Category: Uncategorized

When rabbits rabbit

I’m not sure which is more amusing, this guy’s complete failure to even begin to grasp what neo-fascism is, the fact that the SJWs are pretending to take his ranting babble seriously, his claim that “If You Gave a Dinosaur a Cookie, My Love” is better than anything on the 2015 shortlist, or the severeness of the butthurt radiating from his crimson posterior:

Fuck you, Theodore Beale.

Fuck you for trying to break a thing I loved. Fuck you for doing it to serve your stupid, lame fascist ideology. More to the point, fuck you for your stupid, lame fascist ideology. Your beliefs are horrible. You’re horrible. You’re a nasty, cruel little bully, and I do not like you.

Fuck you for making me feel that way. Fuck you for the way you’ve brought this thing that I love, this celebration of great science fiction, to a point where it is full of the sort of mean and hateful desires that seem to animate you. Fuck you for dragging us all down to your sorry level. Fuck you for being so odious that we have to go there.

And fuck you for making me want you to hate me. Fuck you for all of your beliefs that amount to nothing short of hatred for the things I love. For the people I love. For the art and beautiful things that are why I get out of bed in the morning. Fuck you for living your life for the sole purpose of destroying things that I love, and for making me wish that I could destroy something of yours in retaliation. Fuck you for making me write this, in the sincere and passionate hope that it will make you feel even a moment’s unpleasantness.

And fuck you for the very real possibility that a work nominated purely because you used your noxious little voice to rally your loathsome, asshole supporters to support it might win a Hugo Award. Fuck you because it’s actually possible that you will break the Hugos successfully and demonstrate that you’re oh so much stronger than a bunch of fans who were previously just happily attending a convention and voting for stuff they loved in awards. In short, fuck you.

Other than that, how was the play, Mrs. Lincoln? I am afraid that the only thing this extended rabbiting managed to elicit from me was a wry smile. As for my “loathsome asshole supporters”, every article like this creates more of them because the true face of the SJW cannot be forgotten once it is revealed. And the lesson, as always, is this: SJWs always lie.

I particularly enjoyed the punchline: “I will not attempt to construct some absolute explanation of Theodore
Beale’s beliefs. Instead, I will construct a caricature of them.”

You don’t say….

Mailvox: the racism lens

It’s always fascinating how some people have an amazing ability to detect racism no matter how clearly the absence of racism by literally every definition is explained to them. From a discussion on Eric Flint’s blog:

I may as well go all-in here: In comments above Vox Day has repeatedly been called a “racist,” perhaps dozens of times. Have any of you ASKED him what his position is on racial differences? Have any of you READ what he has to say about racial differences? No? Then those of you who call him “racist” are simply a mob. In an attempt to educate, here is what Mr. Day wrote recently in a comment on Brad Torgersen’s blog; it was in response to the following statement by someone else (not Brad): “Vox Day believes that white people and Asians (and clearly Hispanics, since Beale is one, at least in part) are superior to black people, and he believes this inferiority of blacks is innate, genetic.”

Here is what Mr. Day wrote in response:

“Correction: I don’t have any reason to believe any one human population sub-group is intrinsically superior to any other population sub-group. That being said, both science and logic quite clearly indicate that no two population sub-groups are identical, and therefore every population sub-group is either superior or inferior to another sub-group on the basis of any chosen metric.
“It makes no more difference that you like or dislike this fact than if you disapprove of the speed of light or the rate of Earth gravity.
“I assert that an unborn female black child with a missing chromosome and an inclination to homosexuality is equal in human value and human dignity and unalienable, God-given rights to a straight white male in the prime of his life and a +4 SD IQ. How many of my dishonest critics will do the same?
“That doesn’t mean that I think it is wise to ask that particular child, when she is grown, to design the next plane on which I intend to fly. Or even to work in the air traffic control tower.
“I deal in reality as determined by history, science, and logic. And I care no more about what an equalitarian fantasist thinks about me or anything else than I do about the mentally deranged babbling in the psych ward. The world is as it is, not as we might wish it to be. If you can’t understand that, then I am among the least of your problems.”

So query: Do the above statements validate the multiple assertions above that Mr. Day is a “racist”? (Disclaimer: I’ve never met the man, nor talked to him; I have exchanged perhaps a couple of emails when I challenged a statement he made. But I do despise mindless online mobs screaming “racist!”)
Reply

    Gav says:
    April 21, 2015 at 10:39 AM

    A moment’s thought shows that his premise is completely ridiculous. Choose people A, B, C such that A & C are from one group and B from another, but A is taller than B is taller than C. So now I’ve got a metric (height) where group 1 is both superior and inferior to group 2 on the height metric. (For a real-life example, choose Robert Wadlow and his father for A & C, and Michael Jordan for B).

    You have to be not only racist but also stupid to believe that “every population sub-group is either superior or inferior to another sub-group on the basis of any chosen metric.”
 
        Mike says:
        April 21, 2015 at 12:21 PM

        This is a result of false equivocation between individuals and categories. Yes, the mean of the heights of all adult men if taller than the mean of the heights of all adult women, but that doesn’t mean all men are taller than all women.

        It ends up being a big problem in the scientific study of people. Some people have political/personal reasons to try to see one group as better than another, while other people have similar reasons to try to see no groups as being any different from each other. Both camps accuse the other side of being unscientific and ignoring the data.

        Really there is no conflict between the idea that one group may, on average, have a measurable difference than another group, and also the idea that the variance of individuals withing the groups may be much larger than the difference between the groups. But due to confirmation bias, people tend to ignore whatever part of that equation it is convenient for them to ignore.
        Reply
            Eric Flint says:
            April 21, 2015 at 12:33 PM

            The problem goes deeper than that, because there’s an intrinsic bias in the categories someone chooses in the first place. For instance, if you choose to compare “the race of whites” to “the race of blacks” you are assuming not only that such races exist but that they are the proper basis for comparison. But why should that be true? Due to the way the human race evolved, there is more genetic variation among Africans than there is between any given group of Africans and any non-African segment of humanity. The reason people think all Africans belong to the same “race” is because they share certain literally superficial features: skin color, hair and some facial features. But why should those criteria be used as the basis to define a “race” in the first place? Why not, for instance, choose the average distribution of blood types? In which case you wind up with a “racial map” of humanity that is completely different from a “racial map” drawn according to skin color, hair and facial features.

            My point is that there is an inherent bias in the way the question is posed in the first place, which makes any answer to the question automatically questionable. What defines a “racist” in the first place, intellectually speaking, is the firm conviction that “races” as defined sociologically have an actual biological reality which is more basic than any other possible differentiation. For which there is not a shred of actual evidence. It is a faith-based conviction. That’s a polite say of saying it’s just bigotry.
            Reply
                Mike says:
                April 21, 2015 at 1:59 PM

                Yes, I agree. There very definitely are biological races, if you define that as subsets of the overall human gene pool where certain collections of genes are much more prevalent than they are in the general population. But there is so much nonsense and xenophobia and misunderstanding involved that it’s a real nightmare to try to approach these questions without stepping on any land mines.

                I recommend a really interesting book called “The Sports Gene” that gives some great examples of how this can be done properly (IMO), and also some examples of where it has been done very much improperly.
                Reply
                    335522 says:
                    April 21, 2015 at 2:13 PM

                    With all due respect to all of you, I believe you’re missing the point. Please read the third paragraph by Vox Day that begins “I assert that an unborn female black child….” And then answer the question that I posed at the end, please (it being notable that not one of the responses addresses it).

The following quote from that exchange is an astonishing assertion that clearly demonstrates both the intellectual inferiority as well as the logical incapacity of the SJWs:

“You have to be not only racist but also stupid to believe that “every population sub-group is either superior or inferior to another sub-group on the basis of any chosen metric.”

Quite to the contrary, you have to be utterly stupid and wholly irrational to deny that assertion, or else possess hitherto-unknown evidence demonstrating that every human population sub-group is absolutely and entirely equal across the board. Every single group has an average, a mean, and a median, regardless of the metric chosen. None of those three statistics are likely to be precisely equal to the average, the mean, and the media of any other group.

At no point have I EVER claimed, suggested, implied, hinted, or intimated that EVERY SINGLE MEMBER of one human population group is superior to EVERY SINGLE MEMBER of another one. And anyone who claims that I ever have is either lying or simply too dim to bother even attempting to talk down to.

The idea that “races” don’t exist is simply antiscientific dogma. They might as well deny that “species” and “groups” exist while they’re at it.

Meta-SWATTing

Patterico has the details:

This is one of the creepiest articles I have ever read. It reminds me of my experience being SWATted — having armed police rush into my home in what looked like retaliation for my speech. Yet in the case described in the article, the SWATting is actually being carried out . . . by the government.
In Wisconsin, citizens had cops bust into their homes with battering rams. Property was taken from their homes, in full view of the neighbors — and in some cases officers mocked them. Then the citizens were told that they could tell nobody about what had happened. If they did, they could go to jail.
All for exercising their First Amendment rights. Essentially, for being conservatives.

This should be kept in mind by anyone who still thinks going along to get along is still an option. The Statists are as insistent in their demand for submission as those who named their religion after the concept.

There is a theme

A Rabid Puppy responds to David Gerrold

This is an open response to Mr Gerrold’s heart felt facebook post. This post represents the Rabid Puppies official position on the matter. Word for Word. Mr Gerrold’s words will be in italics. The Rabid Puppies response will be in bold. It is my sincerest hope that this dialog will provide some insight to those who seem so confused by the Rabbid Puppies actions.

I’m going to get very personal and candid here.

We don’t care.

In 1995, I won a Hugo award for “The Martian Child.” The story was about how much I loved my son. Because so much of the story came from him, the award was his to share, so he came up on stage with me to hold it proudly. That award meant a lot to me. It still does. It was a validation of that thing we say — writing is easy, sit down at the keyboard and open a vein. That’s where that story came from. And that’s one of the reasons why I hold the Hugos in such high regard — it was a joyous validation of what for me was not only an ambitious experiment, but also a personal breakthrough in my own storytelling. It went someplace I didn’t know I could go. It went someplace I didn’t know a science fiction story could go.

We don’t care.

To me, the Hugo has always meant excellence, but since then I think it also had to represent the most ambitious efforts to stretch the genre in whatever direction an author wants to soar. This is a unique genre. It’s the only genre that asks, “What does it mean to be a human being?” It’s the only genre that reaches for the stars and asks, “What’s next? What are the possibilities in front of us?” It’s the only literary form that functions as the Research and Development Division of the human species. So the Hugo is special.

We don’t care.

Yes, I would say that pretty well sums it all up.

This is an interesting exercise in rhetoric. Mr. Gerrold clearly wants us to be very impressed by his feelbads, and thereby convinced of the pure and utter evil of those who would cause such feelbads.

With all due respect, Mr. Gerrold, you’re not exactly convincing anyone. We’ve read STARTREKSHIRTS. We’ve read “If a Dinosaur Had a Cookie, My Love”. We’ve read “I am Chinese and I am Gay”. We’ve read LOOK MA, I CAN DO WHAT DAVID SILVERBERG DID NEARLY 30 YEARS AGO. The only soaring that is taking place here is the Muse of Science Fiction leaping out the window in protest.

More interesting is Mr. Gerrold’s threats of unpersoning and banishment from that fine community of SF fandom, which of course proves exactly what we’ve been saying from the start.

But the one thing that is growing more and more likely … the architects of this squabble will have indelibly damaged themselves in the eyes of the SF community. There are invitations and acknowledgments that will never be offered — not because it’s a blacklist, but because nobody wants to hang out with assholes.

And if that’s “unpersoning,” then it’s self-inflicted.

Whine all you want, Brad. It won’t work. I learned it by the time I was five. I never got anything I wanted by whining — so I stopped wasting energy and learned how to work for results the old-fashioned way.

This can’t be repeated enough: we don’t care.

We know the SJWs in science fiction are influential and have been actively acting as ideological gatekeepers for the last two decades. We know that there are invitations and acknowledgements that will never be offered – and we know it is a blacklist because people who are most certainly not assholes are treated as badly, if not worse, than those who are.

We know we will never belong to David Gerrold’s little club. We know we never have.

We don’t care.

We’re not wasting energy. We’re not whining. We are working for results in ways that Mr. Gerrold and his little tribe do not, and perhaps cannot, imagine. And I tend to expect they are going to like those results even less than they are enjoying the 2015 Hugo Awards.

Black Gate withdraws

Or rather, they have asked to not be considered for the Hugo award for which they will be on the ballot. While I disagree with John’s decision, I respect his right to make it.  I find it ironic, however, that people are responding to a large group of people dictating the ballot by unilaterally dictating to people for whom they will not vote.

 I also find it telling that a threat to support No Award next year is supposedly worse than a vow to do it this year. I am curious. Would they consider it better if I accepted what passes for their reasoning and announced that Rabid Puppies will join the No Award movement this year? Because that is certainly an option. (Settle down, you bloodthirsty bastards, I said no more than the obvious. It is an option.)

 The goal is to improve the Awards, not destroy them. But if the SJWs would rather destroy them than relinquish their control, well, that will tell the world exactly what sort of totalitarians they are. That’s two birds for the price of one. We’ve already got them on the record stating that our views are invalid and should be suppressed by force; seeing them demolish the awards without our assistance will communicate that more effectively than we can do ourselves.

Puppies on NPR

KW listened in and heard NPR doing their usual bang-up job on Sad Puppies. For me, the most intriguing aspect of the media coverage has been the near-complete lack of interest in actually talking to anyone involved in the actual news-making activity. I mean, I am about as cynical a media skeptic as it is possible to be, and yet somehow, these journalistic incompetents haven’t even managed to rise to my very, very low level of expectations.

Weekend NPR show “On the Media” spent 15 minutes on the Hugo awards controversy, starting at about the half-way mark (30 minutes)

Arthur Wu was the expert interviewed.  He did some amateur psychoanalysis of the Sad Puppies and Rabid Puppies groups.

This was tied to GamerGate, and shortly after mentioning death threats and harrassment, Vox Day was re-mentioned as active in both controversies.  One might conclude, if one was a sloppy thinker, that Vox Day has made death threats.  They non-judgmentally mentioned your blog is among the most often blocked by workplace filters for hate.

Larry Correia was interviewed, or a clip reused, and John C Wright was brought up and invalidated as a right wing has-been whose prose now includes Randian divergences into poltical polemics.

They must have read PopSci, because they almost quoted their line:

“…Vox Day is … on the record as supporting the Taliban’s attempt to assassinate Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousifazi, finding it “scientifically justifiable.””

“Disco Demolition Night” was also brought up.  Apparantly, Disco hate, Sad Puppies, and GamerGate are about fear of castration.

NPR “All Things Considered” teased that they were going to cover Sad/Rapid Puppies as well, but the website does not help out yet.

I don’t really object to their futile attempt to pile on. What this tells us is that the SJWs are uncommonly concerned about losing control of the narrative. And in their point-and-shriek frenzy – and that is all this is – they are bound to overreach themselves and their exaggerations will reach ludicrous proportions as they essentially play a high-tech version of the telephone game.

I won’t be surprised if I’m accused of being a self-admitted member of the Taliban by the time this feeding frenzy reaches its peak. The other thing this tells us is that they are afraid of me. It was remarkable how Damien Walters, who normally likes to work VOX DAY and LARRY CORREIA into everything, didn’t even mention either of us in his initial Hugo column. The media only likes to expose unsophisticated and unsympathetic enemies to the masses, but I am entirely comfortable with the media and not inclined to fall into their patently obvious traps.

That means they are left talking about me, without going to the source, and relying upon dishonest people to give them the straight story. And while they’ll convince the SJW choir, as well as mostly indifferent people who can’t bother to pay attention, at least 9 out of 10 people who discover me as a result are going to immediately notice that I am not even close to what they say I am.

So, I expect this to be not only a net positive, but a significant net positive. I grew up watching Ronald Reagan, after all, and the man not only survived, but thrived on absorbing everything the media could possibly throw at him.

One thing that will be useful, though, is to dig into the identity of each hit piece author. We’ve already tied several of them to Tor Books; the original Guardian hit piece author is published by Tor Books and was in contact with John Scalzi. And we know about both Heer and the PopSci guy as well.

Once we have the complete dossier, we’ll be able to draw a clear picture of how their media operation works and then go about exposing it. Remember, wu wei is all about the art of bending with the wind. Right now it is time to let the wind blow. But that’s all it is, is wind.

The end of Holocaustianity

I’m more than a little astonished that Israel’s government is so willing to throw away the moral high ground here:

Israel does not plan to recognize the Armenian genocide perpetrated by Turkey, Rafael Harpaz, Israel’s ambassador to Azerbaijan, told Azeri website Trend.

“Israel is a democratic country, everybody has two opinions, not one opinion,” Harpaz said. “The government has a very clear opinion.”

He said Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman had made Israel’s policy clear. Harpaz told Trend he hoped Israel’s troubled relations with Turkey would improve.

I suppose this decision makes sense from a geopolitical grand strategic point of view, kjkbut when seen through the Lind lense, it looks a lot more like a potentially disastrous move that could perhaps even be prosecuted in some European countries.

It seems to me that this will make Holocaust denial much easier to justify.

Science is human

One of the things that scientists, but even more so, science fetishists, tend to resolutely forget is that science is not magic. It doesn’t exist in a vacuum.

The Justice Department and FBI have formally acknowledged that nearly every examiner in an elite FBI forensic unit gave flawed testimony in almost all trials in which they offered evidence against criminal defendants over more than a two-decade period before 2000.

Of 28 examiners with the FBI Laboratory’s microscopic hair comparison unit, 26 overstated forensic matches in ways that favored prosecutors in more than 95 percent of the 268 trials reviewed so far, according to the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL) and the Innocence Project, which are assisting the government with the country’s largest post-conviction review of questioned forensic evidence.

No matter how flawless the scientody may be, it always has to pass through several layers of scientistry, each of which is entirely capable of transforming both the data as well as the reported conclusions. This is the primary reason that appeals to science are every bit as flawed as appeals to eyewitnesses, because it is assuming that no scientist will ever fail to be less than entirely truthful and unbiased.

Which, being human, is the one thing that we know for certain that they are not.

Critique by identity

I find it amusing how invariably McCarthyite the SJWs playing critic reveal themselves to be:

Over and over again, we see the mechanism by which power re-asserts itself when challenged. With a gymnastic leap, those on the defensive become the underdogs, cruelly repressed by the BBC, feminists, people from Islington, some nebulous “elite” or the suggestion that sometimes a female character in a videogame might wear a decently supportive bra.

The debate demands onlookers accept one of two contradictory premises, so there is little room for nuance and the argument never runs out of fuel. Is Farage a truth-teller or a race-baiter? Was Thornberry a metropolitan snob, or was the England flag itself a type of dogwhistle? Are the Hugo awards in thrall to a politically correct cabal, or simply making an effort to remedy an ingrained injustice? Whether it’s videogames, science fiction or Westminster politics, the underlying struggle for victim status is the same. And once you notice, it’s downright eerie to hear the same arguments – about “out-of-touch elites” who don’t connect with the tastes of “real people” – coming from the leader of Ukip and a guy who wrote a book called Summa Elvetica: A Casuistry of the Elvish Controversy.

There is no single answer and, at least in the case of the Hugo awards, it is not in the extremists’ interests to find one. Vox Day has built a small internet army on his manufactured grievance, and he won’t let it go lightly. If SFF fans vote to give “no award” in the categories where Rabid Puppies candidates dominate, he has threatened to ensure that the awards are never given again. It is a supremely self-interested move. Politicising the Hugos to such a degree certainly doesn’t help the nominees themselves, because authors on his slate risk being informally blacklisted by the rest of the community. Who wants to read a fantasy story endorsed by a bigot?

This is mildly amusing, considering how it is usually asserted that I am stupid. Now I am suddenly an overly erudite elitist? Okay, actually, that’s considerably closer to the truth, but then, as an avowed anti-equalitarian, I don’t pretend to be anything but an elitist.

The important difference: unlike most elitists, I have no desire to dictate or control the behavior of the non-elite. I simply refuse to let either the elite or the non-elite claim the right to dictate or control my behavior or my beliefs.

The last question is the most interesting. We might, of course, turn it around, as it rather usefully clarifies what James May keeps pointing out to everyone. Who wants to read a fantasy story endorsed by a Communist? Who wants to read a story endorsed by a feminist? Who wants to read a fantasy story endorsed by a Negro? Who wants to read a fantasy story endorsed by a woman?

Once the idea of judging a work on its own merits, rather than on the basis of who creates or endorses it, is rejected, then there is no reason to not judge works on the very racist, sexist, and ideological grounds that the SJWs claim to bitterly oppose. They are openly demolishing the very foundations upon which their incoherent ideology rests.

The Hugo situation doesn’t “prove progressives right”. Quite to the contrary, it has clearly shown their ideology to be not only hopelessly hypocritical, but intrinsically self-contradictory too. And if the article didn’t prove it, the comments certainly do.

“They stand for intolerance, prejudice, fear & loathing and must be rejected with scorn, derision and at times, force. Their opinion and views are not equal nor are they valid so therefore they do not deserve to be given any air time or publicity.”

Very well. We can certainly treat them likewise.

Population replacement

It’s interesting to see how alarm bells are ringing in liberal Minnesotan circles even though Somali immigration has helped the numbers to remain stable:

Casey Sperzel is Minnesotan through and through. She grew up in Maple Grove, went to college at the University of Minnesota, and lived in both St. Paul and Minneapolis. But when the 27-year-old met with a job recruiter last year, she was set on the Pacific Northwest.

“I don’t think I’ll be back,” said Sperzel, now with a Seattle ad agency.

States are scrambling for young professionals like Sperzel to help offset the wave of baby boomer retirements. Minnesota is falling behind in that competition. The state has lost residents every year since 2002, with young adults most eager to leave. About 9,300 18- to 24-year-olds move out annually, according to the Minnesota State Demographic Center.

That — combined with a declining birthrate and an aging population — has demographers and civic leaders sounding alarms.

“It’s a lapel-grabbing moment,” said Peter Frosch, a vice president at Greater MSP, a St. Paul nonprofit focused on economic development in the Twin Cities metro.

Over the next 15 years, more Minnesotans will retire than in the past six decades combined, resulting in a labor shortage that is unprecedented since the end of World War II. By 2020, the state is forecast to have a shortage of more than 100,000 workers…. Each year, 113,000 people leave Minnesota and go to another state, while
about 101,000 move here from another state. Were it not for strong
international migration, Minnesota’s overall population would be
falling.

I left Minnesota in my twenties after founding a Billboard-charting band, a music company, and my first computer game company.  But don’t worry, thanks to “strong international migration”, I’m sure there is an Somali gentleman with an 85 IQ who is doing an admirable job of taking my place there. I have no doubt that he will continue to do so as long as he doesn’t wind up joining Al Shabaab and blowing himself up at the Megamall or somewhere in Africa.

After all, everyone is equal, and if they’re not, they are inevitably transformed by the magic of geographical translocation. That’s why the 20th century America was exactly like 15th century America that was inhabited only by my Native American ancestors.

I’m glad I grew up in then-Minnesota. It was a wonderful place for a child despite the cold winters. But despite the certain improvements that have taken place by virtue of the many blessings of Diversity and Vibrancy, I have no desire to live in now-Minnesota.