Category: Uncategorized

Another Hollywood “death”

It rather looks as if Maxwell’s arrest is percolating through the Hellmouth:

Actress Naya Rivera is missing and presumed dead today after her four-year-old son was found alone on a boat in California.

The Glee star and her son Josey rented a pontoon boat on Lake Piru on Wednesday afternoon, but three hours later another boater raised the alarm after seeing the vessel drifting and the child asleep on board.

Cops found Rivera’s life vest on the boat and believe that ‘she did go in the lake’ to go swimming, acknowledging that ‘this may well be a case of drowning’. Her car was found nearby.

Four-year-old Josey has told investigators that his mother jumped in the water and didn’t come back up, TMZ reports, but the circumstances are unclear and cops say it is ‘challenging’ to interrogate a toddler.

Given her past association with a known pedo from the Hellmouth, there’s little question about her involvement in Hollywood values. And until a body is found and it is convincingly demonstrated to be hers, I’d be dubious about this being either an accident or a suicide.

Never take “free speech” seriously

Much less those artists who claim to champion it:

Trans writer Jennifer Finney Boylan distances herself from free speech letter – that she signed with 150 other authors and academics calling out cancel culture – after realising JK Rowling also endorsed it.

If you’re capable of deriving the correct conclusions from this little vignette, you can save yourself the trouble of reading John Bagnell Bury’s A History of the Freedom of Thought.

St. Efan banned from Twitter

Unfortunately, this is what happens when you make it clear that you are not a hard out:

Stefan Molyneux has had his Twitter account suspended, just a week after he was banned from YouTube. His removal from the platform comes amid a growing debate over free speech on social media.

The ban came without warning, Molyneux claimed during a livestream in which he discussed the development. “It’s nice to see that Twitter is talking to tech journalists before they would talk to me,” he said. The popular right-wing pundit and intellectual suggested that he was removed from the platform after promoting a new essay that outlines his values and beliefs. “It’s not hard to understand why powerful people might not want you to read what I wrote below,” reads a note at the top of the essay, in which he announced his removal from Twitter.

Molyneux argued that the campaign to deplatform conservative voices has started to “energize” conservatives and that his ban demonstrates “who has the power and who doesn’t have the power.”

Twitter appears to dispute the notion that he was removed for ideological reasons. In a statement provided to CNN, the company said that Molyneux “was suspended for spam and platform manipulation, specifically operating fake accounts.”

Liberal journalists applauded Molyneux’s ban. Jared Holt, a reporter for Right Wing Watch, said the move was “overdue” and expressed curiosity about what finally motivated Twitter to pull the plug on his account.

As someone who was banned from Twitter long ago, and who voluntarily left Facebook, I don’t see any significant harm here. And it’s good for people to see even moderates are too extreme for the SJW-converged corporations. But it also underlines the fact that building one’s own platforms is the only way to proceed, as everyone who has tried to pass as innocuous has been banned anyway.

Mike Cernovich’s comment was both apt and amusing:

The Venn diagram of people who just signed that Against Cancel Culture letter and those who will mention Stefan Molyneux being banned will be two wholly non-intersecting circles.

The Left has cucks too

It’s amazing how these fake “free speech advocates” are afraid to tell the truth even when they are taking a public stand:

More than 150 academics and writers including the likes of JK Rowling, Margaret Atwood and Salman Rushdie have called for an end to ‘cancel culture,’ to defend their right to freedom of speech.

Journalist Anne Applebaum warned ‘Twitter mobs’ on the left and right sides of the political agenda, along with US President Donald Trump, were placing ‘very important restraints on freedom of speech’.

Ms Rowling and Ms Atwood, the author of The Handmaid’s Tale, have both signed the letter, despite being on opposing sides on trans issues recently.

The letter, published in Harper’s calls for: ‘The free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society, is daily becoming more constricted.’

The signatories go on to say they ‘uphold the value of robust and even caustic counter speech from all quarters.’

It later adds:  ‘It is now all too common to hear calls for swift and severe retribution in response to perceived transgressions of speech and thought.’

Neither Twitter mobs nor President Trump are the problem. And they know that perfectly well, they’re just afraid to go after the ADL, BLM, the social media giants, and the very concept of “hate speech” for fear that they’ll be targeted next. The ADL is ground zero for all the thought and speech policing in the USA and provides the impetus for a considerable amount of speech policing by the tech companies. So, if you’re not directly addressing that evil organization and its ongoing war against Americans and the First Amendment, you’re not serious about free speech.

And speaking of fear, Spacebunny had an amusing thought about the dilemma that now confronts one fourth-tier writer of mediocre science fiction.

You know Scalzi is losing sleep right this very minute trying to figure out which side is ultimately going to be his best bet……

A tale of two filings

This complete lack of a response to one of the core elements of the dispute pretty much tells you everything you need to know about how next week’s hearing is likely to go.

  • JAMS issued a second letter on March 12, 2020, stating that JAMS would not issue a blanket stay for numerous separate arbitrations.  Specifically, the March 12 JAMS Letter stated: “Patreon’s Terms of Use state that arbitrations ‘may only take place on an individual basis’ and no ‘grouping of parties is allowed.’  (Terms of Use, pages 4 – 5). 
  • In fact, this matter is subject to dismissal under even the Purported Amendment.  The dispute resolution clause expressly states that “[n]o class arbitrations or other grouping of parties is allowed.”  Patreon, here, has made a grouping of Defendants.  By its own terms, it is not entitled to file this suit and seek the relief it requests.  Patreon is not entitled to an injunction that covers 72 defendants as a group—just as Patreon chose to deny Defendants the ability to join as a group and engage in collective action, it cannot now be allowed to obtain an injunction in violation of that term.
  • – DEFENDANTS’ OPPOSITION TO MOTION FOR ISSUANCE OF PRELIMINARY INJUNCTION

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– PLAINTIFF PATREON, INC.’S REPLY IN SUPPORT OF REQUEST FOR PRELIMINARY INJUNCTION [Filed concurrently with Declarations of Colin Sullivan and Tyler M. Layton in Support of Reply]

The irony is that Patreon is now complaining about the way a number of the Bears being sued have put Patreon on notice that they will find themselves facing more arbitrations due to Patreon’s breach of contract involved in bringing the group lawsuit. Their Head of Legal cried about it in their most recent filing with a classic “this just proves” argument that would almost make one mistake him for a bowtie-wearing National Review conservative.

On July 2, 2020, I received emails from 15 Defendants, informing me that unless Patreon withdraws this lawsuit, they intend to commence new arbitrations before JAMS claiming that Patreon’s filing of this lawsuit, to enforce the amended Terms of Use, is a breach of the Terms of Use.  Given that Defendants are already challenging the amended Terms of Use in their already pending arbitrations, this confirms that Defendants’ actual goal is to multiply the number of duplicative proceedings to maximize costs to Patreon, in the hopes they can eventually exceed Patreon’s ability to pay.  That outcome would be an irreparable harm.
– Declaration of Colin Sullivan in Support of Reply

It doesn’t prove anything of the sort. To the contrary, informing Patreon that new arbitrations will be commenced if the breach of contract isn’t cured is exactly what Patreon’s Terms of Use require the Bears to do in light of Patreon’s obvious breach of the contract, as spelled out in the very emails about which he is complaining.

I am sending you this notice pursuant to the procedures stipulated in Patreon’s Terms of Use to inform Pateron, Inc. that the filing of case CGC-20-584586 against myself and 71 other individuals constitutes a blatant breach of its own Terms, which, as you know, clearly prohibit the grouping of parties.

No class arbitrations or other grouping of parties is allowed. By agreeing to these terms you are waiving your right to trial by jury or to participate in a class action or representative proceeding; we are also waiving these rights.

Patreon very clearly waived its rights to participate in the very lawsuit it filed. They not only have no right to an emergency injunction, they have no right to be in that courtroom for those purposes at all. So, they should hardly be surprised when the people they are suing call them out for that.

ACKTUALLY…

Episode 11 of Hypergamouse, ACKTUALLY… is now live on Webtoons.

And Lacey isn’t the only one crushing it. Arkhaven is doing well across the board, as Alt★Hero is now #5 in Superhero and Midnight’s War is up to #25 in Short Story.

The brokeness of wokeness

There will be no sequel to Birds of Prey:

Margot Robbie’s Birds of Prey was a record breaking failure at the box office. According to online publisher Giant Freakin’ Robot, the sequel to Birds of Prey has been canned.

‘Warners [Brothers] no longer believes in the concept or in the creative team behind the movie,’ the publication’s source said.

Birds of Prey failed at the box office, recording the worst opening of any DC Comics superhero movie, bringing in just US$201.9 million worldwide. This was worse than the critically panned Green Lantern film, which still brought in  US$219.9 million in 2011.

The Legend Chuck Dixon wrote the original comic. They should have hired him to write the script.

Daily Beast interview with Owen Benjamin

The Daily Beast interviewed Owen Benjamin about the Patreon lawsuit filed against 72 of its users who backed him. The piece was originally supposed to run on June 24, but apparently never appeared on the site. So, Owen sent me the interview to post for your reading pleasure here.

DB: Patreon says you urged your fans to file claims against Patreon to punish the site, through arbitration costs, for ending your account? Do you think that’s a fair account of what happened?

OB: Not at all. Patreon violated their rights just as it violated my rights when it tortiously interfered with the separate legal contract between me and them. They are exercising their right to legal redress, which Patreon mandated be done through arbitration, just as I am. It’s not their fault, or my fault, that Patreon’s lawyers were dumb enough to impose a legal structure on its users that literally guarantees its own bankruptcy.

Did your fans realize, when they filed the arbitration complaints, that they could potentially get sued? It strikes me that some of these people might not have realized their names and locations would be outed. In that way, do you think this plan backfired?

No. Nor did I, because they shouldn’t be getting sued in the first place, much less sued in a group action. The only reason Patreon brought the lawsuit now is to try to dox and harass them into withdrawing, because it has been losing every decision related to my arbitration and their arbitrations for the last six months. But I guess if you’re going bankrupt, you might as well go down swinging.

Do you have plans to cover your fans’ legal fees or expenses?

Of course. And we’ll set up a legal defense fund if that turns out to be necessary, which it probably won’t. Remember, the Patreon Terms of Use specifically bar group actions, and what Patreon filed is a group action.

Feel free to add anything else on the case you’d like to share.

Your readers may not be fans of mine, but they should be aware that Patreon has repeatedly attempted to strip the California consumer protections from ALL of its creators and is also trying to strip legal rights from all four million of its users. The lawsuit isn’t the first time they’ve doxxed people either; they sent me the complete account information for 2,700 complete strangers – someone else’s patrons – as a result of a data breach.

The real story here is that there probably won’t be a Patreon by the time this is over.  Their CEO openly admits that their business model isn’t sustainable, their numbers reported on Graphtreon suggest they’re losing something like $1.5 million every month, and I’ve been told they have already received hundreds of notices of arbitrations unrelated to my situation. I think this lawsuit is mostly their outside counsel trying to keep the checks coming in for a little while longer.

You’ve been described as “alt right” and engaging in “Holocaust denial” in articles, including Bethany Mandel’s in the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. Do you think those are accurate descriptions?

I raise goats, I tell jokes, and I voted for Obama. I don’t know who Bethany Mandel is, but since I am a history major, I’ll bet I know a lot more about World War II history than she does. You know perfectly well those are not accurate descriptions.

For a considerably less-informed take on the situation, read the Daily Dot article, which manages to get everything wrong from the very start and commits two egregious errors in the first seven words of the headline.

The Chief Justice on the Epstein tapes?

Intelligent Supreme Court observers have had their doubts about Roberts for years, especially his very timely departures from his supposedly conservative judicial philosophy on important decisions. /pol/ thinks they’ve figured out why he’s been showing signs of being owned by the Prometheans:

One of the SCOTUS fags is in the Epstein tapes that were recovered yesterday. I’m sure you can guess which one. The shocking part is the canary is telling the feds a certain nation state has been blackmailing this gentleman since prior to his nomination to SCOTUS.

What does this mean? This justice was hand picked at the highest levels specifically because he was being controlled via blackmail. A sheep in wolf’s clothing appearing to be which he is not.

Cat is out of the bag… or I should say almost.

Here is the best part. The SCOTUS justice on the tapes it is being rumored in the federal court community has sat down with the FBI to roll on a previous president AND wife in an effort to keep his position, or more likely, be allowed to gracefully retire before the next SCOTUS term.

Take it all with a grain of salt, but it does match the available evidence.

A failure of rhetoric

Watered-down rhetoric never works:

Google Trends data shows Trump’s “Sleepy Joe” name-calling isn’t generating nearly the buzz “Crooked Hillary” (or “Little Marco”) did in 2016. Base voters who relished doubting President Obama’s birth certificate aren’t questioning Biden’s.

Other factors are working against Trump’s playbook. Tech platforms are increasingly moving to shut down hate speech and flag misinformation, killing the sources of some of Trump’s favorite conspiratorial material. And search metrics suggest that, for the most part, a nation with more than 125,000 dead from the coronavirus has less patience for the president’s usual tactics.

The reason that “Sleepy Joe” is a failure is because it is poor rhetoric. It is poor rhetoric because it is not based on the truth and therefore misses the target. Hillary is crooked. Marco is a dwarf, both physically and politically. Joe Biden, for all his various flaws and shortcomings, is not a narcoleptic.

I suspect that the President’s original choice for Biden is “Creepy Joe”, but he was talked out of using it by his advisors, because they thought it was too harsh. Which, of course, is wormtongue-speak for “too effective”. But Biden is a confirmed creeper and women, especially young women and little girls, observably find him creepy.

Even “Sniffy Joe” would have worked, given Biden’s predilection for hair-sniffing. But “Creepy Joe” is the killer rhetoric that Trump should have used, and it won’t surprise me if he begins using it once his reelection campaign actually begins in earnest.