Category: Uncategorized

Fighting Without Fuel

US Navy oiler USNS Big Horn ran aground yesterday, leaving the Abraham Lincoln Carrier Group without it’s primary fuel source. The Navy doesn’t have a spare oiler to deploy and is now scrambling to find a commercial tanker.

Karl Denninger comments on the naval foul-up:

We have only one oiler — vessels that carry fuel for things like, oh, aircraft — available where that ship is. ONE, and it just went hard aground and apparently, from that video, ripped up the rudder post mount quite nicely, shearing off several bolts.

How much damage was done to the underwater gear? I don’t think anyone knows yet but it clearly is leaking so the answer isn’t “none.” Whether that damage impacts its mobility (e.g. rudder jammed or the screw damaged) is an open question, but its not going anywhere while hard aground — that much I can assure you.

How “capable” is our allegedly “great” military of doing its job right now? You know, actual fighting in a lethal combat situation where the other side can shoot back?

How many of our “officers” running said vessels and other assets are not competent to do the job under pressure when they ground ships (or, as we’ve previously seen, run them into other vessels) when nobody is shooting at them?

How many of said “officers” were promoted because of their blue hair, what they have between their legs and/or pronouns rather than because they were the person who was most competent to take that command irrespective of any of that horseshit?

You better pray we don’t find out the hard way; not only may thousands of our troops die but you may glow in the dark.

This is totally disastrous, as in addition to making it more difficult to refuel the carrier group, it clearly demonstrates to the opposition how vulnerable the US naval forces are, and how to most efficiently cripple them by targeting their logistics, which at present are not very sound even in the United States itself.

The net stores of military jet fuel immediately available from US refiners above the global contingency supplies managed by the Defense Logistics Agency at any time represents about 375 net flight hours for one carrier and one air wing…less than 16 days of high intensity air operations by far fewer assets than the US would throw into an all-out theater conflict in the Pacific Rim.

This is the danger of being led to war by foreign lawyers and bankers. They’re so accustomed to using words and money to accomplish their goals that they have no significant understanding of what actually goes into fighting an actual war, let alone the planning required to win one.

UPDATE: In case you don’t understand how vital fleet oilers are to the operations of a wartime navy, going into WWII, the US Navy possessed 30 fleet oilers. By the end of 1945, it had 169 commissioned and at its disposal.

DISCUSS ON SG

Eggs Do Not Raise Cholesterol

The link between eating eggs and high cholesterol is just another case of malscientific nonsense:

Dr Norwitz said: ‘I hypothesized that eating 720 eggs in one month, which alone amounts to 133,200mg of cholesterol, would not increase my cholesterol. Specifically, it would not increase my LDL cholesterol.

‘And, indeed, it didn’t, not a smidge.’

He added: ‘Even though my dietary intake of cholesterol more than quintupled, my LDL cholesterol actually dropped.’

He had to eat 24 eggs a day during the experiment, the equivalent of about one every hour if he didn’t leave any time to sleep.

Modern science is best regarded with a LOT of skepticism. Virtually nothing they say is good for your health is genuinely good for you. And remember, the majority of all published, peer-reviewed scientific studies are non-replicable junk.

So go ahead. Fry that egg. Fry it in butter!

DISCUSS ON SG

An Interesting Order

The spokesman for the Chinese foreign ministry confirms that Chinese citizens have been instructed to leave Israel.

Anadolu Agency: It’s been reported by Israeli media that Chinese Embassy in Israel has asked its citizens to leave the country and return to China in a Sunday night statement. The embassy added that Chinese citizens should not travel to Israel for the time being. What’s the reason for the travel advice and the leave advice?

Lin Jian: We indeed released relevant consular notice. It is our unshirkable duty to protect the safety of overseas Chinese nationals.

The USA, the UK, and numerous European countries are advising their citizens to leave Lebanon, not Israel. Which does tend to raise the question: what does China know that Israel’s allies do not?

One thing that is definitely not a good sign:

Fighter jets of the Israeli Air Force are now landing at a reportedly BRITISH base on the island of Cyprus in the Mediterranean Sea, after bombing attacks upon Lebanon. Hezbollah made clear months ago, that if the Israelis use base(s) on Cyprus, to attack them in Lebanon, that Hezbollah will attack Cyprus with long range missiles.

DISCUSS ON SG

Kamala Still Isn’t Black

I don’t know why anyone ever pretended that Kamala Harris was black. I suppose it’s because people assume that everyone from Jamaica is, but as it happens, her father isn’t black. And neither is her mother. As Janet Jackson clearly knows:

Pop star Janet Jackson was blasted by left-wing critics last week for saying that Kamala Harris isn’t black. Then it was reported that she apologized saying she was “misinformed.” Now, Jackson is saying that apology was issued without authorization…

Once Jackson’s words got into print, Mo Elmasri apologized for her comments in a statement on Sunday in a report at Buzzfeed. Elmasri told Buzzfeed he was Jackson’s manager.

“Janet apologizes for any confusion caused and acknowledges the importance of accurate representation in public discourse” Elmasri said. “We appreciate the opportunity to address this and will remain committed to promoting unity … She deeply respects Vice President Kamala Harris and her accomplishments as a Black and Indian woman.”

But now Jackson’s team is disavowing Mo Elmasri’s statement.

Indeed, there seems to be confusion over Elmasri’s actual role with Jackson. According to sources, her brother, Randy Jackson, is actually Janet’s manager. And now the Jackson team is insisting that Elmasri had no right or authorization to issue any apologies, according to USA Today.

Perhaps Neal Gaiman’s team should take a page from Mr. Elmasri’s book and have some random individual who has no actual connection to Team Gaiman apologize for Mr. Gaiman’s alleged actions. They could even have Mr. Elmasri do it. Apparently the press will accept that these days.

DISCUSS ON SG

No Coalition of the Willing 2

The US is sending more troops, specifically, the 101st Airborne Division if the rumors are correct, to the Middle East:

The US is deploying a “small number” of additional troops to the Middle East after Israel launched a large-scale military operation against Lebanon, The Pentagon has announced. Spokesperson Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder announced the move on Monday but declined to provide further details on the number or mission of the American troops.

”In light of increased tension in the Middle East and out of an abundance of caution, we are sending a small number of additional US military personnel forward to augment our forces already in the region,” Ryder said. “But for operational security reasons, I’m not going to comment on or provide specifics.”

The US currently has around 40,000 troops stationed in the Middle East, along with several Navy warships and aircraft carriers, including the USS Harry S. Truman and the USS Abraham Lincoln. The assets are positioned in multiple locations to respond to potential attacks against Israel or American interests.

It appears that the USA and its Greatest Ally are not going to wait much longer for Hezbollah and Iran to break discipline and give them an excuse to claim that they had no choice but to go to war. Which means another false flag is almost certainly in the works, presumably one in the United States.

However, Spain clearly doesn’t want any part of it. There is noticeably less enthusiasm in Europe for war on behalf of Israel than there has been for war on behalf of the Kiev regime.

“The Spanish government expresses its deep dismay and condemnation of the Israeli bombardment of southern and eastern Lebanon today, which has left hundreds dead, in response to Hezbollah’s attacks on Israel over the weekend. The spiral of violence must stop.” – the Spanish Foreign Ministry

UPDATE: 101st Airborne confirmed.

DISCUSS ON SG

The War That Wouldn’t Start

Ron Unz suspects that the pager attack was supposed to be a preemptive first strike to disrupt a Hezbollah attack that never came:

Mossad certainly achieved a brilliant tactical victory, one that its members and pro-Israel partisans surely intend to boast about for years. But many aspects of the attack seemed very puzzling to me, and experienced military analysts wondered whether any long-term gains had been achieved.

After Israel invaded Gaza in retaliation for the Hamas raid last October, Hezbollah and its Israeli enemies soon began trading cross-border fire, bombarding each other with missiles, rockets, drones, and artillery shells, and those exchanges have now continued for nearly a year. As a result, some 160,000 civilians on both sides of the border have fled their homes, with perhaps 60,000 of these being Israelis.

With so many tens of thousands of Israelis having become internal refugees, displaced from their communities in the north of the country and spending the last year living in temporary accommodations, the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been under enormous political pressure to attack and invade Lebanon in order to drive the Hezbollah forces away from the border, thereby allowing those Israelis to return home. In addition, the most extreme religious elements among his supporters regard portions of southern Lebanon as part of Israel’s God-given lands and wish to see them conquered and annexed, with their local Lebanese residents expelled and replaced by Jewish settlers.

However, the last time the Israelis launched a ground invasion of Lebanon in 2006, their forces suffered a severe defeat at Hezbollah’s hands, and during the last eighteen years that organization has become far more powerful, with many of its troops having gained a great deal of military experience during their successful intervention in the Syrian civil war. Meanwhile, a year of fighting against Hamas in Gaza has left the IDF exhausted, so despite Israel’s command of the air, it’s not at all clear how well such a ground assault would go. Moreover, Hezbollah has reportedly amassed an enormous arsenal of some 150,000 rockets and missiles, and these could be used to inflict devastating damage upon most of Israel’s cities and towns if it chose to do so.

The combination of these two conflicting factors has led to repeated indecision on Israel’s part. For months, media leaks have reported that Israel had made the decision to invade Lebanon and that the attack was imminent. But nothing has ever happened, presumably because the military risks of such an operation were considered too great.

Those booby-trapped pagers and other devices might have played an absolutely crucial role in an Israeli ground invasion. If they had all been detonated at the beginning of such an attack, Hezbollah’s forces would have been left dazed and confused, with their entire communications network knocked out, thereby preventing them from mounting an effective defense or retaliatory measures. This would probably have allowed the IDF to win a major initial victory on the ground.

But instead those explosions occurred alone, with no invasion taking place. So Hezbollah has merely licked its wounds and is surely now putting in place a replacement communications network, presumably based upon a large shipment of carefully vetted pagers received from Iran or China or Russia. Israel thus lost the element of surprise, with little to show for it except wounding a large number of Hezbollah members. Thus, the exploding pagers merely produced a tactical victory instead of a potentially strategic one.

This raises the obvious question of why the Israelis chose to shoot their bolt when they did instead of waiting until the pagers could be detonated in conjunction with a major invasion.

It is becoming increasingly obvious that it is Israel that desperately wants a war while Hezbollah and Iran understand that time is on their side. Now that the technological attack has failed to spur either of the latter into action, Israel has proceeded to engage in another round of air strikes against Lebanon.

Israeli missiles slammed into the Lebanese capital of Beirut in a strike said to be targeting a senior Hezbollah commander this afternoon, after the southern suburbs were buffeted with hundreds of missiles. Hezbollah commander Ali Karaki was the target of strikes late Monday as Israeli attacks edge deeper into Lebanon, according to a security source speaking to Reuters.

Attrition warfare always favors the more numerous side. It appears that China isn’t the only one learning from watching how the Russians execute their strategies.

DISCUSS ON SG

The Dangers of Selling Out

Football Outsiders went from a high-quality and influential site to extinction in barely 12 months thanks to selling out to some Canadian financial pirates:

Football Outsiders was founded in 2003 by Aaron Schatz. What began as his passion project grew into a fully fledged website for advanced football analytics and statistics such as DVOA (Defense-adjusted Value Over Average). Football Outsiders went on to strike partnerships with ESPN and became a popular source for hardcore football nerds and casual fans alike. In 2018, Schatz sold Football Outsiders to a company called EdjSports. He stayed on as editor-in-chief, and, according to longtime Football Outsiders writer Mike Tanier, the site continued to operate as normal.

Then, in September 2021, Champion Gaming, co-founded by Simmonds and Hershman, entered the picture. It acquired EdjSports, and Football Outsiders along with it, in late 2021 as part of a “reverse takeover,” a way for private companies to go public quickly without having to go through an Initial Public Offering. As part of the deal, Champion Gaming merged with a shell company called Prime City One Capital. According to a news report from the time, “the group closed a funding round of $3.65 million (CAD $4.62 million), giving it a roughly $12.3 million post-money valuation, and it is on track to begin trading in a few weeks.”

Champion Gaming had ambitions to expand beyond NFL coverage. It struck a licensing deal with Inpredictable, an NBA analytics website run by Mike Beuoy, and partnered with SharpRank, a sports betting resource. The terms and status of these partnerships are unclear; Beuoy and SharpRank did not respond to queries. Champion Gaming also brought on Chris Spagnuolo to oversee content (for a particular microgeneration of sports media consumers, Spagnuolo is best known as the guy who left Barstool Sports after writing a blog calling Rihanna fat), and hired ESPN’s Katie George to be a brand ambassador and create video content. Spagnuolo declined to comment. Defector was not able to reach George for comment.

By the summer after the takeover, changes at the top of the company were underway. In June 2022, Simmonds took over from Hershman as CEO; Wickham took over as CFO; and the company’s president, Chief Innovation Officer, and director all resigned. The company framed the changes as an exciting new chapter. Of Simmonds’s ascent to CEO, Hershman said in a press release, “Given his previous experience as a public markets CEO and his extensive background in online gambling, the board of directors and I determined that his leadership of the Company would be both ideal and appropriate to steer us going forward as we build a leading sports content and data intelligence business.”

But by the fall there were signs that the company was floundering. According to financial documents filed in November 2022, which are publicly available through Sedar, Canada’s securities filing system, the company had little cash flow and was carrying significant debt, especially relative to its revenues. In the first nine months of 2022, Champion Gaming reported $969,789 in revenue and $5,619,803 in losses. (All monetary figures cited in the filings are in CAD.) As of Sept. 30, 2022, the entire company had only $55,776 in cash, with even less coming in. As of the same date, the accounts receivable, meaning revenue the company accrued, but which they still needed to be paid, was only $13,911. On page six of the same filing, the company wrote: “These material uncertainties cast significant doubt as to the Company’s ability to continue as a going concern.”

We were never going to sell out, but rest assured we have learned our lesson about the importance of staying in your lane and focusing relentlessly on what you do best. My answer now to the people both within and without the community who tell me “you know, you should do X” is very short and unmistakably negative.

No short cuts. No outside assistance. No wild ambitions. Just the slow and organic growth that comes from steadily improving quality and value. Castalia History is the only sort of growth we want; it’s now very nearly as large as the Library subscription and all four of the first books have sold out whereas none of our competitors can say the same of most of their recent books with similar print runs.

DISCUSS ON SG

Who Elected Her?

Jill Biden is now running Cabinet meetings:

The New York Post reported that Jill Biden, seated at the head of the Cabinet Room’s board table, “read from a binder about maternal health initiatives for four-and-a-half minutes after her husband spoke for just two minutes off the top of the meeting.”

The president traditionally sits at the center of the table with Cabinet members seated in order of the founding of their departments. The last sitting first lady to attend her husband’s Cabinet meeting appears to be Hillary Clinton.

The amount of influence the first lady has over Joe Biden, and therefore his administration, has been a frequent source of controversy, and numerous commentators took to social media to criticize her presence at the meeting.

The New York Post said that Jill Biden is “considered by insiders to be the most influential first lady since Edith Wilson, who tightly controlled access to her husband, President Woodrow Wilson, after he suffered a debilitating stroke in October 1919.”

Digital strategist Greg Price referenced this comparison, saying, “She’s literally Edith Wilson except right out in the open in a 24/7 news cycle and nobody in the media cares.”

“Wow. A visibly exhausted Joe Biden just held a full Cabinet meeting for the first time in 11 months and immediately turned the mic over to his wife, Jill,” previous adviser to former President Donald Trump Steve Cortes said. He went on to ask, “Who is running the country?”

Political commentator Kate Hyde observed, “Jill Biden is kicking off the first cabinet meeting the White House has had in almost a year and we’re expected to act like this is normal.”

It’s not good, but it could have been worse. At least they were discussing women’s health issues and not the war with Russia or the Middle East.

DISCUSS ON SG

New Values in London

Import people from a rape culture, increase the daily incidence of rape. How is this difficult to grasp?

There is one rape reported every hour in London, according to police data published on Friday. Almost 8,800 cases were handled in 2023, which is an average of 24 each day.

The figures, obtained by state broadcaster the BBC through Freedom of Information requests, show a further 11,000 reports of other sexual offences.

The totals increased by 14% over the last five years to almost 20,000 in 2023, which means that sexual violence or rape was reported to police every 26 and a half minutes, on average.

Charities concerned with protecting children and women against sexual violence said the true extent of such incidents is far higher.

One would think women would be the strongest opponents of immigration, given the inevitable consequences. But apparently widespread rape is a small price to pay for the dopamine hit of knowing that you’re a good person because you welcomed the refugees.

Or maybe their pet economists have determined that rape is good for the economy or something. Either way, Clown World is observably pushing it on everyone from Sweden to Japan. And you really have to hate women if you still support mass immigration.

DISCUSS ON SG

Team Gaiman Speaks

One of Neil Gaiman’s long-time employees posted this on the Reddit thread NeilGaimanUncovered. He claims to only be speaking for himself – which may or may not be true – but it’s very informative in how it appears to show how Gaiman and his team are more upset by the growing number of people who are pointing out that he was never more than a mediocre writer than they are to the other negative blows to his reputation, including his erstwhile “sensitive and progressive good guy” persona.

Some people are going around talking about how they never liked Gaiman’s writing, or they always thought that it was derivative and poor. I’m not sure what those people are hoping to accomplish with these statements. It’s like, that’s great for you and your big brain, I guess? You are superior to all the rubes who had the wool pulled over their eyes and fell for his allegedly sneaky writer ways? Better than all the critics and Hugo voters who gave him awards? Better than all the fans who bought his books?

Every time I see one of these posts or replies I just want to ask them, what are you saying about his scores of fans? That you’re better than them? What message are you trying to send to the vulnerable people who say that his work saved their lives, who are now struggling to square that fact with the allegations? I guess that those fans are fools? What does that even say about the victims who were fans? That they were gullible, that if they had been as smart or as discriminating at you then the power dynamic would have been slightly less out of whack because they would not have looked up to him as an author?

I’m just saying…. maybe the discussion should be focusing on the victims and supporting them rather than how superior your taste in literature is.

I can answer those questions, though I can’t answer them there since I’m banned from r/NeilGaimanUncovered, though strangely enough, not from r/NeilGaiman. Go figure.

What we’re hoping to accomplish with our statements about the quality of Neil Gaiman’s writing and his stature as a literary figure is to put him in his true and proper place. The man is not a rock star, he is not even a mainstream celebrity, and he is neither a literary genius nor a top-tier fantasy writer. While he is widely reported to be a bestselling author who has sold more than 50 million books, his close ties to Scientology tend to cast some doubt on the legitimacy of those sales, particularly in light of how his fellow Scientologist, L. Ron Hubbard, is reported to have sold more than 130 million books, most of them to Gaiman and other Scientologists.

Although I was acquainted with a few of the members of his inner circle in Minnesota, I saw no reason to pay any attention to Gaiman whatsoever until after the founding of Arkhaven Comics. As I wrote in 2018:

if you think Neil Gaiman is a great novelist, or even a great SF/F novelist, you are simply wrong. He is a successful, talented and much-loved SF/F author, and understandably so, but he is also little more than a very successful stunt writer with two or three tricks in his bag. There is a reason that all of his notable books involve mythology of one sort or another; his true gift is translating ancient myth into a form that pleases postmodern palates. He also has the ability to convey that sense of the numinous that I lack. But Neal Stephenson, William Gibson, Alan Moore, John C. Wright, China Mieville, Nick Cole, and even George R.R. Martin are all better, more original SF/F writers with considerably more to say about the human condition than Gaiman. When I have thought about the writers whose work I would like to be able to emulate or surpass over the years, Neil Gaiman never once entered into the equation, not even for a moment. Consider that American Gods is described as “Neil Gaiman’s best and most ambitious novel yet.” I liked that story considerably better when it was called Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul and On the Road. That being said, of the various comics I have read, Sandman is head-and-shoulders above the rest.

Neil Gaiman is a great comics writer. So is The Legend Chuck Dixon. But writing novels is much, much harder than writing comics, and successful novelists are much better writers than successful comic book scriptors. In the same way that John Scalzi managed to transform his Hugo Award for Best Fan Writer into the perception that he was a Hugo Award-winning novelist, Neil Gaiman transformed his status as a great comics book scriptor into the perception that he was a great novelist. But while Scalzi did eventually win a Hugo Award for best novel, Gaiman never wrote a great or even a very good novel.

Then and now, I would categorize Gaiman as a 4th-tier genre writer. He’s not bad, he’s got a bit of a nice magical veneer, but of the four primary aspects of fiction writing, he has mastered none of them. In none of his works can you give him four stars, let alone five, in any category: Style, Story, Characters, or Creativity. Anyone who is impressed by his works is almost certainly very ill-read indeed; there is a reason his fan base tends to be young and female.

Why does this matter? Because there are those who have actually attempted to excuse and justify his alleged actions on the basis of him being a special literary talent. Setting aside that is no excuse anyhow, it’s also an attempted justification built upon a false foundation. As one Redditor noted:

I was perplexed when I looked online, when the first allegations came out, and several people were saying that Gaiman was an A-tier literary genius (someone said he was objectively in the same league as Woolf and the Brontes) and therefore we should immediately skip to the part where we forgive monumental artists their transgressions, because their writing is truly that transcendentally great.

Perplexed is the correct response. Gaiman not only isn’t in the same league as immortals like the Brontes, he’s not even in the same league as SF/F writers a generation prior who are already being forgotten, writers such as Jack Vance, Tanith Lee, and Ann McCaffrey. One couldn’t possibly compare him to Haruki Murakami, Umberto Eco, or Italo Calvino; even George R. R. Martin is a better and more creative writer. One reason it’s so easy to tell which parts of Good Omens were written by Terry Pratchett and which parts were written by Gaiman is because Pratchett’s contributions, as befitting a 3rd-tier genre writer, are objectively and observably better.

You are superior to all the rubes who had the wool pulled over their eyes and fell for his allegedly sneaky writer ways?

Yes, without question. There is no well-read readers who believe Neil Gaiman is a great writer. It’s not an accident that his most ardent fans are young. They simply don’t know any better. To whom are they comparing him anyhow, JK Rowling?

Better than all the critics and Hugo voters who gave him awards?

Absolutely. The Sad Puppies conclusively proved that the Hugo awards are a popularity contest. NK Jemisin has three Best Novel awards, and even as a genre writer, she’s somewhere around the My Billionaire Dinosaur Boyfriend-level.

Better than all the fans who bought his books?

The clueless and poorly-read fans have already been addressed. The Scientologists who may or may not have been bulk-buying Mr. Gaiman’s books for decades are not exactly known for their literary discernment. Case in point: consider Neil Gaiman’s review of one of the worst science fiction books ever written, Battlefield Earth.

For value for money I have to recommend L. Ron Hubbard’s massive Battlefield Earth – over 1000 pages of thrills, spills, vicious aliens, noble humans. Is mankind an endangered species? Will handsome and heroic Jonny Goodboy Tyler win Earth back from the nine-foot-high Psychlos? A tribute to the days of pulp, I found it unputdownable. And all for 2.95.

“Unputdownable.” Indeed. Of course, since I speak Reviewer, I will grant Mr. Gaiman that at least he recognized how awful Mr. Hubbard’s novel was, since this is the sort of thing that reviewers write when they want to trash a book, but they’re afraid to do so.

That you’re better than them?

Better-read, anyhow. And observably with better taste and more discernment in literature.

What message are you trying to send to the vulnerable people who say that his work saved their lives, who are now struggling to square that fact with the allegations?

His work didn’t save their lives. It couldn’t have. They saved themselves and they don’t need him or his work to serve them as a crutch. They never did.

What does that even say about the victims who were fans?

Don’t get in the tub with Mr. Tubcuddle.

UPDATE: You have to love the meme warriors at r/NeilGaimanMemes.

DISCUSS ON SG