Category: Uncategorized

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.

Deflationary inaction

Banks are flat-out refusing to provide business loans unless the government fully guarantees them so they aren’t subject to any risk. It’s interesting, though hardly surprising, to see that the loan guarantees are actually making loans harder to get.

I own and operate a consulting company the end goal of which is to set up & provide loans through multiple funding channels to franchisees of large and small chains nationally. The chains I work with many of you will be familiar with —dominos, jersey mikes, massage envy, European wax center, the joint, club Pilates, jimmy johns, wingstop, Orangetheory, moes southwest.  And many others.  Point is I have BROAD spectrum national exposure to many industries

The banks I work with are SBA, conventional lenders who service smaller loans under 2mm and generally smaller operators of these franchise systems, and then larger banks who provide loans to larger operators from 2-50mm.  I’m short — 20+ banks across ALL spectrum of SME lending

I fund 400-500mm in loans per year through these banks. In February we were on pace to fund well over 500mm and potentially 750mm — growing exponentially year over year.  STIFF DRINK TIME.  Since April 1st we have funded 5mm total through only 2 banks.  Let’s dive in as to why.

SBA banks — they have lending limits to 5mm.  Congress has authorized them to go to 10mm in the CARES Act but they have ignored it.  This will become important later.   They currently have guarantees from the govt at 80{4e01b0bc4ab012654d0c5016d8cbf558644ab2e53259aa2c40b66b3b20e8967d} – pretty good right? DOESNT MATTER THEY STILL WONT LEND

In fact they are pushing the government to guarantee 90{4e01b0bc4ab012654d0c5016d8cbf558644ab2e53259aa2c40b66b3b20e8967d} of the loans (and likely on their way to 100{4e01b0bc4ab012654d0c5016d8cbf558644ab2e53259aa2c40b66b3b20e8967d} — see my prior posts on the de facto nationalizion of the banking system).  In short SBA has SHUT OFF BORROWERS waiting for more from Uncle Sam.

Current excuses ARE PLAYING BOTH SIDES (and this applies to all banking segments). A chain with increased sales since pandemic — no loan. “We want to wait to see if sales increases are sustainable” Doesn’t matter that sales are up.  They may not be “sustainable”

On the other side for businesses with sales down — “well we just aren’t comfortable sales will rebound and we have concerns over COVID”.   So sales up = no loan.  Sales down or flat = no loan.  Operator size IRRELEVANT.   Are some banks lending? Yes. This is 75-80{4e01b0bc4ab012654d0c5016d8cbf558644ab2e53259aa2c40b66b3b20e8967d} of SBA banks. They are also being EXTREMELY selective on industries they will do.  If you are an industry with “large public gatherings” you better pray to Santa Claus for money.

On to conventional banks.   Little known fact is that 50+{4e01b0bc4ab012654d0c5016d8cbf558644ab2e53259aa2c40b66b3b20e8967d} have LEFT THE FRANCHISE LENDING SPACE ENTIRELY.  Of the remaining 50{4e01b0bc4ab012654d0c5016d8cbf558644ab2e53259aa2c40b66b3b20e8967d} — 90{4e01b0bc4ab012654d0c5016d8cbf558644ab2e53259aa2c40b66b3b20e8967d} of those are not taking new clients.   And they are not lending to their existing clients generally.

This is just one of the many reasons that a debt-based economy is a very, very bad idea. It’s the exact opposite of antifragility.

You need not fear COVD-19

If the vaccine kills you first:

A highly anticipated clinical trial for a potential COVID-19 vaccine managed in part by the American drug company Moderna has resulted is some adverse effects in more than half of the trial’s participants, with one test group reporting “severe” symptoms. Notably, every participant in the two larger-dose groups reported adverse reactions after their second injections. 

I suppose that’s one way to beat the virus.

Tell it to the steel workers

Being a foreign concern, Tik Tok doesn’t seem to understand that the threat of losing jobs has not historically saved companies in the USA:

TikTok tells Axios it plans to add thousands of jobs in the U.S. over the next few years — ripping a familiar page from the “companies under fire” playbook.

The big picture: Chinese-owned TikTok is working to distance itself from Beijing in the face of a threatened ban from the Trump administration and broader scrutiny out of Washington, where policymakers are looking to blunt China’s influence and economic might.

Driving the news: TikTok plans to add 10,000 jobs in the U.S. in the next three years as user growth explodes, spokesperson Josh Gartner told Axios.

  • TikTok’s U.S. job growth has already nearly tripled this year, going from almost 500 employees Jan. 1 to just under 1,400.
  • The company plans to hire for jobs in engineering, sales, content moderation and customer service, with a focus on growing workforces in California, New York, Texas, Florida and Tennessee, Gartner said.
  • “It’s supporting the tremendous growth in the country and follows our strategy of building out teams where we have users,” Gartner told Axios.

Between the lines: TikTok’s ongoing hiring spree also includes the addition of more than 35 lobbyists meant to convince the Trump administration and lawmakers of the company’s independence from China, according to a New York Times report.

There is something very ironic about a Chinese company warning about the potential loss of American jobs, considering how many American jobs have been lost over the last 50 years to free trade dogma.

It is a possibility

I don’t know who Tim Pool is, but he is warning his 584k subscribers about the demise of Patreon:

If you still use Patreon you should consider warning your subscribers about potential disruption

Due to the legal defeat they recently faced some lawyers are speculating that Patreon will collapse under the weight of legal costs

You Could LOSE Your entire income stream

I just think it’s funny they still don’t understand how many people want to burn them down to the ground and dance on the glowing cinders.

The way the whole situation has evolved is rather interesting. For generations, companies have understood very clearly that they had to maintain positive relationships with their customers in order to stay in business. Hence the outmoded corporate doctrine that “the customer is always right”.

However, the combination of practical monopolies and the venture-to-IPO model has tended to sever the historical link between the consumer and the corporation, to the point that many technology companies no longer depend upon their consumers for their operating income. To the contrary, they have transformed consumers into users that are nothing more than raw material for their real customers. This is why they simply don’t possess a culture of giving a damn about their users, let alone harboring any regard for a single user they don’t like for one reason or another.

Their problem is their failure to understand that although the technology corporations are not financially dependent upon consumers, they nevertheless possess the same legal responsibilities toward their consumers that they did before, so their survival still relies upon maintaining the good will of the very users they now regard as irrelevant. And, as I noted in Corporate Cancer, because they remain caught between the Scylla of class action litigation – now complete with jury trials – and the Charybdis of mass individual arbitration, there is no way to legally finesse their way out of the situation.

Even worse, every attempt to legally thread the needle by their legal Odysseuses only renders them more vulnerable to being held responsible for the deceptive practices that are necessarily involved, such as Patreon’s false, misleading, and unenforceable “waivers” on class action and trial-by-jury.

The only way out is to accept the fact that their continued survival requires the goodwill of their users, but this necessitates a fundamental change in corporate culture that may not be possible for more than a few converged technology corporations.

Lauren Southern goes after Patreon

Patreon’s problems are rapidly metastasizing:

Lauren Southern revealed that she is taking the first steps into suing Patreon for deplatforming her. Earlier this week, Patreon lost a lawsuit against fans of Owen Benjamin, who was kicked off the platform due to allegedly violating their policies on hate speech, inspiring Southern to take similar action against the platform.

Southern, the Canadian investigative journalist, was one of the first prominent conservatives to be removed from Patreon in 2017. Southern went on to crowd fund documentaries without the help of the platform.

Speaking to National File, Southern revealed that she is speaking with attorney Marc Randazza, the lawyer who handled the cases of the Owen Benjamin fans, on Friday “to see what steps we can take going forward with Patreon.”

“After the initial case was won this week, I tweeted that any former donors of mine should get in touch if they want to join us in an action against Patreon,” Southern told National File, before acknowledging that “While the initial judgement declared that ‘Patreon changed the rules in the middle of the game’ by changing their Terms of Service, this may not apply to our case.”

Southern continued, “If you have logged into Patreon and accept the new ToS, then you likely will not be eligible to join this action. However, anyone who has deleted their account since the ToS change, or simply not logged in, would not be affected by this.”

As it happens, she’s incorrect. Every single user of Patreon has a very strong, virtually open-and-shut legal case against Patreon, as its deceptive practices are literally written into every single version of its Terms of Use, including all three enacted in 2020. While its true that Lauren’s supporters will have additional claims related to her deplatforming, the media coverage considerably underestimates the vulnerability of Patreon’s position due to its lack of knowledge of California law.

Which lack of knowledge it clearly shares with Patreon’s outside counsel. The amusing thing is that it was Patreon’s attempt to strike back at the 72 Bears that led the Legal Legion to the analysis revealing what in retrospect is an absurdly obvious self-destruct button that almost anyone can press at will.

Sadly, this excludes me, as I am not, and I have never been, a Patreon user. I just like to read rulebooks. Frankly, if lawyers knew anything at all about wargames, the first questions they should ask an opposing disputant is if they play Advanced Squad Leader and for how long. If the answers are “yes” and “more than 10 years”, immediately advise the client to settle.

The intricacies of case law and legal theory are like retarded child’s play compared to the ASL rules for everything from routing to vehicular attacks. Consider, for example, the procedure required to calculate the correct Firepower (FP) total while conducting an Overrun attack on exposed infantry by a vehicle.

7.11 FP: The FP base for an OVR is one FP for an unarmored vehicle, two FP for an AFV, or four FP for an AFV whose MA is manned and functioning and is not a MG, FT, MTR, ATR or IFE-capable. The FP base is modified by adding to it the tripled (TPBF) and halved (Bounding First Fire) FP of all manned and functioning MG/IFE armament on the vehicle [EXC: RMG do not add to OVR FP]. CE armored halftrack (only) Passengers can add one-half (and the Passengers/Riders of other vehicles can add one-fourth) of their printed FP to an OVR, but this too is subject to TPBF. All FT FP is added normally with no TPBF/halving adjustment. The total FP of an OVR is halved if the vehicle becomes Immobile or destroyed before it can resolve its OVR (in addition to any halving vs a concealed target; A12.13), but combat results vs Passengers/Riders after an OVR declaration do not affect the OVR FP. The halving of FP for Motion/ Non-Stopped Fire does not apply to OVR FP. 

Of course, one can’t blindly apply the rules as written, as one has to keep in mind the game’s equivalent of case law, which consists of the expert exegeses, the examples and the errata as well.

The IFT DR will be on the 8 FP column, with a +1 DRM because all of the Tiger’s AF are equal to or better than 8. This +1 DRM is found in Note 3 on the AFV Destruction Table, and also in Rule 7.11. Note, however, the typo at the end of Rule 7.11: it should read ‘+1 if all AF are greater than or equal to 8.’ 

Wait, what typo? That doesn’t look right! (checks rulebook version) Oh, never mind, that reference to Rule 7.11 refers to C 7.11 TK# DERIVATION rather than D 7.11 FP, so no +1 DRM.(1)

Now are you beginning to understand why Terms of Use and legal citations are so easy and relaxing to read by comparison? And in not-entirely-unrelated news, the Daily Dot updates its hit piece on Big Bear:

Update 8:35am CT, July 31: On July 30, Patreon lost the suit in California state court. The claims will now be arbitrated individually.


(1) Of course, as is my wont, I left a little trap for the first ASLer tempted to sperg about this. 100 points to the first non-ASLer who can spot what it is. -100 points to the first ASLer to fall for it. If you play ASL and you see it, keep your mouth shut and see who doesn’t.