Flashpoint: Syria

Israel shoots down a drone, Iran shoots down an F-16:

An Israeli fighter has been shot down as the country’s air force carried out attacks against Iranian targets in Syria after intercepting a drone. The military said its planes faced massive anti-aircraft fire from Syria that forced two pilots to abandon an F-16 jet that crashed in northern Israel, seriously wounding one and lightly injuring the other.

‘This is a serious Iranian attack on Israeli territory. Iran is dragging the region into an adventure in which it doesn’t know how it will end,’ Israel’s chief military spokesman, Brigadier General Ronen Manelis, said in a statement.

Israeli forces identified an ‘Iranian UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle)’ launched from Syria and intercepted it in Israeli airspace with a combat helicopter, a statement said. They then ‘targeted the Iranian control systems in Syria that sent the UAV into Israeli airspace,’ military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Conricus tweeted. ‘Massive Syrian anti-air fire, one F16 crashed in Israel, pilots safe.’

The Israeli military then carried out what it called a ‘large scale attack’ against Iranian and Syrian targets in Syria.

Given the way in which a Russian plane was shot down earlier this week, it is increasingly apparent that the age of air supremacy, although not over, is approaching its end. Once lasers replace missiles and guns, it’s all but over for aircraft, manned or not.

A Churchian Response, part III

This is the third part of my critique of the Churchian response to the 16 Points of the Alt-Right. The first part, covering Points 1-4, is here. The second part covering Points 4-8 is here.

9. I disagree completely. Politics supersedes culture and identity. Right is right no matter when, where, or who is present. A conservative seeks to do what is correct based upon the principles I laid out above. Those principles are the same without regard to my identity or location in space and time. Elective abortion is always murder. Slavery always denies human worth. We do not conform ourselves to our identity (whether social, ethnic, racial, familial, or economic) or our culture; we are to conform ourselves to Jesus Christ. All action, even apolitical action, is political because, as John Donne said, “no man is an island entire of itself.” In following Christ, we necessarily take up certain political ideas. Those ideas are always at odds with the tyranny and oppression, which is why so many nations have tried so hard to eliminate Christianity. Rome cannot fathom the abolition of infanticide and crucifixion or religious liberty. Nazi Germany has no place for such brotherly love and compassion for human life. Communism cannot tolerate any other god than the state. The American South could not allow the doctrine of the image of God because that sets all human beings as equals. No. The Alt Right is quite incorrect. Our identity only matters in how each of us relate to God individually; after that we are duty bound to conform ourselves to him and attempt to conform our world to his word by making disciples. “But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.” (Matthew 6:33)

Politics do not supersede culture or identity. This is not only backwards, but utterly absurd and flies in the face of all political history as well as the politics of every political entity on the planet. The churchian also contradicts himself when he asserts that Christians – a religious identity – necessarily take up certain political ideas. That is simply another case of identity dictating politics.

As the extraordinarily successful politician Lee Kuan Yew wisely noted, “In multiracial societies, you don’t vote in accordance with your economic interests, you vote in accordance with race and religion.”

10. Well, once again we have some absolute self-refuting nonsense. According to the Alt Right, the only people who belong here are the North American Indians. Ironically, the Latin Americans the Alt Right seems so desperate to keep out of this country would be amongst the only people left here. So, to where, would you like your plane-ticket? Let me help eliminate some places you might think you can go. You probably cannot go to the British Isles; after the Roman, Saxon, Angle, Jutes, Norman, and Viking invasions as well as the immigration of Indians, Arabs, and various Allied peoples, the druidic people who first lived there have not sufficiently passed on their bloodlines. No one is truly properly British is he or she cannot trace the ancestry back to the time of Boudicca. Let me also rule out anywhere in central Europe; the Germanic tribes invaded Europe in wave after wave before the Huns and Mongols swept across the land, and it get real dicey after the Jewish Diaspora, the collapse of Rome, the Moorish invasions, the Crusades, and a couple of World Wars. I’m not ‘purely’ white. I have evidence that one of my great grandmother’s was a slave and the Landress family was originally Jewish before coming to America. Since Europe is too difficult to determine where I should go, I’ll claim that very minute portion of Jewish ancestry. If you’re ‘Jewish’, like me, you might enjoy the ancient city of Ur of the Chaldeans, after all, Israel was the land God promised Abraham, not the land of his birth. That’ll be nice; I’ve always wanted to live in southern Iraq. We’ll send everybody back where his or her families originated. I hope don’t get too carried away with such a ridiculous idea; it’s going to be awkward with all seven billion of us trying to share North Western Africa.

This concept is racist. It’s not racist in the idea that one race is superior to another; though it does indicate the Alt Right secretly believes that. Instead it is racist in the same way segregation is racist and about it I same the same thing as Chief Justice Earl Warren, “in the field of public education, the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.” As it is true in education, so it is true in life. I reject the Alt Right’s belief in blood and soil.

Why does he hate the Jews? This is a truly reprehensible, anti-semitic position. Since he rejects the belief in blood and soil, he clearly doesn’t believe that the Jewish people have any right to the land of Israel. Alert the SPLC! All churchians are clearly Nazis at heart and there is no place for them in any civilized society.

It’s fascinating to see that he rejects our opposition to “the rule or domination of any native ethnic group by another in the sovereign homelands of the dominated peoples.” One wonders which group he believes should rule over the native populations in the United States, in China, and in India.

11. This is utter nonsense. To which war do they refer? There are several where racial diversity was an issue. In every one of them, the aggressors were racists. Their only defense for holding such a belief is they will champion one of the most despicable forms of bigotry and hatred humans have ever demonstrated. America exists on the idea that diversity is your right. No one has the authority by right of conformity to tell another person he or she is wrong for being different. If we follow the Alt Right to its logical conclusion, the Jews were wrong for being in Germany. That is utterly detestable. I reject in the strongest terms possible the Alt Right belief that diversity and proximity causes war.

Between whom does this moron believe wars are fought? Why does he imagine they take place? And if it is right for the Jews to be in Israel, then clearly it was wrong for them to be in Germany. Israel cannot belong to the Jews if Germany does not belong to the Germans. Again, we see that he is denying the Jewish claim to the land of Israel. What a horrible anti-semite! Why, his attack on the Alt-Right is, ironically, another Holocaust. Which, of course, makes him Hitler.

Also, America does not exist “on the idea that diversity is your right”. One will search the Federalist Papers in vain for anything that even reasonably approximates this idea. It’s also a bit ironic that he asserts no one has the authority to tell another person he is wrong for being different, considering that his whole rabid screed is nothing more than telling many, many people that they are wrong for holding their different beliefs in nations, borders, races, and the right of the Jewish nation to the land of Israel.

12. This is an absolute lie. No one spends more time trying to convince others what to think about themselves than do the Alt Right. If they did not care, they would not make their presence known. I reject their lie.

Oh, we genuinely don’t care what people think about the Alt-Right, because the Alt-Right is inevitable. We don’t care what you think about gravity or oxygen either. Reality is going to win out over time. However, that doesn’t mean that we aren’t going to set the record straight when very stupid, very ignorant people tell blatant lies about us and misrepresent our beliefs.

Part IV of IV tomorrow.

Now WHO was colluding with Russia?

The RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA story keeps getting more and more bizarre. And revealing more and more corruption on the part of the federal bureaucracy:

After months of secret negotiations, a shadowy Russian bilked American spies out of $100,000 last year, promising to deliver stolen National Security Agency cyberweapons in a deal that he insisted would also include compromising material on President Trump, according to American and European intelligence officials.

The cash, delivered in a suitcase to a Berlin hotel room in September, was intended as the first installment of a $1 million payout, according to American officials, the Russian and communications reviewed by The New York Times. The theft of the secret hacking tools had been devastating to the N.S.A., and the agency was struggling to get a full inventory of what was missing.

Several American intelligence officials said they made clear that they did not want the Trump material from the Russian — who was suspected of having murky ties to Russian intelligence and to Eastern European cybercriminals. He claimed the information would link the president and his associates to Russia. But instead of providing the hacking tools, the Russian produced unverified and possibly fabricated information involving Mr. Trump and others, including bank records, emails and purported Russian intelligence data.

How are these “American spies” not being arrested already? We already know that the Trump campaign didn’t collude with Russia the way the Hillary campaign did, but as far as we know, even the Hillary campaign didn’t actually offer to PAY the Russians ONE MILLION DOLLARS!

American intelligence, such as it is, more and more appears to be run by Dr. Evil.

The Times obtained four of the documents that the Russian in Germany tried to pass to American intelligence. All are purported to be Russian intelligence reports, and each focuses on associates of Mr. Trump. Carter Page, the former campaign adviser who has been the focus of F.B.I. investigators, features in one; Robert and Rebekah Mercer, the billionaire Republican donors, in another.

Yet all four appear to be drawn almost entirely from news reports, not secret intelligence. They all also contain stylistic and grammatical usages not typically seen in Russian intelligence reports, said Yuri Shvets, a former K.G.B. officer who spent years as a spy in Washington before defecting to the United States just before the end of the Cold War.

On the plus side, someone finally figured out how to make money by publishing news on the Internet. Alert Goldman Sachs, we’ve got a new business model! I love the smell of an IPO in the morning.

Disproving pay discrimination… again

Uber’s objective, driver-controlled pay system still produces a pay gap:

The mainstream media also continues to cite the pay gap as a problem, disregarding evidence that it’s merely the result of free choice. Recently, an even more convincing rebuttal has arisen from the tech sector.

Uber, which pays its drivers not on an inherently subjective individual basis but via a formula that takes into account time and mileage driven, still has a 7 percent pay gap between male and female drivers. That’s right: a company that allocates salary in a way that is necessarily blind to an employee’s sex has still generated a pay gap, because men and women make different choices.

It turns out that female Uber drivers work shorter hours, are less likely to work during peak times, and drive more slowly. Because the compensation structure is automatic, Stanford researchers were able to pin down the three factors that caused the gap: experience on the platform, willingness to work at peak times and in busy areas, and driving speed preferences.

Somehow, I doubt these facts will even act as a speed bump to feminists rushing to denounce Uber’s sexist pay gap. Still, it would be interesting to see how race and other factors affect average pay.

Freedom of association lives

For the time being, anyhow:

A California trial court has upheld a Christian baker’s right to refuse to create a wedding cake for a lesbian couple, but the decision comes as a similar case is already pending in the nation’s highest court.

Tastries Bakery owner Cathy Miller’s freedom of speech “outweighs” the state of California’s interest in ensuring a freely accessible marketplace, Judge David R. Lampe said in his decision in the Superior Court of California in Kern County, one of the state’s 58 trial courts.

Standing to set a legal precedent is the case of Colorado baker and Masterpiece Cakeshop owner Jack Phillips, deliberated before the U.S. Supreme Court in December 2017. A ruling is expected within months in Phillips’ fight to limit his creativity as a wedding cake baker to marriages between a man and a woman.

No one should ever have to bake a damn cake for anyone. It’s absurd that this is even an issue at all.

Trusting science

Are you placing your faith in scientistry or scientody? Because if you believe in the reliability of the latter, you need to understand that the former, on average, no longer practices it:

More than 70{f34b2ed14022567e3962d98ceb517f14c2acb643b80147bdb11c1357fe49acc6} of researchers have tried and failed to reproduce another scientist’s experiments, and more than half have failed to reproduce their own experiments. Those are some of the telling figures that emerged from Nature‘s survey of 1,576 researchers who took a brief online questionnaire on reproducibility in research. The data reveal sometimes-contradictory attitudes towards reproducibility. Although 52{f34b2ed14022567e3962d98ceb517f14c2acb643b80147bdb11c1357fe49acc6} of those surveyed agree that there is a significant ‘crisis’ of reproducibility, less than 31{f34b2ed14022567e3962d98ceb517f14c2acb643b80147bdb11c1357fe49acc6} think that failure to reproduce published results means that the result is probably wrong, and most say that they still trust the published literature.

This is absolutely incredible. Even Hollywood accounting is not this slipshod! In how many other fields does the failure of the numbers to add up correctly not mean that the result is wrong?

What this means is that nearly 7 in 10 so-called scientists are not utilizing the scientific method at all. What now passes for “science” is now little more than a modern spin on the logical fallacy of argumentum ad verecundiam, the appeal to credentialed authority.

A Churchian Response, part II

This is the second part of my critique of the Churchian response to the 16 Points of the Alt-Right. The first part, covering Points 1-4, is here.

5. I reject nationalism on principle. The ontology of a thing is its necessary attribute. The unnecessary attributes are accidental. When I consider the ontology of a human being, his or her ethnicity, nationality, race, skin tone, language, age, and body shape are all accidental attributes. This means I am still the person who God created me to be whether or not I was born of any other racial background, in any other environment, at any other time in history. I will always be me. If “we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights” has any meaning, then the ontology of human beings runs contrary to nationalism. This does not mean I do not love the United State of America. No. I believe in what the United States claimed itself to be at the moment it established itself. Being anti-nationalist does not mean I am unpatriotic. Again, I say, “no.” I volunteered to serve this nation and I gave a portion of my time for that purpose. I love the United States and believe this nation is a bastion of freedom. I do not believe we are superior by our existence.

As I pointed out, this gentleman is hopelessly incoherent. He professes to love the United States and believes it is “a bastion of freedom” but rejects nationalism on principle, does not believe it is superior, and believes its attributes are accidental. This is not possible. If you are anti-nationalist, then you are by definition anti-patriotic and anti-American. Worse than that, you are a globalist, a servant of Babel, and an enemy of the God who created the nations.

6. Well, I am dedicated to the proposition to carry the Gospel to all nations and people groups. My objective is 100{f34b2ed14022567e3962d98ceb517f14c2acb643b80147bdb11c1357fe49acc6} globalist. I want to spread Christianity to every nation on earth. As it if even matters after that; I also want to spread liberty to every nation and people group. I also want to help build sustainable economies, educational facilities, and hospitals in every nation with access to every people group. I want to universally outlaw elective abortion, elective euthanasia, slavery, human trafficking, prostitution, illicit drugs, rape, incest, genital mutilation, and caste systems. Knowing I will not succeed, I want to end starvation, disease epidemics, and poverty. On these issues, the Alt Right will call me a globalist. I will respond by saying they are acting like foolish isolationists who are out of sync with moral duty. “Then Jesus came to them and said, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.’” (Matthew 28:18-20)

“When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne. Before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. And he will place the sheep on his right, but the goats on the left. Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.’ Then the righteous will answer him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?’ And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.’ Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’ Then they also will answer, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to you?’ Then he will answer them, saying, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’ And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.” (Matthew 25:31-46)

The Bible says to “go and make disciples of all nations.” It does not say to “eradicate all nations, eliminate all borders, and convert the world into a one-world government, so there will be no escape from the rule of the most ruthless and evil people in the world.” Since this guy likes quoting verses, I have three for him.

Anyone who does not provide for their relatives, and especially for their own household, has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.
– 1 Timothy 5:8

But Jesus replied, “It is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs.” “Yes, Lord,” she said, “even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.”
– Mark 7:26-27

And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation.
– Acts 17:26

In any event, any Churchian who openly endorses globalism, free trade, and open immigration is clearly not in service to Jesus Christ, but rather, to the Prince of This World. This is hardly a secret; the globalist elite openly flaunts their true allegiances. Remember, by their fruits you will know them.

7. This is another example of the Alt Right expressing ignorance. “Anti-equalitarian” is not a word. Instead they mean anti-egalitarian. They are so woefully ignorant about the concepts they do not even know the nomenclature of the discussion. For the record, I am a complementarian with regard to the roles of men and women in relationship and limited some career roles. I believe women should never witness combat because God did not design the female body for such rigor. I believe a woman should not be the pastor of a church. I believe men cannot be mothers and women cannot be fathers. Beyond those limitations, and in spite of the innate differences in how men and women think, we are and should be equals in all socio-economic political roles. I am very much an egalitarian in those realms. All human beings are equal in terms of worth. “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” (Galatians 3:28) “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” (Genesis 1:27) If God created us all in His image, we all share the same worth and rights of human beings. I absolutely reject the Alt Right’s statement.

Yeah, so about that “expressing ignorance”. This moron is more than 200 years behind the language. Anti-equalitarian is most certainly a word. From THE AMERICAN HERITAGE® DICTIONARY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE, FIFTH EDITION by the Editors of the American Heritage Dictionaries.

EQUALITARIAN
Adjective
Characterized by social equality and equal rights for all people.

Noun
A person who accepts or promotes the view of equalitarianism.

Origin
Coined around 1800 from equality +‎ -arian.

All human beings are not equal in terms of worth, not even by his own cited Bible verses. If there is neither Jew nor Greek in Christ Jesus, then are those human beings equal to those who are not in Christ Jesus? If this cretin was capable of following his own logic, he would soon reach the conclusion that no one is damned, God loves everyone, and there was no need for Jesus Christ to die on the cross.

8. The Alt Right is so scientifically illiterate they have to make up words to attempt to sound like they know what they are saying. The least scientific stance one can have is to “presumptively accept” something. Science is not a practice of democracy but of evidence. If all the scientists agreed that water boils at 75º Celsius, it would not change the boiling temperature form 100º Celsius. 90{f34b2ed14022567e3962d98ceb517f14c2acb643b80147bdb11c1357fe49acc6} of scientist believing in anthropocentric climate change does not make it so. Science is a process of observation, making hypotheses, testing, observing, and drawing conclusions. Nothing in the scientific process is based on democracy. The Alt Right is baselessly accusing scientists of corruption. I may not agree with the conclusion of every scientist; however, I am not accusing them of corruption when they interpret data differently than I assume I would. I reject the Alt Right’s fabricated language and blanket accusation.

Baselessly accusing scientists of corruption? “More than 70{f34b2ed14022567e3962d98ceb517f14c2acb643b80147bdb11c1357fe49acc6} of researchers have tried and failed to reproduce another scientist’s experiments, and more than half have failed to reproduce their own experiments” according to a survey of 1,500 scientists by Nature. There is nothing baseless about what 90 percent of scientists themselves consider to be a “reproducibility crisis” nor are concerns about the corruption of scientistry limited to the Alt-Right.

And science is considerably more than just “a process of observation, making hypotheses, testing, observing, and drawing conclusions.” That is precisely why neologisms such as scientody: the method of science, scientistry: the profession of science, and scientage: the knowledge base of science are required. The clarity of thought and communication that such neologisms require tend to enhance one’s understanding of science, it is the precise opposite of scientific illiteracy.

Part III of IV will be posted tomorrow.

Olympic Lives Matter

The US Winter Olympic team shows what unity in diversity looks like.

Over the past six years the U.S. Olympic Committee has made concerted efforts to promote diversity among its team members. In 2012, a committee was formed to improve diversity and Jason Thompson was hired as director of diversity and inclusion.

In an angry tweet, Davis, who has won two golds and two silvers in previous Olympics took a shot at Hamlin, the holder of a single bronze medal.

‘I am an American and when I won the 1000m in 2010 I became the first American to 2-peat in that event,’ Davis wrote on Twitter. He then slammed TeamUSA for ‘dishonorably’ tossing a coin to decide who would have the honor of carrying the flag. ‘No problem. I can wait until 2022,’ he added before using the hashtag #BlackHistoryMonth2018.

Why don’t African-Americans simply compete as their own team? After all, we are frequently informed by them that they are a separate nation and a proud and vibrant people with their own history and culture. Shouldn’t they be able to have their own Olympic team too? Isn’t it racist to deny them that right? Why should they be forced to march behind the flag of bigoted white people, like slaves, instead of behind a proud Black Power flag?

On a tangential note, there are few things more reliably predictive of things about to head south than a commitment to diversity.

The horrors of the LGBT household

Lifesite profiles Moira Greyland’s autobiographical memoir:

The daughter of famed science fiction author Marion Zimmer Bradley has written an autobiographical account revealing the horrors of growing up in a home raised by LGBT parents who repeatedly sexually abused her and her brothers.

“I have heard all the customary protestations. ‘Your parents were evil because they were evil, not because they were gay,’ but I disagree,” writes Moira Greyland in her new book, The Last Closet: The Dark Side of Avalon.

“The underlying problem is a philosophical one that is based on beliefs that are not only common to gay culture but to popular culture. And this is the central belief: All Sex is Always Right No Matter What,” she wrote.

“I had both biological parents in the home, but both refused to act like traditional parents,” writes Greyland. “I needed my father to protect me and to see me as a girl instead of refusing to protect me and seeing me as an amorphous nothing who competed with him for boys. I needed my mother to love me and hold me and comfort me instead of being a terrifying, angry dictator. Worse than that, I was expected to not want them to love me and protect me, or to act like normal parents. I was supposed to be happy that they were doing their own thing, no matter what they did to us.”

The Last Closet has been an Amazon bestseller for weeks as a Kindle e-book, and is scheduled to be published as a print book this month. Over one hundred readers have reviewed it, and virtually all have given it five stars.

The book recounts Greyland’s life with her mother, who was the author of The Mists of Avalon and many other famous works of science fiction and fantasy, and her father, Walter Breen, who was a world-renowned authority on numismatics. Both identified as “gay,” both abused drugs and were involved in occult practices, and both were pedophiles, Greyland says, a claim that has been confirmed by her only surviving brother.

Man people desperately want to believe homosexuals Are Just Like Everybody Else. But they are not. Just ask a policeman. Or ask a child of gay parents. Once an individual decides that he no longer has to abide by traditional morality because he has certain urges, it becomes considerably easier to violate even the most outrageous moral norms when he feels the need or even just the desire.

That doesn’t mean that gays can’t abide by traditional moral standards, or that all straights do, only that the probabilities observably differ. A gay man is 14 times more likely to abuse a child than a straight man. Even worse, gay priests are 198 times more likely to abuse children than straight men. One of the ugliest aspects of The Last Closet is the way in which Moira’s parents intellectually rationalized even their most abhorrent behavior. They were not unique in their ability to do that.

You can shriek “bigot” and “homophobe” if you like. But reality doesn’t care. No amount of denial will eliminate the logic, the probabilities, the statistics, or the pain of the abused children.

GDC rescinds award to Nolan Bushnell

I’m glad I stopped going to GDC after it changed its name from CGDC. It looks as if we’re going to have to launch a new conference for game designers who actually value gamedev history one of these days. Corporatization and subsequent SJW infestation have completely ruined something that used to be the highlight of my year back in the day.

The Game Developer’s Conference (GDC) announced that it would be honoring Nolan Bushnell, the co-founder of Atari, with its Pioneer Award.

Brianna Wu took to Twitter to disagree.

What followed was the #NotNolan campaign and a quick article in The Verge that would result in the GDC rescinding the award the very next day, instead choosing to honor “the pioneering and unheard voices of the past.”

I conducted my own research into the situation. I talked to several women who worked with Nolan Bushnell back in the 1970s. I talked with a man who has researched Atari for decades and wrote an 800 page book on the history of the company. I talked with Allan Alcorn, the engineer who designed Pong. They all provide a story much different to the one currently reported on by the press.

Several hours after Brianna Wu’s tweets, Elizabeth Sampat, who bills herself as a game designer and activist, posted the first of the #NotNolan tweets. Two minutes later, Jennifer Scheurle, another game designer and activist, followed it up with her own tweet. The #NotNolan campaign had begun.

The early stage of the #NotNolan campaign consisted of a total of 26 tweets sent out by 18 accounts. Several of these accounts are listed as game developers, including a developer from Bungie, one from Blizzard, and one from id Software. These 26 tweets received a cumulative total of 221 retweets and 645 likes — and likely fewer than that when The Verge wrote about them, as I’m counting them several days later.

In the article, the writer cited the examples of sexist behavior that Brianna Wu claimed, as well as some of the 26 tweets that comprised the NotNolan twitter campaign. It concluded, “Although many industries, from Hollywood to media, have had their ‘me too’ moments highlighting the predatory or sexist behavior of prominent men, video games has not” [sic] — and here she cites as evidence a post on the Patreon account of Elizabeth Sampat lamenting the lack of a MeToo moment in the video game industry. The GDC is quoted at the end saying they had not known about Bushnell’s behavior, but “will look at these more closely.”

The Verge article was posted at 8:46pm that night. On the next day, at 11:20am, the GDC rescinded the Pioneer award from Nolan Bushnell.

Unbelieveable. Literally Wu (real name John Flynt) has really become a cancerous, self-promoting little wart on the backside of the game industry. A microscopic and insignificant freakshow, but an increasingly irritating one.

I’d like to see game developers and game designers start boycotting GDC over this. I would, except I already stopped attending because it had become too commercial and too crowded.