This is what “Zero Fucks” looks like

John Scalzi goes into great detail explaining that he doesn’t care that people hate him, that only a few dozen people hate him anyhow, that it doesn’t matter that people hate him, and also, it totally doesn’t bother him at all that people hate him:

Specific, embarrassingly devoted hater and his pals:

I don’t have much time for this dude anymore, and I suspect it really bothers him. Cultivating the idea of a feud between us is a cornerstone of his publishing strategy, and asserting equivalency in our careers is how he tries to convince others he’s important. And while it’s nice every now and again to raise lots of money for charitable causes off his obsession with me, in a general sense I’ve been kind of busy. I pretty much don’t think of him unless he’s jumping up and down to get my attention, or trying to make a buck off my name. It’s a lopsided deal — he needs me, but I don’t need him for anything. My real annoyance at this point is that other folks are unintentionally doing this jerk’s desperately attention-seeking work for him, sending me updates on the latest nonsense he’s saying or doing, involving the version of me he peddles to his pals. If all y’all could resist the temptation, I’d be obliged. I don’t actually care about this dude.

“Don’t actually care” is where I mostly am with my haters these days, in fact, and I acknowledge it’s a nice place to be in. I’m blessed with work I like and people in my life I love, and the time I have now is all the time I’ll ever have. I plan to spend as much of it focusing on the things I like and people I love as I can, and rather little of it on the people who get off on hating me. Go on and hate me, dudes. It’s your karma. I have better things to do with my time.

First, SJWs always lie. And John Scalzi lies more than most. Scalzi is an insecure poser, which is why you can be certain that whatever the truth might be, it is not whatever he is saying.

Second, I never paid any attention whatsoever to John Scalzi until he began attacking me in 2005 in order to curry favor with Patrick Nielsen Hayden. I had no idea who he was. If Scalzi disappeared tomorrow, it wouldn’t bother me in the slightest. I don’t need him, I don’t want his attention, and I don’t even hate him. He’s nothing but PNH’s tool; his entire career is entirely dependent upon PNH. PNH and Tor Books are the disease, Scalzi is merely the symptom. I don’t read his blogs. I don’t read his books. I don’t read his Twitter account. I almost certainly pay less attention to him than he does to me; if nothing else, I don’t have the time.

Third, John Scalzi was so indifferent that he took the time to narrate the audiobook of a parody of SJWs Always Lie in 2015. (I found this somewhat remarkable given that I couldn’t be bothered to do the same for my own book.) This uncomfortable fact was completely swept under the table and ignored by those who found it utterly outrageous that Castalia House would dare to publish a parody of his most recent novel. Those who run with the ridiculous “envy” and “obsession” themes always skate over the fact that my responses to Scalzi are just that: responses to his little forays.

Fourth, I will always find the time to hammer John Scalzi. He is a horrible, dishonest little creature, and very nearly Plato’s Form of everything that a man should not be. If he didn’t exist, we’d have to manufacture negative examples.

Fifth, this long post indicates that Mr. Scalzi is rattled by the failure of The Collapsing Empire to break out in a manner justifying his book contract. Tor Books pushed it as hard as they could, but once more, they discovered that while you can call a midlister a “bestselling author” all you want, that’s not going to make his book a hit. The book sucks; even his fans don’t think much of it. Which is why the over/under on the contract being “renegotiated” moves from Book Four to Book Three.

From the comments:

I didn’t mention the name of my specific, embarrassingly devoted hater in the piece because it amuses me not to, but I don’t mind if you name him in the comment thread here. With that said, don’t turn your mentions of him into a two-minute hate, please. We all know he’s an awful person. Let’s not reiterate it endlessly.

So very amusing! See: First Law of SJW. What’s fascinating is the idea that their pretending not to pay attention to me is somehow “infuriating”. I didn’t pay any notice to these weird little losers in high school, what on Earth makes them think I am desperate for their attention now?

Syria, because North Korea

It increasingly appears that the Syrian attack was intended to put pressure on China to end the North Korean nuclear threat.

April 11, 2017: A Chinese daily newspaper (Global Times) known for being a state-controlled media outlet used to test new ideas published an item today pointing out that if North Korea does not abandon its nuclear weapons program (which is seen as a threat to China) then China will bomb the nuclear facilities and North Korea will have to live with that or suffer further military and economic consequences they cannot respond to (by attacking China). This article also warned the United States not to contemplate doing this, as North Korea was for neighbor China to deal with, not some distant superpower. Within hours the article was removed from the Global Times website, but many people had seen it and it still existed in Google cache. In other words, China was telling North Korea that stronger measures from China were now a possibility. At the same time the U.S. was making it clear that the kind of attack on Syria the U.S. recently carried out could be tried on North Korea. China agrees that it might come to that but they insist that the bombs or missiles be Chinese.

My current thinking is that the attack on Syria was intended to let Premier Xi know that Trump meant what he was saying about North Korea, and that if China did not swiftly address the situation, the US naval forces being sent to the Sea of Japan would be utilized instead. This also means that the US will have additional assets in place if North Korea were to respond to a Chinese attack by attacking South Korea.

I’ve never thought it was an accident that the attack took place during the meeting between Trump and Xi. It also tends to answer the question that has been plaguing the Trump-doubters, which is why Trump would suddenly appear to do an about-face on Syria. But Trump still doesn’t care about Syria or see it in the national interest, he simply needed something to blow up in order to make it clear to Xi that he would actually follow through on his threats. And I think Trump actually agrees with the Chinese in that he, too, would prefer that any bombs or missiles dropped on North Korea be Chinese rather than American.

If this is the correct interpretation of events, and if the Syria attack causes the Chinese to remove the Kim dynasty from power in North Korea, it will be seen as a brilliant grand strategic move on the God-Emperor’s part. It will also demonstrate that Trump not only is not controlled by the neocons, but that he doesn’t need them at all.

The horror scenario

It’s interesting to see that the core concept of Infogalactic is Sir Tim Berners-Lee’s horror scenario:

I talk about the horror scenario of going to a candidate’s webpage and depending on who you were you get a different message and that is just marketing 101 for the political websites out there. So we need to rethink the way we have built society on top of the web.

But why shouldn’t people see what they prefer to see? Why should they be forced to see what Sir Tim, or the 512 Wikipedia admins want them to see?

CITY BEYOND TIME now in paperback

Metachronopolis is the golden city beyond time. Ruled by the Masters of Time, who can travel freely throughout the multitudinous time lines of Man’s history, the city is a shining society of heroes and horrors. For the arrogant Masters, who steal famous men and women out of the past and bring them to the eternal city for their amusement, are not only beyond time, but beyond remorse and retribution too.

CITY BEYOND TIME: Tales of the Fall of Metachronopolis is John C. Wright’s mind-bending and astonishingly brilliant take on time travel. Utilizing a centuries-spanning perspective, Wright expertly weaves a larger tale out of a series of smaller ones. Part anthology and part novel, CITY BEYOND TIME is fascinating, melancholy, frightening, and a true masterpiece of story-telling by one of the most important and audacious authors in science fiction today.

John C. Wright is the Dragon Award-winning author of SOMEWHITHER, THE GOLDEN AGE and AWAKE IN THE NIGHT LAND. CITY BEYOND TIME: Tales of the Fall of Metachronopolis is 192 pages and retails for $12.99. From the reviews:

  1. This collection of stories is amazing, and, true to form, incredibly deep and convoluted, (although well thought out). The vagaries of time when time travel is a part of the equation, when cause and effect are disassociated from one another, when paradoxes are used and abused by the ruling class is positively mind-bending.
  2. There are a lot of time travel books out there, the best and enduring being ones that examine questions of why or how or who. John C Wright has done what I’ve never seen before and examined time travel by “ought”; only with questions far deeper than just “ought you kill baby Hitler?”
  3. I would recommend this book to anyone who loves time travel science fiction. It is better then most time travel books that are linear in style and movement. It is by no means predictable and keeps you reading for more.
  4. Time travel has been a staple of science fiction for decades, as has the usual paradoxes. But Wright has tried a new twist – the morality of time travel. What is right and wrong when you can go back in time, rerun the past, and create the future? And what horrors can you conceal? Wright tells these stories with an elegant phrasing rarely seen today. Highly recommended.
  5. He writes as if Ray Bradbury and G.K. Chesterton stepped into an oddly shimmering portal, fractured the timelines, and produced an amalgamation, bent on one thing and one thing only: to produce engaging and enlightening entertainment disguised as books.

SJW doesn’t like being identified as such

The amusing thing about SJWs taking offense to being called SJWs is that they clearly don’t understand that it was originally their own label adopted by their own kind that was weaponized by the Alt-Right’s sarcasm. Also: Every.Single.Time.

I’ve always said that I appreciate all my readers, both those who agree with me and those who don’t. But lately I’ve been puzzled by the new slurs directed at me by some of the latter. Many I didn’t even understand, so I did some digging.

Apparently, tried-and-true insults such as “fag,” “fairy,” “kike” and “hebe” (yes, I’m Jewish) are old-school, especially among the alt-right. That small, far-right movement that seeks a whites-only state is developing new coded language, much as the Nazis once did, says noted linguist George Lakoff, a professor emeritus at the University of California at Berkeley.

For instance, in February I wrote about Milo Yiannopoulos, the now-disgraced Breitbart News editor and alt-right poster boy. I heard from many readers about that column, which took Yiannopoulos to task for his incendiary language. But one email caught my eye: “Milo is far less bigoted, misogynist, and hateful than those of you sick sociopathic and psychotic SJW’s who smear him so desperately.” Sick, sociopathic and psychotic, I knew. But SJW? I had no clue. In a personal ad it might mean “straight Jewish woman,” but two of those don’t apply to me. So what was this snarky new gem of an insult?

I emailed back, “What is an SJW?” The reply: “An SJW is a social justice warrior. In the press, this particular public predator tends to be big on PC [political correctness] virtue signaling but happy to smear others viciously with false accusations of sexism, racism, white nationalism, hate speech, etc.”

Well, that was certainly clear — I’m a “public predator” allegedly guilty of smearing Yiannopoulos by referring to his very own, widely reported hateful language.

I started looking into other slurs readers hurled at me. There was “libtard,” and one I really liked at first — “snowflake,” because they’re magical, in moderation.

But here’s the nasty undercurrent: These new words are intrinsic to the alt-right’s rise, according to Lakoff. He connects this to the Nazis and the coded language (prime example: “the master race”) that eventually allowed them to topple governmental institutions. “The strategy is to control discourse,” Lakoff points out. “One way you do that is preemptive name calling . . . based on a moral hierarchy.”

First, the Alt-Right is much bigger than the Alt-White, much less the Alt-Reich. As evidence of this contention, I note that I’ve just been sent translations of the 16 Points in Ukrainian and, of all things, Esperanto. Second, Milo is Alt-Lite, not Alt-Right.

Third, the incessant whining about name-calling by people who don’t hesitate to hurl “Nazi” and “anti-semitic” at a pizza delivery driver who arrives thirty second late with their Veggie Supreme with extra eggplant and tofu is both pathetic as well as indicative of the extreme susceptibility of SJWs to rhetoric.

Fourth, they’re not “codewords”. As one of Steve’s commenters pointed out: ” The alt right is small but has power and this is for one reason only – the alt right is the one group that Calls Things By Their True Name.” And fifth, it’s not hard to understand why Steve Sailer’s appeal remains self-limited, he’s the classic example of the dialectic speaker who simply can’t bring himself to accept the necessity of rhetoric. I mean, if you’re still loftily sperging at this point about using the term “warrior” for SJWs, you simply don’t grasp the way rhetoric works.

Steven Petrow’s column is prima facie evidence of why you should simply utilize SJW instead of whatever your preferred dialectic alternative might be.

“We’re not going into Syria”

The God-Emperor spells it out:

Amid complaints that his aides are saying different things about Syria and his policy is confusing, President Trump emphatically cleared the air. “We’re not going into Syria,” he told me yesterday in an exclusive interview. “Our policy is the same — it hasn’t changed. We’re not going into Syria.”

He was especially upset that Syria had used chemical weapons after supposedly destroying all its stockpiles under a deal President Obama signed in 2013 and repeatedly boasted about. I asked whether that fact gave him more pause about Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran.

“I don’t need more pause about Iran,” Trump said. “It was the single worst deal ever. It’s a disgrace that a deal like that was even signed. It made Iran a power from a country that was ready to fall apart.”

He wasn’t finished. “Iran won’t honor its deal. Instead of saying, ‘Thank you very much for saving our country,’ they’ve been emboldened.”

Noting those problems and North Korea’s threatening aggression, Trump said, “I knew I was left a mess, but it’s worse than I thought.”

We’ll see whether he stands by that statement. But regardless, it’s clear that he hasn’t been entirely captured or convinced by the neocons, or he wouldn’t come out publicly and say that.

Sic semper cucks

Any time you see a politician waxing holier than thou and posturing righteously, that’s a pretty reliable sign that he’s covering for his own misbehavior.

Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley said he could no longer vote for Donald Trump in wake of the GOP presidential nominee’s sexually charged words about women.

Bentley comments came as state Alabama U.S. Reps. Martha Roby and Bradley Byrne, on Saturday called for Trump to step aside from the GOP ticket. Trump is under fire for his remarks about him groping women in a 2005 recording.

Roby was one of the first Republicans to speak out against Trump on Saturday, leading what would soon be a chorus of voices against the GOP nominee.

“Now, it is abundantly clear that the best thing for our country and our party is for Trump to step aside and allow a responsible, respectable Republican to lead the ticket,” Roby said in a statement. “Hillary Clinton must not be president, but, with Trump leading the ticket she will be.”

Governor Bentley is expected to resign today after audio was uncovered of Governor Bentley describing how he embraced and placed his hands on an aide’s breasts.

Clearly he should have simply grabbed her… well, you know. Smooth, old man, simply smooth.

The end of civic nationalism: literary edition

Steve Sailer notes that even an SJW version of the 88 books that shaped America tends to demolish the 20th century civic nationalist construct:

I like lists, so here is the 2012 Library of Congress list of 88 Books that Shaped America. It’s not supposed to be the best books, but the most influential, with lots of non-literary works. Despite obvious biases like blacks being vastly better represented than in reality, it’s not a bad list.

A few comments:

– Benjamin Franklin wrote 3 of the 88 books. The only other author with more than one book on the list is Harriet Beecher Stowe with 1.5.

– You can see the role of identity politics taking over as the list gets closer to the present. The last book on the list, one I had never heard of existing before now, was no doubt thrown on in panic when the list-makers realized they hadn’t checked a certain demographically sizable (but culturally insignificant) box.

– One striking thing is the lack of influence of Catholic writers until fairly recently…. This is in contrast to England, where Catholic writers, such as Alexander Pope, pop up even during eras of oppression. And America mostly lacks a literary tradition of converts to Catholicism, like Newman, Hopkins, Chesterton, Waugh, and Greene in England.

– Jewish writers were not major literary figures until roughly after WWII….

– Overall, the weight of Protestants on American culture is pretty overwhelming until the mid-20th Century. So, you can see why there is such a strong urge to retcon American history with heapings of Ellis Island Nation of Immigrants schmaltz to inflate the reputations of the ancestors of today’s top dogs.

Steve is nicer than I am, so he tends to say the same thing rather more politely. Translation: American culture is a white and Protestant culture. Period.

It’s not a nation of immigrants. It’s not a melting pot. It never was. And anyone who tells you otherwise is not only lying, but is usually doing so for reasons related to identity and self-interest.

Z-man’s comment indubitably won the Internet today: Maybe they should pick the 14 that really stand out.

You don’t say

My proposed scenario of a joint US-Chinese effort against North Korea is looking considerably less out there than it did three days ago:

According to Chosun, a Korean news agency, the People’s Republic of China has moved an estimated 150,000 troops to the border of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (a.k.a. North Korea) in order to prepare for “unforeseen circumstances.”

Among such unforeseen circumstances?  The possibility of “military action” by the United States.

Over the weekend, U.S. president Donald Trump ordered the U.S.S. Carl Vinson (CVN – 70) – a 1980 Nimitz-class aircraft carrier – and three guided-missile destroyers to break off planned exercises in Australia and head toward the Korean peninsula.

This redirection was ostensibly ordered in response to North Korea’s latest missile test – in which a nuclear-capable intermediate-range ballistic missile called the Pukguksong-2 was successfully fired for the second time.

Both North Korean missile tests took place as Trump was welcoming key Asian leaders for meetings at his Winter White House in Mar-a-Lago, Florida.

The Chinese military posturing comes two months after its government announced the immediate suspension of coal imports from North Korea – cutting off a vital economic lifeline for North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un.

This doesn’t mean I’m correct. It doesn’t mean that the God-Emperor isn’t sending 150,000 troops to Syria in order to attack Russia, Iran, and the Assad regime there.  But it does demonstrate why it’s probably best to keep your eyes open and your mouth shut when the God-Emperor does something you don’t understand.