Author: VD

Qanon is winning the Narrative battle

The media is beginning to worry that it is losing control of the Narrative

Why it matters: QAnon is not just one fringe conspiracy theory — it’s a sprawling network of falsehoods that’s seeping into the mainstream. Its growing influence is sowing fear and confusion around some of today’s most important issues, such as election integrity and the coronavirus pandemic.

Catch up quick: QAnon is a far-right conspiracy theory that alleges the “deep state” is engaged in a global fight to take down President Trump.

QAnon rose out of the 2016 Pizzagate conspiracy theory and has grown into a decentralized network that analyzes cryptic prophecies dropped in remote online forums by “Q,” who claims, without ever offering evidence, to be a Trump administration official with high-level clearance.

Q maintains President Trump is secretly fighting a child-selling cabal in the U.S., though the conspiracy has spiraled to cover a vast array of claims, from JFK Jr. having faked his death to help Trump behind the scenes to the coronavirus being a hoax or a biological weapon engineered in either case by sinister elites.

By the numbers: Conspiracy theories tied to QAnon are growing more popular.

There was more than 10 times as much Google search interest in QAnon in mid-July than in mid-January, according to Google Trends data.

QAnon pages and groups on Facebook had nearly 10 times more likes at the end of last month than they did last July, according to data tracked by the Atlantic Council and shared with Axios.

There has been a 190{4e01b0bc4ab012654d0c5016d8cbf558644ab2e53259aa2c40b66b3b20e8967d} increase in the daily average number of tweets with popular QAnon hashtags since March as compared to the seven months prior, according to data from GroupSense provided to Axios.

Of course, the readily confirmable fact is that the Qanon narrative has proven to be vastly more reliable, and a better predictive model, than the mainstream media narrative. Which means that it would be better described as a sprawling network of uncomfortable truths that is seeping into the public consciousness.

The Beirut port explosion

I don’t have any theories about this myself, although there is certainly no shortage of speculation about the nature of the blast:

Survivors of a cataclysmic explosion that devastated the Lebanese capital of Beirut last night were picking through the remains of their city for victims today as the death toll topped 100 and was expected to continue rising, with more than 4,000 wounded. 

Beirut, once known as the Paris of the Middle East, resembled a huge scrapyard as the sun rose on Wednesday – with barely a building left unscathed in a blast caused by 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate that exploded with a fifth of the power of the atomic bomb that levelled Hiroshima.

Street after street, neighbourhood after neighbourhood, buildings were left without roofs or windows, their interiors shredded by the force of the explosion – believed to have been sparked when a welder caused a fire at the port, which in turn set light to a warehouse storing chemicals which had been seized from a ship six years ago. 

The one thing that does look a little strange is the fact that the chemicals were supposedly seized from a ship six years ago. That seems a long time to leave such a large quantity of dangerous material just lying around the port. On the other hand, Beirut hasn’t been a particular focus for massive violence for quite some time now.

Feel free to speculate amongst yourselves.

Salvaging Creepy Joe

The New York Times is trying to save Joe Biden from being exposed as a dementia-addled figurehead on prime time in front of the entire electorate by the God-Emperor:

Nervous managers of the scheduled 2020 presidential debates are shuffling the logistics and locations to deal with the threat of the coronavirus. But here’s a better idea: Scrap them altogether. And not for health reasons.

The debates have never made sense as a test for presidential leadership. In fact, one could argue that they reward precisely the opposite of what we want in a president. When we were serious about the presidency, we wanted intelligence, thoughtfulness, knowledge, empathy and, to be sure, likability. It should also go without saying, dignity.

Yet the debates play an outsize role in campaigns and weigh more heavily on the verdict than their true value deserves.

This, by the way, isn’t written out of any concern that Donald Trump will prevail over Joe Biden in the debates; Mr. Biden has done just fine in a long string of such contests. The point is that “winning” a debate, however assessed, should be irrelevant, as are the debates themselves.

Sure it isn’t….

No accountability

Anyone with more than half a brain will take their chances with the coronavirus instead of the so-called cure once it arrives:

Last week we warned readers to be cautious about new COVID-19 vaccines, highlighting how key parts of the clinical trials are being skipped as big pharma will not be held accountable for adverse side effects for administering the experimental drugs.

A senior executive from AstraZeneca, Britain’s second-largest drugmaker, told Reuters that his company was just granted protection from all legal action if the company’s vaccine led to damaging side effects.

“This is a unique situation where we as a company simply cannot take the risk if in … four years the vaccine is showing side effects,” said Ruud Dobber, a top exec at AstraZeneca. “In the contracts we have in place, we are asking for indemnification. For most countries, it is acceptable to take that risk on their shoulders because it is in their national interest,” said Dobber, adding that Astra and regulators were making safety and tolerability a top priority.

AstraZeneca is one of the 25 pharmaceutical companies across the world, testing experimental drugs that could be used to combat the deadly virus. And, of course, if testing yields positive results, AstraZeneca could manufacture hundreds of millions of doses, with no legal recourse if side effects are seen.

If vaccines were actually anywhere nearly as safe as the media usually claims them to be, their manufacturers would not require complete legal unaccountability for the harm done by them.

Facebook has corporate cancer

Keep this Facebook example in mind should you catch yourself assuming that employees at a corporation would never deliberately do anything that would harm their employer’s profits:

Facebook’s moderators have called on advertisers to keep boycotting the site, over the way it deals with “hate speech,” but they really just want to stop Trump winning again. Keen observers of the ins and outs of Silicon Valley’s complicated relationship with freedom of expression may remember that last month a host of big corporations, including Disney, Ford and Adidas, pulled their adverts from the site in the biggest boycott ever of its kind.

This was sparked by a campaign called Stop Hate for Profit set up by several US civil rights groups in the wake of George Floyd’s killing. The group accuses Facebook of “profiteering from hate and misinformation” and has branded their policy on hate speech “vexing.” Now, as the month-long July boycott is due to end, some of Facebook’s own employees have urged companies to keep the pressure on their employer. Yes, Facebook’s own employees want the company to make less money to make themselves feel better.

Never allow SJWs or Gammas into your organization. They will ALWAYS turn against the organization sooner or later, because their priorities are not the organization’s priorities and they are constitutionally incapable of putting anything ahead of their own priorities.

In the case of the SJW, it is the social justice Narrative. In the case of the Gamma, it is his sense of self-importance. In either case, they won’t even hesitate to turn against the organization or community.

Patreon makes a statement

A concerned YouTuber emailed Patreon and was so encouraged by the response that she recorded a video entitled Patreon Is Not Going Away:

We’ve heard there are some concerns about the recent decision in the lawsuit we filed and wanted to clarify some things. First of all, there’s nothing to worry about overall. Litigation is an unfortunate fact of doing business and Patreon deals with a lot of it, the same as any other platform. Specifically in this situation, we filed a lawsuit to bring some frivolous arbitrations into court because these claims should be decided in court under our terms of use. Unfortunately the judge denied our preliminary injunction against those claims preceding in arbitrations so we’ll now deal with these in arbitrations while we proceed with the next stage of the lawsuit. It seems that some of the people who are involved in organizing these arbitrations are reporting that we are going bankrupt as a result of these claims. I can assure you, that this is not true and it appears that they are making those claims to try to keep up morale on their side and convince more people to bring claims against Patreon.
– Patreon PR

Allow me to observe that even the CEO of Patreon knows its business model is not sustainable. Back in January 2019, he observed that they would need to add revenue streams and reduce the percentage of payouts to creators to make it sustainable, but they obviously have not done so.

Far from being frivolous, at least 72 of the arbitrations are now certain winners thanks to Patreon’s inexplicable decision to violate its own Terms of Use and bring the very sort of group action in court that it waived its right to bring. The next stage of the lawsuit is going to be the 72 Bears bringing a demurrer which is very likely to be approved; even if the case is not immediately dismissed with prejudice, Patreon has no chance of winning a lawsuit that it has absolutely no right to have brought in the first place under its own contract.

It’s true that Patreon is very unlikely to go bankrupt right away as a result of the current claims. They received 60 million in investment last July, so even if they have been losing the estimated $1.5 million per month thanks to their expensive offices and 200+ employees since then, it should be sufficient to allow them to limp along for another two years or so. However, that presumes that the investors are going to sit by idly as the executives blow all their investment money on lawyers, arbitration fees, and awards, which strikes me as unlikely. Sooner or later, and the longer this dispute goes on, the sooner it will be, the investors are going to pull the remainder of their money out and put it in gold or the stock market, at which point it’s game over and all the creators move to whatever the next model happens to be.

And finally, what need do we have to keep up morale? Patreon is winless in JAMS administration, 0-for-4 in Owen’s arbitration, 0-for-2 in court, and counting. This statement strikes me as pure projection, especially given that it was made in an attempt to reassure a worried Patreon creator. We have absolutely no need to convince more people to bring claims against Patreon. We haven’t even made an arbitration template available to the hundreds of thousands of potentially interested parties; Patreon very foolishly did that when they included the full text of a demand for arbitration in their lawsuit filings.

(I genuinely could not believe that when I saw it. I’ve seen lawyers do some stupid and crazy things over the years, but that almost certainly takes the cake.)

Anyhow, the most important thing about this statement is the fact that Patreon felt the need to make it in the first place. Also, it’s not meth. Definitely not meth.

The lede, buried

I’m always interested in wargames, but this one by the DNC strategists is particularly intriguing in light of the current polls:

Democrats are contemplating secession and potential civil war as they game out possible scenarios for a closely contested election, according to a report by Ben Smith in a New York Times column Sunday.

The bulk of Smith’s column is devoted to the question of how the media will handle Election Night coverage, given that the result may not be known for weeks. Vote-by-mail, which many states have only recently adopted — ostensibly, to prevent the spread of coronavirus in polling places — could lead to an uncertain result.

However, buried near the end of Smith’s column is a report that Democrats have participated in a “war game” in which they considered several possible outcomes of the election.

In one scenario, John Podesta — the former chair of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, and a leading figure in party circles — played former Vice President Joe Biden, and refused to concede the election.

The result: the threat of secession by the entire West Coast, followed by the possible intervention of the U.S. armed forces.

Ask yourself this: why are Democrats wargaming the loss of the election if Creepy Joe is genuinely ahead in the polls by seven points?

We’ll just skip over the fact that most of the country would celebrate the secession of the entire West Coast. Throw in New York City and we’d happily pay them to leave.

Ruh-roh

More and more people are reaching the conclusion that Patreon has landed itself in some very deep doo-doo and are taking steps accordingly:

PATREON AS A PLATFORM IS IN TROUBLE ! (IMPORTANT)

Everyone Patreon is facing a situation that has come to our attention. We’re not really sure what the future holds for our orange logo’d subscription based platform, and honestly it has us worried. We do feel that our current steady income is at risk, so….here’s our statement. XD

With the future being so uncertain, we talked about it through out the following days to come up with an alternative that could help us and YOU to keep your monthly rewards

Since there’s a lot to unpack here, we decided to make a QnA to inform you all of the decisions we have taken as a preventive measure.

What’s interesting is that many, if not most, of these people are not exactly the sort of folks you’d expect to find in the Big Bear fan club, but they can clearly see that the ship is not only infected with Covid-19 and a nasty stomach bug, but is taking on water fast. So, they’re abandoning ship.

I’ve been teeter-totting on whether or not I should stay on Patreon for a while, and this for me is the  kick of the bucket. You’re dead to me. First of all, I’m recognizing all of the red flags here. You’re losing money, you’re in a lawsuit that you’re going to lose. Patreon has always been kind of shady with their creators and it goes to show that they don’t think their creators have rights.

People are getting sick of it. Guys, there’s only so much you can take, at some point you have to jump ship, especially when the ship is sinking into a volcano and everyone on the ship has diarrhea. I don’t want to be covered in hot… to those of you who are giving to my Patreon account, thank you and I’m sorry. I am closing it.

ASL: the answer

I mentioned that there was a little trap in the previous post that mentioned ASL. It was actually contained in this sentence: Consider, for example, the procedure required to calculate the correct Firepower (FP) total while conducting an Overrun attack on exposed infantry by a vehicle.

The underlined word was the sperg bait, since infantry don’t need to be exposed in order to be attacked by Overrun. In fact, it’s even possible for the vehicle to destroy the infantry during the Bog check by collapsing the building as it drives into it, as per the AFV Overrun order of resolution:

  • The AFV declares OVR
  • Bog check is first (note the EXC: list at the end of D7.1) The OVR MP expenditure must be announced as a combined expenditure with that for entrance of the hex as the vehicle enters the OVR hex, unless that hex contains only unknown enemy units (A12.41). … [EXC: Bog DR, and Defensive First Fire other than Reaction Fire (7.2), prompted by that MP expenditure (or by the MF expenditure of accompanying Infantry using Human Wave {A25.23} and Armored Assault {9.31}) are resolved first].
  • Then DFF against the AFV.
  • Then OVR.

Canceling Rape Rape

The SF-SJWs have finally come for George R. R. Martin:

Celebrated author George R.R. Martin angered a lot of fans this week. No, not because he still hasn’t finished the next book in A Song of Ice And Fire (although he missed his self-imposed deadline for that this week, too), but because of the incredibly lackluster job he did hosting a prominent award ceremony.

The Hugo Awards is one of the most prestigious and well-known award ceremonies for science fiction and fantasy literature, and something many SFF fans and creators alike look forward to every year. Like many big events this year, the Hugos turned into a virtual ceremony, streamed online for fans and nominees, and with pre-recorded hosting duties completed by Martin.

But some felt Martin fell short of the responsibility bestowed on him, repeatedly mispronouncing the names of nominees and celebrating the achievements of dead white men over the actual winners.Natalie Luhrs summarized the disaster on her blog, calling the entire ceremony “blatantly disrespectful of the nominees and winners.”

“George R.R. Martin repeatedly mispronounced the names of nominees and, in one case, a publication which was nominated. All the nominees were asked to provide pronunciations for their names in advance,” she wrote. “The fact that Martin chose not to use that information is disgusting and racist as f*ck, as nearly without exception the names he mispronounced were Black and brown.”

Martin also continually name-dropped John W. Campbell, a writer who had a Hugo Award named after him until 2019, when the title was changed to the Astounding Award on the heels of a scathing speech given by winner Jeannette Ng.

“John W. Campbell, for whom this award was named, was a fascist,” Ng said at the time. “Through his editorial control of Astounding Science Fiction, he is responsible for setting a tone of science fiction that still haunts the genre to this day. Sterile. Male. White. Exalting in the ambitions of imperialists and colonisers, settlers and industrialists.”

The Game of Thrones author also reportedly complained about fandom getting bigger, which some took to be a criticism of the fandom becoming more inclusive and welcoming to anyone who isn’t a straight white man. And when mentioning N.K. Jemisin, a Black female author who won best novel three times in a row—an accomplishment Luhrs rightly pointed out is unprecedented for the Hugos—Martin turned it into an excuse to harp on the achievements of a white male author who won the award three times over a span of nine years.

Shameful. Truly shameful. Just wait until they actually read one of his books and discover what a rape culture enthusiast he is. And then they’ll come for Scalzi.

UPDATE: They all know that Jemisin’s “best novel” wins are a fraudulent joke. Robert Silverberg couldn’t bother to hide his contempt for them:

He fucked up primarily by focusing all of his attention on ancient Hugo history, pointing his gaze backwards to the 1970s and lionizing problematic faves like Heinlein and Asimov and, yes, Campbell. The latter was especially egregious, since just last year Jeannette Ng began her now Hugo-winning Campbell Award speech by declaring him (rightly) to be a “fucking fascist.” It felt like a stinging rebuke of Ng’s incredible speech, a speech that actually prompted the Hugos to change the name of the award, to spend so much time talking about Campbell throughout the ceremony. To then trot out Robert Silverberg, who made dismissive comments about N.K. Jemisin’s deserved three-peat in the Best Novel category, felt like an especially craven capitulation to the old racists who feel the genre slipping out of their hands.