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Darkstream: Disney suicides Star Wars

From the transcript of the Darkstream:

So there was very, very disappointing news for Star Wars fans today just a few hours ago. Variety and some other entertainment news sources reported that the woman who is primarily responsible for the destruction of the Star Wars franchise, the ongoing destruction of the Star Wars franchise, has actually been signed to a three-year contract with Disney and apparently is still going to be in charge of the Star Wars movies. Now, I personally think this is fantastic news, I think this is wonderful news, because it means that there is a tremendous opportunity out there for those of us who are creating alternatives. If you look at what has been done with Galaxy’s Edge, if you look at what we are in the process of doing with Faraway Wars, if you look at a lot of the other stuff that people are doing in a similar vein, this is an excellent opportunity for the Star Wars fans to find better and more worthy alternatives because it is now very, very clear that Disney is not going to fix what George Lucas broke.

In fact Disney is going to continue to make it worse. Disney is going to make Star Wars even more converged than it is. You might not think it’s possible, but believe me it is. There’s a good question, “Vox, why do they ruin everything?” They ruin everything because they don’t understand anything. You have to understand that culture and technology and art, all of these things, are black boxes to SJWs. They do not understand what they are,  they don’t understand how they work, they don’t understand the nature of their appeal to other people. SJWs are essentially cargo cultists.

On a related note, John C. Wright provides some characteristically insightful observations in his ongoing critique of the latest generation of Star Wars movies:

The reason why I argue that this is objectively bad, mechanically bad, and not just a plot twist that happens not to please me is this:

There are three components to any criticism of art. One is to look at the mechanics of the art form, regardless of content. That is an objective matter. The poem either has fourteen rhyming lines or does not; if it is a thirteen line poem, or blank verse, good bad or indifferent, it is not a sonnet. The next component is a judgement call: did the artist achieve the effect he was attempting? Was the audience moved as he was trying to move them? The final is subjective reaction: did I like it? And why did I?

It is often said in the modern day that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, which, in effect, says there is only one component to criticism: the subjective one. Nonsense. A fair-minded critic could, for example, be no fan of horror movies, or even dislike the whole genre, and still be able to tell John Carpenter’s HALLOWEEN is well-made horror movie and Ed Wood’s PLAN NINE FROM OUTER SPACE is not. More to the point, he could tell that MY FAIR LADY is not a horror movie at all.

In this case, in story telling of any kind, in film or print, any plot point needs set up and follow through if it is to be emotionally satisfying.

Example: The set up for a character like Rick Blaine in CASABLANCA, or Han Solo in STAR WARS, who at first wants no part of the fight is to have him show his reluctance. Hence the scene in CASABLANCA where Rick looks on indifferently as Ugarte is arrested and executed; hence the line in STAR WARS where Han will not stir a foot to rescue the princess until he is reassured that she is rich. That is the set up. The follow through is the about-face: when Rick sends away the woman he loves, despite the personal cost to him, or when Han returns unexpectedly to swoop out of the sun and blast Vader’s pursuit-ship as it is closing in on Luke for the kill.

In this case, we saw the set up for Finn’s reluctance in this last film and in this one. He attempts to steal an escape pod, and is zoinked by a zoink-dwarf with a zoink-wand. The follow-through was the about-face and the noble sacrifice to save his friends. Except that the suicide run is said over the radio to be in vain: a pointless gesture. Either Finn would have destroyed the gun by ramming it, or not. If not, it is not a real about-face. It is just a wasted character trying to waste himself to escape this wasteland of a film. But if it would have worked, preventing the sacrifice (at the sacrifice of everyone else) prevents any follow-through on the character arc: he is still, through no fault of his own, back where Rick and Han started out.

Good, bad or indifferent is another matter. Whether you personally liked it or not is another matter. On an objective level, having an event that robs all the meaning out of the set up event, and then leads nowhere to nothing, is a mechanical error in story telling. Story telling consists of telling about meaningful events, not meaningless ones. Even if you want to tell a nihilistic story, whose point is that life is pointless, the story itself must be told in a pointed way, and the events in the story must be meaningful in order to carry the message to the audience, even if that message says that meaning is illusion.

Basically, the story telling is objectively bad when the character in a drama loses all dramatic potential. There is no more story here. What is our Token Stormtrooper now? He is a hero who fails to be heroic. No chance to try again was given, not in this film. If the self-centered cynic, like Han Solo or Rick Blaine, has a certain romantic glamor to him, a cool self-possession. But a flunked suicide? What has he got? He is neither selfish nor selfless. He has no personality at all. The character becomes nothing.

So, about that FBI investigation

It appears “Doctor” Christine Ford may have perjured herself at the Senate hearings:

Testifying under oath before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Christine Blasey Ford identified herself as a ‘psychologist,’ but records indict this is a false statement under California law. Someone at Stanford University also appears to have caught the blunder and edited Ford’s faculty page. Just one sentence into her sworn testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee regarding allegations of sexual assault against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, Dr. Christine Blasey Ford may have told a lie.

After thanking members of the committee on Thursday, and while under oath, Ford opened her testimony saying, “My name is Christine Blasey Ford, I am a professor of psychology at Palo Alto University and a research psychologist at the Stanford University School of Medicine.”

The issue lies with the word “psychologist,” and Ford potentially misrepresenting herself and her credentials, an infraction that is taken very seriously in the psychology field as well as under California law.

Under California law, as with almost every other state, in order for a person to identify publicly as a psychologist they must be licensed by the California Board of Psychology, a process that includes 3,000 hours of post-doctoral professional experience and passing two rigorous exams. To call oneself a psychologist without being licensed by a state board is the equivalent of a law school graduate calling herself a lawyer without ever taking the bar exam.

According to records, Ford is not licensed in the state of California.

The more this drags on, the worse it is going to get for Democrats. The fact that Stanford is already trying to whitewash its allegedly criminal actions doesn’t bode well for Ms Ford or her credibility.

High school never ends

The media appears to be on the verge of discovering the socio-sexual hierarchy:

Is this the genesis of a new Sailer’s Law?

The most passionate tweets by male journalists tend to be demands that, Come the Revolution, the guys who beat out the journalists in getting the girls in high school will be destroyed in their adult lives.

The late Tom Wolfe suggested something similar in Back to Blood, in which an old editor, Topping, reflects upon young reporter John Smith. Only Wolfe thinks it all starts ten years younger:

If you ask me, newspaper reporters are created at age six when they first go to school. In the schoolyard boys immediately divide into two types. Immediately! There are those who have the will to be daring and dominate, and those who don’t have it. … But there are boys from the weaker side of the divide who grow up with the same dreams as the stronger … The boy standing before me, John Smith, is one of them. They, too, dream of power, money, fame, and beautiful lovers.

The sort of men who go into journalism tend to be gammas. Just look at the average high school boy working on the school paper or college man majoring in journalism. That’s why so many of them get themselves into trouble once they climb the ranks, become a public face, start amassing real money and influence, and find themselves in the position of being a situational alpha. They simply don’t have the self-control that the young alpha naturally develops over time and their ability to rationalize their actions is off the charts because gamma.

But in truth, it’s more that elementary school never ends. That’s the age where most people appear to be stamped into what more or less remains their final form. Even the late-bloomers who transform themselves over time tend to more or less retain that early form on the inside.

Disney doubles down

On Star Wars Destroyer Kathleen Kennedy.

The force is strong with Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy — for another three years, to be precise.

The veteran producer and chief of the Disney content giant behind “Star Wars” has renewed her deal through 2021, an individual familiar with the negotiations told Variety, following a tumultuous year for the label under her control.

The studio had no immediate comment on the new deal.

The re-up comes as the division gets back on solid footing following “Solo: A Star Wars Story,” the Alden Ehrenreich Han Solo spinoff that suffered disappointing box office returns and behind-the-scenes drama after the studio dismissed directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller well into production. They were replaced by Ron Howard, who was tasked with bringing home the pricey standalone (which cost at least $250 million).

Why? Because doubling down is what SJWs do. After all, they can’t possibly admit they were wrong and those evil NaziHaterWhiteSupremacists who said the movies sucked were right, can they?

This is great news, as far as I am concerned. Opportunity beckons….

Voxiversity Episode 008

The production team and I are pleased to announce Voxiversity Episode 008: WHY WESTERN CIVILIZATION NEEDS CHRISTIANITY, PART TWO.

The bestselling author of THE IRRATIONAL ATHEIST and ON THE EXISTENCE OF GODS explains why Christianity is an integral aspect of Western civilization, which cannot survive without it.

Thanks very much to all the Voxiversity and Darkstream backers who are making these videos possible. If you haven’t seen WHY WESTERN CIVILIZATION NEEDS CHRISTIANITY, PART ONE, you can do so here.

UPDATE: If you’d like to support Voxiversity and the Darkstream, you can do so through one of the options below. Please note these are all MONTHLY subscriptions.

An informative contrast

Abuse children and the Roman Catholic Church will protect you for decades. But burn a gay pride logo and the full wrath of the so-called church bureaucracy will promptly descend upon you, as one priest recently learned.

Father Paul Kalchik is no longer the acting pastor of Resurrection Parish following the controversial decision to burn a rainbow flag last week. According to witnesses at the parish, Cardinal Cupich sent two priests, Fr. Dennis Lyle and Fr. Jeremy Thomas, from the Vicar for Priests Office to the church right before 6 p.m. mass on Saturday asking to meet with Fr. Kalchik in private. Fr. Kalchik refused and asked for witnesses to the exchange. What was reported to have happened after that is chilling.

According to sources at the parish as reported by Church Militant, “Lyle and Thomas made clear they were there on order of Cdl. Cupich, who insisted that Kalchik be sent to St. Luke Institute for his ‘psychiatric issues.’ Both vicars for priests had also only days before threatened that Kalchik could have his faculties removed if he failed to comply with Cupich’s orders.” Those threats led to the revoking of a transfer that would have allowed Fr. Kalchik to be close to his aging parents.

Two witnesses, Miriam and Wayne Smith, said that when Fr. Kalchik refused to go with them, the priests became threatening and at one point the cardinal’s men referenced Fr. Kalchik dying. “Fr. Kalchik told those two enforcers that he had Mass to celebrate in the morning and that he was needed in the parish,” the Smiths said. “The response from the two was to ask him, ‘What would happen if you were dead?’ They could have asked, ‘What would happen if you were sick or injured?’ but they asked him what would happen if he was dead.” The Smiths continued, “Based on that it is clear that if any harm came to Fr. Kalchik it would be on the orders of Cdl. Cupich.”

When Fr. Kalchik refused to comply, the Smiths said the cardinal’s emissaries “continued to bully and verbally insult and attack Fr. Kalchik until it was clear that he was not going to do as they demanded because he had done nothing wrong. They left the rectory and everybody was very shaken up because they never expected that kind of behavior from the representative of Cdl. Cupich.”

A staff member who did not want to be named said: “His options were to leave on his own or be taken out forcibly by the police.”

Dear Catholics who are still genuine Christians,

Please bring back the Inquisitions. We are truly sorry for propagating the Black Legend.

Love,

Protestant Christianity

Darkstream: fisking the NPR hit piece

From the transcript of the Darkstream:

He calls himself the supreme Dark Lord and then he wonders why people make him out to be evil.

I don’t wonder why people make me out to be evil. I know why they do, because I violate their narrative and I threaten their narrative. They only have two weapons: they call people evil and they call people stupid. They can’t successfully call me stupid, so they call me evil. This is not rocket science. And then she says, “yeah it’s hard to understand.”

They feign ignorance in order to try to support this narrative so then they talk about… okay now, this is just ridiculous.

Okay so when did the Alt-Hero comic book get started?

Well, Vox launched a crowdfunding campaign after the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville.

Okay, that’s true and it has nothing to do with it! I also launched a crowdfunding campaign after the NFL 2016 season. What they’re trying to do is they’re trying to draw a nonexistent connection between the Unite the Right rally and our crowdfunding.

Trust not in personality

Because in the end, a cuck is always going to cuck, because nothing, literally nothing, is more important to him than not being identified as one of the SJW-denominated “bad guys”:

In an exclusive email to the BBC, Mr Torvalds shared his thoughts on his decision to temporarily step aside, the controversy behind the CoC, and the defects of the community he set up.

“So I’ve obviously long been on record as wanting to deal with the technical side, and not really wanting to get involved in most other discussions.

“Because technology is what I have always found interesting. People? Not my forte. Never has been, clearly. If you watched that TED talk, you’ll know I wasn’t a people person even as a child.

“And if you have read any of the recent stories, you will now know at least one other reason why I’ve wanted to stay away from that whole discussion. Because it’s not just my lack of people skills. It’s the discussions themselves.

“The advantage of concentrating on technology is that you can have some mostly objective measures, and some basis for agreement, and you can have a very nice and healthy community around it all. I really am motivated by the technology, but the community around Linux has been a big positive too.

“But there are very tangible and immediate common goals in any technical project like Linux, and while there is occasionally disagreement about how to solve some particular issue, there is a very real cohesive force in that common goal of improving the project.

“And even when there are disagreements, people in the end often have fairly clear and objective measures of what is better. Code that is faster, simpler, or handles more cases naturally is just objectively ‘better’, without people really having to argue too much about it.

“In contrast, the arguments about behaviour never seem to end up having a common goal. Except, in some sense, the argument itself.

“Have you read the Twitter feeds and other things by the people who seem to care more about the non-technical side? I think your ‘hyped stories’ is about as polite as you can put it. It’s a morass of nastiness. Instead of a ‘common goal’, you end up with horrible fighting between different ‘in-groups’.

“It’s very polarising, and both sides love egging the other side on. It’s not even a ‘discussion’, it’s just people shouting at each other.

“That’s actually the reason I for the longest time did not want to be involved with the whole CoC discussion in the first place. That whole subject seems to very easily just devolve and become unproductive. And I found a lot of the people who pushed for a CoC and criticised me for cursing to be hypocritical and pointless. I could easily point you to various tweet storms by people who criticise my ‘white cis male’ behaviour, while at the same time cursing more than I ever do.

“So that’s my excuse for dismissing a lot of the politically correct concerns for years. I felt it wasn’t worth it. Anybody who uses the words ‘white cis male privilege’ was simply not worth my time even talking to, I felt.

“And I’m still not apologising for my gender or the colour of my skin, or the fact that I happen to have the common sexual orientation.

“What changed? Maybe it was me, but I was also made very aware of some of the behaviour of the ‘other’ side in the discussion.

“Because I may have my reservations about excessive political correctness, but honestly, I absolutely do not want to be seen as being in the same camp as the low-life scum on the internet that think it’s OK to be a white nationalist Nazi, and have some truly nasty misogynistic, homophobic or transphobic behaviour. And those people were complaining about too much political correctness too, and in the process just making my public stance look bad.

“And don’t get me wrong, please – I’m not making excuses for some of my own rather strong language. But I do claim that it never ever was any of that kind of nastiness. I got upset with bad code, and people who made excuses for it, and used some pretty strong language in the process. Not good behaviour, but not the racist/etc claptrap some people spout.

“So in the end, my ‘I really don’t want to be too PC’ stance simply became untenable. Partly because you definitely can find some emails from me that were simply completely unacceptable, and I need to fix that going forward. But to a large degree also because I don’t want to be associated with a lot of the people who complain about excessive political correctness.

“Am I turning into some cuddly people person? I’ll admit that sounds very unlikely. I still care about the technology, and I’m still not exactly the most empathetic person. But I’m hoping I can at least ‘fake it until I make it’. Part of that ‘faking it’ is definitely going to be a filter on my outgoing emails, but as mentioned, I’m actively also trying to find a professional therapist to talk to as well.

“Will everybody be happy? No. People who don’t like my blunt behaviour even when I’m not being actively nasty about it will just see that as ‘look, nothing changed’. I’m trying to get rid of my outbursts, and be more polite about things, but technically wrong is still technically wrong, and I won’t start accepting bad code just to make people feel better about themselves.

“But if people at least realise that I’m not part of the disgusting underbelly of the internet that thinks it’s OK to show the kind of behaviour you will find if you really have been reading up on the ‘discussions’ about the code of conduct, then even that will be a really good thing.

“And again – the above is just my explanation of why I applied the CoC even if there is obviously discussion about it. We will have the maintainer summit in Edinburgh next month, and we’ll talk about this issue a lot more.

“In the meantime, I’m taking a break from the kernel and probably shouldn’t talk to journalists.”

There are the three key phrases that explain his previously inexplicable actions:

  • I absolutely do not want to be seen as being in the same camp as the low-life scum on the internet that think it’s OK to be a white nationalist Nazi, and have some truly nasty misogynistic, homophobic or transphobic behaviour. 
  • I don’t want to be associated with a lot of the people who complain about excessive political correctness. 
  • I’m not part of the disgusting underbelly of the internet….

Never trust a nerd to stand his ground. No matter what principles he espouses, no matter how tough he talks, at the end of the day all he really wants is to be accepted by the popular people. “Asbestos underpants” should never be confused with actually possessing iron balls and integrity.

Torvalds has destroyed his tech legacy, and he did it for less than nothing. What a contemptible, cowardly action. I have little doubt he’ll eventually come to regret this, but by then it will be too late.

It shouldn’t be a surprise that Torvalds failed to protect his tech legacy. The man failed his daughter too.

You were active in the Feminism Club at your high school. What did you learn from that experience? What feminist issues are most important to you now?

My friend and I co-founded Feminism Club at our high school late in our sophomore year. We did receive lots of resistance to the club at first, and while that never entirely went away, by the time we graduated feminist ideals were absolutely a part of the school’s culture. The feminist work we did at my high school was generally on a more immediate scale and focused on issues like the dress code.

Personally, I’m very focused on intersectional feminism, which is feminism as it applies to other aspects of oppression like racism and classism. The Facebook page Guerrilla Feminism is a great example of an intersectional feminism and has done so much to educate me. I currently run the Portland branch.

Feminism is also important to me in terms of diversity in tech, although as an upper-class white woman with strong connections in the tech world, the problems here affect me much less than they do other people. The same goes for my involvement in intersectional feminism. Publications like Model View Culture are very inspiring to me, and I admire Shanley Kane so much for what she does.

Game over

Townhall reports that Kavanaugh has the votes, both in the committee and on the floor:

With the Senate Judiciary Committee holding a vote at 9:30 A.M. tomorrow, a Senate insider has told Townhall that Kavanaugh has the votes to make it out of committee and the votes to be confirmed on the floor for a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court. Sens. Flake (R-AZ), Collins (R-ME), Murkowski (R-AK), and Manchin (D-WV) are expected to vote in favor of Kavanaugh. All the Republicans are voting yes. Also, in the rumor mill, several Democrats may break ranks and back Kavanaugh. That’s the ball game, folks. 

Notice the difference in result between Torvalds cucking and Kavanaugh holding his ground. Never, ever, give any ground to SJW pressure. Never apologize, never retreat, never hesitate to go on the counterattack.

Wikipedia doxxes the US Senate

It’s long past time to apply antitrust and racketeering and campaign finance laws to the social media giants. Perhaps this experience will inspire the Senate to action.

Several Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee had their home addresses and phone numbers released to the public on their Wikipedia pages during Thursday’s hearing on Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination.The victims included Republican Sens. Mike Lee and Orrin G. Hatch of Utah and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.

The idea is gaining important adherents:

The Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry said he would like to see Google, Facebook and other major social media behemoths broken up like the federal government did to Standard Oil more than a century ago. Landry said the internet giants are suppressing conservative agendas, stifling competition, and infringing on antitrust laws.