Author: VD

The bright side of narcissism

Anonymous Conservative reviews The Nine Laws by Ivan Throne:

I recently finished The Nine Laws by Ivan Throne of DarkTriadMan.com, the new Castalia House release. The book is basically like A Book of Five Rings, or perhaps more so, the Art of War, a little more organized and spread broadly to cover the way of approaching life in its entirety. It is also infused with Ninjutsu lessons in mindset, philosophy, and strategy which the author has acquired in his study of that art. That is all overlaid on an analysis of the Dark Triad Traits, and the specific advantages which aspects of those traits can contribute to success in endeavors, if used properly. In short, I think it is among the best mindset/strategy books out there, and I expect that there will be a lot of copies of Art of War and Five Rings throughout the world finding a bold new title sharing their space on the bookshelves of the world….

To be clear, the book is not advocating for the dark triads traits broadly. As an example, it encourages the aspects of narcissism which lead to success – the belief in self, the grand visions it produces, the fearlessly plunging into endeavors as if failure is impossible. Those are all traits of the narcissist which explain why you see so many narcissists attain high positions in life. They expect success, and plunge into ridiculous endeavors as if it is to be expected.

But not all narcissists succeed, and those who fail due to their malady fail badly. He examines why this is, and concludes correctly, in my opinion, that the reason is delusion. Narcissists, just as their malady drives them forward relentlessly, and fearlessly, also suffer from a detachment from reality which leads them to misjudge their abilities and expect success to just happen. He encourages you to develop the former traits of plunging forward fearlessly into grand visions, while maintaining a grasp of reality and an ability to see where failure may arise so you may enjoy the benefits of the narcissist’s grandiose vision, without the detriments of being unable to effectively plot courses.

Similarly, sociopaths enjoy freedom from the moral rules which constrain others. But their ignorance of them is reflex, and uncontrolled. That leads them to stumble as often as they ascend. He encourages a recognition of the fact that there are no rules, but tempers it with a recognition that ignorance of the rules may have consequences, and thus you must always be on the lookout for them.

Because the book is so deep, I cannot say how it will change your life. I’d need to post that review in a few years. But I can say there is a ton of wisdom in the book, and it is solid.

This is an important review, because AC is the foremost observer of narcissism, sociopathy, and deranged minds in general on the Internet. The Nine Laws has been a surprisingly good seller for Castalia, and should easily break the 10,000-lifetime sales mark that serves as the unofficial “successful book” line in the mainstream publishing world now that the average U.S. nonfiction book is now selling less than 250 copies per year.

It may sound counterproductive to look to deranged minds for success strategies, but the fact of the matter is that those strategies are so effective that they allow even the delusional and the brain-damaged to succeed despite themselves. Therefore, it makes sense that a healthy mind utilizing the positive aspects of those strategies while rejecting the negative ones should be able to generate even more success for itself.

The fox guarding the chicken coop

Facebook is arguably the very worst organization to lead the charge against “fake news” than any organization not called “The Onion”, as Techdirt concluded long before Mark Zuckerberg’s latest George Soros-funded crusade:

Facebook is generally seen as a key multiplier in this false force of non-news, which is probably what led the social media giant to declare war on fake news sites a year or so back. So how’d that go? Well, the results as analyzed over at Buzzfeed seems to suggest that Facebook has either lost this war it declared or is losing it badly enough that it might as well give it up.

To gauge Facebook’s progress in its fight, BuzzFeed News examined data across thousands of posts published to the fake news sites’ Facebook pages, and found decidedly mixed results. While average engagements (likes + shares + comments) per post fell from 972.7 in January 2015 to 434.78 in December 2015, they jumped to 827.8 in January 2016 and a whopping 1,304.7 in February. 


Some of the posts on the fake news sites’ pages went extremely viral many months after Facebook announced its crackdown. In August, for instance, an Empire News story reporting that Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev sustained serious injuries in prison received more than 240,000 likes, 43,000 shares, and 28,000 comments on its Facebook page. The incident was pure fiction, but still spread like wildfire on the platform. An even less believable September post about a fatal gang war sparked by the “Blood” moon was shared over 22,000 times from the Facebook page of Huzlers, another fake news site.

So, how did this war go so wrong for Facebook? Well, to start, it relied heavily on user-submitted notifications that a link or site was a fake news site. Sounds great, as aggregating feedback has worked quite well in other arenas. For this, however, it was doomed from the start. The purpose of fake news sites is, after all, to fool people, and fooled people are obviously not reporting the links as fake. Even when a reader manages to determine eventually that a link was a fake news post at a later time, perhaps after sharing it and having comments proving it false, how many of those people then take steps to report the link? Not enough, clearly, as the fake news scourge marches on.


Another layer of the problem appears to be the faith and trust the general public puts into some famous people they are following, who have also been fooled with startling regularity. Take D.L. Hughley, for example. The comedian, whose page is liked by more than 1.7 million people, showed up twice in the Huzlers logs. One fictitious Huzlers story he posted, about Magic Johnson donating blood, garnered more than 10,000 shares from his page. Hughley, who did not respond to BuzzFeed News’ request for comment, also shared four National Report links in 2015. 

Radio stations also frequently post fake news. The Florida-based 93XFM was one of a number of radio stations BuzzFeed News discovered sharing Huzlers posts in 2015. Asked about one April post linking to a Huzlers story about a woman smoking PCP and chewing off her boyfriend’s penis, a 93XFM DJ named Sadie explained that fact-checking Facebook posts isn’t exactly a high priority.

So, it’s not the dark and ever-dangerous Alt-Right that is to blame for fake news, but celebrities and Facebook itself. Moreover, Facebook isn’t even reliable when it comes to reporting its own internal metrics to advertisers, as it has been caught exaggerating its own traffic numbers for the FOURTH time. Or, as Facebook would prefer you see it, accidentally making mistakes that just coincidentally happened to favor its own financial interests again for the fourth straight time.

Facebook Inc. built a colossal business based on measuring something older advertising methods cannot: the granular details about people. Two months ago, the company copped to a flaw in that measurement. Then Facebook did it again. And again.

On Friday, Facebook revealed faulty metrics with Instant Articles, its mobile publishing system, the fourth disclosure of a measurement error since September. The admission sharpened calls for more independent organizations to monitor the performance of digital advertising. And some large firms that buy a lot of ads said they will more closely scrutinize their spending on the social networking giant and could shift marketing dollars elsewhere….

In September, Facebook shared its first measurement error: inflated viewership numbers for its video ads, a relatively new product. Two months later, the company disclosed additional metric errors along with new tools for third-party measurement companies, including ComScore and Nielsen, to track its system more closely.

Problems persisted. Earlier this month, a report in Marketing Land, an industry publication, spotted a discrepancy between Facebook’s internal metrics on how articles where shared and public measurements. Facebook confirmed the error. “That shouldn’t happen,” said Brian Wieser, senior analyst, Pivotal Research Group. “If anyone was concerned that Facebook’s self-audit was not sufficient enough, they just proved it.”

I don’t know why anyone is surprised that Facebook is trafficking heavily in false information on every side. Look at who runs it. Once a con artist, always a con artist. That’s been Zuckerberg’s motif from the start.

The death knell of the dinosaur media

The New York Times has entered its terminal decline:

When we moved into our new building in 2007, we saw it as a modern headquarters for a modern New York Times. We still feel that way.

But as Mark mentioned in the State of The Times last month, after a good deal of consideration, we have determined that the way that we use our headquarters building needs to evolve to better match the changes you and your colleagues have been driving across every part of the company.

The current way we have configured our office makes us slower and less collaborative. It is also, frankly, too expensive to occupy this many floors when we don’t truly need them.

We’ve made the decision to consolidate our footprint across the building to create a more dynamic, modern and open workplace, one that is better suited to the moment. We’re planning significant investments in a redesign of our existing space in order to facilitate more cross-departmental collaboration.

We expect a substantial financial benefit as well. All told, we will vacate at least eight floors, allowing us to generate significant rental income.

We have engaged Gensler, an architecture and interior design firm, to help us redesign our workplace and beginning early next year, work will begin on select floors below 14. By the end of next year, we expect to have consolidated our occupancy to that side of the building. We will keep the cafeteria and the conference rooms on 15.

We have already seen that changing office layouts can lead to good results. Some of the most creative wings of the company — the Beta team, the Graphics Department and some of our technology teams have changed their floor plans to help improve the way they work.

The coming redesign will introduce more team rooms and common spaces. And, we will do away with big corner offices, like the ones you see on the 16th and 17th floors, including, yes, the publisher and CEO’s offices. We don’t need to preserve those vestiges from a different era, so we won’t.

What a pity they employed Paul Krugman back in 2007, rather than a more astute economist who saw the 2008 financial crisis coming, who could have warned them that buying real estate was not a good idea at the time.

Anyhow, it will take a while before the NYT goes away entirely, as there is a lot of ruin in a major media institution, but it won’t be too terribly long before its debts exceed its assets.

One can always count on gamma

I’m not sure which was more predictable. The fact that the late and unlamented Wild Man would react to his abrupt exit from the premises with the usual aplomb of the gamma scorned, or the fact that his tears would go undried at the Chateau.

Lucius Somesuch
Having read your “existential ontological” scribblings at Vox Popoli, Wild Man, with all of your buttkissing “please help me to understand, Good Sir” bowing and scraping, we see what a (((cucky))) midwit trolltard you are. John Locke is dead. You’re a fucking idiot. Oh, but a liar too– saruh is that YOU?! lzolzoz .

Wild Man
Lucius Fuckwad – you be so dumb …… to confuse the shiv for buttkissing. What else goes over you head buddy? Fuck ….. I bet you be owned by the women in you life. John Locke inconsequential as to western institutions? …… fuck you stupid

Hesiod
Wild Dude, you got your arse handed to you by Vox Day. Retreating to another blog to cry your gamma dreams of being the once and future king were unjustly robbed does you no good. It’s embarrassing, in fact.

I imagine you can guess what comes next….

A magnificent monster

You have to admit, that would look impressive on your bookshelf. My own copy hasn’t arrived yet, so a reader was kind enough to post an image on Gab.

And on a tangential matter, in answer to a question that has been asked a few times, A SEA OF SKULLS will be released in print when it is precisely the same size, which is to say in the April-May timeframe.

In the meantime, if you want to acquire your own magnificent monster, A THRONE OF BONES is available also available in an alarmingly enormous paperback.

Zero interest in Rogue One

It was interesting and informative to watch a countdown show of the top 20 moments in Star Wars cinematic history. All of the top moments were from the first two movies, and the so-called “top moments” from the new movies – none of which I have seen – were almost uniformly lame. I had a hard time not laughing at the setup for the death of Han Solo, as all I could hear in my mind was Gandalf shouting “you shall not pass!”

Filmmakers really shouldn’t try to rip off great moments from other films. Sure, the visual is great, but it kicks the viewer out of the movie as surely as a poorly-timed product placement.

The only really good one was the fight between Darth Maul, the young Obi-wan, and Liam Neeson. Some of them, like Girl Luke and her Man Friday accidentally boarding the Millennium Falcon and recreating earlier flight combat scenes, were simply embarrassing.

So, I wasn’t inclined to bother seeing Rogue One anyhow, and the fact that Disney Wars is now fortified with feminism and multiculturalism only confirmed my indifference towards it.

Wait a minute, after thirty-nine years, it turns out that Star Wars is about race?

Sort of. You may not notice at first (I didn’t, until the second half of the movie), but in Rogue One there isn’t a single non-Hispanic white male among the large cast of heroes. The rebel band seeking to steal the plans for the Death Star from the Empire is led by a white woman (Felicity Jones), a Latino man (Diego Luna) and three ethnic Asians (Riz Ahmed, Donnie Yen, Wen Jiang), with advice from a black man (Forest Whitaker) and a droid (voice of Alan Tudyk). Among the rebels, non-Hispanic white dudes (for convenience, I’ll just call them white from now on) are relegated to the background, while the Empire is represented by brigades of sinister white men, led by Ben Mendelsohn and (the digital reincarnation of) Peter Cushing as Imperial officers. It’s as if the cast was meant to echo a Hillary Clinton speech in which she described her coalition as everybody but white males.

The casting was not accidental. The Empire is (now) a “white supremacist (human) organization,” Rogue One co-writer Chris Weitz Tweeted the Friday after Clinton was defeated in the election. Another writer for the film, Gary Whitta, replied with his own Tweet, “Opposed by a multi-cultural group led by brave women”—then deleted it.

Needless to say, this aggression will not stand, man. Look for a literary response to the nonsense from Castalia in 2017.

It’s also unsurprising to learn that SJW-converged Wired is up to its usual tricks. The reporter is evidently confused about the difference between “reporting” and “debating”, as can be seen in her impromptu debate with Mike Cernovich:

Hi Mike—WIRED is reporting on #DumpStarWars, which I see you’ve participated in. Any chance you’d like to chat about why you’re boycotting?

Star Wars writers hate Trump voters. Why give them money?

From what I’ve seen, what they really hate are white supremacists. You don’t see throwing alt-right/lite/west support behind the boycott as reinforcing the idea that trump supporters=white supremacists?

Buddy my wife is Persian, we have a daughter, the white supremacist stuff is stupid as hell.

To be clear, I wasn’t saying you were a white supremacist. But much of the backlash has focused on the idea that Rogue One is racist against white men. Are you saying that white supremacist sentiment isn’t a factor in the protest?

Nah that’s not it at all. I don’t see why this is hard to understand. Trump supporters are attacked. Giving money to people who attack them is pathetic. I am going to organize more boycotts.

I’m struggling to find evidence that Rogue One’s writers have been explicitly against anything but white supremacy. Could you point out an example?

What’s the matter, Mike? Why come you won’t make the argument I keep trying to stuff in your mouth instead of saying what you actually think?

Also, as it happens, the movie sucks:

Lobotomized and depersonalized, “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story,” the latest entry in the film franchise, is a pure and perfect product that makes last year’s flavor, “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” feel like an exemplar of hands-on humanistic warmth and dramatic intimacy…. “Rogue One” offers an international cast that, along with Jones, Whitaker, and Mikkelsen, features Diego Luna (as the rebel captain Cassian Andor, who is Jyn’s main cohort), Riz Ahmed (as the band’s intrepid pilot), and Donnie Yen (as a blind martial-arts spiritualist). But it seems as if the condition for assembling this diverse group is not letting them say or do anything of note, anything of any individual distinction, anything of any free-floating or idiosyncratic implication. 

Initial speedups

Some recent posts at Gab concerning Infogalactic:

  • The daily traffic at #Infogalactic is steadily growing. 
    • +34.4 % October to November 
    • +43.5% November to December 
  • Jimmy e-mailed me many times pleading for me to donate again to Wiki. Wiki is compromised, infiltrated by underemployed SJWs w/ too much free time. Wiki is losing a donor. Out with Wiki. In with Infogalactic. Migrate over if you’re right of Karl Marx.

If you’re using Infogalactic to replace Wikipedia – which you can now do as your default search engine in Brave, or by typing :i in the URL bar – you’ve probably noticed that it is considerably faster than it was a week ago. Click a few times on the Random Page link to see the initial improvements in page load times.

We’re still working on the Search and Image Fetch database functions; the latter is the primary culprit with regards to the persistent slowness of both, but we have made considerable progress there as well and expect to have those speedups implemented within a week. I’ll be sending out an update to both the Burn Unit and the Phase Two donors with an explanation of what IG’s Techstars have done, what they are doing, and what they’ll be working on next, as soon as this first round of speedups are in place. Please note that as a general rule, I try to avoid unnecessary communiques that contain no actual information.

If you haven’t joined the Burn Unit or jumped the donor ship from Wiki to IG yet, I would encourage you to do so now for two reasons. First, the Alt-Tech revolution is the only way out of being permanently walled in by the converged technology giants, and second, the planetary knowledge core is only going to keep getting better from here.

As you may have heard, Apple is still playing politics with Gab, attempting to keep the Gab app out of the Apple Store on spurious and hypocritical grounds, and Twitter has banned API-related access by Gab, which tells you that Big Tech is already alarmed by the rapid rise of the Alt-Tech. We not only can win, we will win, but we do need those who are on our side to support us rather than continue to support those who hate them.

Fighting for due process

The Minnesota Golden Gophers take a strong stand for due process for college men:

Minnesota football players announced Thursday night that they were boycotting all football activities in the wake of the suspensions this week of 10 teammates. The school did not specify the reasons for the suspensions in Tuesday’s announcement. Ray Buford Sr., the father of defensive back Ray Buford Jr., one of the suspended players, said Wednesday the suspensions resulted from a Title IX investigation conducted by the university into an alleged sexual assault, which was separate from a police investigation into the alleged assault in the early hours of Sept. 2.

The other suspended players are sophomore running back Carlton Djam; freshman quarterback Seth Green; sophomore defensive back KiAnte Hardin; redshirt freshman defensive back Dior Johnson; freshman defensive lineman Tamarion Johnson; junior running back Kobe McCrary; sophomore defensive back Antonio Shenault; freshman quarterback Mark Williams; and freshman defensive back Antoine Winfield Jr.

In a statement read by senior wide receiver Drew Wolitarsky, the players said: “The boycott will remain effective until due process is followed and suspensions for all 10 players involved are lifted.”

The statement said the players were forced to take action after an unsatisfactory meeting with athletic director Mark Coyle in which they “wanted answers but received misleading statements.”

Coyle and university president Eric W. Kaler released a joint statement after the players’ announcement that read: “We understand that a lot of confusion and frustration exists as a result of this week’s suspension of 10 Gopher Football players from all team activities. The reality is that not everyone can have all of the facts, and unfortunately the University cannot share more information due to federal laws regarding student privacy.

“We fully support our Gopher football players and all of our student-athletes. Situations like this are always difficult, and the decision was made in consultation with and has the full support of President Eric Kaler. The decision was based on facts and is reflective of the University’s values. We want to continue an open dialogue with our players and will work to do that over the coming days. It’s important that we continue to work together as we move through this difficult time.”

There has been some confusion about whether or not Gophers coach Tracy Claeys backed the decision to suspend the players. Coyle and Kaler said Claeys was consulted, but the players said Thursday night they did not believe their coach had a say in the matter.

Claeys spoke out in support of his players on Twitter after their decision to boycott. Former Minnesota Vikings star cornerback Antoine Winfield Sr. said his son did nothing wrong and blistered university leadership for what he said was a lack of communication.

“If the president and athletic director keep their jobs, my son, Antoine Winfield Jr., will not attend the University of Minnesota,” Winfield Sr. said.

The players are demanding a closed-door meeting with members of the board of regents without the presence of Coyle or Kaler.

If other bowl-bound football teams join the Gopher protest against the complete lack of due process afforded young men in college who are accused of sexual misconduct, I suspect the extralegal nonsense of the last 30 years will be undone rather quickly.

No one is saying that football players, particularly black football players, don’t behave badly from time to time around women and break the law. I know a woman who was raped by a black football player at the University of Minnesota, and it wasn’t one of those next-day-regret “rapes” either. But that’s clearly not the situation here since the police have already investigated and the players were not even arrested, let alone charged with any crime. Moreover, only three players were investigated by the police, but ten are now suspended by the university at the behest of the Title IX investigation.

It would certainly make for an intriguing dilemma if the universities were forced to choose between their SJW-converged internal justice system-substitutes and the football-generated revenue produced by the players.

The awfulness of Apple

The appeal of Apple is lost on Jerry Pournelle:

I wish I could return all my Apple devices for refunds. Actually, that isn’t true; I like my Apple iPhone 6, and I’ll keep it; but the iPad is far more trouble than it’s worth, and the MacBook Pro, while useful, suffers from the same security mania that makes the iPad useless. I can’t even install free apps on the iPad. I tell it to install; it asks for my Apple account password; I go find that and mistype it, but eventually I get it right; whereupon it tells ,me it has sent a security number to a trusted device. I go looking for trusted devices. Naturally they have to be Apple. Eventually I remember that the iPhone is an Apple device and I trust it, and lo! I find there is a message with a code number. I type that into the iPad. It is rejected. I try again. Still rejected.

I give up. I have an iPad with almost no apps because it takes all afternoon and another Apple device to get an app for it, and that doesn’t work because – I don’t know why. It took me a while to figure out that the trusted device was the iPhone; could the delay be it.? I suppose I will have to go to the Apple Store and see if anyone can fix this, but at this season that’s not a practical thing to do, and I’m not really all that mobile at my age anyway.

I thought the Surface Pro was a fussbudget and it is, but it’s got to be better than having to own two Apple devices before you can use one of them, and then having them send you a security number that doesn’t work, with no instruction as to what to do next. Congratulations. My iPad is now so secure I can’t use it, and I don’t know what to do next.

I like the MacBook Pro. I like the keyboard. But the security paranoia with the need for two devices to do the most trivial tasks like installing a free app is too much for me. And the message with the code seems to have vanished from the iPhone now; it’s neither in mail nor in messages. I suppose I must have dreamed it?

It is rather ironic that the company whose fortune was made by its superior user interface is now heading downhill due to the worst UI experience in technology. But that’s the way of the world; it turns out that Steve Jobs was irreplaceable after all.

Apple’s main concern is now keeping people imprisoned in its walled garden, not luring them in any longer. The “technology giants” are no longer even technology companies, but marketing-distribution systems. So, it’s no surprise that their technology and user experience is suffering as a result.

I have an iPad Mini that was required for a game on which I’m working. It’s got some nice hardware, but the UI is so horrifically awful that I simply don’t use it for anything except testing the game. Sadly, Google is going the same way, to the point that I no longer update my Android tablet, phone, or apps.

This tells me we’re heading for some serious disruption in the not-too-distant future.