Category: Uncategorized

Police it or lose it

Country music has been converged:

MEAWW reported that one-half of the Grammy-winning country duo “Big & Rich” recently dished on the disconnect between the country music industry and its fans.

Rich says that while most country music fans are conservatives, those who actually run the industry are mostly liberal. He says its this conflict that leaves conservative leaning country artists in a difficult situation.

“The industry of country [music] is, I would say, I can’t give you a percentage but let’s just say the majority is very liberal,” Rich said. “They’ve been that way for a long time. It’s interesting that the industry that puts out country music doesn’t really align with a lot of the audience.”

“A lot of folks that listen to country [music], and again I can’t give you a percentage but I can tell you a majority of the audience probably leans conservative,” he continued. “So you’ve got this gulf, kind of, between the two.” 

Rich went on to say that he has seen things change in the industry to swing even further left over the past few months.

“Over the years, the industry has never really come out really strongly about their liberal edge that they’ve got until recently, maybe in the past six to 12 months,” he said. “They’ve started coming out more and more and the problem you get is if you’ve got artists that are conservative but their record label, their publicist, their manager, a lot of the radio stations are being overseen by liberals.” 

Conservatives and everyone else to their right have to learn to stop taking the money bait and stop working with those who hate them, particularly when those who hate them are in the stronger, more defensible position. Nothing good is going to come of any such collaborations in the long run even if you are strong enough to refuse to sacrifice your principles.

I was told that I’d never be signed by Tor Books, but that was irrelevant because I never made any attempt to be signed by Tor Books. And when Thomas Nelson, a supposedly Christian, right-wing publisher tried to convince me to change what I was writing, I refused, and declined every subsequent approach from their editors.

It’s hard for young artists with stars in their eyes to understand that compromising at the start, even if it is a reasonable compromise, is going to lead to being controlled, if not owned outright. But you can’t sell just a piece of your soul.

Thou shalt not notice

An English comedian is cancelled for telling jokes about Africans missing penalties:

A string of venues have cancelled shows with comedian Andrew Lawrence after he made racist ‘jokes’ on Twitter about England’s football stars.

The comedian faced widespread condemnation after making the comments in the aftermath of England’s heartbreaking penalty shoot-out defeat to Italy last night.

In one comment the 41-year-old, who has previously featured on the BBC, said he was ‘sorry that black guys are bad at penalties’.

And in reference to the anti-poverty campaigning of Marcus Rashford – one of those to miss a penalty last night – he said he’d: ‘Rather he’d (Rashford) practised his penalties and the kids had gone hungry.’ 

Today, following a backlash on Twitter, venues have begun pulling planned shows with the comedian.

Meanwhile, Lawrence’s agents also revealed they had cut ties with the comedian. 

How dare he! After all, no one has ever criticized anyone who missed a penalty before, right? 

How long will it be before not applauding is sufficient cause for cancellation? Or even being the first to stop applauding…. 

What happens when you stop paying

Karl Denninger asks the obvious question about the proposed annual Covid vaccine licenses:

There are times that paying what amounts to a rental fee is a net positive.  If you fly into some city and need a car, it would be stupid to buy one.  You only need it for a week.  Odds are you may never need it there again.  In addition there is no cost to you beyond the immediate loss of use when you terminate the agreement.

Now look at Quicken.

Your data is in their format.  Stop paying, what happens?

Adobe?

Your data is in their format.  Stop paying, what happens?

See the problem?

Same problem exists when you build for a “cloud” platform.  It’s their data format and their application APIs, which are theirs.

Stop paying, what happens?

Ok, now think about this. Pfizer is already saying they think you need a booster Covid shot. Moderna has in the pipe a whole plethora of….. annual mRNA shots.

What happens if you stop paying?

Nobody knows in this case.

That would arguably be a better outcome than either the killshot theory or the sterilization theory. Of course, just because it wouldn’t make sense for Big Pharma to terminate its subscribers doesn’t mean that they might not inadvertently do so, so it’s clearly not an either/or set of hypotheses. 

Schizophrenia at Google

Google’s position on a free and open Internet is not so much incoherent as schizophrenic.

A free and open internet is under attack, according to Sundar Pichai, the head of Google. In a wide-ranging interview with the BBC, the Google CEO said an open internet –information online being equally free and available to everybody – has been a ‘tremendous force for good’ that is ‘taken for granted’. 

While Mr Pichai did not directly refer to China, he did make the point: ‘None of our major products and services are available in China.’ 

He also called artificial intelligence (AI) more profound than fire or electricity, and said privacy is ‘foundational to everything we do’.  

Pichai’s firm posted whopping revenues of $55.3 billion in the first quarter of this year, but he argued against suggestions it’s a ‘surveillance capitalist’. 

Someone should let ol’ Pikachu know that one of evil those organizations attacking a free and open Internet is Google’s YouTube subsidiary, which is actively defaming, deplatforming, and demonetizing creators for making information online equally free and available to everybody:

YouTube is selectively enforcing its policies regarding ‘disinformation’ in what appears to be an attempt to silence content creators who oppose the platform’s penchant for censorship, political commentator Matt Orfalea told RT.

Orfalea is speaking from experience: Last week he received a ‘strike’ and had his channel demonetized for allegedly violating the company’s policy prohibiting “violent criminal organizations.” The flagged video was a seven-year-old satirical fake Starbucks ad, which referred to the coffee chain’s “insanely overpriced beverages for psychopaths.” YouTube later admitted it had acted “in error” and dropped the strike. 

Speaking to RT on Sunday, the YouTuber said he felt that he had been intentionally targeted by the company because of an earlier video he made in which he criticized the platform’s attempts to censor discussions about ivermectin, a drug that some medical experts believe could be effective against Covid-19. Orfalea pointed out that it was puzzling why a video from nearly 10 years ago would suddenly pop up on YouTube’s radar. 

“Why did they flag that? A video from seven years ago? Well, that tells me that because I had the recent unfortunate experience of YouTube banning me for a video covering YouTube censorship – that told the AI or whatever to keep digging and find more stuff,” he said. 

Monday AM Arktoons

GUN GHOUL Episode 11: Murder in France

CHUCK DIXON PRESENTS: MYSTERY Episode 3: The Final Sacrifice

Speaking of The Legend Chuck Dixon, Breitbart ran a piece that was based on one of his Ask Chuck Dixon videos criticizing Marvel and DC:

A prominent writer of “Batman” graphic novels has slammed the two biggest American comics publishers, saying they churn out low-quality content and promote an “obvious political agenda.”

Chuck Dixon targeted the “big two” publishers — Marvel and DC Comics — for a verbal lashing in the most recent episode of his podcast Ask Chuck Dixon.

“Because what’s out now, for the big two, is, for the most part, poorly crafted,” Dixon said, comparing them to Japanese manga. “There’s a few exceptions, but for the most part, it’s poorly crafted, poorly conceived. There’s an obvious political agenda to everything and there’s no variety.”

Dixon also decried the glut of superhero titles.

“There really isn’t anything else at the mainstream companies,” he continued. “It’s superheroes, superheroes, superheroes. And they’re all avatars for the writers’ political agenda. And they’re kind of tiresome. They’re not particularly well drawn. They’re not particularly well-realized.”

As is the usual pattern, however, Breitbart is content to whine about DC and Marvel without ever mentioning that there are very viable alternatives such as Arkhaven, Dark Legion, and other professional independents, or even seeing fit to mention Arktoons. That’s because Breitbart is a gatekeeper that is meant to prevent any nationalist alternatives from arising to replace the converged institutions about which they complain so regularly.

Bounding Into Comics, on the other hand, had no such reservations:

Dixon then lamented, “So it’s sad. It’s a sad state of affairs. But everybody saw it coming. It had to happen. There has to be winners and losers. As the American comic book sales fall something has to replace it and manga is right there. It’s popular. I know my kids know kids who read manga. They don’t know anybody who reads American comics.

“And the kids that my kids know who read manga are just casual readers. They’re not fans. They’re not geeks. They’re not going to conventions. They just like reading manga. They like reading it on their phone. They like reading it in books. And there you go. I don’t see the mainstream, the Big Two, ever catching up. Although there are alternatives,” he concluded.

Arktoons will be launching its first manga-style comic soon, courtesy of Super Prumo.

NFL celebrates second gay player

Strangely, the revelation that Barkavius Mingo is a homosexual has not been greeted with the same rapturous chorus of delight as last month’s announcement concerning Carl Nassib’s similar preferences.

Mingo invited a teenage family member and the boy’s friend, also a teenager, to spend the day with him. Mingo took the boys to the Six Flags Over Texas amusement park in Arlington and K1 Speed, a Dallas-area go-kart complex. They had dinner at BJ’s restaurant, a popular local steakhouse. Mingo paid for everything, including a season pass to K1 Speed.

Mingo also treated the boys to a shopping spree, paying for items they chose from Nike.com. The relative’s friend chose a variety of T-shirts, shoes and shorts. The gear was shipped to the boy at the address of his friend, Mingo’s family member.

On the night of July 4, 2019, the boys returned to the local hotel where Mingo was staying. According to the documents obtained by Sports Illustrated, the boy fell asleep, but at approximately 3 a.m. he woke up and noticed Mingo in bed with him. He “thought it was odd,” according to documents, because the plan was for the two boys to sleep in a room separate from Mingo. He thought little of it and went back to sleep.

According to the document, “The victim was then woken by [Mingo] pulling at his underwear.

Looks like it’s time to update the ol’ meme again. 

Reflections on the Euro final

  1. Italy clearly deserved to win the European championship. They were the best team throughout the tournament, and after watching the Copa America final, in which Argentina beat Brazil 1-0, they have to be the favorites to win the World Cup next year.
  2. Nice to see Messi finally get an international trophy. Pity he couldn’t score in the 88th minute; he should have shot sooner. And De Maria’s goal was a beautiful example of playing the miss.
  3. Chiellini’s foul on Saka at the end of extra time was correctly given a yellow card. He was not the last man back, therefore taking down an attacker by pulling his jersey is a clear and obvious yellow, not a red. The ironic thing is that it was totally unnecessary, as all he had to do was put the ball out of bounds rather than wait for it to go out for an Italian throw-in. But he’s an old pro and he was taking no chances after the ball didn’t go out on its own before Saka arrived.
  4. I don’t think there was any diversity agenda on England manager Southgate’s part. First, he was open about how Rashford and Sancho were the two best penalty-takers in training. If he’s lying, someone will leak it. Southgate is a genuine equalitarian, so he simply failed to take into account that emotional young Africans are not exactly known for their cool under pressure and practice penalties are not the same as the finals of the Euros at Wembley. Second, the fifth spot is not the high-pressure spot, in fact, it’s where you put your weakest of the five shooters due to the fact that it’s the only spot where the shooter might not get to take a shot at all.
  5. That doesn’t mean that UEFA wasn’t attempting to take advantage of the situation. The VW ad for diversity playing while an African had the chance to win the championship for England was probably not a coincidence. It was amusing to see all three of them demonstrate so clearly that diversity is not a strength.
  6. Southgate also said that he didn’t put Rashford and Sancho on earlier because he was afraid that if he did, the Italians would win the game in extra time. That’s not what one would call indicative of a diversity agenda.
  7. Southgate’s real mistake was not sitting Harry Kane down for the final. Kane – or Kanezaghi as I like to call him given his predilection for flopping – is big, strong, and slow. It was obvious that he presented no problems for Chiellini and Bonucci, the two big, strong, and slow veterans in the Italian central defense. He should have sat Kane and put Sterling in the lone striker position, since Spain’s Morata showed how speed and quickness were the Italian defense’s weak spot in the center. Leaving Sterling on the wing meant that he could be marked by the fast young Italians on the sides.
  8. Speaking of Sterling, it’s a fool’s game to think that you can successfully dive against the Italians. They have literally decades of experience in dealing with it; again and again Sterling looked to dive, but the Italians simply didn’t make contact with him in the box.
  9. Most people didn’t notice it, but Italy should have scored in the 57th minute. If Insigne had kept the ball on the ground instead of going high, it was going right through Pickford’s legs.
  10. Pickford and Walker were England’s best players. And Luke Shaw’s goal in the second minute was a LOT harder than he made it look.
  11. If Spinazolla hadn’t been injured, the game wouldn’t have even been close.
  12. Diverse teams can be strong in terms of the individual parts, but they are incredibly fragile as a whole. One minor difference of opinion between two players of different races can rapidly turn into accusations of racism and the complete destruction of any sense of being a team. France and England are experiencing this in the aftermath of their exits, which suggests both teams will underperform in the upcoming World Cup qualifiers.
  13. The diversity-obsessed English sportswriters actually gave Saka, who was a complete nonentity in the game before missing his penalty, a 10/10 rating. “Saka was given a 10 out of 10 rating, the highest out of all England and Italy players, with the writers highlighting the winger’s bravery.” What a joke. He was a 5/10 on the field, and deserves to have a point knocked off for his choke job at the line. 4/10 is more like it.
  14. Avanti Azzurri! L’Europa e’ vostra!

Campioni!

England got off to a shockingly good start, but the Azzurri took control of the game after the first 15 minutes and dominated it, although they only managed to break through and score once. However, if Insigne had gone low instead of high when he jumped on the rebound from Chiesa’s shot in the 57th minute, he would have put the ball right between Pickford’s legs for another score.

Southgate made a horrific error at the end of extra time, in my opinion, by having two young Africans, who hadn’t played at all throughout the 120 minutes, take the penalties. Not only did both of them miss, but one didn’t even put it on target.

Italy was clearly and consistently the best team of the tournament, and definitely deserved to win. And in light of Brazil’s underwhelming performance in its 1-0 loss to Argentina in the Copa America final last night, they have to be feeling very optimistic about their chances at the World Cup next summer.

The Italians, of course, are taking the championship calmly in their stride, as is their wont.

L’Europa è nostra!

Italia campione d’Europa a Wembley, Inghilterra battuta 4-3 ai rigori. Donnarumma para i due tiri decisivi.