Author: VD

A tactical analysis

Watch this tactical analysis of the recent church shooting in Texas. Very insightful, very informative. And one hell of a shot from the old guy!

The key is to a) be armed, b) be aware, and c) do not hesitate to act when necessary. Both the usher and the first responder were suspicious, and both had the opportunity to put themselves at a tactical advantage by moving closer in the first instance and surreptitiously drawing in the second, but unfortunately, neither of them acted on their initial suspicions. It’s completely understandable, of course, but even so, their failure to act on their suspicions cost them dearly.

Mailvox: deal with it, gamma

It’s interesting to see how one gamma troll has belatedly learned that the costs of trolling can come back to bite him years later. I received an email today from someone seeking my assistance to remove his comments from the blog.

I need you to be a friend and remove the comments by “[redacted].” I learned the hard way that employers are very unforgiving regarding comments. But a fall in a pit a gain in one’s wit. I also need you to edit out my name in other comments.

So, as I am always amenable to reasonable requests from readers, I went to find the comments specified with the intention of deleting them. At which point, I discovered that these comments were not run-of-the-mill comments from regular readers, but the usual hectoring and posturing from the sort of individual we no longer permit here.

For example, here is one typical exchange:

Gamma: I am almost unable to offer meaningful assistance to you on a personal level, and you quickly become annoyed with me.

VD: Then shut the hell up and stop trying to offer unsolicited advice. It’s not that hard to avoid annoying people.

Shut. Your. Fucking. Mouth.

That works 99 percent of the time. If no one has asked you for help or assistance, stop trying to give it to them. If no one has asked you about something, stop trying to teach, help, criticize, or otherwise talk to them about it.

Gamma: It is extremely unwise to return vitriol for kindness.

“If you repay good with evil, evil will never leave your house.” (Proverbs 17:13)

Solon:  *Shakes head sadly*

Your reply is ridiculous. Preaching, holier-than-thou, “I know better than you.”

He told you to shut your mouth on his blog. The correct response is to accept your chastisement and learn from it, not go full-Gamma and try to tell him he’s wrong.

Or to use some logic: your response is not “good,” and his response is not “evil.” He didn’t ask for your advice, you outright admitted you had nothing to offer, and when he said “then go fuck yourself,” you responded in butt-hurt indignation. You even tried to use a Bible quote without even having the self-awareness to apply it to yourself.

Shameful. Your advice was not requested, your post was arrogant, condescending, and rude to assume you know shit about VD or why he likes Trump.

Textbook gamma. Vox, I believe you said you were going to start banning Gammas?

So, instead of complying with his request, I replied:

No. You’re no friend and you never were. Deal with it, troll. 

His future non-employers should thank me. No one wants or needs these people in their organizations or in their lives. I’ve given these people chance after chance after chance to no avail. There is absolutely no point in helping them evade the inevitable consequences of their malicious and unnecessary actions.

I deal every single day with people holding me accountable for my words. Don’t come to me looking to help you avoid accountability for yours.

Conservatives wave the white flag… again

Rod Dreher does what conservatives do best, surrender. Now they’re waving the white flag in the culture war:

Chick-fil-A proved that no matter what nasty things your enemies said about you, if you held your head high and continued doing good work, you would succeed. With so many American businesses and institutions capitulating to the woke mob, Chick-fil-A’s quiet, lonely resistance was inspiring.

It all came crashing down in mid-November, when the company quietly announced it was changing its giving priorities. No longer would it donate to the Salvation Army and the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, two charities that activists slammed as gay-haters. Chick-fil-A did not say outright that it was cutting off ‘anti-LGBT’ charities, but for anyone half-literate in reading public relations statements, it was clear they were doing exactly that.

It’s hard to overstate the symbolic importance of this move. For one, Chick-fil-A’s white flag meant that it accepted the vicious slander that the venerable Salvation Army, of all organizations, is a hate group. More importantly, Chick-fil-A was not pressured by financial losses to back down. It did so from a position of strength — hence the stunning demoralization of conservatives. If even one of the great financial success stories in American retailing would not hold out against leftist campaigners, what hope do the rest of us have to thrive in a highly ideologized public square?

Mind you, Chick-fil-A’s opening toward armistice will not buy it peace. The fast-food giant will now be shaken down so hard by gay groups seeking ‘reparations’ that its corporate teeth will rattle — and that still won’t be enough. LGBT activists will not rest until they have strangled the last Evangelical wedding-cake baker with the entrails of the last homophobic farm fowl.

However, in US culture war terms, Chick-fil-A’s surrender really is a Germans-marching-down-the-Champs-Élysées moment for the right. The conflict, which roughly dates from the late 1960s, has moved from a combat phase to a life-under-occupation period. Though the craven capitulation of a Christian-run corporation as successful as Chick-fil-A must shatter the delusions of the most ardent dead-enders, in truth the culture war was definitively lost five years ago.

What a total load of nonsense. Not only are we not surrendering, we are taking the offensive! The Promethean forces have been reeling since 2016, weakened from within and from without, under assault from the god-emperor, from China, from Russia, and from the Men of the West.

Never pay any heed to a conservative. They are cowards, cucks, and capitulants.

And never forget. All we need is twelve.

Speaking of hunting trolls

A word of advice: emailing us nothing but a link to a video and saying “this video is in violation” is entirely useless. If you want to help, then please put in the work that will actually reduce the workload of others.

This is what a proper copyright violation report looks like:

1. Copyright Infringement Notification
What is the issue?

 Copyright infringement (Someone copied my creation)

2. Copyright infringement – Who is affected?

 My company, organization, or client

3. Videos to be removed

∗ URL of allegedly infringing video to be removed:

Describe the work allegedly infringed:
∗ The YouTube URL of my original video: 

∗ Where does the content appear?

Timestamps:
Where does your work appear in the targeted video?
 to
Where does it appear in your source video?
 to

Note that without the timestamps from BOTH the original and the violating video, the lawyers cannot submit the copyright infringement notification. So, if you’re not going to provide that, there is no point in providing anything.

I understand people are simply trying to help. But the key word there is “trying”, as it is vital to understand that actual help requires REDUCING the burden upon others, not INCREASING it. Which is why just bringing something to someone’s attention cannot reasonably be described as helping.

The troll wars

The problem with which we’ve been dealing for the last few years is just a microcosm of a much larger one that has disturbing long-term implications for the future direction of the intersection of technology and law:

The resounding message in the Pew report is this: There’s no way the problem in public discourse is going to solve itself. “Between troll attacks, chilling effects of government surveillance and censorship, etc., the internet is becoming narrower every day,” said Randy Bush, a research fellow at Internet Initiative Japan, in his response to Pew.

Many of those polled said that we’re now witnessing the emergence of “flame wars and strategic manipulation” that will only get worse. This goes beyond obnoxious comments, or Donald Trump’s tweets, or even targeted harassment. Instead, we’ve entered the realm of “weaponized narrative” as a 21st-century battle space, as the authors of a recent Defense One essay put it. And just like other battle spaces, humans will need to develop specialized technology for the fight ahead.

Researchers have already used technology to begin to understand what they’re up against. Earlier this month, a team of computer scientists from Stanford University and Cornell University wrote about how they used machine-learning algorithms to forecast whether a person was likely to start trolling. Using their algorithm to analyze a person’s mood and the context of the discussion they were in, the researchers got it right 80 percent of the time.   

They learned that being in a bad mood makes a person more likely to troll, and that trolling is most frequent late at night (and least frequent in the morning). They also tracked the propensity for trolling behavior to spread. When the first comment in a thread is written by a troll—a nebulous term, but let’s go with it—then it’s twice as likely that additional trolls will chime in compared with a conversation that’s not led by a troll to start, the researchers found. On top of that, the more troll comments there are in a discussion, the more likely it is that participants will start trolling in other, unrelated threads.

“A single troll comment in a discussion—perhaps written by a person who woke up on the wrong side of the bed—can lead to worse moods among other participants, and even more troll comments elsewhere,” the Stanford and Cornell researchers wrote. “As this negative behavior continues to propagate, trolling can end up becoming the norm in communities if left unchecked.”

Using technology to understand when and why people troll is essential, but many people agree that the scale of the problem requires technological solutions. Stopping trolls isn’t as simple as creating spaces that prevent anonymity, many of those surveyed told Pew, because doing so also enables “governments and dominant institutions to even more freely employ surveillance tools to monitor citizens, suppress free speech, and shape social debate,” Pew wrote.

We’re already seeing how companies like Facebook and Google have weaponized the concept of “fake news”, and now entire countries are following suit. In what is a crushing refutation of libertarian theory, the Internet and the devolution of what were once civilized anonymous discussion spaces on bulletin boards and CompuServe have clearly demonstrated that Man cannot handle the freedom of a perceived lack of accountability.

There are deeper philosophical aspects to this, that lend additional clarity to traditional thinking about morality and ethics. Even the most devout atheist should be able to recognize at this point that Man was not made for, nor can he reliably handle, even the perceived absence of a Lawgiver to whom he knows he will be held responsible for his actions.

The goose protests the gander

It’s bitterly amusing to see the USA and EU fussing over their discovery that the rest of the world is not going to play with their stacked deck:

A move by the United Nations to approve a Russian-sponsored and China-backed resolution that aims to create a new convention on cybercrime has alarmed rights groups and Western powers that fear a bid to restrict online freedom.

The resolution was approved on Friday by the general assembly by a vote of 79-60, with 33 abstentions.

It establishes an expert committee representing all regions of the world “to elaborate a comprehensive international convention on countering the use of information and communications technologies for criminal purposes”. The resolution said the committee will meet in August 2020 to agree on an outline of its activities.

The United States, European powers and rights groups fear that the language is code for legitimising crackdowns on expression, with numerous countries defining criticism of the government as “criminal”.

Meanwhile, the US, the European powers, and rights groups are busy cracking down on expression of which they do not approve. They simply don’t have a leg to stand on, and the rest of the world knows it. Do they really think that China, Russia, India, and everyone else don’t see that no one is allowed to criticize certain peoples, races, and orientations despite this supposed freedom of expression?

And furthermore, Huawei is discovering the advantage of being forced to build your own platforms:

Being cut off from the world’s most popular mobile OS and being left with its open-source version at best was a blow for Huawei – but the split between the two tech giants is a sword that is capable of cutting both ways. Just months after Google’s decision, Huawei unveiled its own Harmony mobile OS and rolled out a new flagship smartphone without any proprietary Google apps. It vowed to finalize the development of Huawei Mobile Services (HMS) – a replacement for popular Google apps – by the end of the year.

The Chinese giant did not stop at that, and entered into negotiations with India’s top 150 app developers to convince them to publish their products on HMS, which itself could offer up to 150 ‘own apps’ to customers all over the world.

“In the future, Chinese companies might push the American one from the entire Asian market. Huawei’s indigenously developed services might soon replace Google services like Gmail, YouTube, and Google Maps. Then, the US company will be in real trouble.”

I switched from Samsung to Huawei several years ago. Both their tablets and their phones are great; as for the OS, I barely noticed when the switch to Harmony took place. This is why I have no doubt that we will soon see a China-Russia-India technological alliance that, unlike the China-Russia-Iran military alliance, will be fundamentally offensive in nature.

They always want to escape consequences

And whatever happened to that whole “speech has consequences” idea they were pushing anyhow?

Back in September, we reported that TV network OAN had filed a lawsuit against Rachel Maddow for the time the host said that OAN “really, literally is paid Russian propaganda.”

Now, Maddow finds herself having to come up with a defense for her statement in court. And she has also apparently hired Lionel Hutz as her legal adviser.

According to Culttture, her lawyers argued in a recent motion that “…the liberal host was clearly offering up her ‘own unique expression’ of her views to capture what she saw as the ‘ridiculous’ nature of the undisputed facts. Her comment, therefore, is a quintessential statement ‘of rhetorical hyperbole, incapable of being proved true or false.”

So Maddow is looking for the court to give her a free pass to say anything she likes, because her words can never be considered true or false. It’s an interesting, and perhaps even novel, legal theory, but I tend to doubt even a sympathetic liberal judge is likely to accept it.

Especially given the particular emphasis she really, literally, placed upon it.

However this is an excellent example of what happens when an individual abandons Truth, as he – or she – eventually becomes incapable of seeing or even speaking the truth.

An interesting perspective

The Big Bear’s hate club certainly have a different perspective on defamation:

If they are so right, why are they bothered by Crocko who is so wrong – they would be indifferent or just laugh it off if there was nothing to it…

There is nothing to it. No matter how we react – and notice that we did ignore it for months until events yesterday rendered that impossible – there has never been anything to it. By this bizarrely twisted illogic, people only react to true accusations, against which stands the entire history of written and case law dealing with defamation, slander, and libel. Here is just one recent example disproving the hate club’s logic, in this case, from Australia.

Malicious comments on social media can have costly consequences. This was demonstrated in Cables v Winchester [2018] VSC 392. Ms Cables, the owner of multiple McDonald’s franchises, sued Mr Winchester for a series of defamatory comments he posted on the “Everything Albury Wodonga” Facebook page (“the Facebook Page”).

The Court’s Findings

The court found that the posts were defamatory. The Court found that the defamatory posts were published to at least 9,477 people who followed the Facebook page. The Court also noted that as a publicly accessible page, other people who did not ‘follow’ the page or like the page may have seen the publications, and additionally the “grapevine” effect meant it was likely that the publications would have spread further still. The “grapevine” effect  has been described as the realistic recognition by the law that, by the ordinary function of human nature, the dissemination of defamatory material is rarely confined to those to whom the matter is immediately published.

There was direct evidence of damage to Ms Cables’ mental health and wellbeing as well as her professional reputation within the Albury community. The publications even raised the attention of the McDonald’s Head Office in Sydney, who summoned Ms Cables to an urgent meeting. She was told that head office were investigating the allegations made in the publications and that if they were true, she would be required to sell her franchises.

Damages

Ms Cables was awarded damages of $200,000. The Court considered aggravated damages to be appropriate because Mr Winchester published the words solely to injure Ms Cables’ reputation, refused to apologise and did not participate in the trial. What’s more, Mr Winchester encouraged scores of comments which denigrated Ms Cables to be published.

Now, you might reasonably ask, what does Australia have to do with anything? Well, YouTube videos are broadcast there, along with nearly everywhere else, which means that the choice of venue is extremely broad. Unauthorized also has many Australian customers, as it happens. Notice, in particular, that last line about “encouraging scores of comments” and how it relates to ALL of the people who are involved in Unauthorized, which is most certainly not, contrary to the defamatory assertions of Mr. Crocko, a scam of any kind.

Every view and every comment on his videos is just that much more ammunition against the individual in question.

The costs of labor mobility

You won’t see these social costs showing up in the GDP statistics. But they are very real costs all the same:

In decades past, it wasn’t uncommon at all for the average family to know each and every one of their neighbors living close by on the same street. Those dwelling on the same block would regularly gather for holiday parties in the winter, and barbecues during the summer. As the years have gone by, however, people have slowly become more inclined to keep to themselves and shy away from even greeting or speaking to their neighbors.

Now, a new survey of 2,000 British adults shows the staggering extent to which the concept of a neighborhood community has fallen by the wayside. In all, 75{de336c7190f620554615b98f51c6a13b1cc922a472176e2638084251692035b3} say they consider their neighbors mere acquaintances at best. Sadly, nearly a quarter wouldn’t dream of knocking on one of their doors uninvited because there is “no sense of community spirit” in their neighborhood.

The survey, commissioned by Lottoland, also found that one in 10 modern adults mine as well be living next to an empty house as they only see their neighbors less than once per month. Still, four in 10 say they are at least “friendly” with a few of their neighbors, but still wouldn’t call them actual friends. The average survey respondent reports knowing the names of just five people living on their street.

Shockingly, one in 20 couldn’t name a single other person from his or her block.

Remember, this is the positive outcome for which the economists have been hoping. Maximizing output by moving all of the pieces around to their optimal production efficiency. Of course, it’s a short-sighted approach, because the societal instability and lower quality of life it creates more than outweighs the short-term economic benefits.

24 hours, trolls

I’m giving Davey Crocko, RealOwenBenjamin, ultrafuzzyforeigner, and the rest of the Unauthorized-hating gamma trolls on Reddit and YouTube 24 hours to come clean, declare their real identities, admit their actions, and thereby avoid having the wrath of the VFM and the Legal Legion of Evil crash down upon their heads.

I have never filed a copyright violation before nor had anyone do so on my behalf, but starting next week, the Legal Legion lawyers will begin filing copyright violations against every YouTube attack video that broadcasts content from the Darkstream without permission. And note that I am not only doing this of my own accord, but also at the specific request of some of our technology partners that these individuals have been contacting and with whose contracts they have been attempting to tortiously interfere.

As for those who say this is a waste of time, rest assured that it is not. Lines – serious criminal lines that consist of state and federal laws – have been crossed and we will no longer look the other way. Instead, we intend to utilize the full force of the techniques and tactics that have been developed and refined by the Rabid Puppies, the VFM, and the LLoE.

And since we don’t know precisely who was responsible for exactly which action against us and we can’t easily distinguish the civil tortfeasors from the felonious criminals, we have no choice but to begin systematically rolling them up and forcing them to admit their deeds, beginning with the most obvious culprits.