Author: VD

How to deal with a hit piece

Clay Travis follows Owen Benjamin’s lead in dealing with a Daily Beast hitpiece:

“OutKick recently added Dr. David Chao as a staff writer. Did you ask about the medical lawsuits and six-figure settlements, probations, accusations of “gross negligence” and malpractice, and/or the DUIs prior to hiring him? In the blog post announcing his arrival, why is this information omitted? Did Dr. Chao or someone representing him ask you or anyone at OutKick to exclude that information? Do you feel it’s relevant for your readers to have this information when reading his content?”

Dr. Chao is a licensed doctor in California. Given that he’s licensed to operate on people in this country, I felt comfortable with him writing for an opinion website.

Furthermore, he’s been profiled as an NFL injury expert in the New York Times recently, written for the San Diego Tribune for years prior to joining Outkick, and is cited as an NFL injury expert, thanks to his tenure as team physician of the San Diego Chargers, throughout the Internet.

He’s not remotely controversial.

We believe in the first amendment on this site, writers don’t tell other writers what they can and can’t say. And writers certainly don’t tell the owners of this site what we can and can’t say either.

“Jason Whitlock wrote a column describing Jaden McNeil as a “martyr” who was targeted for tweeting “politically incorrect” jokes about George Floyd. Jaden McNeil is a member of the openly racist “Groyper” movement. He also promotes, works with and praises white nationalists. How and why was this information left out and did you personally edit the column? Are all of the articles on OutKick edited or are staffers allowed to post stories on the site without review?”

I asked Whitlock to respond to this question since the writer didn’t email him directly, but asked me to comment on his column. Enjoy his response.

“Karen, I honestly find this line of questioning racist and emblematic of the systemic racism practiced by busybodies in the white alt-left movement. Let me translate what you just did: “Clay, Mr. White Folks, your negro writer is out of control and published an opinion that upstanding white people disagree with. Discipline and control your negro or we will.”

Karen, I’m a PARTNER at Outkick. Clay is not my overseer. He is my partner. All due respect to Clay, but I am the most accomplished journalist at Outkick. You could argue I’m the most accomplished sports journalist in America.

I’m offended you reached out to Clay and Dr. Chao directly with questions about their work, but in typical Karen fashion chose to report me to Mr. White Folks. Did you question Kansas State president Richard Myers for not mentioning Jaden McNeil’s alleged affiliation to white nationalists in Mr. Myers’ public critique of McNeil? Like 99.99 percent of America, I’ve never heard of the Groyper movement. When I was in college I was attracted to and attended events put on by the Nation of Islam, an organized and well-known black nationalist group.

Kids experiment with dumb shit. Karen, I am the wrong negro for you to be f–king with. Go sit down.”

Of course, this preemptive exposure response is only recommended for those with sizeable audiences. What is different about this sort of hit piece than the usual media inquiry is that it is usually going to be written whether you respond to the individual writing it or not, so preemptive exposure is an opportunity to both undermine the hit piece in advance as well as highlight the elements that the hit piece’s author obviously intends to omit.

It will be interesting to see if the Outkick piece, like the Big Bear piece, fails to run after being preemptively exposed.

The very best strategy, of course, is to refer the inquiry to my media relations expert, Pax Dickonson.

China is “stoking racial tensions”

Of course the Chinese are helping fan the flames of the demographic fire that is going to destroy the United States of America. Why wouldn’t they do so? The US military and its ability to intervene in Asia is the only thing that currently stands between China and the regional dominance it seeks, and if the USA collapses, China can avoid the need for a war with a very real possibility of turning into World War III.

China is stoking racial tensions in the United States, Fox News Asia analyst Gordon Chang stated Wednesday. In an interview on “America’s Newsroom,”  Chang pointed out that the reason the State Department said the Chinese consulate in Houston was ordered shut this week was that it was “involved in intellectual property theft” and because they “wanted to protect the information of U.S. individuals.”

“Also, there are stories that this consulate had links with protest groups in the United States providing financial and logistical support. That’s unconfirmed,” he added. “But, what is confirmed is that the Chinese Foreign Ministry and the Communist Party’s global ties have been engaged in a malicious disinformation campaign, deliberately stoking racial tensions in the U.S.

“And, U.S. Customs has seized items coming from China this year that would be very handy for protesters,” Chang noted.

Of course, it would be considerably more meaningful if Fox News or anyone else in the mainstream media would also report honestly on the way another nation has been doing exactly the same thing since 1923.

Celler made his first important speech on the House floor during consideration of the Johnson-Reed Immigration Act of 1924. Three years earlier, Congress had imposed a quota that limited immigration for persons of any nationality to 3 percent of that nationality present in the United States in 1910, with an annual admission limit of 356,000 immigrants. This national origin system was structured to preserve the ethnic and religious identity of the United States by reducing immigration from Eastern and Southern Europe, thereby excluding many Jews, Catholics, among others. Celler was vehemently opposed to the Johnson-Reed Act, which passed the isolationist Congress and was signed into law. Celler had found his cause and for the next four decades he vigorously spoke out in favor of eliminating the national origin quotas as a basis for immigration restriction.

The Chinese may well finish the demolition of the USA, but they obviously are not the nation responsible for starting it.

Total insanity

I wouldn’t have even thought it was possible to SKI down K-freaking-2!

A super-athlete’s mission become the only person to ever descend the world’s most dangerous mountain on skis has been turned into a feature length documentary.

In 2018, Andrzej Bargiel made history when he clicked into his bindings 28,000 feet up the side of K2 in Pakistan and didn’t once take them off until he was safely off the mountain. Following a treacherous 60-hour ascent without supplemental oxygen, the Polish mountaineer had to make his way back down ‘as quickly as possible’ to escape the notorious ‘death zone’ above 8000m (26,200ft).

He then dodged ice falling ‘at the speed of bullets’ to reach the Messner Traverse, a barely-climbed narrow route with deep caverns on either side, and on to the crevasse-filled Kukuczka-Piotrowski route back to base camp.

Don’t ever count Europeans out. They aren’t just crazier than you think, they are crazier than you imagine.

Jason Whitlock won’t work on the SJW plantation

The ex-ESPN commentator calls out Mike Florio for SJW and extends support for Jets owner Woody Johnson:

I’m “deeply troubled” that a State Department official was “stunned” by Johnson’s comment on the importance of black fathers. I don’t know a single black person unconcerned with the general state of the black family. Seventy-five percent of black children are born to unwed mothers and raised in homes with an absent father.

Johnson’s “real challenge” statement is as controversial and insensitive as observing water’s ability to produce wetness.

But somehow Johnson is being analogized to disgraced and bigoted former Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling. ProFootballTalk founder and NBC Sunday Night Football contributor Mike Florio, who has never hired a black contributor to his website, raised the possibility of Johnson being forced out of the NFL….

Black people, we’re being set up and used. We’re pawns in a global political game. The attack on Woody Johnson is really an attack on Donald Trump. Johnson’s real crime was allegedly asking a British official about the possibility of The British Open Golf Championship being played at Trump’s Turnberry golf resort in Scotland.

Johnson is a Trump supporter, and Newspeak/Twitter has reduced Trump support to “systemic racism.”  Anti-black racism is now just a political ploy used by white liberals to grab political power. It’s the Democratic Northern Strategy.

Trust me, the purple-haired white liberals holding up Black Lives Matter signs and rioting in Portland and Seattle don’t give a f–k about black people. Those aren’t George Floyd’s friends or family members. Those are people chasing power they were denied in junior high and high school. Only a fool would think they’re going to share their new-won power.

Let’s face it, Woody Johnson has hired hundreds, if not thousands, of black employees. Mike Florio has never hired one. Who, then, is the racist?

Good news about women in combat

The good news is they can hit what they shoot at. The bad news is that they are shooting at their fellow US soldiers:

A U.S. Army M1A2 Abrams main battle tank has been reportedly shooting another tank during a training exercise at Fort Bliss. On July 20, an incident with friendly fire occurred at the Fort Bliss training ground in Texas during firing at moving targets. Some sources reported that one of the “Abrams” tanks, from a distance of 2600m, has shot a tank from his own Cavalry Regiment. One soldier was injured in an accident when the M1002 multi-purpose training round hit his tank. His tank commander and crew responded quickly to render aid.

But the media isn’t covering the whole story, and reportedly, all the soldiers involved have had their phones confiscated:

The big detail they are leaving out is that the tank doing the shooting was helmed by a brand new Female 2LT, who was the Tank Commander in charge of directing fire. And she put 2 MPAT T rounds in to her Platoon Sergeant’s tank, from 2600m away. 

Apparently Taylor Swift didn’t fix 2020

Things continue to get crazier and crazier.

Item: RIP Mike Adams:

According to the New Hanover County Sheriff’s Office, Mike Adams was found dead at his residence today.

Deputies responded to a wellness check at Adams’ home address and found him deceased. NHCSO is investigating the death, but has not released any additional information, and could not confirm cause of death or if foul play was suspected.

The longtime professor of criminology and sociology at the University of North Carolina Wilmington (UNCW) was set to retire next week as part of a $500,000 settlement.

The settlement came as Adams was facing growing criticism for his social media posts and UNCW, in particular Chancellor Jose V. Sartarelli, was under increasing pressure to terminate his employment. Several petitions with around 85,000 total signatures called for his termination, and letters from his colleagues and fellow criminologists denounced his actions and called for his firing.

Due to Adams’ tenured status, and his previous legal victory over UNCW (which cost the UNC system roughly $700,000), the university opted for a negotiated exit.

Mike was a good writer and a conservative who actually lived by his principles. It’s too soon to say that his death is suspicious, since no details have been provided yet, but there is absolutely no way I would buy the idea that he committed suicide one week before retiring with half a million dollars.

Item: Media figureheads are claiming there will be no election in November:

MSNBC’s John Heilemann said that the deployment of federal agents into crime-ridden, Democratic-run cities was a “trial run” for Trump to steal the 2020 election. He’s going to seize this contest by force supposedly.

What do they know, what are they hearing, that would lead them to this conclusion? And if they know better, but are pushing a false narrative anyhow, what benefit is it to them?

Item: Facebook to ban Qanon:

The New York Times reports that two Facebook employees, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that Facebook will be taking similar steps to those taken by Twitter in order to limit the reach of QAnon content and the that it will be announcing its plans next month. The employees added that Facebook has been coordinating with Twitter and other social media companies when formulating its plans to purge QAnon content.

They’re certainly going to a lot of trouble for something that is supposed to be nothing more than a LARP.

Philosophy catches up to theology

It’s interesting to see how those who deny the supernatural are nevertheless gradually reinventing it under the guise of simulation theory, which is functionally identical to my original God as Game Designer hypothesis described 12 years ago in The Irrational Atheist:

This is one possible way for the intelligent life form to discover that it is actually existing in a simulation. Given enough time, it would discover the nature of its universe and learn it is actually a simulation. The trouble here is the intelligent life form would have to accept as a possibility that it exists in a simulation. A creature that is sure its universe operates on a fixed set of rules is unlikely to accept that those rules are an arbitrary invention of some higher intelligence outside its universe.

There is also another problem. The creators of the simulation could themselves be the product of a simulation. It’s entirely possible the one fixed rule of existence is that no intelligence entity can create an intelligence superior to itself. Perhaps Thomas Aquinas was right all along and there is some prime mover. The very source of the existence is the pinnacle of intelligence, which creates imperfect copies of itself manifesting as simulations within simulations.

We have in this simulation some evidence of this limitation. Despite the hyperbole about artificial intelligence, we have not come close to creating a computer that can rival the human mind. We have made very fast computers that can do calculations and sort through stacks of data faster than humans. These are not artificial intelligence or even intelligence at all, but rather they are very fast calculators. The collapse of the self-driving car project is an example of this limit.

Putting that aside, there is one other way the intelligent life forms inside the simulation could start to notice they are in a simulation. The point of creating a simulation, aside from sadism, is to test some theory or model some conditions. This implies the creators could make a mistake. They recognize this, so before changing something about their world or making a new tool, they test the theories behind it in a simulation. This means their simulation could have errors in it.

Let’s say they create a set of economic rules for their model society, but forget to carry the one or round the wrong way and there is an anomaly in the model. For example, creating more currency of a certain type does not result in inflation. All the other types of money operate by the rules of economics, but this one type of money seems to exist outside of those rules. The intelligent creatures figure this out and start producing tons of this new money to produce great material excess.

Presumably, the creators of the simulation would distribute skills and talents unequally among the intelligent life forms in order to see how creations of differing skills interact with one another. Maybe it is just an efficient way to use the finite resources available to the simulation makers. Regardless, the rules of the universe would have to dictate that those with a skill do better at some things than those without the skill. The result would be natural hierarchies in every aspect of the simulation.

What if there was a bug in the code where those with extreme narcissism and narrow intelligence can rise up to control society? At some point, through random chance, the stupid and narrow-minded figure this out and take over the simulation. Like the mouse utopia, this would be a useful discovery for the simulation makers, but it would create havoc for their simulation. So much so they may be tempted to unplug the thing, fix the bad code and re-run the simulation again.

Assuming the simulation keeps running, some of the intelligent life forms will see the anomalies in the system. They will work to resolve the paradoxes, but at some point, given enough cycles, they will have exhausted their set of options. At that point, they will have to question the very axioms of their existence and that’s when they can begin to contemplate the possibility they are in a simulation. The number of paradoxes grows to the point where they cannot be ignored.

The more we learn about genetics and physics, the more it becomes evident that we are living, not in a simulation, but a consciously created reality. In technological terms, the “supernatural” is simply the coder’s reality as opposed to the coded reality, and evidence of the paranormal is merely elements of the former penetrating the latter.

Which is why I am prone to referring to the afterlife as “Level 2”. After all, does not “the Word became flesh” beautifully describe a transition from a conceptual to a physical reality?

Republican National Convention canceled

It isn’t necessary, after all, since everyone knows who the nominee will be:

President Donald Trump announced Thursday he was scrapping the Republican nominating convention in Florida as the number of coronavirus cases in the United States topped four million.

Trump said he was cancelling next month’s event in Jacksonville because it was not the right time to do a “big, crowded convention.”

“The timing for this event is not right, it’s just not right with what’s happened recently,” he said at a White House news conference.

A wise and sensible move. Now do the general election….

This is why Gammas are never welcome

After copious bloviating, SamuraiJeff finally managed to get himself banned from here as well as SocialGalactic for an egregious violation of the rules here. Now, this would not normally be an event worth noting, as it was almost inevitable, but for the very informative reaction of SamuraiJeff to his banning:

You know vox, I haven’t seen ur books on The Pirate Bay. Hopefully some spiteful gamma king posts your books. That would certainly cost you more than 10$ per month (my subscription). You could have just let me have my opinion.

And I will pay that cost happily and without hesitation. Gammas are full of spite and pain, and the poison of their self-delusions never leaves them. This is why there are entire subreddits devoted to hating various celebrities, and even non-celebrities, and it is why I do not permit Gammas to participate in any of our projects.

As soon as the Gamma feels things aren’t going his way for one reason or another, he will turn on you every single time. It doesn’t matter how enthusiastic he is, or that he is your biggest fan, eventually he will decide that you, like everyone else in his life, has failed him. It saves a lot of time to simply let them know they are not welcome, and encourage them to go elsewhere once they draw attention to themselves.

She certainly got something

From a book I recently scanned:

Amelia Earheart was an inspiration to women everywhere. She wanted something more than hearth and home, and she got it.

She died childless and alone, presumably of starvation, on an uninhabited island. So inspirational!