Category: Uncategorized

7 families, 7 books

The seven families have been selected and notified about the seven donated Castalia Library subscriptions they will be receiving. Each family will receive seven Library editions, the six books included in the annual subscription plus the seventh book to complete the Plutarch pair.

33 homeschooled children and 14 parents will be the beneficiaries of these beautiful donations.

My sincere thanks to the seven incredibly generous donors. You have planted acorns, and though you may never see the trees, you will know that it is thanks to you that they grow. Well done and thank you!

Call their bluff

Facebook threatens to pull out of Europe if it isn’t permit to continue ignoring European data protection and privacy laws:

Facebook has threatened to pack up its toys and go home if European regulators don’t back down and let the social network get its own way.

In a court filing in Dublin, Facebook said that a decision by Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC) would force the company to pull up stakes and leave the 410 million people who use Facebook and photo-sharing service Instagram in the lurch.

If the decision is upheld, “it is not clear to [Facebook] how, in those circumstances, it could continue to provide the Facebook and Instagram services in the EU,” Yvonne Cunnane, who is Facebook Ireland’s head of data protection and associate general counsel, wrote in a sworn affidavit.

The decision Facebook’s referring to is a preliminary order handed down last month to stop the transfer of data about European customers to servers in the U.S., over concerns about U.S. government surveillance of the data.

I’m not exactly what you would call a fan of the European Union, but I would love to see the following sequence:

  1. Call their bluff.
  2. Watch them back down.
  3. Prosecute them for their past violations of GDPR.
  4. Prosecute them for their ongoing violations of GDPR.
Someone has to rein in the lawless Tech Cartel, and to date, neither the Trump administration nor anyone outside the Chinese government has demonstrated the courage required to do so.

Impeccable Timing

As we’ve seen time and time again, SJWs can’t help themselves. Twitter’s most recent attempt to play publisher and manage its trends appears likely to backfire in the near future:

It’s important to note exactly what’s happening here, Twitter is choosing a subject to trend and making a values judgment about why that subject is trending. That’s the very essence of being a publisher. They are publishing their own opinion.

Twitter is saying, “Jason Whitlock opens himself up to criticism after making sexist comments about ESPN hosts.”

I added the bold language because it’s important for all of you to see.

Look at what’s going on here, Twitter is directly deciding what to trend and then making a values judgment about what was said. They are sharing their opinions. You (hopefully) read the columns. Did Whitlock treat anyone in those columns any different than he has countless men, athletes or media figures, he has ripped for decades? In my opinion, of course not.

But maybe you disagree.

That’s fine, that’s your right.

You are entitled to publish your opinion on your website or your social media feeds and be responsible for what you say. And if you do that, you’re being held to a different standard than the platform you write on because you are the content creator. Twitter’s distributing your content to the masses and claiming they aren’t responsible for it, all while monetizing their entire business on opinions. The more people who have opinions all day long, the more money the content platforms make. (Which is why they’re all created to seduce us into caring so much about likes and retweets and attention).

But here’s the deal, Twitter isn’t behaving as a content neutral company in any way when some anonymous person we don’t know who works at Twitter is labeling Whitlock’s opinions sexist. They are directly making a determination about content that they deem objectionable and then featuring it prominently on their website. All in an effort to try and punish the person who has stepped outside the bounds of what they deem to be an acceptable opinion.

Twitter is directly impacting the marketplace of ideas in this country while claiming they aren’t involved at all. They are pretending to be content neutral when in reality they are making a calculated and direct decision to be engaged in editorial content. They are picking sides and claiming to be neutral.

Why does that matter?

Because if you are in the editorial business, you are subject to lawsuits for those opinions you share. If you’re a platform, you aren’t.

So who at Twitter decided Jason Whitlock’s comments were “sexist?” We have no idea. If I had to guess, it was probably someone working in Twitter’s trending topics division but that’s only a guess. In reality, who is that person or persons? What are their biases? Why did they try to slide in their opinion on this topic and hope no one would notice? Why did they decide to make this a trending topic? And most importantly how can Twitter claim to be an unbiased content platform when they make clear editorial decisions such as these?

Those are all fascinating questions.

Which I’m sure Jason Whitlock will be interested in discussing on Thursday of this week.

When he testifies in front of Congress about content discrimination from tech companies.

It’s LONG past time to end the platform/publisher dance these companies have been permitted to play. They must be forced to choose one or the other. If you want to edit beyond the direct requirements of the law, you have to take responsibility. If you don’t want to take responsibility, then you don’t get to edit.

Twitter has taken an official stance that all public criticism of women, no matter how valid, is intrinsically sexist. If you want to  know what a feminist society would look like, now you know.

Castalia Library donation

First, I would like to thank the extremely generous – and by their own preference, anonymous – donors

who very graciously donated an entire YEAR of Castalia Library to SIX  SEVEN families. The families will be alerted by email tonight. As I mentioned when the offer was made, Castalia will be adding LIVES Vol. I by Plutarch to the donations, so each of the six families selected will receive seven deluxe books bound in topgrain cowhide. I am truly amazed by the generousness of this community and the ready willingness shown by those who with more resources to help those with less, as well as the depth of the concern demonstrated for the future generations.

These donors will never sit in the shade of the trees they are planting, but they have gone out of their way to plant intellectual acorns nevertheless. Let us hope they turn out to be mighty oaks indeed.

As subscribers know, one of these seven books will be Summa Elvetica by yours truly, Book 7 in the Library subscription and Book I in the Library/Libraria sets of Arts of Dark and Light. I’m taking this opportunity to introduce the cover of the Library edition, seen below, and to announce that it will be a) a signed edition that is b) available as a one-off purchase to non-subscribers. We’re cutting the retail price from $150 to $115 due to the high level of interest in the book, and subscribers should note that they will receive a new discount code soon in the event they wish to purchase additional copies.

We won’t know what the print run will be until the end of December, but we will keep it under 2500.

ID’ing the pedo elite

It appears a lot more evil creeps are about to be identified:

Jeffrey Epstein’s flight logs on his aircraft, including his ‘Lolita Express’ jet, have been subpoenaed, sparking fear among the rich and famous who partied with the pedophile.

The Attorney General in the US Virgin Islands, where the billionaire had a home and is said to have carried out many of his horrific crimes, has demanded to see the logs which document the passengers on his aircraft.

The logs on his four helicopters and three planes span from 1998 until his suicide in prison last year.

A source said: ‘The records that have been subpoenaed will make the ones Rodgers provided look like a Post-It note. There is panic among many of the rich and famous.’

Lawyers for the victims said the logs released in 2009 did not include the flights of chief pilot Larry Visoki who had flown Epstein for more than 25 years. 

The rocks must be overturned. The wicked must be exposed and held accountable for their crimes. The Swamp must be drained. 

The consequences of the choice

CS Lewis described the process and the consequences of taking the ticket in an essay entitled The Inner Ring:

To nine out of ten of you the choice which could lead to scoundrelism will come, when it does come, in no very dramatic colours. Obviously bad men, obviously threatening or bribing, will almost certainly not appear. Over a drink, or a cup of coffee, disguised as triviality and sandwiched between two jokes, from the lips of a man, or woman, whom you have recently been getting to know rather better and whom you hope to know better still—just at the moment when you are most anxious not to appear crude, or naïf or a prig—the hint will come. It will be the hint of something which the public, the ignorant, romantic public, would never understand: something which even the outsiders in your own profession are apt to make a fuss about: but something, says your new friend, which “we”—and at the word “we” you try not to blush for mere pleasure—something “we always do.”

And you will be drawn in, if you are drawn in, not by desire for gain or ease, but simply because at that moment, when the cup was so near your lips, you cannot bear to be thrust back again into the cold outer world. It would be so terrible to see the other man’s face—that genial, confidential, delightfully sophisticated face—turn suddenly cold and contemptuous, to know that you had been tried for the Inner Ring and rejected. And then, if you are drawn in, next week it will be something a little further from the rules, and next year something further still, but all in the jolliest, friendliest spirit. It may end in a crash, a scandal, and penal servitude; it may end in millions, a peerage and giving the prizes at your old school. But you will be a scoundrel.

That is my first reason. Of all the passions, the passion for the Inner Ring is most skillful in making a man who is not yet a very bad man do very bad things. My second reason is this. The torture allotted to the Danaids in the classical underworld, that of attempting to fill sieves with water, is the symbol not of one vice, but of all vices. It is the very mark of a perverse desire that it seeks what is not to be had. The desire to be inside the invisible line illustrates this rule. As long as you are governed by that desire you will never get what you want. You are trying to peel an onion: if you succeed there will be nothing left. Until you conquer the fear of being an outsider, an outsider you will remain.

The ticket, and those who offer it, have been around for a very long time. Metallica described it in rather more succinct terms.

Careful what you wish

Careful what you say

Careful what you wish you may regret it

Careful what you wish you just might get it

The media endangers itself

Journalists no longer should be afforded any protection, because journalists are not neutral observers. As they have chosen their side, they should be treated like the enemies of law and order that they are. As the primary enforcers of “hate speech”, they have no justification to hide their actions behind “freedom” or “free speech”.

“I remember this guy Velshi,” Trump said. “He got hit in the knee with a canister of tear gas, and he went down. He was down. ‘My knee, my knee.’ Nobody cared, these guys didn’t care, they moved him aside. And they just walked right through. It was the most beautiful thing,” Trump said. “No, because after we take all that crap for weeks and weeks, and you finally see men get up there and go right through them, wasn’t it really a beautiful sight? It’s called law and order.”

In a statement, MSNBC responded to Trump’s taunt, accusing him of encouraging violence towards the press. 

“Freedom of the press is a pillar of our democracy. When the President mocks a journalist for the injury he sustained while putting himself in harm’s way to inform the public, he endangers thousands of other journalists and undermines our freedoms.”

First, the USA is not a democracy. Second, the press has already undermined those freedoms. They don’t deserve any protection at all. They deserve prosecution. 

Flat-out Judases

Jim Caviezel rips into the Churchian leadership of Protestants and Catholics alike: 

Catholic actor Jim Caviezel, best known for playing Jesus in the 2004 film The Passion of the Christ, blasted “lukewarm” Christians in a Fox News interview, saying it’s “a bloody shame” one can’t tell the difference “between a priest, a bishop, or a politician.”

“I got to play Jesus, some of us love Peter or Paul, but there are many of us right now, they are flat out Judases, okay? Or they’re Pontius Pilates or they’re the Pharisees, okay?” Caviezel told Shannon Bream on the Fox News show FOX@Night yesterday.

“It’s a bloody shame if you can’t tell the difference between a priest, a bishop, or a politician. It’s really sad, but this is called lukewarmness, and Christ has a very special place for them, and they know it.”

Caviezel appeared as a guest on FOX@Night to discuss his latest movie, Infidel, which he described to Bream as a “well executed thriller.” Caviezel made the remarks when asked by Bream about what his concerns are regarding the role of faith, and what people should be doing about it in today’s world.

He was blunt with Bream, telling her that his new film is not some “candy-ass Christian stupid film,” but is rather one about “what is really going on today” in terms of the persecution of Christians in the Middle East.

“Well, it’s relevant because we have this thing called cancel culture, and if Christians don’t watch, it will be canceling Christianity as well, because a lot of our pastors, okay, our bishops, our priests — they’re laying right over,” Caviezel told Bream.

“They let their churches being burned, all right? How do we know that? Well, it’s right there in the news. Statues being ripped down. They don’t say anything.”

He’s absolutely right. God will certainly spit what passes for the modern Church out of His mouth, although most Churchians are worse than lukewarm. They follow the world and the Prince of this world, not Jesus Christ. That’s why they are laying right over; their objective is to lead their flocks away from God.

Read the Bible. Fear God. Serve Jesus Christ. Do not follow evil men and women into Hell simply because they call themselves christians, pastors, priests, or popes.

Pity the poor SF-SJW

Strange, I don’t recall any of them being terribly bothered about fake reviews back when their fellow SJWs were posting fake reviews about A THRONE OF BONES or SJWs Always Lie. But now that Tor authors are being targeted by fake reviewers, it’s a national emergency:

Remember, this is a book none of them have read, and none of them even have access to. We know who advanced reader copies have been sent to, and none of them are on the list. This is purely about continuing their terror campaign against a randomly picked target for fun.

I fully expect that before I wake up tomorrow, STARSHIP REPO will have several dozen fake, malicious reviews already posted on its Amazon page, along with the half dozen that have already appeared on Goodreads. All of the above evidence and explanation has already been repeatedly sent to Amazon customer service, both from myself, and from my publisher. And what has Amazon done in response?

Absolutely nothing. Indeed, they have actively refused to take any action at all, falling back on the excuse that their algorithms have already determined the reviews are genuine, and no human actively polices them anyway.

This is, to put it mildly, disappointing coming from one of the largest and most powerful companies in the entire world. When all is said and done, I don’t really blame the trolls for their antisocial, maladjusted behavior, any more than I would blame a baby for soiling its diaper, or a college student puking up six hours of 2-4-1 Long Island Ice Teas in an Applebee’s sink on their 21st birthday. In all three cases, they simply have no control over themselves, and can’t be expected to do better.

But Amazon and other companies like Twitter, Facebook, and Reddit can be expected to do better. Indeed, we must demand they do. Targets of online harassment campaigns must be given the tools they need to combat these all-encompassing attacks, and their oppressors silenced.

Somehow, when it comes to our collective online lives, society has agreed to the perverse notion that people of accomplishment and status, be they actors, athletes, writers, or musicians, should just shut up and take it when harassed. “Don’t feed the trolls” people who have never been in the spotlight say, not realizing that trolls turn to stone in the presence of sunlight. Meanwhile, hordes of anonymous terrorists are somehow afforded infinite free speech rights, up to and including consequence-free libel, incitement to violence, and threats of bodily harm or death.

This social compact is not just counterintuitive, but utterly insane. It validates and encourages the dead worst behavior, from the world’s most awful people. It has poisoned social media and public discourse, and it must change.

I, for one, can’t be bothered to care. It is what it is. Maybe they should consider building their own platforms.