Author: VD

I think I know the answer

But I’m going to ask anyhow. We’re working on getting the print edition of SJWAL together and I’d like to know whether folks here would prefer it in paperback or hardcover first. A number of you have stated your intention to buy it in order to give it to people, so I’m assuming that a less expensive paperback would be preferred. We’re hoping to hit a $9.99 price point for that, but we won’t know until we finish the layout.

My current thought is three paperbacks, one for each of the three laws, followed by an eventual hardcover omnibus entitled THE THREE LAWS OF SJW. But Selenoth fans need not worry, I’ve already turned my attention to A SEA OF SKULLS.

More social justice convergence in action

SJWs have all but killed Gnome:

Until July at the earliest, the foundation behind the GNOME desktop environment will be freezing all expenditure deemed not essential to its running will be frozen, as the foundation has run out of cash reserves.

“The issue has been caused by a number of factors,” wrote GNOME Foundation board member, Ekaterina Gerasimova in a post to the foundation’s mailing list.

“These include increased administrative overheads in the last few years due to the increased turnover which has been caused by to the Outreach Program for Women, and the associated payments going out while the associated income has been slow to come in.”

To rectify the situation within a few months, the GNOME Foundation intends to invoice, and chase up, outstanding monies owed to it.

“By keeping expenditures to a minimum while some delayed revenue is regained, the board aims to have things back to normal within a few months,” said a FAQ on the freeze.

It doesn’t sound that bad, until you look at the numbers and realize that the Women’s Outreach Program, which didn’t exist in 2010, rapidly grew to soak up 45.8 percent of the foundation’s entire budget by 2013.

Karen Sandler was, for three years, the foundation’s executive director. She made Women’s Outreach the open source software’s top priority, and quickly turned what had been a financially healthy tech foundation into one that was $80,000 in the hole. In 2013, the most recently reported year, Gnome spent $275,000 of its $600,00 budget (and $512,000 revenue) on Women’s Outreach.

In her outgoing statement as Gnome’s Executive Director, Ms Sandler described the Outreach Program for Women as an “ongoing success”. She was also elected to Gnome’s Board of Directors.

“The more an institution converges towards the highest abstract standard of social and distributive justice, the less it is able to perform its primary function.” 
– SJWs Always Lie: Taking Down the Thought Police

What is Sasquan hiding?

And who is Sasquan protecting? Despite numerous requests, Glenn Glazer of Sasquan continues to refuse to release the anonymized NOMINATION ballots (not the final vote ballots, get it straight because you look like a complete moron when you can’t correctly distinguish between the two), because he claims, falsely, that protecting the privacy of Sasquan’s members is the paramount concern of the organization.

Glenn Glazer may well be an SJW, because SJWs always lie and he is most certainly lying.

Glazer is not lying about the ability to correctly figure out who the occasional individual is, as there are no doubt more than a few pathetic nobodies whose nominations for themselves stand out. For example, it wouldn’t surprise me in the least if one could figure out which of the nominating ballots belonged to Patrick Nielsen Hayden… assuming there weren’t 40 more just like it. Of course, one can only reach a logical conclusion about a nominator’s identity, one cannot actually prove that one’s surmise is correct without Sasquan confirming it.

But Glazer is blatantly lying about the fact that Worldcon gives a damn about privacy. Consider this post from Making Light in April:

#9 ::: beth meacham ::: April 06, 2015, 12:49 PM:
Laurie Mann posted on facebook that neither John C. Wright nor Theo Beale have Sasquan memberships of any sort. I am not sure what to make of that.

Laurie Mann is the Programming division head for Sasquan. Her breach of privacy wasn’t just a one-time thing either, as there is this Facebook post from June:

David Gerrold, June 3

As long as we’re still talking about the sad puppies and the rabid puppies, there is one question that has not yet been asked.

Will Larry Correia and Brad Torgersen be attending the Hugo award ceremony? Will Vox Day and John C. Wright be attending the ceremony? What about the other nominees and the various puppy supporters?

I have been told that none of the major architects of the slates have attending memberships. So the answer is no, they will not be there.

(Some of the slated nominees will likely be there, but that’s not the question I’m asking.)

And that causes me to wonder —

Some of the puppy supporters have said this whole thing is about reclaiming “the real science fiction” from those who have hijacked it into the realm of literary merit. (Something like that.)

Okay — but if we take that at face value — then why aren’t the leaders of the movement coming to the award ceremony to cheer for their nominees? If this is really that important, why aren’t they coming to the party?

Not attending the celebration makes it look like this was never about winning the awards as much as it was about disrupting them.

In other words, Sasquan was freely divulging information – incorrectly, as it happened – about the very members whose privacy they now claim prevents them from releasing the anonymized data. It is very clear that, like Animal Farm, the privacy of some members is considerably more important than others. And their inconsistency isn’t conclusive proof of anything yet, nor do we know exactly what he is trying to hide or who he is trying to protect, it does suggest that Mr. Glazer is attempting to conceal the evidence of the Tor Books nominating bloc vote whose activities have been readily apparent since at least 2008.

Since I am informed that a number of polite requests from various Sasquan members have been stymied, I think it is now time to get a little more serious about finding out what Mr. Glazer appears to be so belatedly determined to hide from the public eye. If you were a Sad Puppy or Rabid Puppy nominator or voter who is interested in seeing Sasquan release the data, email me with your a) Loncon membership number or your b) Sasquan membership number to verify yourself and we will plan our strategy accordingly. Put SASQUAN in the subject.

And if Mr. Glazer continues to refuse to release the promised data under a false claim of privacy concerns, that will simply provide us with even more ammunition for the media, who are already interested in the increasing appearance of corruption in science fiction. I haven’t contacted them yet, but if Mr. Glazer continues to try to bury the evidence – of what, I repeat, we do not know – I will do so soon.

UPDATE: This Sasquan coverup may be considerably more serious than even the most confirmed cynic could have imagined. It appears someone may be resorting to hitherto unprecedented measures to prevent the data from being released. From File 770:

Bobbie DuFault, co-chair of Sasquan, the 2015 World Science Fiction Convention, passed away from unknown causes this morning, September 14. Glenn Glazer of the committee asks, “Please respect the families’ wishes to not be contacted at this time.”

There is that name again too. Glenn Glazer. (Raises eyebrows.) NB: If you are a science fiction SJW, please feel free to commence feigning shock and outrage now.

Running out of altruism

Pat Buchanan on the latest Islamic invasion of Europe:

“Liberalism is the ideology of Western suicide,” wrote James Burnham in his 1964 “Suicide of the West.”

Burnham predicted that the mindless magnanimity of liberals, who subordinate the interests of their own people and nations to utopian and altruistic impulses, would bring about an end to Western civilization.

Was he wrong? Consider what is happening in Europe.

Serbia, Hungary and Slovakia, small nations sensing they will be swamped by asylum seekers from the Muslim world, are trying to seal their borders and secure their homelands.

Their instinct for survival, their awareness of lifeboat ethics, is acute. Yet they are being condemned for trying to save themselves.

Meanwhile, the pope calls on Catholics everywhere to welcome the asylum seekers and Angela Merkel will be taking in 800,000 this year alone, though the grumbling has begun in Bavaria.

This is but the beginning of what is to come, if Europe does not pull up the drawbridge.

For the scores of thousands of Syrians in the Balkans, Hungary, Austria and Germany are only the first wave. Behind them in Lebanon, Turkey and Jordan are 4 million refugees from the Syrian civil war. Seeing the success of the first wave, they are now on the move.

Behind them are 2 million Alawites and 2 million Christians who will be fleeing Syria when the Bashar Assad regime falls to ISIS and the al-Qaeda terrorists who already occupy half of that blood-soaked land.

Now the Iraqis, who live in a country the prospects for whose reunification and peace are receding, have begun to move. Also among the thousands pouring into Europe from Turkey are Pakistanis, Bangladeshis and Afghans. When the Americans leave Afghanistan and the Taliban take their revenge, more Afghans will be fleeing west.

Africa has a billion people, a number that will double by 2050, and double again to 4 billion by 2100. Are those billions of Africans going to endure lives of poverty under ruthless, incompetent, corrupt and tyrannical regimes, if Europe’s door remains wide open?

What is coming is not difficult to predict.

Europe is going to run out of altruism long before it runs out of refugees. 

Again, 40 percent of the migrants are NOT refugees, they are Eastern European Muslims who desperately want to get on the Germano-Scandinavian gravy train. Meanwhile, the more sensible European countries such as Serbia, Hungary, and Denmark are already shutting down their borders:

Danish police were forced to close road and rail links with Germany to prevent thousands of migrants seeking to head north towards Sweden. In one incident, around 300 refugees, including large numbers of women and children, set off on foot for Sweden, forcing police to shut the motorway near Padborg for a several hours.

The reason the migrants are trying to get to Germany or Sweden is that under EU law, the asylum request is processed by the country of entry. And if they are registered in Greece or Italy, much less Denmark or Hungary, they will eventually be repatriated to their home countries.

On the art of administering the bitch slap

Judgy Bitch reviews SJWs Always Lie: Taking Down the Thought Police:

SJWs and feminists (I’ll use SJW to include both for this article) hate and fear the man known as Vox Day, and for very good reason: he can deliver a bitch slap like no other (except maybe Milo Yiannopoulos). Granted, Day would never call what he does to SJWs a ‘bitch slap’ – he is far more sophisticated than that. Drawing on Aristotle’s concepts of dialectic (arguing from reason) and rhetoric (arguing from emotion), Day has done a great public service and published an ebook that has a few SJWs throwing hilarious tantrums.

It’s a very kind and colorful review, and I do appreciate it. Also, I was asked to do a Hangout or some such nonsense by a group on Twitter,  but it was clear that it would work better as a themed open Brainstorm, so if you’re interested in hearing me discuss SJWs with some folks who may be friend or foe (I honestly don’t know), you can register for tonight’s session at 7 PM EST.

How’s that diversity thing working out?

Apparently diversity isn’t turning out to be as quite as “good for the Jews” as it’s been advertised. But there is no pressing cause for concern, I’m sure that the third worlders invading America will be much better behaved than the third worlders invading Europe. And speaking as a son of the Mexican Revolution, I can assure you that La Raza Cósmica is every bit as susceptible to appeals to the Holocaust as the Chinese and other immigrant populations are.

Married Holocaust survivors brutally beaten in savage Amsterdam robbery as attackers shouted ‘dirty Jews’ and left them blinded and confined to wheelchairs. Men forced their way into home of Shmuel Blog, 87 and his wife Diana, 86. They beat and kicked the pair and demanded they hand over valuables. Called Mr and Mrs Blog ‘dirty Jews’, tore off their rings and tied them up. Mr Blog was left blinded with a broken thigh and wheelchair-bound for life. Mrs Blog is also confined to a wheelchair suffering from ‘extreme pains’

It seems to me that the Learned Elders of Wye would be well advised to reconsider their previous position on homogenous white Christian populations rather than assume that they can simply relocate to Israel and China after America follows the current European example.

There is no escape from SJW

SJWs are in the process of reinventing James Bond to be more to their liking:

For decades he has swaggered through life conquering women, chain smoking and saving the world, untroubled by the sensitivities of the 21st century. In a new book, however, James Bond will be getting a dose of modern morality, as author Anthony Horowitz reveals the tricks he used to drag the spy kicking and screaming into the era of political correctness.

Horowitz, the writer of new Bond novel Trigger Mortis, said he had worked carefully to preserve Ian Fleming’s original character and ensuring his 1950s attitudes remained in tact.

But he has introduced a cast of new characters to point out the error of his chauvinistic ways, including messages about smoking causing cancer, women who give him a run for his money, and an “outspoken” gay friend.

Horowitz, who has been given access to Fleming’s own notes to research his latest update, said he had inserted “little twists” to make the story work for modern readers.

 “He does smoke cigarettes, he smokes many many cigarettes. But then what I do is I nudge him with a little reference to a newspaper article he happens to glance at which just reminds him that these things will give him cancer. With women, he has this sort of patronising carnal attitude with them which is absolutely accurate to the Bond of the books. But then by creating very strong women he is given quite a run for his money and his attitudes are challenged. I also gave him a very outspoken gay friend, who chides him and says ‘come on Bond, you’re living in the 20th century now not the Middle Ages.’”

It’s not just science fiction, it’s not just games, it’s not just comics, it is literally everywhere. You cannot escape social justice morality, you can only submit to it or fight it. And one way to do the latter, as this gentleman inadvertently demonstrated, is to black-knight it.

Controversy has enveloped the prestigious Best American Poetry anthology after it emerged that a white poet had been included in the selection after adopting a Chinese pen name – and that Yi-Fen Chou’s poem was kept in the much sought-after lineup even after the author told editors his real identity was Michael Derrick Hudson.

At the back of the 2015 edition of The Best American Poetry, which is published today, Yi-Fen Chou is revealed as the pen name of Michael Derrick Hudson, from Indiana. Hudson writes that his poem chosen for the anthology, The Bees, the Flowers, Jesus, Ancient Tigers, Poseidon, Adam and Eve, was rejected under his real name 40 times before he sent it out as Yi-Fen Chou, when it was rejected nine times before getting accepted. “If indeed this is one of the best American poems of 2015, it took quite a bit of effort to get it into print, but I’m nothing if not persistent,” writes Hudson.

At least Mr. Chou has had the sense to avoid apologizing, but it would have been even better if he had simply announced to his critics that he identifies as Chinese and to refer to him as “Michael Hudson” is deadnaming, racist, and wrongskinphobic.

This identity black-knighting is an excellent way to systematically undermine the SJWs, which is to claim whatever identities you find useful and force them to recognize them in precisely the same manner they declare war to be peace, black to be white, and Bruce to be Caitlyn. The key is to not overdo it or be too obvious – I see way too much stupid “well, I’m a lesbian in a man’s body, ha ha ha” here – and to stick to it relentlessly. If you’re a white writer, you should have at least one ethnic nom de plume to your credit.

Rationalist naivete

One of my great disappointments this year has been reading JB Bury’s History of Freedom of Thought. Bury was the editor of my much-beloved Cambridge Medieval History series, which is excellent, and so I was looking forward to reading his thoughts on a matter that is of more than a little interest to me.

But while the book is as erudite and well-sourced as one would expect, it is little more than a one-sided anti-Christian rationalist polemic, with little insight and absolutely no foresight whatsoever. It’s High Church Atheist in a manner that is about as proto-“I Fucking Love Science” as it is possible for a book published in 1913 to be.

One wishes one could bring Bury forward in time to see what passes for reason hath wrought; a thought police more authoritarian, more delusional, and more in conflict with reality than any of the religious opponents of the freedom of thought ever were. Bury’s unjustified faith in the power of reason is a fascinating precursor to the complete inability of the modern irreligious to grasp the connection between Christianity and many of the aspects of Western civilization that they value, as well as their willingness to blithely saw off the branches of the tree on which they are sitting.

The struggle of reason against authority has ended in what appears now to be a decisive and permanent victory for liberty. In the most civilized and progressive countries, freedom of discussion is recognized as a fundamental principle. In fact, we may say it is accepted as a test of enlightenment, and the man in the street is forward in acknowledging that countries like Russia and Spain, where opinion is more or less fettered, must on that account be considered less civilized than their neighbours. All intellectual people who count take it for granted that there is no subject in heaven or earth which ought not to be investigated without any deference or reference to theological assumptions. No man of science has any fear of publishing his researches, whatever consequences they may involve for current beliefs. Criticism of religious doctrines and of political and social institutions is free. Hopeful people may feel confident that the victory is permanent; that intellectual freedom is now assured to mankind as a possession for ever; that the future will see the collapse of those forces which still work against it and its gradual diffusion in the more backward parts of the earth. Yet history may suggest that this prospect is not assured. Can we be certain that there may not come a great set-back? For freedom of discussion and speculation was, as we saw, fully realized in the Greek and Roman world, and then an unforeseen force, in the shape of Christianity, came in and laid chains upon the human mind and suppressed freedom and imposed upon man a weary struggle to recover the freedom which he had lost. Is it not conceivable that something of the same kind may occur again? that some new force, emerging from the unknown, may surprise the world and cause a similar set-back?

The possibility cannot be denied, but there are some considerations which render it improbable (apart from a catastrophe sweeping away European culture). There are certain radical differences between the intellectual situation now and in antiquity. The facts known to the Greeks about the nature of the physical universe were few. Much that was taught was not proved. Compare what they knew and what we know about astronomy and geography—to take the two branches in which (besides mathematics) they made most progress. When there were so few demonstrated facts to work upon, there was the widest room for speculation. Now to suppress a number of rival theories in favour of one is a very different thing from suppressing whole systems of established facts. If one school of astronomers holds that the earth goes round the sun, another that the sun goes round the earth, but neither is able to demonstrate its proposition, it is easy for an authority, which has coercive power, to suppress one of them successfully. But once it is agreed by all astronomers that the earth goes round the sun, it is a hopeless task for any authority to compel men to accept a false view. In short, because she is in possession of a vast mass of ascertained facts about the nature of the universe, reason holds a much stronger position now than at the time when Christian theology led her captive.

All these facts are her fortifications. Again, it is difficult to see what can arrest the continuous progress of knowledge in the future. In ancient times this progress depended on a few; nowadays, many nations take part in the work. A general conviction of the importance of science prevails to-day, which did not prevail in Greece. And the circumstance that the advance of material civilization depends on science is perhaps a practical guarantee that scientific research will not come to an abrupt halt. In fact science is now a social institution, as much as religion.

I wonder if Bury would revise his conclusions in light of the “social construct” school of denial, which has produced everything from the “science” of anthropogenic global warming to multiplying sexes. Considering how ready the SJWs are to deny that a man is, in fact, a man, it is not at all hard to imagine that they would be every bit as willing to compel men to accept a false view of the sun rotating around the earth.

SJWism is the revival of the blasphemy concept, but it is far more dangerous than the religious laws ever were because it lacks a textual anchor. At least with religion, you always knew what blasphemy was and could readily avoid committing it. With the current thought police, they will inform you of your offenses after you have committed them, and neither ignorance of the law nor its previous nonexistence will provide you with any defense.

All you can read

If you have Kindle Unlimited or Amazon Prime, you can now borrow both A THRONE OF BONES and A MAGIC BROKEN at no charge. As it happens, at 854 pages, Amazon will pay more for a Prime or a Kindle Unlimited user reading ATOB than Castalia gets for actually selling a book there. However, this means that neither book is presently available in the Castalia store.

We do NOT plan to do this for most of our books, just to be clear.