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Hugo 2016 Rabid Puppies ballot

This is how I will be voting for the 2016 Hugos. As MidAmericaCon2 has noted, there are less than two weeks to vote, so if you’re already registered, don’t neglect to send in your ballot.

BEST NOVEL

  1. Uprooted by Naomi Novik (Del Rey)
  2. Seveneves: A Novel by Neal Stephenson (William Morrow)
  3. The Cinder Spires: The Aeronaut’s Windlass by Jim Butcher (Roc)
  4. No Award

BEST NOVELLA

  1. Penric’s Demon by Lois McMaster Bujold (Spectrum)
  2. Perfect State by Brandon Sanderson (Dragonsteel Entertainment)
  3. Slow Bullets by Alastair Reynolds (Tachyon)
  4. Binti by Nnedi Okorafor (Tor.com)
  5. The Builders by Daniel Polansky (Tor.com)

BEST NOVELETTE

  1. “Obits” by Stephen King (The Bazaar of Bad Dreams, Scribner)
  2. “What Price Humanity?” by David VanDyke (There Will Be War Volume X, Castalia House)
  3. “Flashpoint: Titan” by Cheah Kai Wai (There Will Be War Volume X, Castalia House)
  4. “Folding Beijing” by Hao Jingfang, trans. Ken Liu (Uncanny Magazine, Jan-Feb 2015)
  5.  No Award

BEST SHORT STORY

  1. “Space Raptor Butt Invasion” by Chuck Tingle (Amazon Digital Services)
  2. “Seven Kill Tiger” by Charles Shao (There Will Be War Volume X, Castalia House)
  3. “If You Were an Award, My Love” by Juan Tabo and S. Harris (voxday.blogspot.com, Jun 2015)
  4. “Asymmetrical Warfare” by S. R. Algernon (Nature, Mar 2015)
  5. “Cat Pictures Please” by Naomi Kritzer (Clarkesworld, January 2015)

BEST RELATED WORK (2080 ballots)

  1. Between Light and Shadow: An Exploration of the Fiction of Gene Wolfe, 1951 to 1986 by Marc Aramini (Castalia House)
  2. “The Story of Moira Greyland” by Moira Greyland (askthebigot.com)
  3. “Safe Space as Rape Room” by Daniel Eness (castaliahouse.com)
  4. “The First Draft of My Appendix N Book” by Jeffro Johnson (jeffro.wordpress.com)
  5. SJWs Always Lie: Taking Down the Thought Police by Vox Day (Castalia House)

BEST GRAPHIC STORY

  1. The Sandman: Overture written by Neil Gaiman, art by J.H. Williams III (Vertigo)
  2. No Award

BEST DRAMATIC PRESENTATION (LONG FORM)

  1. The Martian screenplay by Drew Goddard, directed by Ridley Scott (Scott Free Productions; Kinberg Genre; TSG Entertainment; 20th Century Fox)
  2. Avengers: Age of Ultron written and directed by Joss Whedon (Marvel Studios; Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures)
  3. Ex Machina written and directed by Alex Garland (Film4; DNA Films; Universal Pictures)
  4. Mad Max: Fury Road written by George Miller, Brendan McCarthy, and Nico Lathouris, directed by George Miller (Village Roadshow Pictures; Kennedy Miller Mitchell; RatPac-Dune Entertainment; Warner Bros. Pictures)
  5. Star Wars: The Force Awakens written by Lawrence Kasdan, J. J. Abrams, and Michael Arndt, directed by J.J. Abrams (Lucasfilm Ltd.; Bad Robot Productions; Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures)

BEST DRAMATIC PRESENTATION (SHORT FORM)

  1. My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: “The Cutie Map” Parts 1 and 2 written by Scott Sonneborn, M.A. Larson, and Meghan McCarthy, directed by Jayson Thiessen and Jim Miller (DHX Media/Vancouver; Hasbro Studios)
  2. Supernatural: “Just My Imagination” written by Jenny Klein, directed by Richard Speight Jr. (Kripke Enterprises; Wonderland Sound and Vision; Warner Bros. Television)
  3. Grimm: “Headache” written by Jim Kouf and David Greenwalt, directed by Jim Kouf(Universal Television; GK Productions; Hazy Mills Productions; Open 4 Business Productions; NBCUniversal Television Distribution)
  4. Jessica Jones: “AKA Smile” written by Scott Reynolds, Melissa Rosenberg, and Jamie King, directed by Michael Rymer (Marvel Television; ABC Studios; Tall Girls Productions;Netflix)
  5. Doctor Who: “Heaven Sent” written by Steven Moffat, directed by Rachel Talalay (BBC Television)

BEST EDITOR – SHORT FORM

  1. Jerry Pournelle
  2. No Award

BEST EDITOR – LONG FORM

  1. Vox Day
  2. Toni Weisskopf
  3. Jim Minz
  4. No Award

BEST PROFESSIONAL ARTIST

  1. Larry Elmore
  2. Lars Braad Andersen
  3. Michal Karcz
  4. Larry Rostant
  5. Abigail Larson

BEST SEMIPROZINE

  1. No Award

BEST FANZINE

  1. File 770 edited by Mike Glyer
  2. Castalia House Blog edited by Jeffro Johnson
  3. Tangent Online edited by Dave Truesdale
  4. Superversive SF edited by Jason Rennie

BEST FANCAST

  1. The Rageaholic, RazörFist
  2. 8-4 Play, Mark MacDonald, John Ricciardi, Hiroko Minamoto, and Justin Epperson
  3. Cane and Rinse, Cane and Rinse
  4. HelloGreedo, HelloGreedo
  5. Tales to Terrify, Stephen Kilpatrick

BEST FAN WRITER

  1. Jeffro Johnson
  2. Morgan Holmes
  3. Mike Glyer
  4. Shamus Young
  5. Douglas Ernst

BEST FAN ARTIST

  1. Christian Quinot
  2. Kukuruyo
  3. disse86
  4. Matthew Callahan
  5. Steve Stiles

JOHN W. CAMPBELL AWARD FOR BEST NEW WRITER

  1. Andy Weir *
  2. Pierce Brown *
  3. Sebastien de Castell *
  4. Alyssa Wong *
  5. Brian Niemeier

Milo permanently banned from Twitter

After writing the review of Ghostbusters to which I linked the other day, Milo ended up getting into it on Twitter with actress Leslie Jones, who he eventually referred to as “a black dude”. It was funny, of course, because Miss Jones is a large, unattractive black woman who looks more manly than Michelle Obama.

After Leslie Jones – @lesdogg on Twitter – tried to hit back at him and other critics of the movie, she got piled on by the Alt Right and others; her cries of “racism, racism” were met, in the Alt Right’s usual wont, by pictures of bananas, gorillas, and other rhetorical memes, which caused Miss Jones to double down on crying victim.

So, Twitter perma-banned Milo on the grounds of “incitement to harassment”, even though Leslie Jones is the only individual who actually engaged in any incitement, as can be seen in this pair of tweets.

Leslie Jones ‏@Lesdoggg  Jul 18 Manhattan, NY
Exposing I hope y’all go after them like they going after me

Leslie JonesVerified account ‏@Lesdoggg  Jul 18 Manhattan, NY
bitch I want to tell you about your self but I’m gonna let everybody else do it I’m gonna retweet your hate!! Get her!!

Even the New York Times is on it, in its inimitably dishonest way. Twitter Bars Milo Yiannopoulos Over Torrent of Abusive Comments.

It appears the next task after Big Fork launches is an obvious one. No worries, it’s been part of the plan from the beginning.

Never trust a drama queen

I’m not at all surprised that Megyn Kelly is acting up at the expense of Fox News. No woman that self-centered is capable of restraining herself for the good of the network, even if it is in her own long-term interests. My guess is that she is upset at how Ailes and Fox News didn’t white-knight for her when she took on Donald Trump and lost.

Fox News boss Roger Ailes is negotiating his exit, Deadline has confirmed.

Blogger Matt Drudge put up a headline at the top of his popular aggregation website The Drudge Report this afternoon that Ailes will exit the company with a “$40+ million parachute.” There is no link to a story, but a source subsequently told Deadline that Ailes is in exit talks, saying terms of the settlement are being hammered out tonight.

“With internal allegations mounting, it was deemed time for him to go,” the well-placed source said. 21st Century Fox, however, said in a statement: “Roger is at work  The review is ongoing. And the only agreement that is in place is his existing employment agreement.”

Ailes’ ouster comes after Fox News host Gretchen Carlson filed a sexual harassment lawsuit against him on July 6 after her contract was not renewed.

Ailes, the architect of the Fox News as a ratings behemoth and political force, in of June 2015, signed a multi-year contract to continue running Fox News, Fox Business Network, and Fox Television Stations.

Earlier this morning, Drudge linked a headline to today’s New York Magazine story, alleging Fox News star Megyn Kelly had told 21st Century Fox’s investigators that she had been the recipient of unwanted sexual advances from Ailes about a decade ago when she was a correspondent in the Washington bureau.

I have no idea, nor do I care, whether Ailes hit on her or not. I suspect that Kelly assumes any man who looks at her for more than 5 seconds is hitting on her. But regardless, it’s prodigiously stupid to break up a situation that is that good for everyone involved.

The crisis in science

Although the fetishists are loath to admit it, the scientists themselves are well aware that something is rotten in the profession of scientistry:

Spectacular failures to replicate key scientific findings have been documented of late, particularly in biology, psychology and medicine.

A report on the issue, published in Nature this May, found that about 90 percent of some 1,576 researchers surveyed now believe there is a reproducibility crisis in science.

While this rightly tarnishes the public belief in science, it also has serious consequences for governments and philanthropic agencies that fund research, as well as the pharmaceutical and biotechnology sectors. It means they could be wasting billions of dollars on research each year.

One contributing factor is easily identified. It is the high rate of so-called false discoveries in the literature. They are false-positive findings and lead to the erroneous perception that a definitive scientific discovery has been made.

This high rate occurs because the studies that are published often have low statistical power to identify a genuine discovery when it is there, and the effects being sought are often small.

Further, dubious scientific practices boost the chance of finding a statistically significant result, usually at a probability of less than one in 20. In fact, our probability threshold for acceptance of a discovery should be more stringent, just as it is for discoveries of new particles in physics.

The English mathematician and the father of computing Charles Babbage noted the problem in his 1830 book Reflections on the Decline of Science in England, and on Some of Its Causes. He formally split these practices into “hoaxing, forging, trimming and cooking.”

As with all institutions in this latter day, social justice convergence is having its deleterious effects in science. This is why a strict division between scientistry and scientody is absolutely vital; science-SJWs profit from the nebulous nature of the term “science” and use it to cloak their convergent activities.

Criminality and the culture of victimhood

Brings the Lightning author and former prison chaplain Peter Grant draws a connection between the various dyscivilizational organizations active in America today and the criminal mindset:

Each of the organizations we’ve discussed above is trying to exploit the concept and culture of victimhood.  They claim to identify (and identify with) various classes of victims, and seek to mobilize them (and their sympathizers) to agitate against the system that has allegedly made them victims.  If there were no culture of victimhood – if, instead, the focus was on individual responsibility – these organizations would collapse.  Only by denying individual responsibility, focusing instead on groups and the social contract that has until now governed their interaction, can they establish their own reason for being.

This is startlingly reminiscent of the criminal mindset.  I wrote about this in my memoir of prison chaplaincy.  In it, I pointed out a number of characteristics of the criminal’s outlook on life, including the following:

    3.  Refusal to accept responsibility. The criminal avoids or evades any acceptance or admission of guilt or responsibility. Even when he displays contrition about his actions, it’s usually an outward show. In reality his only genuine regret is that he was discovered. He’ll blame anything and everything, anyone and everyone except himself for the negative consequences of his crimes. Of course, this means that he’ll eagerly agree with those blaming factors in his background for his crimes — it allows him to slide out of accepting any personal responsibility for his actions. It’s always someone else’s fault.

    . . .

    6.  A need for excitement. The criminal ‘gets a kick’ out of what he does. Even getting caught has its own thrill. Dealing with the arresting officers (perhaps including an exciting car chase that gets him on TV), establishing his place in the hierarchy in the jail, dealing with the courts, trying to ‘beat the rap’: all have their own emotional intensity. The same applies to life in prison. A really hardened convict may spend more time in the Hole than in general population, aggravate and infuriate staff, annoy other inmates… but he doesn’t care. He’s getting a kick out of his ‘power’ to make others react to him.

    . . .

    10.  A refusal to accept reality. Reality is defined by the criminal on his terms, not by the victim of his crime or by society. A criminal convicted of check fraud will adamantly deny that he’s a thief — he ‘never took anything’. One who stole from a bank didn’t steal from an individual, only an institution, and that’s not theft by his lights. A rapist didn’t do any harm to his victim — ‘she enjoyed it’. A child abuser wasn’t abusing the child at all: he was ‘showing his love’ for his victim. An armed robber who killed his victim when he resisted wasn’t guilty of murder. If his victim had complied with his demands he wouldn’t have died. He ‘asked for it’ by resisting, therefore his death wasn’t the robber’s fault. Most criminals will argue that they weren’t convicted because of what they did, but rather because ‘the system’ or ‘the judge’ or ‘the prosecutor’ was against them. It was personal bias that put them behind bars, not the weight of evidence. I could go on forever in this vein, but I’m sure you get the picture.

Do you see any common ground between these characteristics, and the attitude and conduct of so many progressive pressure groups such as Black Lives Matter, Moveon.org, Common Dreams, Color of Change, and so many others?  I certainly do.  Almost uniformly these groups deny (or don’t even mention) the need for individuals to accept personal responsibility for their lives and actions.  They’ll blame anything and anyone else.  It’s “the system”.  It’s “the police”.  It’s “racism”.  It’s never the individual’s fault, never the fault of the group complaining about oppression.  It’s always someone else.

They also appear to demonstrate a real need for excitement, to make “the Man” respond to what they’re doing.  They’re social gadflies.  They never achieve anything themselves – at least, I’ve never seen anything they’ve managed to build.  They merely cause trouble for those they oppose.  They tear down what others have built, but offer nothing concrete with which to replace it.

Finally, they certainly appear to refuse to accept reality.

These organizations are evil, but they continue to grow in power and influence because no one in the West these days is willing to actually fight evil. Fist-shaking and the occasional denouncement is about as far as it goes. But as the Bible says, there is a time for peace and a time for war. We have already entered the latter, although at this point, any Man of the West who dares to take action will receive considerably more criticism from his own side than praise and support.

The West is not yet desperate enough. Neither the Men nor the Women of the West are truly cognizant yet of the existential threat to them. They don’t fully believe the situation is what it is, and are still hoping that the system will, somehow, magically start working again.

But it won’t. As Dr. Pournelle has repeatedly written, there will be war.

The hero of Nice lives

I’m glad to learn that the courageous motorcyclist who attacked the truck in Nice survived; I didn’t realize that he was actually helped stop the truck in the end. It had been assumed that he’d been killed due to the scooter under the truck, but it turns out that the scooter was thrown there intentionally.

A hero motorcyclist has told of his frantic bid to stop ISIS truck terrorist Mohamed Bouhlel by trying to jump from his bike and onto the lorry as it ploughed at high speed into crowds in Nice. In an act of astonishing bravery, Alexander Migues sped his bike alongside the 19-tonne truck as Bouhlel ran over 84 people watching fireworks on Bastille Day.

Speaking for the time, he revealed how he leapt onto the moving death machine and clung on as he tried to wrestle the driver’s-side door open several times as the truck sped along the promenade.

‘I saw the truck rise (over the median strip) and run over a lady, he told Nice Martin. ‘He was on the sidewalk and then he returned to the road and he tried to run me over too. It was instinctive, I cannot even explain how I managed to go chasing a truck. When I saw that he was really determined, I tried something,’ Migues said

Despite his bravery, Migues was forced to abandon his attempt when the terrorist pulled a gun on him. The Frenchman has been credited with saving lives by slowing the truck enough to give another motorcyclist time to throw his scooter under the wheels of the lorry.

‘He arrived in a scooter and threw it under the wheels of the truck to stop. I let go of the door and when the scooter tapped the truck I heard the noise of bullets,’ Migues said.

He said he wished he could have hung onto the truck longer and slowed it more so that victims would have had more time to flee its deadly path. But he can take comfort that the time when the scooter went under the truck to when the police engaged in a firefight there were no more killed.

In one of the non-fiction articles that will either appear in RTRH 2 or TWBW 11, the special forces author recommends that the best way to survive an urban attack is to adopt an attacker’s mentality, to move, and to act without hesitation. Alexander Migues is an exceptional example of a man who did just that.

And if Migues hadn’t forced Mohamed Bouhlel to deal with his attempts to get into the cab, Bouhlel would not have slowed down enough for the scooter to stop the truck.

RNC: Iowa and Colorado leave in huff

I’m not even going to pretend to be following this, but apparently Ted Cruz’s gang is still butthurt or something.

Iowa and Colorado delegations have left RNC convention. Will not return

Of course, the Colorado “delegation” is the one that wasn’t elected, so it’s a little ironic they’re upset about Trump’s team running a rules game on them. Strategic geniuses, those guys.

This is an open thread to discuss the Republican National Convention.

Refugee axe attack in Germany

The Germans are going to welcome the Nazis with open arms again. And most of Europe isn’t going to blame them.

A 17-year-old Afghan refugee has been shot dead by police after attacking up to 15 people with an axe on a train in Germany. The teenager, who shouted ‘Allahu Akbar’ during the onslaught, was gunned down by armed police after fleeing from the scene near the city of Wurzburg in southern Germany.

As many as 15 people were injured while three of them are fighting for their lives after being attacked with ‘cutting and stabbing weapons’. Authorities say the attacker was an unaccompanied Afghan – but the motives for his attack are still unclear.

As I warned them, they should have sunk the damn boats. Apparently the actual number of wounded is 21, not 15.

Here is the thing. If you don’t like Nazis, then don’t encourage an immigrant invasion, or diversity, or globalism. Because every action leads to a reaction and that is exactly what you’re going to get.

Authorities have said the attacker entered Germany as an unaccompanied child refugee.
Bavarian media say the attacker had lived with a German foster family for two weeks. He had previously lived in a refugee camp.

Europe should not only refuse to accept any refugees, children or adult, it should send all of them back to their native lands. What happens to them there is not going to be as bad as what is going to happen to them in Germany and France, two nations not historically known for their gentle treatment of invaders.

Cantoring Paul Ryan

The most dishonest politician in America faces being upset in his home district:

Following a new primary election poll showing that House Speaker Paul Ryan has plummeted to well below 50 percent in his home district, Ryan is out with new mailers assuring Wisconsin voters of his desire to secure the border, and urging them to support him in his contentious August 9th primary election.

The new mailers touting Ryan’s support for border security is interesting given that just last year, Ryan championed a spending bill that fully funded President Obama’s open borders agenda– including funding sanctuary cities, executive amnesty, and the release of criminal aliens. The mailers also come amid new reports indicating that, one month after his election, Ryan plans to bring up “criminal sentencing” measures that could release thousands of criminal illegal aliens from prison onto the streets.

“Keeping America safe is a big job. And it’s the most important one there is,” the Ryan mailer reads. “Protect our Homeland— that means securing the border, confronting Islamic Terrorism, and tackling new threats by stopping them from reaching our shores… Paul Ryan for U.S. Congress… Vote Tuesday, August 9th”

However, new reports indicate that immediately following his primary election, Speaker Ryan plans to bring up legislation that could release thousands of criminal illegal aliens from prison and into American communities.

As Roll Call reports, “The House will take up legislation to overhaul the criminal justice system in September, Speaker Paul D. Ryan said.”

I’ll be very disappointed in the people of Wisconsin if they fall for this cuckservative charlatan’s faux change-of-direction on immigration. Paul Ryan is the most dishonest politician in America since Bill Clinton hung up his quivering lower lip.

This would be the Lambda review

Milo’s review of Grrlbusters stands in stark contrast to McRapey’s.

I’d have loved nothing more than to give Ghostbusters a glowing review. Seriously! Can you imagine a better troll? Extolling the virtues of a film that my loyal readership has been warring with social justice warriors over for months?

But I can’t. You see, I strive to be honest with my audience. I went into Ghostbusters with a clear and impartial mindset, like some tall, slim, and devastatingly handsome statue of justice. (But no blindfold. It would be a crime to cover up these eyes.)

Ugh, I don’t know what to tell you. Ghostbusters is terrible. It’s more obvious than the reading on an EKG-meter in Zuul’s bedroom. The only frame of reference in which this movie functions is as a meta-movie, in which the Ghostbusters franchise is treated like a vampire in a Hammer Horror from the 60s. The beloved franchise from our childhood with a stake driven through its heart, head chopped off, body burned and buried at a crossroads.

 The overarching problem with Ghostbusters is that the script is a greater abomination to God than any of the demons and ghosts in the franchise. I’m sure they could have done a worse job, but they’d have to study Tobin’s Spirit Guide to summon a script from an even deeper circle of Hell.

Mostly, it’s a lack of intelligence. In the original movie, the bad guys weren’t actually the ghosts — everybody loves Slimer and the Marshmallow Man. No, the bad guys were the clueless bureaucrats in the government, who set off a supernatural crisis through bumbling and red tape.

In this film, by contrast, the enemy is all men, while the government ends up playing dad. Every man in the movie is a combination of malevolent and moronic. The chick ‘busters shame the mayor so much they end up getting government funding at the end. Like all feminists, they can only survive by sucking on the teat of Big Government.

I’ll skip over the vacuous and incoherent plot. You won’t understand it watching the movie and you won’t understand it reading my summary so who cares. This, unlike any movie I’ve ever seen before, seems to have been conceived entirely out of spite, with the result that its plot is largely irrelevant.

Read the whole thing there. I leave it to you to determine whose review is more trustworthy.

The only reason that anyone cares about this movie is because it is a symbol; it is a battleground in the cultural war. As Milo correctly noted, the movie is a standard bearer for the cultural Left. The mere fact that the battle is being waged, and that the movie is being widely panned and ignored, is a very good sign for we Western Civilizationalists, because it means the SJWs and feminists are finally meeting overt opposition.