How SF-SJWs celebrate the Happy Holidays

Because, after all, we all know they certainly don’t celebrate Christmas. Anyhow, this may be the most SF-SJW headline ever seen at File 770. Or, possibly, anywhere.

Season’s Readings: N.K. Jemisin & Christopher Brown Offer Visions of Unhappy New Years at the KGB Bar

Just wait, it gets even better.

In a special treat, and fighting bronchial problems, she shared the revised version of an unpublished short story, at present entitled “Give Me Cornbread or Give Me Death.”  Continuing the evening’s dystopian theme (where was the season’s merry jollity?), we were shown a future where the powerful inhabitants of Towers dominate, ruling by fear and dependency, and have genetically tweaked frogs (as in the Plague in the Book of Exodus) into drug-sniffing dragons.  Rural black raiders, however, have co-opted the dragons, diverting them from eating dark-skinned people with what sounded like soul food (this is a serious story, she reminded us).

Ladies and gentlemen, your two-time winner of the Hugo Award for Best Novel! Let’s hope she can make it three straight in 2018!

Still not tired.

I expect it will be sooner than that

Another Deep Stater is deep-sixed:

Facing Republican attacks, FBI’s deputy director plans to retire early next year

Andrew McCabe, the FBI’s deputy director who has been the target of Republican critics for more than a year, plans to retire in a few months when he becomes fully eligible for pension benefits, according to people familiar with the matter.

McCabe spent hours in Congress this past week, facing questions behind closed doors from members of three committees. Republicans said they were dissatisfied with his answers; Democrats called it a partisan hounding…. McCabe’s role is being examined by the Justice Department’s inspector general, who has said a report on how the Clinton probe was handled should be finished by spring.

I very much doubt McCabe will make it to retirement. The article also mentions that the FBI’s top lawyer, James Baker, “has been reassigned.”

Wright on Knight

The illustrious John C. Wright adds to the increasingly incandescent luster of the Castalia House blog with his first regular post there:

It is an eerie thing to reread the half-forgotten stories treasured in one’s youth. For better or worse, the hold haunts never look the same. The worse happens when eyes grown cynical with age will see tinsel and rubbish where once glamor gleamed as fresh and expectant as the sunrise in the Garden of Eden. And, to the contrary, the better happens when one discovers added layers of wonder, or deeper thoughts to savor, than a schoolboy’s brain can hold.

So I decided to read, in their order of publication, the Conan stories of Robert E Howard. I was not a devout fan of Conan in my youth, so some stories I had read before, others were new. But in each case I was surprised, nay, I was shocked, at how much better they were than I recalled.

In this space, time permitting, I hope to review each tale as I read it, starting with Phoenix on the Sword. But before any review talks about what Conan is, let me tell the candid reader what Conan is not.

As with HP Lovecraft’s spooky tales or with the adventure yarns of Edgar Rice Burroughs, the unwary reader often confuses the popularized and simplified versions of iconic characters, Cthulhu or Tarzan, with the character as first he appeared in the pages of a pulp magazine. Tropes now commonplace, endlessly copied, at the time were stark and startling and one-of-a-kind.

The original character who is later taken into a franchise or revised for comic books, film and television, or who is copied or reincarnated by the sincere flattery of lesser talents, is inevitably more raw and real than such dim Xeroxes of Xeroxes. These franchise writers, imitators, and epigones rarely do justice to the tale they copy, some, for whatever reason, do grave injustice.

And, of course, certain writers of modest talent and no memorable accomplishment delight to assume the pen and mantle of the art critics and connoisseur in order to diminish the stature of author they cannot match. They do a deliberate injustice to iconic characters, and further muddy the perception.

Read the whole thing there, and not just because Mr. Wright administers Damon Knight, the John Scalzi of the Silver Age of Science Fiction, a well-deserved posthumous kicking. It is ever so fitting that the SFWA Grand Master award bears that petty little mediocrity’s name.

Genetically inferior

More scientific evidence in support of my original hypothesis that atheism is a form of mental abnormality that results in spiritual insensitivity is accumulating:

Left-handed people are more likely to be atheists, a study has found, as it says belief is passed on genetically.  The study suggests that religious people have fewer genetic mutations and are therefore less likely to be left handed or have conditions such as autism or schizophrenia.

British academic Edward Dutton, a professor at Oulu University, Finland, said that in pre-industrial times religiosity was passed on like other genetic attributes because it was associated with greater stability, mental health and better social behaviour. But modern science means many people who would not previously have survived are making it to adulthood and reproducing – leading to a greater incidence of atheism.

Lack of belief in God is connected to genetic mutations which cause attributes such as left-handedness or autism, the paper argues.

This would also put Bruce Charlton’s Mouse Utopia observations into context, as atheism appears to be one aspect of the nihilistic despair that is a consequence of the increased prevalence of genetic inferiority that results from easier circumstances.

Over the target

Mike Cernovich did an AMA this week and not only did the SJWs came out in droves to try to attack him, but their counterparts in the media immediately leaped to try to set the Narrative about it in textbook SJW fashion.

Right–wing Pizzagate peddler, conspiracy theorist blowhard, and attention–seeker Mike Cernovich held an AMA on Reddit on Friday. But it didn’t really go anywhere because Cernovich spent most of the time dodging questions and responding with questions of his own rather than providing anyone with any real answers. Which is the opposite of what an AMA is supposed to be.

Anyone familiar with Cernovich—who most recently went after MSNBC contributor Sam Seder over a joke tweet and briefly got him fired—won’t be surprised by any of this. Any exposure for Cernovich, who claims he is a “journalist” and is peddling his book, “Gorilla Mindset: How to Control Your Thoughts and Emotions and Live Life on Your Terms,” is a good thing and helps those donations continue to flow.

If you’re not really familiar with Cernovich’s “work,” all you need to know is that he authored blog posts like, “When in Doubt, Whip it Out,” and not even Alex Jones can really stand him. Some of Cernovich’s best work can be seen here.

On Reddit, the AMA’s first question pretty much set the tone for the entire thing: “Mike, buddy, big fan, long time listener – my question – how do you wake up every morning and resist the urge to swallow a bullet knowing that your lasting memory on this planet will amount to nothing more than a fecal stain on humanity?” a Redditor named MrZissman asked.

Cernovich attacked the question with an eagerness that quickly waned as the session dragged on. “I sleep like a champ and wake up energized every day. How’s your life going?”

This is somehow supposed to be news? Look at the headlines of these articles, and remember, they are about a freaking Reddit AMA.

Mike Cernovich Hounded on Rape Allegation in Reddit AMA
– Daily Beast

Mike Cernovich’s Reddit AMA Backfires Spectacularly
– Splinter

Mike Cernovich Did A Reddit AMA And Got Relentlessly Dunked On
– Digg

Alt-Right Troll Mike Cernovich Gets Ass Handed to Him in Reddit AMA
– SF Weekly

Mike Cernovich’s AMA Went About As Well As You’d Expect
– NY Mag

How does an AMA backfire? How is “SJWs falsely accuse people they don’t like and call them names” supposed to be significant or noteworthy in any way? And how long will it be before we see this sort of “story” appear in the Jeff Bezos blog?

All these attacks actually accomplished was to demonstrate two things we already knew:

  1. Mike Cernovich is too big to ignore
  2. SJWs always lie

EQUATION now in paperback

When the devil moves in next door to Cooper Smith Cooper’s house, Cooper doesn’t know what to make of him at first. But when the unexpectedly neighborly Scratch helps the unemployed actuary find a job at a local insurance company with the help of some inside information into the activities of Death, Cooper decides the old devil might not be so bad after all.

The only problem, Cooper thinks, is how to conceal from his fellow actuaries his newfound ability to perfectly predict the time and place of people’s deaths. And then, there is also the small matter of the screams of his recently deceased neighbor coming from Scratch’s basement furnace to consider.

AN EQUATION OF ALMOST INFINITE COMPLEXITY is a sardonically funny debut novel from J. Mulrooney. Now in paperback and featuring a redesigned cover! 474 pages, $19.99.

From the reviews:

  • J. Mulrooney has crafted a modern fable that illustrates the primacy of the Socratic imperative. In telling the story, the author employs a mordant wit to throw well-deserved darts at journalists, government employees, police officers and baby boomers.
  • Best book in a while. What happens when you are a failed insurance actuary and the devil and his dysfunctional spawn, Death, move in next door? Why, you turn it into a career advantage! As others have said, the humor is very “Douglas Adams-like” with a lot of chuckles and few LOLs. Well worth the read.
  • The best debut novel I’ve read in years. The author hits it out of the park with a truly original story, a crisp writing style and a sophisticated sense of humor that brings a new dimension to this age old tale of “good” versus “evil”. In fact, both good and evil are almost unrecognisable in this tale of a disillusioned Satan who is desperate to retire after the revelation that his traditional role as “Prince of Darkness” is completely irrelevant and no one needs his help finding their way into Hell.
  • This book is FUNNY. I don’t mean like “Louis C.K. talking about necrophilia” funny that passes as comedy today, but actual intelligent wit. This book has wry, dry, absurdist, ironic, observational, satirical, droll and situational comedy. I literally laughed out loud on several occasions, and chuckled merrily on many others. Fans of Douglas Adams will be delighted; the style and sensibility is reminiscent of his “Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy,” or “Good Omens” by Prachett & Gaiman, if they’d been influenced by C. S. Lewis and and G. K. Chesteron.
  • I got this book not really knowing what to expect. Quite frankly, I was blown away. Far from being a simple piece of entertaining fluff, I would describe it as a true work of literature. The concept is so clever and the characters so well thought out that I still think about it days after finishing. The lovelorn protagonist is beyond hopeless, but his journey through the story comes with a bizarrely satisfying payoff at the end. Unexpected, brilliant, clever and entertaining.

AN EQUATION OF ALMOST INFINITE COMPLEXITY is probably Castalia House’s most underrated work. But it is a very good, very clever novel. If J. Mulrooney was a New Yorker instead of a Canadian and was published by a boutique New York City-based publishing house instead of Castalia, he’d very likely be hailed as the next Dave Eggers or David Foster Wallace, except, of course, that Mulrooney’s work is considerably more amusing.

The EU Commission is not the spirit of democracy

Although the commissioners seem to think so. I have my issues with democracy, but if one has to choose between direct democracy and limited representative democracy, it is now very clear that the former is vastly to be preferred to the latter, no matter what the American Founding Fathers wrote about “mob rule”. Because a mob of people are clearly wiser and less corrupt than the sort of unsavory creatures who inevitably slither into position to “represent” them.

Although the commission likes to talk a lot about democracy as a European value, it defines this as what Brussels wants, rather than what the people want. Time and again, with a ballot paper in front of them, a majority of voters – from those in Denmark who rejected the Maastricht Treaty in a referendum in 1992, to Britain last year and now Catalonia this week – have ticked the wrong box.

I am not sure that Catalan independence is a good idea any more than Scotland’s breakaway from the UK might be, but the choice is surely for the people affected.

Nothing displayed the EU’s blithe disregard for democracy better than the reaction to the Catalan vote by the European Parliament’s Brexit co-ordinator Guy Verhofstadt. He completely ignored the fact that the three separatist parties had won a total of 70 seats in the 135-seat regional parliament – ensuring a separatist majority – and instead congratulated the pro-Spanish Citizens party which gained 37 seats, admittedly making it the largest single party but one in no position of power.

The trouble for the EU is that resentment over this ‘democratic deficit’ is growing daily. Across Europe – from Austria, where the anti-EU far-Right Freedom Party is now part of the coalition government, to Eastern European EU nations such as Poland and Hungary, which are visceral in their opposition to EU immigration policies – Brussels is increasingly coming up against the anger of voters.

In Poland, Brussels has inflamed that anger by moving to suspend the country’s voting rights in the EU after a dispute over judicial reforms that Brussels claims undermine Polish courts’ independence.

This attempt by the EU to make Warsaw its whipping boy – as though Eastern European members should take their subsidies and in return do the commission’s bidding – has appalled Hungary, which has now come out in support of Poland.

The anti-democratic EU elite well-merits being dismissed as Eurofascists.

Throttling their own tech

Despite being a very early fan – I had both an Apple //e and an original Macintosh as well as a Macintosh SE – I despise what Apple has become. And with good cause; they are an SJW-converged and fundamentally dishonest corporation:

Apple has long inspired an almost religious devotion among customers and tech aficionados — but it just seriously undermined its fans’ faith and loyalty.

The company on Wednesday acknowledged what some people have long suspected: that it has been secretly stifling the performance of older iPhones.

Critics have accused the company in the past, based on anecdotal evidence, of purposely slowing phones to compel users to upgrade to the latest model. While Apple admitted to the practice on Wednesday, it sought to underscore that it had done so for a purely altruistic reason: to prevent older phones from shutting down unexpectedly.

The justification hasn’t mollified Apple’s outraged fans. If anything, the company’s statement has stoked the conspiracy theories, and for good reason.

Now they’re lying about the reason for their despicable behavior. Can you honestly say you are even a little bit surprised?

They knew all along

Ronald Reagan and the Queen of England discussed economics and the prospects for the future in 1991.

The footage begins with the former president asking if the coffee being served is decaffeinated. The Queen calls replies ‘No, it’s ordinary’ before calling over a waiter to request some, then telling Mr Reagan ‘We try our best. It’s coming.’

Their conversation then turns to economics.  Mr Reagan, who finished his second term as president in 1989, told the British monarch: ‘Now if you’ve got two thirds… paying for the bureaucrats and give only one third to the needy people, something’s wrong there.’

The Queen responded by saying that ‘democracies are bankrupt’ because of such policies.

‘But you see all of the democracies are bankrupt now, because of the way the services have been planned for people to grab,’ she told him.

‘I know, we tried to get some of these things changed and reduce them,’ said Reagan.

‘For example, we have a rule to this day, that a supervisor’s salary is based on the number of people he supervises,’ he continued.

‘Well now, you have a group of people that have no interest in reducing the payroll, even if they can, because it will reduce their salary.’

The Queen, who had hosted the event for Florida’s grandest society including another former US president – Jimmy Carter – agreed.

‘Obviously, yes. It’s extraordinary, isn’t it? I think the next generation is going to have a very difficult time.’

The answer, obviously, was to flood the West with credit and third world immigrants, because monetary and population inflation are good for the economy. It’s interesting, though, that both public figures already knew that which eluded the public and most opinion-leaders for another 17 years.

Mailvox: feel the rage

GW wonders about the socio-sexuality of skepticism:

Perhaps you haven’t been following the debacle between the YouTube race realists and the skeptic community, but I would love to hear your view on the main instigator of it, Kraut and Tea. His infantile attacks on imagined ghosts of the Alt-Right, blatant hypocrisy in regards to the principles of not deplatforming or doxxing people, and smug overestimation of his level of expertise in biology and statistics seem like classic symptoms of a Gamma’s wounded ego. That he also refuses to silence his tongue when thoroughly outmatched is just more proof of his status.

It makes me think the “online skeptic” nowadays is predisposed towards being Gamma. What else can explain their lack of conviction? Their unwillingness to argue the believer or race realist in good faith?

There is no question that the average “internet atheist” is a Gamma. More than a few are Omegas. Both scientific studies that looked into my original hypothesis about atheism being a consequence of being on the autism spectrum found correlations between an inability to make social connections and an inability to feel spiritual connections.

This sort of aggressive atheist are akin to the blind man who not only insists that everyone else is lying about their ability “to see”, but also that they are inferior to him due to their inability to come to terms with their blindness. And then proceeds to try to poke out their eyes.

I have no intrinsic problem with people who don’t believe what I do about God or anything else. But I utterly despise those who first proclaim that religion is a crutch, then promptly attempt to kick out that crutch from others who are reliant upon it. They are nasty little creatures.