Author: VD

No “Blue Wave” in November

I’ve said it before, and I have no doubt that I’ll be saying it again. There will be no “Blue Wave” of Democrats being elected in November:

Voters elected political newcomer Pete Flores to the Texas Senate on Tuesday, flipping a Democratic district red for the first time in 139 years and bolstering Republicans’ supermajority in the chamber ahead of the November elections.

A retired game warden, Flores defeated former state and U.S. Rep. Pete Gallego for the Senate District 19 seat after receiving backing from some of the state’s most prominent politicians, including Gov. Greg Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, and U.S. Sens John Cornyn and Ted Cruz.

“We conservatives are conservative in the way we make approaches. The gunfight’s not over until the last shot’s fired,” Flores told the Express-News after Gallego conceded in a phone call just before 9 p.m. “The last shot’s been fired.”

According the Secretary of State’s website, Flores won with 53 percent of the vote to Gallego’s 47 percent with 44,487 ballots cast.

In his victory speech, Flores reflected about the historic significance of his win and the job ahead.

“This district has not been Republican since Reconstruction. And in September of 2018, it’s Republican once again,” Flores told supporters. “The work starts tomorrow.”

Christian Archer, Gallego’s campaign strategist, said he was shocked by the results.

Hillary Clinton won the district by 12 percentage points in 2016. Looks likes Trumpslide 2020 is already gathering momentum.

Arkstream: The Ember War campaign

From the transcript of the Arkstream:

I’m excited about this. We we have another crowdfunding campaign that’s going on, that’s been very successful, Alt-Hero: Q, some of you are probably already backing that one, but Ember War is significant in a different way. It’s significant because this is the first time that a major science fiction writer is doing a comics-related crowdfunding and so this is potentially quite significant. Just like the original Alt-Hero, this is an experiment. The magic of crowdfunding is not that you can get people to give you a lot of money if you’re lucky, if you happen to hit the right sweet spot at the right time, the magic of crowdfunding is that it tells you where the demand is ahead of time.

And you know, we weren’t that serious about getting into comics originally. I’d had people lobbying me for three years to do it, and finally I said, “okay fine,  we’ll see if there is genuine demand for it.” As it turned out as you know there turned out to be ten times more demand for it than we ever imagined, and so this is a test, this is an experiment. If you like military science fiction, if you want to see more military science fiction turned into graphic novels, it would be a very,  very good idea to support the Ember War campaign even if you’re not familiar with either Richard Fox or the Ember War Saga. I don’t think that you’ll be disappointed because it is a really good story.

Code of Conduct, working as designed

Mark Kern@Grummz
I tweeted that Linux’s new code of conduct would be abused to witch hunt devs.

Right on cue, 3 or 5 devs tried to use my opposition of the code of conduct to try to accuse me of violating it.

All the while using behavior that was against the code of conduct.

I rest my case.

Mark Kern@Grummz
You can add one @ZDNet reporter to the list of witch hunters. Came after me just today.

Geoff@Geoffiam
I dunno man, I think having codes of conduct to allow mediocre programmers to police good programmers is precisely the way to move the industry into the direction of a giant bureaucracy. What could go wrong with that?

Corey @corey5135
I’ve been called out for “aggressive behavior” because I stated that I had already evaluated a suggested implementation & decided it was the wrong way to go (different project).  They were putting me in my place for daring to disagree. Last patch they got from me.

Tucker Goodrich@TuckerGoodrich
Yeah, there’s a lot Vox Day says that I don’t like, but I think his analysis of codes of conduct is spot on.

“…the Code of Conduct is working as designed when it chases off the productive members of the project”

Arkhaven to publish THE EMBER WAR

The Indie-go-go campaign for the graphic novel by bestselling science fiction novelist Richard Fox and Jon Del Arroz is now live.

The Earth is doomed. Humanity has a chance. 

In the near future, an alien probe arrives on Earth with a pivotal mission—determine if humanity has what it takes to survive the impending invasion by a merciless armada.

The probe discovers Marc Ibarra, a young inventor, who holds the key to a daring gambit that could save a fraction of Earth’s population. Humanity’s only chance lies with Ibarra’s ability to keep a terrible secret and engineer the planet down the narrow path to survival.

Earth will need a fleet. One with a hidden purpose. One strong enough to fight a battle against annihilation.

THE EMBER WAR is the comic book adaptation of Richard Fox’s bestselling military sci-fi series. If you like A Hymn Before Battle by John Ringo and The Last Starship by Vaughn Heppner, then you’ll love this explosive adventure with constant thrills and high stakes from cover to cover.

This is potentially a major step forward for both Arkhaven and the independent science fiction community, as it is an opportunity for us to work with a broader range of proven creators and an opportunity for them to expand out of the Kindle Unlimited market they currently dominate. If the military SF-reading crowd supports THE EMBER WAR, there is a good chance Arkhaven will seriously consider adapting There Will Be War and other popular Mil-SF series.

Darkstream: Trade war is good for the U.S. economy

From the transcript of the Darkstream:

So today the God-Emperor announced $200 billion in new trade tariffs targeted against Chinese imports, and he’s also made it clear that if China goes ahead and retaliates he’s going to go ahead and drop even more tariffs on them as well. Now this, of course, has all the usual suspects, all the free traders, all the neocons, all the people who think that responding “uh, Ricardo” is a meaningful response to tariffs, in a tizzy. And they’ve been upset about this, they’ve been arguing their theory over and over and over again ever since the first tariffs were announced a couple months ago, but if you noticed something,  what hasn’t happened, what consequences were predicted by all of these doomsayers didn’t come to pass.

Instead what happened is what anti-free trade people like myself predicted would happen, and what proper economic theory, conventional economic theory, predicts would happen – the economy grew! This is not difficult, this is not at all hard. Now, if you want to argue that the idea of a objective measure of a national economy,  especially one that is denominated in a currency, is a contradiction in terms and that it’s not possible to measure a national economy, especially not in its own currency I would accept that argument, but then there’s no point in having this discussion because it’s not possible to argue about something that can’t be quantified becoming larger or smaller. If you’re accepting mainstream economics to the point that you’re talking about the economy growing or the economy shrinking, then you have to accept the mainstream theory and what the mainstream theory very clearly states is that the size of the economy as measured in gross domestic product is C plus I plus G Plus X minus M, as consumer spending plus investment plus government spending plus exports minus imports, so what happens when you reduce imports the economy grows. You know, this is an absolutely straightforward mathematical relationship, it is a very simple equation, and so it’s not at all surprising that despite all the doomsaying,  despite all the ridiculous predictions, that the economy has grown and we’ve actually seen the fastest growth rates for the U.S. economy since the 1980s.

The Return of the Grand Inquisitor

Rumors are flying that Attorney General Jeff Sessions is going to unrecuse himself concerning RUSSIA-RUSSIA-RUSSIA and the Mueller investigation:

Didn’t Q WAY back when Kennedy retired tell us that we’d see 2 Supreme Court Justices leave due to a scandal.

And now Q drops that Sessions sent 1 & 2 a letter.

He was telling them that THEY have to recuse based on declas info and that he is unrecused.

It is Kagan and Soto.

The interesting thing to note here is that Q’s drops are getting more and more specific. Soon there won’t be any room for either doubting his legitimacy or denying that he is a fraud. I still tend to favor the legitimate interpretation, simply because the increased panic in the media is palpable and tends to confirm the overall theme of the drops.

And transparency is a good thing, particularly in government.

No deals

PANIC IN DC
D’s offering to [KILL] sexual assault allegation v Judge K in exchange for immediate pullback of DECLAS.
POTUS: Judge K will be confirmed regardless…
Q

Interesting. I wonder what has the Democrats so worried about what they already know?

President Trump on Monday ordered the declassification of several key documents related to the FBI’s probe of Russian actions during the 2016 presidential election, including 21 pages of an application for a renewed surveillance warrant against former campaign aide Carter Page, and text messages from disgraced FBI figures Peter Strzok and Lisa Page.

White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said Trump had ordered the documents released by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) and the Justice Department “[a]t the request of a number of committees of Congress, and for reasons of transparency.”

The documents to be declassified also include all FBI reports on interviews with Justice Department official Bruce Ohr and all FBI reports of interviews prepared in connection with all other applications to surveil Carter Page.

Because they are obviously worried.

Schiff calls Trump’s declassification move a “clear abuse of power,” says: “I have been previously informed by the FBI and Justice Department that they would consider their release a red line that must not be crossed as they may compromise sources and methods.” 

As if anyone takes those self-serving jokers and their self-serving warnings seriously anymore.

Darkstream: what an SJW attack looks like

From the transcript of the Darkstream:

The important thing to understand about this is that it’s real. You know, when I told you guys about this stuff ten days ago, two weeks ago, whatever it was, a lot of people just simply didn’t believe me. They didn’t want to believe, they wanted to believe that I was just coming up with some excuse to justify my actions. Now whether you agree with my actions or not, the point is that this situation is real. SJWs within the technology companies are abusing their positions and going after people they consider to be the enemy,  and that’s not just people like us,  people who are open and avowedly Christian, who are open and avowedly Alt-Right, who are open about being nationalists, but it also includes all of those who are incorrectly lumped in with us.

And so you know, they’re going to take these kinds of actions and you need to be prepared for it. Now we didn’t flip out, we didn’t panic, we just calmly sat down and analyzed the stuff, looked more deeply into it and then figured out what was going on. The concern that I have is that it’s very clear to me, from the way that the ComicsGate folks are attempting to virtue signal and attempting to get themselves out of the sights of the SJWs, means that they’re not ready for this.

Linux, converged

Linus Torvalds finally surrenders to the SJWs:

Linux creator Linus Torvalds has apologized for years of rants, swearing, and general hostility directed at other Linux developers, saying he’s going to take a temporary break from his role as maintainer of the open source kernel to learn how to behave better.

For many years, Torvalds has been infamous for his expletive-filled, aggressive outbursts on the Linux Kernel Mailing List (LKML), chewing out developers who submit patches that he believes aren’t up to the standards necessary for the kernel. He’s defended this behavior in the face of pushback from other developers, insisting that people being nice to one another was an American ideology.

But that may be coming to an end. In a lengthy email posted to the LKML on Sunday night, Torvalds expressed a change of heart. Taken to task over attacks that he recognizes were “unprofessional and uncalled for,” he says he now recognizes that his behavior was “not OK” and he is “truly sorry.” He’s going to step back from kernel development for a while—something he’s done before while developing the Git source control system—so that he can “get help on how to behave differently.”

It’s not entirely clear what precipitated this change, though Torvalds did mention a little of the backstory. The Linux Maintainer Summit, an invitation-only gathering of around 30 core Linux developers, takes place each year to provide a venue for kernel maintainers to discuss issues around the kernel’s development process. This year’s summit was due to be in Vancouver but was moved earlier this month to Edinburgh after it turned out that Torvalds had mistakenly booked a vacation in Scotland that clashed with the Vancouver event.

This situation presented two options: stay in Vancouver without Torvalds or move to Edinburgh with Torvalds. Torvalds himself preferred the first option, but this idea was met with resistance, suggesting that Torvalds’ behavior, which is known to have driven some developers away from kernel development entirely, was one of the issues that the maintainers wanted to discuss. Accordingly, the decision was made to move to Edinburgh to fit in with his vacation. That such a disruptive change of venue should occur indicates there’s considerable strength of feeling about Torvalds’ presence.

Simultaneously with this, the Linux project now has a code of conduct. Previously, the project had a “code of conflict”: a short document that asserts that the code quality is the only thing that matters and implores developers to “be excellent to each other.” The new code of conduct is more extensive and sets explicit standards for behavior, requiring it to be positive, professional, welcoming, and inclusive.

So much for Linux, then. If I didn’t already have my hands full, I’d fork the damn thing myself.

ComicsGate in the UK

The SJW media offensive has reached The Guardian. It’s only a matter of time now before it reaches The New Zealand Herald. Can a Special Victims Unit episode be far behind?

Comicsgate is the latest front in the ongoing culture wars
Unless comics creators adopt a zero tolerance approach to racism and misogyny, this abuse of power by ‘fans’ will never end

‘Comicsgate is, well, it’s exactly what it sounds like: Gamergate but comics.’

For those who haven’t been following the latest front of the ongoing culture wars, Comicsgate is, well, exactly what it sounds like: Gamergate but comics. In 2014, the Washington Post described Gamergate as “a proxy war for a greater cultural battle over who belongs to the mainstream”, and that description, four years later, remains perfectly adequate to describe its comics iteration.

Many will tell you that the movement began with the 2017 rise of Richard C Meyer, a Twitter user who amassed a platform largely based on denouncement, derision and disrespect of marginalised industry professionals, as well as their advocates – typically by co-opting marginalised rhetoric to reposition himself and others like him as victims.

Quick, guys, VIRTUE SIGNAL! You have to VIRTUE SIGNAL harder!