Author: VD

The Roots of GamerGate 2.0

The Dark Herald delves into the latest iteration of GamerGate at the Arkhaven blog:

It all began with GamerGate.

Well, no it didn’t. It began with decisions that the editors of PC gaming magazines made.

Back in the 1990s I had a subscription to Computer Gaming World. It was a don’t miss back then. Given what the internet was like at the time, a print magazine was an absolute necessity. At least if you were going to find out if Master of Orion II was anywhere near as good as the first game, (BTW, it was better). Is the full version Redneck Rampage as difficult to run as the share-ware? (Yes, definitely). Or is John Romero really going to make you, his bitch? (No, he wasn’t.) You would also get interviews with people like Roberta Williams and Richard Garriott. Plus, you would find out which conventions were going to have the best computer gaming room. (It mattered in those days because it might be the only place you could play some titles if your friends didn’t have a copy.)

Here’s the big thing. There was a real sense of community back then and gaming magazines were the glue that was holding us together. The guys that wrote those articles were part of our tribe. They spoke our language, shared our concerns, and agreed with us on what was cool.

The gaming magazines were huge and I don’t just mean within gaming culture. They were physically gigantic. There was a point where CGW had 500 pages. That was where the trouble began.

When you have that many pages, you need to fill them with something. The editors of gaming magazines had run into a problem there. They could hire more gamers and teach them how to write, a longer process to be sure but in the end, you would have more in-depth articles by people who know and love gaming. However, given how fast the gaming magazines were growing and how much original content they needed month to month, a shortcut beckoned siren-like to the editors.

There was always a pile of resumes from journalism majors who were shotgunning any publication in the hopes of landing a gig. They knew absolutely nothing about gaming, but they did know how to write, (sort of, they were journalism majors after all). The view clearly was, just give them something easy to play until we can find someone better.

So, the editors started hiring journalism majors as a temporary shortcut. The kind of temporary shortcut that stays forever. Journalism majors could write about games, but they didn’t love them. They didn’t care at all about game mechanics, what they had a passion for was narrative story structure and pretty, pretty pictures. So long as a game had those it would get a ten-star review even if the gameplay sucked.

It was obvious that these journalism majors were setting the game difficulty on Toddler Mode and playing through as fast as possible. They wanted to experience the narrative with as little interruption by gameplay as could be managed.

This temporary fix stuck around. The journalists got promoted. Then the magazines started getting bought by media conglomerates like Ziff Davis, who definitely preferred to work with journalists. Consequently, the gamers at the gaming magazines got shunted to the side and the journalists started making the hiring decisions. Guess who they hired?

You guessed right. Other journalists.

Most readers here know of my involvement in GamerGate, including the hosting of #GGinParis with Mike and Milo. But I was much more deeply involved with game journalism starting more than 20 years before the exposure of the GameJournoPros list.

Computer Game World was arguably one of the greatest magazines in publishing history. I read it from cover to cover, carefully taking notes as to who did what and worked for which company, to the point that when I started attending industry events, I could speak substantively to pretty much anyone of note that I met.

I eventually started writing for them, had one of our games reviewed by them, and even contributed by writing the initial review for the much-anticipated id-and-Raven game Heretic. In fact, I was the only game developer who was permitted to write for them, for as Editor-in-Chief Johnny Wilson once said, correctly, “Vox would rather cut his arm off than cut a bad game any slack.” Johnny was eventually replaced by Chris Lombardi, who was also excellent and possessed of a formidable intelligence, but once Ziff Davis bought them and Chris was hired away by one of the early gaming networks, the quality declined rapidly, to the point that I no longer even bothered subscribing even though I was a game developer.

So, I can state with some authority that it’s a good history. Read the whole thing there.

DISCUSS ON SG

Those Who Call Evil Good

An Australian pastor asks why so many of his self-professed fellow believers can’t see the evil in the murderous frenzy of the Gazacaust:

I know many of the Christians who are supporting Israel have condemned other nations in recent years for doing far less. But their misunderstanding of the nature of the identity of God’s people only applying to those who believe in Jesus by faith and having nothing to do with genetics, causes them to overlook the clear evil intent behind the levelling of an entire city, and the devastation of the people in that city. Christians are partnering with Molech in a tragic way, and they cannot even see it. Although, I have noticed that less and less of these people are defending it, as time goes by, which is a good sign that the devastation Israel is causing is making them uncomfortable.

This should be a warning to all of us who claim the name of Christ that we need to be diligent and wary to the encroachment of unbiblical doctrines that rise to prominence in the Church. Any one of us that might consider ourselves mature could become slack in our study of the word, reliance on the guidance of the Spirit of God through his word and other believers, and fall into a place of immaturity. We should not speak to others blindness without being willing to examine our own blind spots. But that does not mean that we should not be concerned about how many believers appear to lack discernment between good and evil. This is deeply concerning and has genuinely negative impacts in our world. Bad theology is supporting a terrible foreign policy that has destroyed countless lives in the Middle East for 80 years or so.

Many good Christians were hung out to dry during covid because the leaders of the church could not see the clear evil that was happening, or could but were afraid to speak out about it. Many good Christians have been hung out to dry on many issues. But who would have thought that so many believers would not be able to call a mass killing of people in a small, underdeveloped region of the world the evil that it is?

Israel is just another nation. It is neither intrinsically good nor intrinsically bad on the basis of its geography or dominant ethnicity. The Israelis have absolutely no historic claim to the land except the same right of conquest by which most people, including Americans, hold their land; even their historic claim is based on invasion and the genocide of the native people living in the land of Canaan.

Which means that Israel must be held to the same standard to which all other nations of the world are held to account. And yet, many self-professed, self-styled Christians are actively working to prevent the Israeli government or its people from being held accountable for their genocidal actions.

This suppressive action by South Dakota and other state legislatures is obviously a Clown World attack on Americans, Christians, and the First Amendment to the Constitution, as well as further evidence that neither Donald Trump nor most Republicans are actually on the side of the angels. None of these antisemitism laws are likely to hold up in court, given their blatant anti-constitutionality, but they are being passed and signed into law nevertheless in order to try to intimidate the American people into remaining silent when they should be speaking out against the global satanists who presently rule over them.

When even the pagans speak out against the wickedness they are witnessing, should not Christians do the same?

China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Thursday, March 7, called Israel’s war in Gaza a “disgrace for civilization”. “It is a tragedy for humankind and a disgrace for civilization that today, in the 21st century, this humanitarian disaster cannot be stopped,” Wang told journalists at a press conference.

This is not a political problem. It’s not going to be fixed by electing different politicians. It is, rather, the inevitable consequence of failing to prevent the wicked from ascending to the pulpits. The Apostle Paul warned Christians about the wolves in sheep’s clothing who would infiltrate their churches, but Catholics and Protestants alike failed to guard their doctrine, their dioceses, their deacons, and their pulpits.

Lest you give into fear and the temptation to accept the wicked as your spiritual leaders, don’t forget that we are told God will hold those accountable who call good evil, and evil good. Which is why my response to the self-styled Christians who proclaim that a certain ethnicity are uniquely unfallen beings who are in no need of salvation through Jesus Christ and are thereby worth of being protected from all criticism with the force of law is this: are you really sure your professed beliefs are in line with the eternal Word of God?

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Convergence Kills US Semiconductors

There’s also an interesting geopolitical strategic assumption buried deep in this article on the chip-making industry’s abandonment of the USA, which is particularly intriguing in light of the audience for The Hill:

The Biden administration recently promised it will finally loosen the purse strings on $39 billion of CHIPS Act grants to encourage semiconductor fabrication in the U.S. But less than a week later, Intel announced that it’s putting the brakes on its Columbus factory. The Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) has pushed back production at its second Arizona foundry. The remaining major chipmaker, Samsung, just delayed its first Texas fab.

This is not the way companies typically respond to multi-billion-dollar subsidies. So what explains chipmakers’ apparent ingratitude? In large part, frustration with DEI requirements embedded in the CHIPS Act.

Commentators have noted that CHIPS and Science Act money has been sluggish. What they haven’t noticed is that it’s because the CHIPS Act is so loaded with DEI pork that it can’t move.

The law contains 19 sections aimed at helping minority groups, including one creating a Chief Diversity Officer at the National Science Foundation, and several prioritizing scientific cooperation with what it calls “minority-serving institutions.” A section called “Opportunity and Inclusion” instructs the Department of Commerce to work with minority-owned businesses and make sure chipmakers “increase the participation of economically disadvantaged individuals in the semiconductor workforce.”

The department interprets that as license to diversify. Its factsheet asserts that diversity is “critical to strengthening the U.S. semiconductor ecosystem,” adding, “Critically, this must include significant investments to create opportunities for Americans from historically underserved communities.”

The department does not call speed critical, even though the impetus for the CHIPS Act is that 90 percent of the world’s advanced microchips are made in Taiwan, which China is preparing to annex by 2027, maybe even 2025.

Handouts abound. There’s plenty for the left—requirements that chipmakers submit detailed plans to educate, employ, and train lots of women and people of color, as well as “justice-involved individuals,” more commonly known as ex-cons. There’s plenty for the right—veterans and members of rural communities find their way into the typical DEI definition of minorities. There’s even plenty for the planet: Arizona Democrats just bragged they’ve won $15 million in CHIPS funding for an ASU project fighting climate change.

That project is going better for Arizona than the actual chips part of the CHIPS Act. Because equity is so critical, the makers of humanity’s most complex technology must rely on local labor and apprentices from all those underrepresented groups, as TSMC discovered to its dismay.

Tired of delays at its first fab, the company flew in 500 employees from Taiwan. This angered local workers, since the implication was that they weren’t skilled enough. With CHIPS grants at risk, TSMC caved in December, agreeing to rely on those workers and invest more in training them. A month later, it postponed its second Arizona fab.

Now TSMC has revealed plans to build a second fab in Japan. Its first, which broke ground in 2021, is about to begin production. TSMC has learned that when the Japanese promise money, they actually give it, and they allow it to use competent workers. TSMC is also sampling Germany’s chip subsidies, as is Intel.

Intel is also building fabs in Poland and Israel, which means it would rather risk Russian aggression and Hamas rockets over dealing with America’s DEI regime. Samsung is pivoting toward making its South Korean homeland the semiconductor superpower after Taiwan falls.

In short, the world’s best chipmakers are tired of being pawns in the CHIPS Act’s political games. They’ve quietly given up on America.

DEI killed the CHIPS Act, THE HILL, 7 March 2024

Notice that it’s not “if” Taiwan falls but rather “when”, complete with an estimated range of dates from 2025 to 2027. This may also explain Victoria Nuland’s fall from grace at the State Department, as the pivot to China from Russia is clearly underway.

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Is This Really News?

BREAKING: The federal government has been illegally surveilling and building profiles for Americans in secret portal called DSAC for those who oppose firearm restrictions, lockdowns & vaccine mandates, and or support border security and are labeling them as domestic extremists.

I’ve lost track of the number of government lists I’m on, and that’s just the US government. Look, all of this stuff is completely illegal, unconstitutional, and proves that the whole thing about “the Land of the Free” is total and absolute nonsense. But it’s not as if we didn’t know this already.

The material surveillance state erected by Clown World is wicked, nefarious, anti-American, and wrong. It needs to be exposed and it needs to be eliminated entirely. Even so, don’t forget that all the men and machinery of the surveillance state is but a pale shadow of the spiritual surveillance that is actively seeking to peck away at your soul every single day. So don’t stress yourself worrying about either the material evil or the spiritual evil. They exist. They have always existed. Do what is right, speak the truth, and fear God only.

And remember, it’s pretty clear that they fear us. Perhaps you should give some thought as to why that might be.

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The Specialist Always Wins

There is a panoply of ignorance on display in the recent UFC vs Navy SEALs debate in the sports world:

Sean Strickland, the UFC superstar, made some waves when he claimed no Navy SEAL could make it through the training he does. While he didn’t specify, it definitely seemed like he meant fight training. Could a Navy SEAL beat Sean Strickland in the octagon?

You know who else found the response to Strickland absolutely cringe? Andy Stumpf. For those of you who might not have heard of Andy Stumpf, he’s a legit dude. He was an operator in SEAL Team 6, got shot in Iraq on the same mission Tyler Grey was blown up, recovered and deployed again. The man isn’t a joke or someone pretending to have knowledge of the topic. He’s fought alongside some of the greatest warriors in America’s history, and he thinks this entire situation is embarrassing…

I spoke to another ST6 operator and one more Spec. Ops. veteran about Strickland’s comments. Both had reactions that mirror Stumpf’s and both admitted it wouldn’t be a fair fight against Strickland…..and that many UFC fighters would struggle in a Spec. Ops. training pipeline.

I don’t know about UFC fighters making it through the military training. I have no experience in that regard. But I am 100-percent certain that no Navy SEAL could ever beat a top UFC fighter in the Octagon. The two SpecOps guys are right. It wouldn’t even be a fair fight. Allow to explain:

I was never one of the top five fighters at my dojo, which was much respected by the other dojos in the Twin Cities, where we practiced an early form of MMA. Being the only dojo to ever take all the trophies from white belt to black in a statewide competition – it was only point-fighting, it must be said – we were basically the Cobra Kai of the state right down to the black gis, although the base of our style was, ironically enough, much more akin to Miyago-do, being Okinawan. I think it’s fair to say I was one of the top ten fighters there, as I was selected for a few of our public demos, including a pretty wild one at Glam Slam that involved fighting under strobe lights.

On several occasions, I had the opportunity to spar with guys who had military training, usually Marines for some reason. And while they weren’t completely hopeless like the normal guy walking in off the street with absolutely no training, they were never above the level of a fairly recent gold belt who had just started sparring a month or two prior. Never. I maintained a weight of 170, and didn’t even need to break a sweat to take apart a Marine who went 235, although, as I’ve said in the past, my little physics experiment in trying to go toe-to-toe with him was a complete failure.

When the Commandant of the Marine Corps was talking smack one day about the lethality of the Marine Fu that the Corps had adapted from the Israeli Krav Maga, I just laughed at him, pointed out that six weeks of fight training is inadequate preparation for going up against anyone with six years of fight experience, and told him to bring it on. He came at me and tried a basic takedown at the waist, so I put him face-down on the carpet in a neck-breaking lock that forced him to tap out in about five seconds.

Now keep in mind that my training was built around the striking arts and that my preference was always for counterattacking with a combination of speed and upper body strike power to stun and overwhelm an opponent. And yet, it took less than 10 seconds to completely incapacitate a very highly-trained Marine a) without harming him and b) without throwing a single strike of any kind.

Think about the degree of total superiority that implies. And yes, there were no shortage of witnesses, including Spacebunny.

Now, based on my experience fighting two national champions and one guy who was better than either of them, a fighter like Strickland would probably beat me in my prime in about 45 seconds. I’m confident that I’d get two or three good shots in – I was benching 295 then and even the very best guys had to be wary of my speed – but I’d definitely lose and lose comprehensively. So, there is no way, none whatsoever, that any military training would prepare a Navy SEAL or anyone else to beat a highly trained specialist like Strickland. It would be like spending a few weeks shooting clay pigeons with a shotgun, then challenging a Force Recon sniper to a long-distance shooting competition.

No, he does not have next…

DISCUSS ON SG

Finish the Problem

Donald Trump endorses the Gazacaust:

Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump expressed his support for Israel’s war in Gaza Tuesday, in his most explicit comments yet on the fighting, as international pressure grows on the United States to rein in its ally.

“Yes,” Trump responded, when asked during an interview on Fox News if he was “in Israel’s camp.”

The interviewer then asked if the former president was “on board” with the way Israel was executing its offensive in Gaza.

“You’ve got to finish the problem,” Trump responded.

President Joe Biden, whom Trump is set to challenge for the White House in November, has come under increasing fire both internationally and from his own Democratic base over his backing for Israel as the death toll in Gaza soars and the specter of famine looms.

The fighting began with an attack by Palestinian militant group Hamas on southern Israel on October 7, resulting in about 1,160 deaths, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive in the Gaza Strip has killed 30,534 people, mostly women and children, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-ruled territory.

Well, at least he didn’t call for a final solution. It’s a healthy reminder that Americans will not be voting their way out of Clown World. They’re going to have to go through the whole decline-and-fall process. It’s informative that Trump views Palestinians living in Palestine as a problem, but doesn’t view hundreds of millions of foreigners living in the United States as one. And it’s even more informative to see that his position appears to be diametrically opposed to that being presented by China and Russia.

It’s not that Trump wasn’t a good president. He was one of the better ones. But I wouldn’t hold out a whole lot of hope for his presidency, even if there is a legitimate election sans fraud.

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The Thucydides Stamp

No, it’s not some bizarre permutation on the so-called Thucydides Trap now en vogue with regards to the challenge being posed by China to Clown World’s imperialist hegemony, it’s the report on the successful test-stamping of the first Castalia History book, complete with pictures.

The successful test means that the books should be going out to the warehouse early next week, so some of you might even have them as soon as next weekend. We’ve seen the first reports of the two volumes of the Cambridge Medieval History showing up in the wild on SocialGalactic already, so March is clearly going to be a very big month for Castalia History subscribers.

We’ve also got some good news for Castalia Library subscribers. Check out the update at the bottom. And due to the unique nature of, and exceptionally high level of general interest in, THE ILLUMINATED BEOWULF, we are going to depart from our usual policy and allow non-subscribers to purchase a preordered copy for $199 for a very limited period of time beginning later this month.

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GamerGate 2.0

Buckle up, boys. The ride never ends. A summary from /pol/

  • DEI-gaming consultants “Sweet Baby Inc” exposed for harassment and coercion to insert wokeism into video games (example: CEO talk admitting to their coercion tactics
  • Issue mostly ignored by Media/Gaming “Journalists” for at least a week
  • A group on Steam forms with a list of games that employed Sweet Baby to consult on their creation, along with a discussion board and chat about the issue
  • Group swells to just under 200k users as of the time of this post
  • Kotaku and other gaming “news” start posting articles over the past 24 hours to start calling the group and users a bunch of wayciss chud nazis
  • Alyssa Mercante, “Journalist” who wrote the Kotaku article, starts taking heat for defending the Sweet Baby company and CEO for her own racism vs whites
  • “Journalist” then hauls off her mask to obliviously spout critical theory talking points after posting said article denying that Sweet Baby pushes critical theory agenda. “hi! you can’t be racist against white people! thanks for tuning in!”

I think we all know who is going to win the 2025 Hugo Award for Best Related Work now. I’m a little surprised Kotaku is still around, to be honest, given the fact that no one who is actually interested in or plays games reads them anymore.

UPDATE: Curiouser and curiouser…

  • Sweet Baby Inc is funded by Baby Ghosts
  • Baby Ghosts co-founder is Eileen Holowka
  • Eileen Holowka’s brother was Alec Holowka
  • Alec Holowka was LITERALLY WHO’s boyfriend

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The Fake Science of Sugar

How fat and cholesterol were substituted for sugar and turned Americans into an unhealthy herd of waddling land-whales.

A doctor explains how the groundwork for the Food Pyramid nonsense and the encouragement to reduce fat consumption and increase carbohyrdate consumption of the 1990s was laid by the corruption of scientistry in the 1960s.

In 1967, a single scientific study revealed the true culprit of the diabetes and heart disease epidemic was sugar. NOT saturated fat or cholesterol. So why wasn’t this information made common knowledge? They covered it all up. The sugar industry knew the results of these studies would tank sales and cost them billions. So the Sugar Research Foundation paid three Harvard Scientists $65,000 each to “prove” sugar was harmless. The scientists were some of the most respected nutrition experts in the world. Dr. Frederick Stare was the chairman of Harvard’s Department of Nutrition. Dr. Mark Hegsted was a scientific advisor for the USDA. Dr. Robert Gandy was a pioneer in dietary research.

The scientists dismissed multiple long-term studies. The first study proved sugar caused deadly arterial plaques. This was ignored. Another showed heart disease skyrocketed on a high-carb diet. The scientists dismissed it, claiming “these diets are rarely consumed.” The consequences of this scientific manipulation are horrifying. The truth about sugar and its effects on obesity, diabetes, and heart disease remained in the dark for years. Well-meaning doctors prescribed their patients low-fat, high-carb diets for decades. These dietary suggestions are to blame for the obesity crisis in America.

The USDA urged Americans to trade butter for margarine. Margarine is now accepted as an artery-clogging poison. And another massive shift was to “healthy” low-fat foods loaded with hidden sugars. As a result, U.S sugar consumption tripled. So did Big Sugar profits. And not surprisingly, so did type 2 diabetes and blood sugar issues. In 1980, only 1 in 50 Americans had a blood sugar problem. Today, that number is up to 1 in 3. High blood sugar kills roughly 3.2 million people per year.

In other words, as with immigration and third-world overpopulation, the seeds of the castastrophic crises we are experiencing across the West were planted in a very small period of time between 1960 and 1967.

During the mid-20th century, Borlaug led the introduction of these high-yielding varieties combined with modern agricultural production techniques to Mexico, Pakistan, and India. As a result, Mexico became a net exporter of wheat by 1963. Between 1965 and 1970, wheat yields nearly doubled in Pakistan and India, greatly improving the food security in those nations. These collective increases in yield have been labeled the Green Revolution, and Borlaug is often credited with saving over a billion people worldwide from starvation. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 in recognition of his contributions to world peace through increasing food supply.

Add the names of Frederick Stare, Mark Hegsted, and Robert Gandy to the infamous list that includes Norman Borlaug, Philip Hart, and Emmanuel Cellar of men whose objectives and actions contributed the most to the downfall of the West and its transformation into Clown World.

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A Quote, Updated

Ayn Rand’s famous quote about the difference between Communism and Socialism didn’t go anywhere nearly far enough to be accurate. I tend to doubt she ever truly understood that she was never on the side of the angels. Her flawed ideology, as with that of her successors, has been completely undermined by the opportunity to see some of the consequences of its concepts put into practice, and illustrates how secular reason inevitably fails due to its intrinsic inability to take the supernatural into account.

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