Author: VD

All US Flights Grounded

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has halted all flights throughout the US due to a major communications issue that has grounded flyers indefinitely. The Air Traffic Control System Command Center (ATCSCC) said at 3.54pm ET that the reason for the immediate halting of US flights was: ‘Due to extraordinary circumstances for safety reasons.’

Flight tracking service FlightAware said nearly 7,000 flights were ⁠delayed or cancelled due to the nationwide ground stop.While preliminary reports suggest the outage was not caused by a cyberattack, FBI personnel across the country are monitoring the situation, a law enforcement source told CNN. One possible cause for the massive ground stop reportedly being investigated is a software update gone wrong, leading to the systems outage, according to Bloomberg.

Could be something, could be nothing at all. But in given all the rumors about the need to stock up for 2-3 days, it’s probably best not to assume the latter at this point. Especially in light of the massive Microsoft outages yesterday. Gas up the cars, lay in supplies for a long weekend, and stay close to home.

It’s a good weekend to work in the yard, play a boardgame or two, and watch college football.

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A Corporate Hit

Steve Hsu says Jensen Huang was taken down intentionally:

In the past months I heard on very good authority that Jensen and Nvidia were planning to go hard at producing frontier class open models.

They wanted to verticalize their AI presence, and not depend on OAI or ANT to drive the industry forward.

OAI, ANT, and GOOG are simultaneously competing with NVDA by designing AI chips.

At the same time, Jensen had all but gone to war with NatSec hawks in DC over Nvidia sales in China. As I’ve noted over the last two years, NVDA sold huge numbers of GPUs (~20% of total sales?) to SE Asian buyers and I always thought many of those chips ended up physically in China, or available for remote use by Chinese companies.

This story is much more complicated than you might guess from establishment media reporting.

Jensen was very sloppy to play dangerous games like these while leaving hostages to fate.

This is something we’ve seen again and again, in different countries and industries. The ticket-takers always think they are safe because their coloring outside the box has been protected over and over again, often for literal decades. Think about Russell Brand’s behavior, or Prince Andrew’s, or Harvey Weinstein’s.

Then, without warning, their wrongdoings are suddenly exposed and trumpeted throughout the press. It’s no wonder they tend to react with disbelief and incredulous denial; they don’t understand why they are suddenly being held accountable for things they had been doing for years without a problem.

Police launch criminal probe into David Walliams as victims come forward accusing him of sexual misconduct.

Women have been making accusations about Walliams for years. They’ve contacted the police and provided very credible reports. Everyone on the comedy circuit knew about him. But nothing ever happened until now.

The thing is, the Black Rider almost always throws his own from the horse sooner or later. There are the occasional exceptions, such as George Soros, who has lived a long and full life. But it should never be surprising to see a ticket-taker suddenly, and more or less inexplicably, fall.

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When the Ox is Gored

It’s rather fascinating, and very informative, to compare the response of HR professionals to this YouTuber’s expose of how HR departments are auto-rejecting tens of thousands of resumes from people attempting to apply for jobs to the way in which professional scientists responded to Probability Zero.

I found hundreds of examples of ATS companies, HR news outlets, and recruiter influencers across LinkedIn, Reddit, and YouTube all sharing this story – oftentimes using it as evidence to sell their own resume-writing products or AI-driven hiring software.

You can read my original article if you’re interested in the details, but LONG story short:

  • I argued that the Enhancv survey was too small and heavily biased.
  • I argued that their definition of “auto-rejection” was too narrow, as it did not include situations where “knockout” questions, fit scores, and other criteria forced ATS to auto-reject resumes.
  • I found evidence from government testimonies, university research, employment lawyers, and journalists proving that ATS do, in fact, auto-reject candidates for pointless, and often illegal, reasons.
  • And I argued that some companies and HR personnel might knowingly be using these broken hiring tools as a legal scapegoat to avoid getting sued for employment crimes.

The initial response to my video was modest and predictable…

But then… everything changed when the LinkedIn recruiter influencers attacked…

A week later, I started to receive dozens, and then eventually hundreds, of notifications from HR professionals, LinkedIn “Top Voices,” and recruiter influencers responding to my video/article about ATS auto-rejection.

However, virtually none of them were making substantive or evidence-based arguments against my video.

Instead, they were resorting to name-calling, personal attacks, and demonstrably untrue (and likely defamatory) accusations of me being a fraud or a scammer.

I had become the victim of a social media dogpile.

This is always what the so-called “professionals” do when they can’t hide behind their credentials and the entire basis of their field is factually called into question. It makes no difference if the field is science, business, sports, technology, or entertainment; the first and foremost priority is to contain and then attempt to disqualify the perceived threat.

None of the HR professionals even watched the video, just as the vast majority of the PhDs, grad students, biology majors, and lesser evolutionists haven’t read Probability Zero or read any of my science papers. That’s not a complaint, just to be clear and preempt any more false accusations, that’s very predictable behavior on the part of the professionals.

They’re “too busy.”. It’s “not even worth it.” They “can’t be bothered.” You don’t even need to know what the subject is to know exactly what they’re going to say and what their excuses will be, even as they dedicated dozens of hours to making videos, hunting down potentially disqualifying information, and preparing “debunkings” that don’t even begin to address the very thing to which they are supposedly responding.

Which is why you can always be confident that you’re on the right track when the professionals in any field retreat from substantive dialectic and rely instead upon irrelevant rhetorical attempts to disqualify both the argument and the people presenting it.

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So the Immigration Didn’t Help?

Mercedes-Benz to halt ‘all future investments’ in Germany.

Imagine that. I’ve spoken first-hand to German manufacturers. They said it’s almost impossible to get anything done in a reasonable period of time with as many as 12 different languages being spoken on the plant floor.

And, of course, none of the immigrants happen to have a German work ethic, for the rather obvious reason that they’re not German. There is no magic dirt.

Everything is cyclical. When the National Socialists return, and either they or some reasonable facsimile most likely will, this is why, and this is why they will be welcomed.

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SFWA is Racist, Anti-Hispanic

I am ashamed, deeply ashamed, that the organization of which I am a Life Member, and to which I still belong despite the deeply misleading statements by the past board with regards to that membership, should exhibit such shameless racism and anti-Hispanic bigotry by rejecting the application by the Leading Hispanic Voice in Science Fiction to join our elite and august organization.

It’s truly reprehensible. One has to wonder what are the behavioral expectations of an organization that permits a) an ex-Wax Trax! recording artist, b) a convicted pedophile, and c) a self-declared NAAMBLA supporter to remain members in good standing.

In all the old SFWA directories, Edward E. Kramer comes right after Mary Robinette Kowal. And, to the best of my knowledge, he has never been expelled from SFWA. In fact, unlike me, I’ve never even heard that the SFWA Board voted to expel him, like me, the full membership never voted on either of our proposed expulsions despite the requirement of the then-bylaws.

As for (c), well, they awarded him SFWA Grand Master status…

I will, of course, support any attempt by Mr. Del Arroz to pursue his legal rights under California law, which I understand have been very amenable to supporting his legal rights in the past. I may be the only SFWA member who believes Hispanic science fiction writers should be permitted to join the Science Fiction Writers of America, but sometimes it’s necessary to stand up for what is right, even if one stands alone.

So brave. And stunning.

UPDATE: JDA has already defeated Worldcon in the California courts. It appears SFWA may be next, as he has four very specific questions for them. And if they don’t answer them to his satisfaction, I feel fairly confident that a lawyer will eventually be asking them to answer those questions, and more, under oath.

  • What conduct did the Membership Committee cite, toward which members, and on what dates?
  • Was the same standard applied to the member who published the Bluesky post?
  • Did Edward Kramer ever hold a SFWA membership, and what did the Board do about it?
  • Who decided my application?

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Two is Enough

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the Nvidia board is intending to remove Jensen Huang from the company now that a second affair, this one with an Nvidia executive who reports to him, has surfaced.

The Nvidia board is reportedly planning to oust CEO Jensen Huang amid reports he engaged in two extramarital affairs, including one with a Chinese businesswoman and alleged spy and another with an executive at his tech company.

The Wall Street Journal reported that the board was preparing to meet as soon as Wednesday to determine Huang’s future with the technology giant he founded.

On Sunday, Nvidia said that its board launched an independent investigation “in light of recent reporting that founder and CEO Jensen Huang has been the target of a foreign intelligence effort.”

The development on Wednesday comes after The New York Times reported nearly two weeks ago that Huang had “a close relationship” with an alleged Chinese government agent, identified as Alice Huang, a top executive at Singapore-based data company Megaspeed. He later admitted in an internal statement to Nvidia staff that he had been “unfaithful to his wife.”

Amid the fallout from the allegations and the letter, The Times reported on Wednesday that Huang also allegedly had an extramarital relationship with an Nvidia executive who allegedly reports to him. The outlet, citing sources within the company, reported that Huang and his colleague were allegedly captured on video being affectionate at a hotel during an Nvidia conference in March. The New York Times said it had not seen the video.

I somehow doubt that all of this news coming out right now is unrelated to the upcoming trilateral summit between the USA, China, and Russia. It’s pretty clear that none of this behavior is unknown to the intelligence agencies, but they don’t act upon the knowledge until it’s of some potential use to them.

All I can say is that I am so very happy that something happened to inspire this video. It is conclusive proof that AI is good and for the material benefit of Mankind.

UPDATE: A press release published Thursday following a late Wednesday night board meeting announced Huang’s resignation as CEO, president, and board member, effective immediately, with current CFO Colette Kress appointed interim CEO.

Buckle up, looks like bumpy weather ahead.

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Sad Puppies: A Retrospective

In which Brad Torgerson, who took up the Sad Puppies mantle when Larry Correia retired from the science fiction award scene, shares his thoughts on our successful nuking of the Hugo Awards.

One of the most fascinating things about the past ten years has been watching different people who weren’t part of Sad Puppies speak authoritatively on Sad Puppies. I have my own thoughts, of course. Understand that everything I am about to say, I say as a guy with several authorial accolades under his belt, including the DragonCon Dragon for Best SF novel in 2019, and three readers’ choice awards from Analog magazine in 2010, 2012, and 2014. I was also the rare triple-nominee for Hugo, Nebula, and Campbell awards in 2012.

So . . . did Sad Puppies fail?

For my part I wanted the Hugos to have broad cultural relevance within literary SF again. Versus continuing their long slide into activism-induced irrelevance. In this regard Sad Puppies 3 failed spectacularly. The net dividend of 2015 was the power brokers of Worldcon declaring, “We’re gonna Feminist and Queer the Hugos even HARDER!” and that’s precisely how it went. The Hugos are now ignored by the great majority of spec fic and fantasy readers because they know beyond a shadow of a doubt the award has been made into an explicitly political activist totem. As of 2026 only a fraction of spec fic and fantasy readers even know who the Hugo winners are year to year, and most who remember the Hugos think of the Hugos as they think of almost all entertainment awards: that legacy thing we used to care about but we’ve stopped caring about because people on stages giving each other trophies doesn’t matter to the consumer like it did a few decades ago. It was already becoming true by 2010.

Much moreso, now. Grammys, Emmys, Oscars, yadda. Just don’t have the cultural heft of the 1970s-1990s. And the same for both the Hugo and Nebula. Which are not signposts of quality (on a book cover) like they once were. In fact, for many readers they are a, “Stay away, this is a Modern Audience (said in Drinker voice) book!” And that’s precisely what I wanted reversed. Because I remember when the words HUGO WINNER and NEBULA WINNER on a dust jacket actually described what was between the covers. Like with Ender’s Game and Speaker for the Dead. But the opposite occurred. Because the Nielsen-Haydens and George R. R. Martin and many other people with media reach and influence decreed that no dirty normal Hugo voters would have a say in their sainted backroom politicized log-rolling process. The Hugos would be perma-Woke.

And so they are. And that’s a damned shame, because most readers don’t give the Hugos any regard anymore—as they don’t give most lit awards any regard. And if you doubt it ask yourself if Ann Leckie is bigger than Heinlein? Who has been dead for decades. But he outsells Leckie 20 to 1 on Grandpa Bob’s slow days. They hate Heinlein for that. They want him dustbinned. They tried their best to make Leckie into a thing. Heaped every award possible on her between 2014 and 2016. And all that resulted were massive stacks of deluxe boxed merchandise at B&N locations. With the words HAS WON EVERY SCIENCE FICTION AWARD KNOWN TO MAN plastered across the slipcases and the special selection signage.

But the merchandise didn’t move. I repeat: the merchandise didn’t move. They tried the same thing from ’16-’18 with Nora Jemisin, and it was a similar result: triple-Hugo Best Novels that sat on shelves. And kept sitting. Neither Leckie nor Jemisin are bigger than Heinlein. Both remain midlist activist authors who could not be catapulted over the cultural relevance wall by any means, because that’s not how a literary work (nor author) achieves long-standing relevance in both geek culture and the wider English-speaking culture as a whole. You know who does have relevance? J.K. Rowling. Or Orson Scott Card. Or any dozen other caps-n Names nobody needs to spotlight trophies about. Because their books gained and kept vast audiences all on their own power. Much like Heinlein’s.

The dog of culture cannot be wagged. You can take over institutions believing you will take over culture, but it doesn’t really work like that. The Soviet system dominated the Eastern Bloc for most of a century. It literally owned every institution. But all it did was teach generations of Iron Curtain dwellers to subsist on black humor about how their supposed Socialist paradise was in fact a corrupt hell of bureaucrats, toadies, secret police, and fear.

I believe we’re entering something like that, where American pop culture is concerned. The Woke own the big gaming companies, along with gaming media. But who’s buying and playing the games? Similarly, the Woke own the big movie studios and all of the media media, but ticket sales have cratered on huge blockbuster projects over and over, and keep cratering. More broadly, the Woke own the Ivy League, but all this does is make people question if the Ivy League still matters anymore? Or, does a PhD even matter if the person putting those letters next to their name is a raving loon stuffed with terrible ideas and terrible politics, like a rotten Christmas turkey?

You can corrupt an organization, but you cannot corrupt people if they don’t want to be corrupted. In this regard Sad Puppies was a spectacular success. Because it was the loud, emphatic shout of the normie SF/F reader who used to esteem the Hugo and refused to let the Hugo go quietly into the night. People who could not be convinced that mediocre or even terrible storytelling with Woke wrappings and trappings was in fact brilliant and timeless.

Again, the dog of culture cannot be wagged.

UPDATE: JDA adds his perspective at Fandom Pulse:

The controversy began in the mid 2010s when it became obvious that works were being nominated for the politics of the author and not because of the content of them, in tandem with Tor Books clearly running behind-the-scenes ops to influence the awards toward their authors for marketing purposes. Larry Correia posted up a slate of works he thought were good for his fans to enjoy, and it spiraled from there.

The media attacked everyone involved, calling them racists, Nazis, and the usual insults that sane people ignore. However, it was a different time back then, and the pressure was immense. Vox Day, the publisher of the fine books imprint Castlia Library, saw the writing on the wall that they would never allow the proverbial “normies” influence ithin the culture, and formed a secondary group called The Rabid Puppies where he used his gaming experience to torpedo the entire system by nominating absurd works to ensure nothing but the most extreme would win, tarnishing the reputation of the Hugo Awards forever… Was there a winner for the Puppies? Yes, and it has to be decisively and objectively stated that it was Vox Day.

I still have my Sad Puppies and Rabid Puppies shirts. And I still wear them with great pride. Especially since when you look at the list of the current Hugo Awards today, you see absolutely nothing but Tor, Tor Tor… thereby underlining my original point, and, more or less, Larry Correia’s. The Hugo Awards ceased to be about science fiction a long, long time ago.

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Another UK Predator

Here we go again…

A second well-known male celebrity accused of having ‘multiple’ victims is also hiding behind an injunction, an investigative journalist has claimed. Justine Smith, who works for Private Eye magazine, said the unnamed star had been granted the order several months ago and was ‘in the public eye’.

The revelation comes after David Walliams was accused yesterday of sexual misconduct and abusing his power to groom teenagers as young as 15.

Walliams was named as part of an investigation by two media outlets, after he tried to obtain an injunction to prevent the reporting of allegations against him.

Speaking on The Private Eye Podcast – released yesterday before Walliams was identified – Ms Smith said: ‘There are two men at the moment that can’t be named. One for the most recent proceedings, and then one from several months back. Both of them, there are injunctions on reporting anything. Both of them multiple, multiple victims. Both of them in the public eye.’

Walliams was pretty obvious, especially after the ludicrous “oh, he tried to kill himself twice but he just happened to fail” drama. But I have to admit I have no idea who this one is likely to be.

Of course, if Fake President Trump would simply release all of the Epstein files, we’d almost certainly know a lot more than we’re permitted to know at present. Isn’t it interesting that the media didn’t mention that as one of the reasons why his former base didn’t turn out in the recent mid-term elections?

Never has it been more clear that if you want to be a celebrity, there is something wrong with you.

UPDATE: Apparently the two favorites are a) Jonathan Ross and b) Noel Fielding.

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We Like That!

Before the trade that sent Kirk Cousins back to Minnesota was finalized, the Vikings and the Raiders did something that is rarely done in the NFL – they gave Cousins the opportunity to decide if he wanted to go back to Minnesota or if he wanted to stay in Las Vegas.

He informed Raiders GM John Spytek: he wanted to go back to Minnesota…

At this point, it’s very clear that the Vikings should never have moved on from him in the first place. But regardless of how it all turns out, for good or for ill, the Purple would rather ride or die with Kirko Chainz than with anyone else for the next two seasons.

We are the sons and daughters of Bud Grant. We can handle things going wrong. We don’t despair. All we ask for is loyalty, effort, and the faintest vestige of hope.

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Interview with Razorfist

JDA interviewed Razorfist about his new crowdfund for Ghost of the Badlands 2: Ghost Dance, at Fandom Pulse.

You’ve been a vocal critic of mainstream entertainment. Is the problem the creators, the corporate gatekeepers, or the audience that keeps buying products based on corporate IPs indiscriminately?

It’s a failure trifecta.

1) Creators emanate from what are, in effect, covens of coastal insularity. Even those who are not avowed propagandists advancing an agenda all attend the same colleges. Are ‘educated’ by the same professors. Attend the same parties and rut with the same sexual partners. They may never see a single MAGA hat outside of a television their entire lives. They truly do not know how anyone in a ‘flyover state’ thinks, nor have they incentive to do so.

2) The fans, whether from ignorance or habit, keep going back to the same failing franchises for a second and third turn at ‘revival’.

3) The corporate structure is almost the least pernicious of the three: These corpos were, in most cases, in fiscal freefall long before they assumed a ‘woke’ sociopolitical posture. They see vanishing profit margins, ascendant alternatives, and in the case of comics, waited entirely too long to transition to digital. So they’re taking the “free” ESG money, and the Faustian checklist items attendant to it.

The internet has taken up the cry of “Get woke, go broke”, but it’s an incomplete formulation: My, slightly fuller, exposition is “Go broke, get woke, ultimately croak.” And, from BioWare to DoubleFine, we see daily reenactments of this truism.

Do you see the independent, creator-owned scene as a true alternative to Marvel and DC, or as a separate market that will always be smaller? Is there any way to get people to wake up and move over?

Marvel and DC have slowly sunk to the status of an IP piggy bank, which their parent entities plunder for movie and video game material periodically (less frequently these days, as the superhero film trend has plummeted earthward). Independent creators should not aspire to be the decayed husk DC and Marvel have been relegated to. We should be building something else entirely; something more akin to a culture, with comics almost as an adjunct. New franchises or comic series are less key to the prosperity of the same than is the creation of an independent media environment where they can be reviewed, discussed, discarded, or championed. The underground has been festooned with new projects since time immemorial. That’s nothing new.

It’s the mouthpieces to let passionate people become fans of such – that separate the stellar stuff from the trash – that we need. A modern, digital variant of that killer ‘Zine culture – somewhat elitist, but oriented around the honest interests of its adherents – led to the ‘80s black-and-white comics explosion, and seems to precede every such creative revolution.

Read the rest of what is a very good interview there.

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