubcuddle.

In other, and obviously completely unrelated news, a professional comics illustrator sent me this last night, which appears may have been loosely based upon an incident at a certain writers’ workshop.

UPDATE: Fandom Pulse has a piece that discusses the song and reveals a new observation that may render the whole situation even more absurd.

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France Finds Out

I don’t see what the French are complaining about. As long as it’s not open war, it doesn’t count and there’s nothing to complain about, right?

High-speed train traffic in France was disrupted on Friday, just hours before the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics following a series of “malicious acts” including arson and cable theft, according to the country’s state railway operator SNCF.

In a post on X (formerly Twitter), the company said at least three TGV lines had been damaged, including the Atlantic, Northern and Eastern routes. A group of saboteurs set fires and stole cables at the Courtalain, Pagny-sur-Moselle, and Croisilles junctions of the high-speed network. Another attack was foiled in Verginy on the South-Eastern line.

The operator said “a large number of trains are being diverted or canceled,” while the company’s CEO Jean-Pierre Farandou estimated that at least 800,000 travelers would be affected by the disruption. In a statement, SNCF asked all travelers who can postpone their trips to do so or use the classic (non-high-speed) lines until TGV traffic is restored. Repairs have already started, but are expected to continue until at least Monday.

“It is truly appalling. It is playing against the [Olympic] Games, playing against France,” Minister for Sports Amelie Oudea-Castera stated.

How dare they! It’s always fascinating to see how Clown Worlders seem to find it impossible to believe that anyone is ever going to hit them back. They’re like legalistic children, always trying to create new rules and redefine existing terms in ways that restrict others while allowing them to get away with anything they want, consequence-free.

Perhaps it was the Russians, perhaps not. There are certainly no shortage of people in France, some of them even French, who are extremely unhappy with what passes for the French government these days. And regardless of who is responsible, it is eminently clear that all of the Clown World-run societies are going to collapse into chaos, some sooner, some later.

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How to Wreck an Epic Fantasy

George RR Martin was never, ever, going to finish A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE. But introducing too many perspective characters and excessively widening the story isn’t the only way to screw things up. Now, I personally thought THE WHEEL OF TIME started out mediocre and only got worse from there, but it’s interesting to see the suggestion that it was ruined, not once but twice, by two different authors.

I loved Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan growing up. LOVED IT. MULTIPLE REREADS of the series, even when I wasn’t prepping for the next release. I read it as much as some other folks (me included) reread Harry Potter.

Here is how WOT went down:

Books 1-5 were AMAZING. So was Book 6, but Book 6 did intro, in a minor way, elements/characters that came to be very unpopular. People argue about the JTS book, whether it was Book 6 or 7 (majority argue book 6, but I disagree). From Book 7 on it was a long, meandering trek into the wilderness, wherein popular characters were minimized, unpopular characters/subplots were given tons of coverage, and new characters no one cared about were introduced. The main characters hardly interacted during this time.

Then the OG author DIED. He’d had a long illness, and fans were told that he’d left behind a detailed outline to finish the story, that only lacked being fleshed out by another author. Brandon Sanderson, a then up and coming (he’s since arrived) fantasy writer was tapped to finish the series alongside the widow (who was also the editor of the OG author). Instead of one follow up book, it quickly turned into 2 follow up books. Then it blossomed into 3 books. Fine. Whatever.

Especially since book 1 (under the new guy, book 1 of 3) was so good. A return to the 1-5 level of quality in the minds of readers. Then Book 2 came out. And things got shaky. There were a few iffy sections. But we all sort of explained it away because the author had to arrange pieces on the board to get ready for the finale.

And the last book was straight up terrible. Series ruining terrible. Terrible to the level (and I’m not alone in this) wherein I have not since picked up a single book in the series, and I used to read the entire series (or, OK the first 5-6 books) every 18 months or so. Fan sites saw traffic dip by 80+ percent. Long gestating talk about spinoff novels/stories died instantly (and there was speculation that the widow and publisher were vetting writers and workshopping plots). Again, this all died instantly and permanently.

That detailed outline we’d been told about was, instead, 2-3 legal pads of freeform notes. No organization.

That is where GOT is. The author has written himself into a corner, and has no idea how to end it. All he knows is that he doesn’t know what to do, and that his most likely idea was widely panned in the TV show. He’ll never finish.

I’ve heard this from multiple sources, including some who have worked with him directly on ASOIAF-related products. However, I stand by my original analysis, which is that Martin made a technical and structural mistake that was the initial cause of the problem, which was introducing too many perspective characters. If I recall correctly, he went from 9 in the first book to 22 in the second; ironically for all his bloodthirsty reputation, Martin’s problem is that he doesn’t kill off enough of his perspective characters.

Brandon Sanderson sells incredibly well, but he would not be able to fix the technical problem with the series and bring it to a proper conclusion. I could do it, being sufficiently ruthless to resolve the situation, and I even know how I would do it, but I’m probably the second-to-last person on the planet who would ever be asked to do so. And I’ve got to wrap up ARTS OF DARK AND LIGHT properly in A GRAVE OF GODS.

Chuck Tingle, of course, would be the last.

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A Beast Exposed

It’s been a busy July for exposing big-time Clown World ticket-takers. First Mr. Tubcuddle gets outed as a creepy serial bathtub enthusiast, then Alice Munro’s reputation is demolished by her daughter, and now it looks as if another ticket-taker is going down in an even more spectacular manner.

A former employee of MrBeast came forward and released a shocking video, wherein he claims that MrBeast is “done” if the truth of the Chris Tyson (aka Ava Kris Tyson) controversy is exposed in its entirety, implying there’s far more to the story than we’ve seen so far regarding the transgender activist’s attempts to get close with underage boys.

In the video, the former employee says, “I’m outside Mr Beast’s studio right now, here’s a cornfield, I’ll explain that tomorrow. I’ve just been driving by looking to to see you know is there an FBI raid going on, what’s happening. My name is Dawson I worked at Mr Beast from February to May of this year 2024. Kris is the the tip of the iceberg and when Jake the Viking says Mr Beast knew, yeah Mr Beast knew. I Heard many times that Ava Kris Tyson is a major liability but they can’t get rid of her because she’s already threaten legal action and she knows too much. And when all this information comes out about everything that she knew, everything other people know, I promise you on everything Mr Beast is done.”

Mr. Beast being outed as a seriously predatory ticket-taker or something even worse would be about the least shocking news about the Hellmouth since we learned Rickey Martin was gay. Anonymous Conservative would have a field day analyzing that face; forget the deeply suspicious stage name, just look at those deeply traumatized eyes and that painful forced smile that doesn’t even begin to touch them. Whatever he had to do to reach the pinnacle of YouTube appears to have eaten away at him to the point that he looks more like someone sharing the story of his multiple suicide attempts in a mental health facility than a successful man at the top of his game.

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The Numbers Gap Grows

According to the Commander-in-Chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, by the end of the year, the Russian invasion force will have grown nearly 7x from the initial 100,000 in February 2022:

Syrskyi is Ukraine’s new commander-in-chief. His unenviable task is to defeat a bigger Russian army. Two and half years into Vladimir Putin’s full-scale onslaught, he acknowledges the Russians are much better resourced. They have more of everything: tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, soldiers. Their original 100,000-strong invasion force has grown to 520,000, he said, with a goal by the end of 2024 of 690,000 men. The figures for Ukraine have not been made public.

“When it comes to equipment, there is a ratio of 1:2 or 1:3 in their favour,” he said. Since 2022 the number of Russian tanks has “doubled” – from 1,700 to 3,500. Artillery systems have tripled, and armoured personnel carriers gone up from 4,500 to 8,900. “The enemy has a significant advantage in force and resources,” Syrskyi said. “Therefore, for us, the issue of supply, the issue of quality, is really at the forefront.”

It is this man and machine superiority that explains recent events on the battlefield. Since last autumn Ukraine’s armed forces have been going steadily backwards. One of his first acts when he got the job in February 2024 – replacing Valerii Zaluzhnyi, now Ukraine’s ambassador to the UK – was to order the withdrawal of his troops from the eastern city of Avdiivka. The retreat coincided with a six-month gap in the US supply of weapons.

As Simplicius points out, this means that Russia invaded with only 40 percent of the troops that the Western media reported. And far from running out of ammunition and tanks in two weeks, the Russians have doubled the number of tanks and tripled the number of artillery systems. Also, since about two-thirds of the initial invasion force was provided by the rebel Donbass militias, that means that as few as 30,000 Russian troops were utilized against an initial Ukranian army of 250,000 that has now been completely destroyed.

Just to make matters worse, the British, French, and US militaries have already lost dozens, if not hundreds, of soldiers in a war they supposedly are not fighting.

Colonel of the Spanish Army Reserve Pedro Baños:

So, the Russians carried out an attack on Odessa, which killed 18 members of the British Special Air Service and injured 25 more. And they tell me that French soldiers died. These are not mercenaries who are French, no, these are soldiers of the French army. They were killed in large numbers, I was told that the number was greater than in Algeria. These are scary numbers because we are talking about NATO countries.

The sooner this foolish, unwinnable war ends, the better. Vladimir Putin clearly doesn’t want to take all of Ukraine, but he will do that and more if NATO – or to be more precise, Clown World – doesn’t permit its Ukrainian puppet state to stop the bleeding and surrender.

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More Bubbles in the Tub

Fandom Pulse has uncovered more dirt on the unusually clean bathtub enthusiast:

To add more bubbles to the bath, a publishing industry insider has spoken out about Neil Gaiman on X. Michael Matheson posted, “The pattern talked about in recent allegations is decades-long. Power imbalance frequently at the heart of what Neil does. At Clarion, there’s the Gaiman Rule for instructors, named after Neil: ‘Don’t sleep with the students.'”

He continued noting something potentially worse for the author about his being kept away from young writing students at another course, “Neil is (I think unofficially?) barred from teaching at a particular workshop for young writers that caps out attendant age at 19. Not naming that one because I was told it in confidence nearly a decade ago when I was reprinting a story of Neil’s in an anthology.”

Matheson also points out how the industry protects Neil Gaiman, saying, “It’s not a question of ‘if,’ the silence surrounding Gaiman for years is about who wants to lose their career by tilting a lance at one of genre publishing’s sacred (cash) cows. That Gaiman cloaked himself in feminist/ally rhetoric for ages also made it harder to air things.”

Having an unspoken rule about not sleeping with students named after Neil Gaiman at Clarion is a huge red flag. Clarion is where writers go to live for six weeks to workshop and learn from teachers like Neil Gaiman. The workshop produces a lot of writers in traditional publishing and is seen as a rite of passage for a fast track to get into places like Clarke’s World or Tor Books. With a second writer’s workshop allegedly banning Neil Gaiman because it’s geared toward young students, it appears the industry knows the 62-year-old author’s proclivities are much worse than they seem on the surface.

And that’s not all… tomorrow’s Arkhaven Nights is going to be lit! It turns out that in 2012, a nameless, unidentified individual who absolutely and totally was not Neil Gaiman himself set up a Tumblr site where people could send pictures of themselves reading his books in the bathtub. Even better, if they were too shy to post a public picture, they could email the picture directly to an email address belonging to a Gmail account that was definitely not set up by Neil Gaiman, and was certainly not accessible by him, called bathbookneil@gmail.com.

joleneparton: Reading @neilhimself in the bathtub (the illustrated edition of Stardust with Charles Vess). Just barely SFW, if you have a fairly permissive office.

neil-gaiman: This is the internet. Is there actually a dedicated place for happy photos of people reading my books in the bath?

joleneparton: There is now! Send me your photos, people, and I’ll put ‘em up. I’m student enough (and therefore bored enough in class) to take on this task. Address them to bathbookneil@gmail.com if you don’t want to do a Tumblr submission.

neil-gaiman: Why, thank you. I love it when things move at the speed of internet. (And as far as I am concerned, people can be reading their books in the bath naked, fully dressed, they can be of any gender or all, masked, alone, or in groups of as many of them as can fit into a bath.) (I’ve never successfully read in the shower, although I HAVE tried.)
(via neil-gaiman)

That Neil! He’s so naughty and charming and ever so attentive to his fans. My favorite part is where the person who definitely is not Neil Gaiman explains why he is going to the trouble of doing this.

I’m student enough (and therefore bored enough in class) to take on this task.

Gaiman never was particularly good at writing credible dialogue. Case in point, there is someone named PrudishChild suddenly active in the Gaiman-related threads who more than a few Redditors suspect of being one of Gaiman’s sock puppets.

PrudishChild
Any reason to think he set up the gmail, or had access to it? I thought someone else set it up and he just commented on it.

And the suspicions appear to be well-founded, since PrudishChild, who “made this alt account to comment on the allegations against Neil Gaiman” exhibits at least one of Gaiman’s writing quirks.

Weird spaces and poor punctuation? I don’t agree. Maybe some autocorrect issues..? Honestly, I’m not sure what you mean.

What evidence would you accept as me not being Neil Gaiman? I find the accusation that I am him to be bizarre, a bit self-important, and utterly ridiculous. There are 57 members here on this sub, and to think that I’m a famous author is just so, I dunno, self-centered. I am sure he’s being kept away from social media, and I am sure he’s working on prepping for Good Omens 3, which stars filming in January. Engaging with 57 people on r/neilgaimanuncovered won’t do a damn thing for his reputation, his pocketbook, or his work.

I am not defending him. As Ive said many times, I am staying neutral on the matter, until more is known. It may seem like I am “supporting rape culture” or “attacking the victims” or “dedicated to Neil,” because I am one of few (though not alone) who are calling for neutrality instead of immediately condemning him. You can probably find a few statements where what I say can come across as support for Neil, but I think if you look at all my comments fairly, you’ll see that I am merely against turning allegations into proof. That does not serve anyone – victim, accused, society, the internet, Reddit, etc.

I have been posting information about Neil’s works on r/NeilGaiman , as I am allowed to do, and also because the mod asked that be what the subreddit remain. I am providing content for comments. You may see that as attacking the accusers, but I do not.

Gammas always think they’re being so clever. They never understand how transparent their actions are.

UPDATE: Of course, there’s more. There is always more. Apparently, like Harvey Weinstein, naughty Neil likes to run the Teddy Kennedy on the unsuspecting.

The massage was supposed to be for Amanda, but she decided to split it in two with Neil. When it was Neil’s turn, this person recounts that they told him to get naked and covered with a towel so that when they returned he was decent. Neil called the masseur back into the room (usually it’s the massage therapist who knocks), and when they got back into the room Neil was standing naked in front of them.

Gamma Game!

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