A magnificent monster

You have to admit, that would look impressive on your bookshelf. My own copy hasn’t arrived yet, so a reader was kind enough to post an image on Gab.

And on a tangential matter, in answer to a question that has been asked a few times, A SEA OF SKULLS will be released in print when it is precisely the same size, which is to say in the April-May timeframe.

In the meantime, if you want to acquire your own magnificent monster, A THRONE OF BONES is available also available in an alarmingly enormous paperback.


Zero interest in Rogue One

It was interesting and informative to watch a countdown show of the top 20 moments in Star Wars cinematic history. All of the top moments were from the first two movies, and the so-called “top moments” from the new movies – none of which I have seen – were almost uniformly lame. I had a hard time not laughing at the setup for the death of Han Solo, as all I could hear in my mind was Gandalf shouting “you shall not pass!”

Filmmakers really shouldn’t try to rip off great moments from other films. Sure, the visual is great, but it kicks the viewer out of the movie as surely as a poorly-timed product placement.

The only really good one was the fight between Darth Maul, the young Obi-wan, and Liam Neeson. Some of them, like Girl Luke and her Man Friday accidentally boarding the Millennium Falcon and recreating earlier flight combat scenes, were simply embarrassing.

So, I wasn’t inclined to bother seeing Rogue One anyhow, and the fact that Disney Wars is now fortified with feminism and multiculturalism only confirmed my indifference towards it.

Wait a minute, after thirty-nine years, it turns out that Star Wars is about race?

Sort of. You may not notice at first (I didn’t, until the second half of the movie), but in Rogue One there isn’t a single non-Hispanic white male among the large cast of heroes. The rebel band seeking to steal the plans for the Death Star from the Empire is led by a white woman (Felicity Jones), a Latino man (Diego Luna) and three ethnic Asians (Riz Ahmed, Donnie Yen, Wen Jiang), with advice from a black man (Forest Whitaker) and a droid (voice of Alan Tudyk). Among the rebels, non-Hispanic white dudes (for convenience, I’ll just call them white from now on) are relegated to the background, while the Empire is represented by brigades of sinister white men, led by Ben Mendelsohn and (the digital reincarnation of) Peter Cushing as Imperial officers. It’s as if the cast was meant to echo a Hillary Clinton speech in which she described her coalition as everybody but white males.

The casting was not accidental. The Empire is (now) a “white supremacist (human) organization,” Rogue One co-writer Chris Weitz Tweeted the Friday after Clinton was defeated in the election. Another writer for the film, Gary Whitta, replied with his own Tweet, “Opposed by a multi-cultural group led by brave women”—then deleted it.

Needless to say, this aggression will not stand, man. Look for a literary response to the nonsense from Castalia in 2017.

It’s also unsurprising to learn that SJW-converged Wired is up to its usual tricks. The reporter is evidently confused about the difference between “reporting” and “debating”, as can be seen in her impromptu debate with Mike Cernovich:

Hi Mike—WIRED is reporting on #DumpStarWars, which I see you’ve participated in. Any chance you’d like to chat about why you’re boycotting?

Star Wars writers hate Trump voters. Why give them money?

From what I’ve seen, what they really hate are white supremacists. You don’t see throwing alt-right/lite/west support behind the boycott as reinforcing the idea that trump supporters=white supremacists?

Buddy my wife is Persian, we have a daughter, the white supremacist stuff is stupid as hell.

To be clear, I wasn’t saying you were a white supremacist. But much of the backlash has focused on the idea that Rogue One is racist against white men. Are you saying that white supremacist sentiment isn’t a factor in the protest?

Nah that’s not it at all. I don’t see why this is hard to understand. Trump supporters are attacked. Giving money to people who attack them is pathetic. I am going to organize more boycotts.

I’m struggling to find evidence that Rogue One’s writers have been explicitly against anything but white supremacy. Could you point out an example?

What’s the matter, Mike? Why come you won’t make the argument I keep trying to stuff in your mouth instead of saying what you actually think?

Also, as it happens, the movie sucks:

Lobotomized and depersonalized, “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story,” the latest entry in the film franchise, is a pure and perfect product that makes last year’s flavor, “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” feel like an exemplar of hands-on humanistic warmth and dramatic intimacy…. “Rogue One” offers an international cast that, along with Jones, Whitaker, and Mikkelsen, features Diego Luna (as the rebel captain Cassian Andor, who is Jyn’s main cohort), Riz Ahmed (as the band’s intrepid pilot), and Donnie Yen (as a blind martial-arts spiritualist). But it seems as if the condition for assembling this diverse group is not letting them say or do anything of note, anything of any individual distinction, anything of any free-floating or idiosyncratic implication. 


Initial speedups

Some recent posts at Gab concerning Infogalactic:

  • The daily traffic at #Infogalactic is steadily growing. 
    • +34.4 % October to November 
    • +43.5% November to December 
  • Jimmy e-mailed me many times pleading for me to donate again to Wiki. Wiki is compromised, infiltrated by underemployed SJWs w/ too much free time. Wiki is losing a donor. Out with Wiki. In with Infogalactic. Migrate over if you’re right of Karl Marx.

If you’re using Infogalactic to replace Wikipedia – which you can now do as your default search engine in Brave, or by typing :i in the URL bar – you’ve probably noticed that it is considerably faster than it was a week ago. Click a few times on the Random Page link to see the initial improvements in page load times.

We’re still working on the Search and Image Fetch database functions; the latter is the primary culprit with regards to the persistent slowness of both, but we have made considerable progress there as well and expect to have those speedups implemented within a week. I’ll be sending out an update to both the Burn Unit and the Phase Two donors with an explanation of what IG’s Techstars have done, what they are doing, and what they’ll be working on next, as soon as this first round of speedups are in place. Please note that as a general rule, I try to avoid unnecessary communiques that contain no actual information.

If you haven’t joined the Burn Unit or jumped the donor ship from Wiki to IG yet, I would encourage you to do so now for two reasons. First, the Alt-Tech revolution is the only way out of being permanently walled in by the converged technology giants, and second, the planetary knowledge core is only going to keep getting better from here.

As you may have heard, Apple is still playing politics with Gab, attempting to keep the Gab app out of the Apple Store on spurious and hypocritical grounds, and Twitter has banned API-related access by Gab, which tells you that Big Tech is already alarmed by the rapid rise of the Alt-Tech. We not only can win, we will win, but we do need those who are on our side to support us rather than continue to support those who hate them.


Fighting for due process

The Minnesota Golden Gophers take a strong stand for due process for college men:

Minnesota football players announced Thursday night that they were boycotting all football activities in the wake of the suspensions this week of 10 teammates. The school did not specify the reasons for the suspensions in Tuesday’s announcement. Ray Buford Sr., the father of defensive back Ray Buford Jr., one of the suspended players, said Wednesday the suspensions resulted from a Title IX investigation conducted by the university into an alleged sexual assault, which was separate from a police investigation into the alleged assault in the early hours of Sept. 2.

The other suspended players are sophomore running back Carlton Djam; freshman quarterback Seth Green; sophomore defensive back KiAnte Hardin; redshirt freshman defensive back Dior Johnson; freshman defensive lineman Tamarion Johnson; junior running back Kobe McCrary; sophomore defensive back Antonio Shenault; freshman quarterback Mark Williams; and freshman defensive back Antoine Winfield Jr.

In a statement read by senior wide receiver Drew Wolitarsky, the players said: “The boycott will remain effective until due process is followed and suspensions for all 10 players involved are lifted.”

The statement said the players were forced to take action after an unsatisfactory meeting with athletic director Mark Coyle in which they “wanted answers but received misleading statements.”

Coyle and university president Eric W. Kaler released a joint statement after the players’ announcement that read: “We understand that a lot of confusion and frustration exists as a result of this week’s suspension of 10 Gopher Football players from all team activities. The reality is that not everyone can have all of the facts, and unfortunately the University cannot share more information due to federal laws regarding student privacy.

“We fully support our Gopher football players and all of our student-athletes. Situations like this are always difficult, and the decision was made in consultation with and has the full support of President Eric Kaler. The decision was based on facts and is reflective of the University’s values. We want to continue an open dialogue with our players and will work to do that over the coming days. It’s important that we continue to work together as we move through this difficult time.”

There has been some confusion about whether or not Gophers coach Tracy Claeys backed the decision to suspend the players. Coyle and Kaler said Claeys was consulted, but the players said Thursday night they did not believe their coach had a say in the matter.

Claeys spoke out in support of his players on Twitter after their decision to boycott. Former Minnesota Vikings star cornerback Antoine Winfield Sr. said his son did nothing wrong and blistered university leadership for what he said was a lack of communication.

“If the president and athletic director keep their jobs, my son, Antoine Winfield Jr., will not attend the University of Minnesota,” Winfield Sr. said.

The players are demanding a closed-door meeting with members of the board of regents without the presence of Coyle or Kaler.

If other bowl-bound football teams join the Gopher protest against the complete lack of due process afforded young men in college who are accused of sexual misconduct, I suspect the extralegal nonsense of the last 30 years will be undone rather quickly.

No one is saying that football players, particularly black football players, don’t behave badly from time to time around women and break the law. I know a woman who was raped by a black football player at the University of Minnesota, and it wasn’t one of those next-day-regret “rapes” either. But that’s clearly not the situation here since the police have already investigated and the players were not even arrested, let alone charged with any crime. Moreover, only three players were investigated by the police, but ten are now suspended by the university at the behest of the Title IX investigation.

It would certainly make for an intriguing dilemma if the universities were forced to choose between their SJW-converged internal justice system-substitutes and the football-generated revenue produced by the players.


The awfulness of Apple

The appeal of Apple is lost on Jerry Pournelle:

I wish I could return all my Apple devices for refunds. Actually, that isn’t true; I like my Apple iPhone 6, and I’ll keep it; but the iPad is far more trouble than it’s worth, and the MacBook Pro, while useful, suffers from the same security mania that makes the iPad useless. I can’t even install free apps on the iPad. I tell it to install; it asks for my Apple account password; I go find that and mistype it, but eventually I get it right; whereupon it tells ,me it has sent a security number to a trusted device. I go looking for trusted devices. Naturally they have to be Apple. Eventually I remember that the iPhone is an Apple device and I trust it, and lo! I find there is a message with a code number. I type that into the iPad. It is rejected. I try again. Still rejected.

I give up. I have an iPad with almost no apps because it takes all afternoon and another Apple device to get an app for it, and that doesn’t work because – I don’t know why. It took me a while to figure out that the trusted device was the iPhone; could the delay be it.? I suppose I will have to go to the Apple Store and see if anyone can fix this, but at this season that’s not a practical thing to do, and I’m not really all that mobile at my age anyway.

I thought the Surface Pro was a fussbudget and it is, but it’s got to be better than having to own two Apple devices before you can use one of them, and then having them send you a security number that doesn’t work, with no instruction as to what to do next. Congratulations. My iPad is now so secure I can’t use it, and I don’t know what to do next.

I like the MacBook Pro. I like the keyboard. But the security paranoia with the need for two devices to do the most trivial tasks like installing a free app is too much for me. And the message with the code seems to have vanished from the iPhone now; it’s neither in mail nor in messages. I suppose I must have dreamed it?

It is rather ironic that the company whose fortune was made by its superior user interface is now heading downhill due to the worst UI experience in technology. But that’s the way of the world; it turns out that Steve Jobs was irreplaceable after all.

Apple’s main concern is now keeping people imprisoned in its walled garden, not luring them in any longer. The “technology giants” are no longer even technology companies, but marketing-distribution systems. So, it’s no surprise that their technology and user experience is suffering as a result.

I have an iPad Mini that was required for a game on which I’m working. It’s got some nice hardware, but the UI is so horrifically awful that I simply don’t use it for anything except testing the game. Sadly, Google is going the same way, to the point that I no longer update my Android tablet, phone, or apps.

This tells me we’re heading for some serious disruption in the not-too-distant future.


An open letter to Democrats

ESR writes one in the faint hope they will react reasonably and learn from their unexpected defeat:

Donald Trump’s victory reads to me like a realignment election, a historic break with the way interest and demographic groups have behaved in the U.S. in my lifetime. Yet, Democrats, you so far seem to have learned nothing and forgotten nothing. Indeed, if I were Donald Trump I would be cackling with glee at your post-election behavior, which seems ideally calculated to lock Trump in for a second term before he has been sworn in for the first.

Stop this. Your country needs you. I’m not joking and I’m not concern-trolling. The wailing and the gnashing of teeth and the denial of reality have to end. In the rest of this essay I’m not going to talk about right and wrong and ideology, I’m going to talk about the brutal practical politics of what you have to do to climb out of the hole you are in.

We need to start with an unsparing assessment of that hole.

First, your ability to assemble a broad-based national coalition has collapsed. Do not be fooled into thinking otherwise by your popular vote “win”; that majority came entirely from the West Coast metroplex and disguises a large-scale collapse in popular support everywhere else in the U.S. Trump even achieved 30-40% support in blue states where he didn’t spend any money.

County-by-county psephological maps show that your base is now confined to two major coastal enclaves and a handful of university towns. Only 4 of 50 states have both a Democratic-controlled legislature and a Democratic governor. In 2018 that regionalization is going to get worse, not better; you will be defending 25 seats in areas where Trump took the popular vote, while the Republicans have to defend only 8 where Clinton won.

Your party leadership is geriatric, decades older than the average for their Republican counterparts. Years of steady losses at state level, masked by the personal popularity of Barack Obama, have left you without a bench to speak of – little young talent and basically no seasoned Presidential timber under retirement age. The fact that Joseph Biden, who will be 78 for the next Election Day, is being seriously mooted as the next Democratic candidate, speaks volumes – none of them good.

Your ideological lock on the elite media and show business has flipped from a powerful asset to a liability. Trump campaigned against that lock and won; his tactics can be and will be replicated. Worse, a self-created media bubble insulated you from grasping the actual concerns of the American public so completely that you didn’t realize the shit you were in until election night.

There is considerably more, all of which will be completely lost on Democrats wailing about Russian hackers, Putin, incest, racists, and Nazis.


Firing the far left

The Trump administration-to-be sends a clear signal to the media that if they refuse to cover the President-elect and his team in a reasonably respectful manner, they will be cast into outer darkness:

President-elect Donald J. Trump’s inner circle will be cutting off access to David Bradley’s The Atlantic magazine after a disgusting tweet by one of its new hires, Julia Ioffe, a highly-placed source has confirmed to GotNews.

Ioffe was fired from Politico ahead of schedule after posting the following obscene tweet, which has since been deleted but was archived here:

“This was not a first-time thing,” the Trump source told GotNews, pointing to “conspiracy theories” written by Atlantic senior editor David Frum about Trump world’s ties to Russia. “It’s a far left-wing magazine that’s about as relevant as the New Republic. We’re getting pretty tired of them calling us anti-Semites while they write hit pieces against our Jewish staffers.”

The corrupt minds of the SJW Left always project their own filth upon others. This is the 3rd Law of SJW. It would also appear that the neocon journey from the Left into “conservatism” and back again is now complete.


Mailvox: the ontology of existential idiocy

Wild Man keeps blithely repeating the same argumentative nonsense over and over again despite the fact that he can’t even construct a basic syllogism or correctly understand what Western civilization is.

VD – you said – “Give it up, Wild Man. I already told you that you’re full of it. You keep trying to work your false narrative of Western civilization being based on equality in there, which a) is not true, and, b) the Alt-Right openly opposes.”

VD – you also said – “You’re not (mystified). There are no deep contradictions, you’re simply either a) a liar, or b) a stubborn idiot.”

VD – In all fairness, I don’t think anything I said implies that I am lying and therefore trolling and baiting around supposed mystification. My mystification with regards to fully groking the alt-right (particularly your conception of it) is real – and I am making a real effort to try and understand your position on this – and by way of this effort I have observed some deep contradictions ….. and these are the source of my mystification (nothing weird going on here with me – just straight forward rational discussion is what I am hoping for).

I also think you are wrong about anything I said implying I’m a stubborn idiot (but they all say that – right?) – but I try to be open minded and we’ll see – I’m always hoping to learn something new, and maybe you will point me in that direction, but “idiot”! …. you know what they say about extraordinary claims …. but hey maybe you will show me something worthy of a face palm slap sufficient of the “idiot” voice-over. If so I will do my best to admit it!

Here are the reasons for my counter-claims:

1)Your claim that I keep trying to work in a particular narrative around western civilization, namely that it is partly based on some sense of equality, is true in general, with respect to many of the comments I have posted on previous threads – i.e. – I do believe that as per the 4 underlying precepts of the western egalitarian as I have defined, particularly as per precepts #1 + #2 ….. some sense of existential ontological equality does arise, by way of each man and woman enjoying, or perhaps suffering if you like, the same existential and ontological conditions around the operation of self-agency – namely the belief in the ever present power to choose, and the belief in the implied personal responsibilities that entails.

It’s not a claim, it’s a straightforward observation that Wild Man keeps saying the same thing over and over, then asserting a nonexistent contradiction on my part on the basis of his own false narrative, which action, you will note, he has now admitted. It is apparent that he is a low midwit enchanted by the fact that he actually has an idea. This is exactly the sort of behavior Mike Cernovich warned against, and is an object lesson in the importance of jettisoning bad ideas.

Wild Man doesn’t realize that he’s defined 2+2 as being equal to 37, then attempted to criticize everyone else’s math on that basis. Worse, he’s attempting to claim everyone who is doing math correctly is contradicting themselves, which is not possible since no one accepts the idea that 2+2=37 or that there exists a sense of existential ontological equality intrinsic to the West.

What part of “equality does not exist in ANY meaningful and material sense” is hard for the moron to grasp? If he had the ability to construct, or deconstruct, a logical syllogism, he would attempt to demonstrate that a) equality does exist, and, b) this equality is integral to Western civilization. He would fail, of course, since both statements are false, but at least he would stop subjecting every reader of this blog, and worse, me, to this interminable, nonsensical salad of words he observably does not understand.

Note to the midwits: using big words that impress you when others use them does not make you correct, convincing, or intellectual, particularly when you use them incorrectly.

In a previous thread I have outlined these 4 underlying precepts of this conception of the western egalitarian, which I could copy and paste here again on this thread if you like. You say it is not true (you are contending that there is no such sense of human equality – I discern you judge this as a fallacy) but you have not yet engaged as to precisely why the common existential ontological conditions of personhood do not support some sense of equality, so …. how can I possibly know your mind on this, if you don’t engage on this topic and tell me? I assume your judgment as to the fallacious nature of my contention also conditions your conception of the Alt-Right. As such I trust you now see that this absolves me of the charge of lying about my mystification about your conception of the alt-right ….. now implying perhaps, that the charge, by default, is instead one of “stubborn idiot”.

Oh Sweet Darwin, no, you’ve already done enough copy and pasting here. And no, you clearly understand perfectly well what the 16 Points mean, you’re just too determined to cling to your egalitarian nonsense to accept them. This mewling “I’m so mystified, please prove the obvious to me or I’ll post another thousand-word screed that says the same damn thing” is contemptible. So, I have concluded that the dichotomy was false and you happen to be both a) a liar, and b) a stubborn idiot.

The conditions of personhood are too trivial to support any sense of equality that is relevant to Western civilization, and moreover, have never served as a basis for any form of observable scientific, legal, material, intellectual, sexual, or spiritual equality in the West, or anywhere else. The fact that corporations are legal persons in the West should alone suffice to demonstrate the fact that Wild Man’s “common existential ontological conditions of personhood” argument is a complete non-starter.

OK – You think I am a stubborn idiot for reasons that I am apparently too dense to see, I guess you are implying. Well humor an implied underling (by intellectual brilliance standards) then, good sir. Please now address my quandary. My prior discussion with respect to the underlying precepts #1 + #2 of the western egalitarian, as defined, implies some sense of existential ontological equality does arise by way of the condition of personhood. People are the same in some sense. The necessary conditions of personhood implies a sense of categorical equality. What are the necessary conditions of personhood? We all are going to die. Well prior to adulthood we all come to know this existential fact. We all are faced with the same challenge ….. as to grok the best way to conduct one’s life. We each sense and undertake this challenge because of our common human belief in self-agency and the personal responsibility so implied. Where is this conception of the categorical equality of the existential ontological nature of personhood fallacious?

This is false on its face, and contains several false foundations as well. Corporations don’t die, and yet they are legally recognized persons. Human embryos and fetuses do die, and they are not. Dogs and pigs and monkeys and plants are all going to die too, and they are not considered persons either. Many humans do not believe in self-agency or in a subsequent implication of personal responsibility; the current state of cognitive science specifically denies even the theoretical possibility of conscious self-agency. The conception of the categorical equality of the existential ontological nature of personhood is observably fallacious from start to finish, which is one reason why it is not, and has never been, recognized in any legal system in the history of the West.

Your more direct claim, that the particular narrative around western civilization that I have implied, namely that it is partly based on some sense of equality (as discussed in #2 above), is actually OPENLY opposed by the Alt-Right, is also, more directly, mystifying, given #(15) of your outline of the Alt-Right principles (i.e. – The Alt Right does not believe in the general supremacy of any race, nation, people, or sub-species. Every race, nation, people, and human sub-species has its own unique strengths and weaknesses, and possesses the sovereign right to dwell unmolested in the native culture it prefers.) Well what is the negation of supremacy so implied? Given that you stated principle #(15) in terms of racial/national existential preservation – does it not imply the negation of supremacy so implied, is some sense of equality (given what we know about the operation of darwinian evolution)?, and furthermore via the paraphrase of the embrace of the scientodific (alt-right principle #8) I provided in comment #72 above, the racial/national cultural profile is obviously contingent on the the make-up of the in-group individuals ….. and as such, the sense of darwinian existential equality implied by the principle of racial/national existential preservation as implied by Alt-Right principle #(15), is contingent on the make-up of the individuals ……. now what precise qualities expressed at the individual level might well account for said cultural darwinian existential equality implied by the principle of racial/national existential preservation? – well the categorical equality of the existential ontological nature of personhood is certainly a good candidate to account for that – is it not? Or, more succinctly ……the spirit of which can be summed up as “all men are created equal in the eyes of God”, or the spirit of which could also be summed as “perhaps even God knows not (and certainly no man can know) the future existential conditions of nations and races”. So VD – please tell me precisely how I am a stubborn idiot by way of being too dense to see how your conception of the Alt-Right is OPENLY opposed to some sense of human equality?

Wild Man is an idiot because a declaration of an absence of belief in SUPREMACY is not synonymous with a declaration of any sense of SAMENESS or EQUALITY. Quite the contrary, in fact, as the further from sameness one goes, the harder it is to even compare two things. What is supreme, a penguin or a satellite? It’s a category error to even ask the question! Now consider the intrinsic dishonesty of the language to which he is forced to resort to even begin to try making his idiotic case.

  • “does it not imply” (no)
  • “the sense of darwinian existential equality implied” (there is no such thing, ergo it cannot imply anything)
  • “might well account for” (and yet does not)
  • “is certainly a good candidate” (it can’t be, since it doesn’t exist)
  • “could also be summed as” (no, it can’t, and it isn’t)

Very well, Wild Man. You are a stubborn idiot who is too dense to see that you have constructed a false narrative, claimed that because that false narrative can be imagined, it actually exists and thereby negates a vast range of material observations which have led me, and many others, to conclude that equality is an abstract concept which does not exist in any observable scientific, legal, material, intellectual, sexual, or spiritual form.

That being said, I will grant you that the common existential ontological conditions of personhood support equality in an imaginary sense. In your head, if nowhere else.

Now …… if you happen to now agree with the conceptions around some sense of human equality that I have now repeatedly outlined, here and in prior threads, (which aren’t my original conceptions in any event – these are simply the western egalitarian principles of the enlightenment period – wasn’t it John Locke that fleshed out these ideas?) …… then ….VD some of your conclusions don’t follow.

I don’t agree with any of the conceptions Wild Man has repeatedly outlined. And Western civilization long preceded the Enlightenment, nor does John Locke or any other Enlightenment philosopher define Western civilization, which is why the entire argument has been so prodigiously and obviously stupid from the start.

You had your shot, Wild Man. Now give it up and stop trying to argue your nonsensical point. If you are still mystified, then you will simply have to remain that way, because I have zero interest in continuing to explain the observable and the obvious to you.

I trust this explains why I am seldom inclined to do more than simply tell midwits and those of normal intelligence that they are wrong, and if egregiously so, stupid. My curt dismissals are not evidence that I cannot dismantle their arguments and demonstrate in detail why they are incorrect, they are instead an indication that doing so is so trivially obvious and easy that only long and painful experience of MPAI has made it possible for me to believe that it could ever be necessary.


Encouraging the others

Sorry, Jack, no seat for you at the table:

As we reported earlier, Trump sat down with top tech executives, including several of his sharpest critics, to mend fences after a divisive election in which virtually all of Silicon Valley backed Hillary Clinton. Trump was heading into hostile territory – with the exception of PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel, Silicon Valley shunned the New York billionaire during the presidential campaign, throwing their weight behind his Democratic rival Clinton.

The tech talks, convened by Trump, bought together numerous CEOs such as Tim Cook of Apple, Satya Nadella of Microsoft, Larry Page of Alphabet (Google) and Brian Krzanich of Intel, among others. In addition to Trump nemesis Jeff Bezos, also on the guest list are Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk, Facebook’s chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg and Oracle chief executive Safra Catz.

We now know the answer why Dorsey was MIA: according to Politico, Twitter was told it was “bounced” from Wednesday’s meeting between tech executives and President-elect Donald Trump in retribution for refusing during the campaign to allow an emoji version of the hashtag #CrookedHillary, according to a source close to the situation.

Play fair or be frozen out. The God-Emperor hasn’t even Ascended yet and he’s already laying down the law. It’s going to be interesting to see how the Trump administration wields the IRS once it assumes control.

And, in the meantime:

Officials at FBI headquarters instructed its New York field office to continue its corruption investigation into the Clinton Foundation following the election of Republican candidate Donald Trump, according to a former senior law enforcement official.

The instructions ordered agents to “go forward” with their ongoing inquiry into the Clinton Foundation which is focusing on issues of corruption and money laundering, according to the source.

“There were no instructions to shut it down, to discontinue or to stand down on the investigation, but to continue its work,” the former official told the Daily Caller News Foundation in an interview.


Vox Day of the Washington Post

It could happen, right? They really do want alternative, intelligent, Trump-supporting columnists with considerable mainstream media experience, right?

Wanted: Columnists to say nice things about Donald Trump. Must be able to make cogent arguments in favor of the president-elect’s policies, appointees and statements. Experience preferred but not required.

It’s not an actual want ad, but it might as well be one. As they discovered during the long campaign season, the nation’s newspapers and major digital news sites — the dreaded mainstream media — are facing a shortage of people able, or more likely willing, to write opinion columns supportive of the president-elect.

Major newspapers, from The Washington Post to the New York Times, have struggled to find and publish pro-Trump columns for months. So have regional ones, such as the Des Moines Register and the Arizona Republic, which has a long history of supporting Republican candidates.

The newspapers have plenty of conservative writers, but that’s where the problem begins. Trump, who has defied traditional left-right categories, has offered something for both liberals and conservatives to dislike. The latter never believed that Trump was a true conservative; the former were revolted by his rhetoric from the start.

Hence, he has had few friends on the nation’s op-ed pages.

A case in point: The New York Times’ regular center-right columnists, Ross Douthat and David Brooks, never got behind Trump. And despite recruiting prominent conservative figures such as Glenn Beck and Erick Erickson to write guest columns, the result was largely the same. Erickson called Trump “indefensible.” The best Beck could do was to say, “Mr. Trump is not Hitler.”

It was much the same with The Post’s regular lineup of conservative voices — George Will, Charles Krauthammer, Kathleen Parker, Jennifer Rubin and Michael Gerson; none offered much support for Trump. Regular Post contributors such as Marc A. Thiessen and Ed Rogers tended to knock Hillary Clinton more than they praised Trump.

“We struggled to find voices that could advocate for Donald Trump’s ideas,” said James Bennet, the Times’ editorial-page editor. “It was really unusual. It didn’t help that the conservative intelligentsia lined up against him.” But Bennet says Trump’s campaign contributed to the imbalance: “He didn’t have the people around him who were prepared to put together his arguments” for publication.

Lynn Hicks, the Des Moines Register’s opinion editor, found a parallel at his newspaper, the lar­gest in the swing state that wound up going for Trump. “Given that almost all of our Republican leadership in Iowa supported Trump, I kept waiting for [supportive op-ed] pieces to arrive,” Hicks said. “I’m still waiting.”

The Arizona Republic’s syndicated and staff opinion writers were all “stridently anti-Trump,” said Phil Boas, director of the paper’s editorial department. “In a normal presidential election, we would have seen a strong mix of pro-con views for Republican and Democrat candidates,” he said, “but the Republican civil war turned a lot of traditional voices on the right into opponents of the GOP nominee. . . . A number of pro-Trump readers accused us of betraying our state and its conservative ideals.”

Dear Mr. Farhi,

I am a Trump-supporting columnist. I correctly predicted both his nomination and his eventual victory. I have a daily blog that gets traffic of nearly 4 million monthly pageviews. I have been been a regular columnist for the St. Paul Pioneer Press and the Atlanta Journal/Constitution, and have been nationally syndicated twice, by Chronicle Features and by Universal Press Syndicate. I have published over 500 weekly columns, and according to Amazon, I am one of the bestselling authors of political philosophy alive.

I shall eagerly await what can only be the inevitable offer of a regular column in the Washington Post.

With regards,
Vox Day

I also sent an email to the relevant editor. I figure this will happen right around the time Mike Cernovich launches his show on NBC, Milo is elected Queen of England, and George R. R. Martin finishes A Song of Ice and Fire.