Category: Uncategorized

Dr. Seuss Inc. cancels Dr. Seuss

This is a good example of why authors need to be much more careful about those to whom they trust their literary legacies:

Six popular Dr. Seuss books — including And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street and If I Ran the Zoo — “will stop being published because of racist and insensitive imagery, the business that preserves and protects the author’s legacy said Tuesday,” The Associated Press reported.

“These books portray people in ways that are hurtful and wrong,” Dr. Seuss Enterprises told The Associated Press in a statement marking the late author and illustrator’s birthday.

“Ceasing sales of these books is only part of our commitment and our broader plan to ensure Dr. Seuss Enterprises’ catalog represents and supports all communities and families,” Dr. Seuss Enterprises said. The Associated Press reported that the “racist and insensitive” depictions played a part in their removal.

The other books affected are McElligot’s Pool, On Beyond Zebra!, Scrambled Eggs Super!, and The Cat’s Quizzer.

This appears to be classic convergence in action. Remember, convergence prevents an organization from performing its core function, which in this case is selling Dr. Seuss books. Although I can’t help but notice none of these are among the bestsellers….

The new Chariots of Fire

Why do I doubt that Hollywood will be falling all over themselves to make a movie about this athlete’s heroic refusal to compromise his principles?

Jamaican sprinter Yohan Blake has said that he would rather miss the rescheduled Tokyo Olympics than receive the Covid-19 vaccine. Blake – a two-time Olympic gold medallist and former 100m world champion – made the comments in Jamaican newspaper The Gleaner.

Earlier this month, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) announced that receiving a vaccine would not be compulsory for athletes and officials to attend this summer’s delayed Games, though they still encouraged competitors to be vaccinated if possible before arriving in Japan “to contribute to the safe environment of the Games.”

“Also out of respect for the Japanese people, who should be confident that everything is being done to protect not only the participants, but also the Japanese people themselves,” the IOC said.

Speaking over the weekend, Blake was quoted as saying: “My mind still stays strong, I don’t want any vaccine, I’d rather miss the Olympics than take the vaccine, I am not taking it.”

Now there is a man who understands risk-reward. There are some people whose personal situations justify the risks of the not-vaccine. Frankly, most of their genes could probably use modification. But an elite young athlete is definitely on the wrong side of the risk-reward ratio. 

Mailvox: the worst mortal sin

A Boomer confesses the greatest sin of his g-g-generation. I tend to agree, although I think their grandparenting may be even worse than their parenting. I mean, they may have created latchkey children, but at least they were usually resident in the same STATE at the time.

I enjoy your posts, etc. very much. You could not be more correct about my g-g-generation. I am a 1954 baby. Hunter S. Thompson, may God rest his soul, wrote a book later in his life entitled “Generation of Vipers” Could there be a more apt description of my ‘peeps’?  Yes, great accomplishments accompanied them on their march to the grave, but those pale in comparison to the almost incalculable damage done by the generation of vipers.  I could list them, but you already have the litany memorized. Nor am I innocent. I have been by turns selfish, greedy, self-indulgent, shallow, and that’s the good part. Heck, I could make you feel like you are in the receiving end of a confessional here. I may not be on the level of a Hunter Biden, but I was a scoundrel, nonetheless.

Good news is that I have grown. My political epiphany happened in 1979. The last time I voted for a Democrat was Jimmy Carter in 1976.  Thereafter I have voted Republican even though I knew that at least 50{3549d4179a0cbfd35266a886b325f66920645bb4445f165578a9e086cbc22d08} of them were no better than their openly demonic opponents.  Recent events have only reinforced my conviction that R’s versus D’s is all kabuki theater intended to fool the rubes. I absolutely relish President Donald Trump, our true president. DJT was the only president since Calvin Coolidge who truly worked for the good of our people 24/7/365. He remains the stone rejected by the mason which may yet become the cornerstone of the new temple.

My religious epiphany came in 1996 when I returned to my Christian roots as a mature, informed, experienced sinner working day by day on his own personal reformation….

So, here’s the punchline. In my opinion the worst mortal sin of all the many shortcomings and transgressions of my g-g-generation, is their parenting. We are now seeing the grandchildren born of the children raised by my generation. There are MANY young folks who despite the downward flow of inter-generational excrement have matured into responsible citizens. That having been stipulated, there is a great mass of poor wretches who bear the burden of two generations of varying degrees of pathetic, apathetic and/or downright pernicious parenting. 

They may not be entirely blameless; however, many have become vicious, confused, illiterate, innumerate, sexually perverted morons. They are the victims of varying degrees of child-abuse at the hands of the generation of vipers or their sons and daughters. If a dog bites because he has been beaten by a sadist, how can we blame the dog? For this sin alone the Boomers doom is foretold and is unavoidable. To paraphrase my Lord and Savior, “woe unto he who leads the young ones away from the light”. Of all the punishments that the Boomers so richly deserve, this will be the harshest by far. Truly, it will have been better for them that they were never born.

Boomersick

A few people been slinging around the rhetorical term Boomerphobia. As with the term homophobia, it is denigrating rhetoric that does not point one at the truth. In both cases, disgust is a considerably more accurate description than fear, which means that a more accurate term should be based on one of the two primary Greek terms for the former: αηδία or σιχασιά.

The problem is that in English, Boomeraidia sounds more like someone who has drunk the Boomer Kool-aid or cheerfully contributes to the upkeep of a Boomer’s nursing home than someone who would prefer that the staff make productive use of the pillows there. So, the term Boomersichasia is the preferable neologism, as it anglicizes quite nicely to Boomersick.

So, if one wishes to describe the attitude of this blog and many of this blog’s younger readers with regards to the Baby Boomers, please have the courtesy to utilize the correct dialectical term, which is Boomersichasic, or, if you prefer rhetoric, Boomersick.

Social media hacks

This is just one of the many reasons SocialGalactic has a Clean Speech policy. Because if it’s on the Internet, you have to assume it will be made public sooner or later:

The Gab accounts of Donald Trump and Gab’s own CEO are among those “compromised” by a hack of the microblogging service popular among US conservatives and right-wingers. The data is being offered to researchers and journalists.

A 70-gigabyte trove of data dubbed “Gableaks” includes public posts on the platform, but also “private posts, user profiles, hashed passwords for users, DMs, and plaintext passwords for groups,”according to an entity called DDoSecrets. The information was allegedly stolen by a third party and leaked to the group, which operates similarly to WikiLeaks. The leak was described in detail by Wired, which was given access to a sample of the dataset.

Gab is a competitor of Twitter that caters to users who feel their freedom of speech is being unduly restricted by Big Tech. Critics call it a hotbed of far-right extremism that is flourishing thanks to the company policies encouraging user anonymity and a lack of content moderation.

Like it’s better-known counterpart Parler, Gab saw an influx of new users after Silicon Valley launched a crackdown on undesirable voices in the wake of the January 6 riot at the Capitol. When Parler was effectively deplatformed shortly afterwards, some of its users went to Gab.

The Gableaks trove “contains pretty much everything on Gab, including user data and private posts, everything someone needs to run a nearly complete analysis on Gab users and content,” DDoSecrets cofounder Emma Best told the tech news website. “It’s another gold mine of research for people looking at militias, neo-Nazis, the far right, QAnon and everything surrounding January 6.”

According to Wired, the data in DDoSecrets’ possession was obtained through a technique called “SQL injection,” which tricks a website into executing malicious code sent as user input. In a Friday statement, Gab said it was “aware of a vulnerability in this area and patched it last week.” DDoSecrets says the hacking was done by “JaXpArO (they/them) & My Little Anonymous Revival Project.”

There isn’t any point in complaining about the media utilizing black hat hackers. They are, by their own admission, the enemy, and as such they are going to engage in enemy action. And all the so-called privacy policies will be denied and deemed to be irrelevant by the companies no matter what they say; if there is one thing we have learned from the Bears’ battle with Patreon, it is that the tech companies will assert, at every single point, that their behavior is not restricted in any way by their own contracts no matter what those contracts clearly say.

The only thing that actually restricts them is the intersection of those contracts with the law, to the extent that judges and arbitrators are actually willing to apply the latter. And that is very, very far from a sure thing.

The answer is very simple. Never post or comment anything that you would be hesitant to state in a courtroom before a judge under oath. And if the post or comment could cost you your job if it comes to light, then keep it to yourself. You simply cannot reasonably expect privacy in the Global Panopticon.

Trump CPAC speech

I have no interest whatsoever in anything CPAC-related, nor am I particularly interested in what Trump has to say in the wake of his failure to metaphorically cross the Rubicon. What separates the winners of history from the losers is acting at the moment of crisis, and as far as we can tell, President Trump failed to act. While it’s now clear that something is going on behind the scenes in Washington DC, it is equally clear that whoever is calling the shots does not answer to Donald Trump, at least not anymore.

I’m not personally down on Donald Trump. I still think he was the greatest President since Andrew Jackson. I’d be happy to see him run again in 2024 if the election system is going to be secured between now and then. But, based on the imperfect information we presently possess, I think he would have done better to emulate Caesar than Cincinnatus.

Anyhow, feel free to discuss the speech here.

Amazon is locking down

Having already eviscerated both the ebook and audiobook markets, Amazon is now going to sabotage its own print book sales:

Conservatives are sounding the alarm about an updated Amazon policy that bans books the ubiquitous billion-dollar company deems offensive or includes so-called “hate speech.”

Amazon has ramped up its censorship on conservative views in recent weeks. For example, a popular documentary on U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas was banned from their streaming service this past week. Before that move, the company deplatformed conservative Ryan Anderson’s book critical of gender theory, “When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Movement.”

When Just the News reached out to Amazon over the ban on Anderson’s book, the outlet said the company directed them to a page outlining their “Content Guidelines for Books.” Under a section labeled “Offensive Content,” Amazon states that they “don’t sell certain content including content that we determine is hate speech, promotes the abuse or sexual exploitation of children, contains pornography, glorifies rape or pedophilia, advocates terrorism, or other material we deem inappropriate or offensive.”

“A review of those policies suggests that sometime in the last few months Amazon made a major change to the ways in which it moderates book content on its servers, imposing a much stricter standard on books than it had previously done,” the report said. It appears the company recently added so-called “hate speech” to their guidelines on book platforming, and is amping up their censorship of the “offensive.”

Castalia has already removed most of its audiobooks from Audible. We’re well set up to not only survive, but thrive upon the convergence and decline of Amazon, so don’t worry about us. If you must worry, worry about all the independents who have staked their careers and livelihoods upon Amazon. 

And if you’re not using the Arkhaven and Castalia Direct stores yet, you really should be.

It is good to hate the Boomer

I don’t hate old people. I hate Boomers. I hate literally everything about Boomerdom. There is not one single thing I like about it. I hate their music, I hate their clothes. I hate their stupid hair and their stupid civnattery. I hate their materialism. I hate their horrible 70s fabrics and colors. But most of all, I hate their juvenile and terminally dyscivilizational self-obsession. This is not a recent phenomenon. I have hated everything about them since the late 1970s, when I first began to become aware that things had not always been so ugly and myopic and awful.

These idiots are proud of hating on a targeted group, the old.

This is ageist nonsense. If you like being insulted by children go to Vox to be insulted; you may have invented personal computers, the internet, and gone to the moon. You could be Tim Berners-Lee, It won’t matter. Vox is a bigot against anyone who has been around longer than himself. If you don’t like it he will ban you.

He must hates his parents so he takes it out any one who is older than himself.

How much do you love that he actually worked the Moon in there. The point is that if you self-identify as a Boomer, if you are offended when younger generations exhibit their contempt for Boomers, then you are accepting culpability for all the many sins of your g-g-generation. I don’t hate or despise old people. To the contrary, I have always respected and sought to learn from my elders. I harbor no contempt for pre-Boomers, or with people born between 1946 and 1964 who repudiate Boomerism. It’s not when one was born that matters, but rather, one’s identity and values.

Boomers don’t understand this because they never respected their elders and identified themselves by their long-distant youth. That’s why they always say, incorrectly, that our children and grandchildren will despise us the way theirs despise them, and the way they despised their parents and grandparents. But that is not true, because we loved our grandparents, we love our children, and we will love our grandchildren. And we don’t merely love them, we prioritize them. We sacrifice for them and we do so gladly.

The best description of the Boomer I have ever heard is this: the Boomer criticizes his grandchildren for failing to plant the acorns of the nonexistent oaks under which he cannot sit.

I have consciously hated Boomers since they were declaring that 40 is the new 20 and I always will. The Day of the Pillow is coming for all of them. And the best thing is that we are literally writing their history, because none of those self-obsessed losers had enough interest in anything outside of their g-g-generation to be able to put it in historical context.

God hates the wicked. That is why it is good to hate the Boomer.

This is what one calls “a failure cascade”

DC Comics is finding itself under increasing pressure from the POX thanks to its SJWs:

Justice League star Ray Fisher launched a fresh volley of tweets against Warner Bros. and DC Films on Saturday following news of a new Superman project with a high-profile Black writer.

Fisher, 33, reiterated his claims that DC Films President Walter Hamada had tried to ‘destroy’ his ‘credibility,’ before implying that the new Superman movie was a ploy to distract fans from his allegations against Justice League’s replacement director Joss Whedon.

‘Do ya’ll remember that time Walter Hamada and @wbpictures tried to destroy a Black man’s credibility, and publicly delegitimize a very serious investigation, with lies in the press?’ the actor began his furious tweet.

‘But hey, Black Superman…,’ he added, suggesting fans’ attention would be diverted by the new project.

On Friday, it was announced that the acclaimed essayist and novelist Ta-Nehisi Coates would be writing a new Superman film, which is rumored to feature a Black Superman.

Coates has been acclaimed for his journalism at The Atlantic, which often focused on the impact of racism on Black Americans, but in recent years he has expanded from non-fiction to writing comic books and publishing his debut novel.

Then when Ta-Nehisi’s script is rejected, or is as more likely, is completely rewritten by the usual suspects, the high-profile Black writer will denounce the racism inherent in the project, and if the film ever gets filmed, it will bomb, which failure will also be denounced as racism.

Given how SJWs have destroyed both Marvel and DC’s comics business, and the Star Wars film franchise, don’t assume they will be unable to take down first DC’s, then Marvel’s film franchises too. And in the case of the latter, Disney overpaying for ten years of a converged and declining NFL is going to hasten the process.

That ship has sailed

I think it’s a little late to talk about “dignity” with regards to Creepy Joe’s Fake Administration:

The Chinese government forcibly anally swabbed U.S. diplomatic officials as part of the Chinese Communist Party’s new Covid testing protocols “in error,” prompting Joe Biden’s U.S. State Department to  beg China to stop violating the “dignity” of Biden officials.

VICE and the Washington Post were among the first outlets to report the story, in which China originally promised to stop anally swabbing State Department officials after complaints from the Biden administration, but has now reversed course and denied forcibly applying the test in the first place.

“The State Department never agreed to this kind of testing and protested directly to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs when we learned that some staff were subject to it,” a spokesperson from Biden’s State Department reported to VICE on Wednesday.

Let’s face it, the Chinese know perfectly well that Biden didn’t win. And now they’ve got carte blanche to do whatever they want, lest they expose the fraud. This is just a public humiliation ritual.