The Disney bait-and-switch

Disney is now making use of the same trick to sell its movies that the Pink SF crowd has been pulling for decades, in this case, selling princess movies to the public under the guise of a film for boys.

The first teaser trailer for Disney’s new animated musical Moana has been released online, and it’s a little short on… Moana. The film’s titular heroine is a Polynesian princess (voiced by native Hawaiian teenager Auli’i Cravalho, in her film debut) who journeys across the sea to find a legendary island, with the help of demi-god Maui (voiced by Dwayne Johnson). When the film opens in November, Moana will be the newest Disney princess and is expected to be absorbed into the multibillion-dollar Disney Princess franchise. So why is the trailer (below) all about Maui?

It’s not because Dwayne Johnson is the biggest-name star in the film, although that is true. It’s just the latest example of a very specific Disney marketing strategy, designed to broaden the appeal of its fairy-tale movies by making them appear less girl-centric. Because a movie for the female half of the population is a “niche” film, whereas a movie aimed at boys is fun for the whole family! Or so the thinking goes.

This all began after 2009’s The Princess and the Frog underperformed at the box office. That film had a few notable issues — like a meandering story, in which the princess spent most of her time being a frog — but per the Los Angeles Times, Disney execs came to the conclusion that The Princess and the Frog didn’t attract an audience because boys didn’t want to see a movie about princesses. 

Which brings us to Moana. To its credit, Disney hasn’t excluded the main female character in its marketing to the extent that it did with Frozen and Tangled. The first image released from the film featured the princess and the demi-god side by side and a video posted online in October introduced actress Cravalho to the world. So it’s disheartening that the first teaser essentially excludes Moana. Maybe the full-length trailer will be a little more balanced?

The bait-and-switch of the trailers is also indicative of an issue with the princess films themselves: Since 1989’s The Little Mermaid, male characters have had the majority of dialogue in Disney fairy-tale movies. Even though the protagonists of these movies are girls, they exist in a world of male sidekicks and supporting characters who get the last word.

Boys don’t want to see movies about princesses. Boys don’t want to read books about romances either. But rather than simply making movies that boys want to see and publishing books that boys want to read, the SJWs in Hollywood and in publishing think that the secret to success is making princess movies and publishing romances, then deceiving everyone as to the content.

It’s remarkable what contempt they have for their customers; one imagines they must understand that even the most dimwitted boys and parents are going to eventually figure out the bait-and-switch and simply stop buying anything from them.

SJWs always lie. Always.

Vote LEAVE today

To my British readers,

For centuries, your nations have been at the forefront of Western civilization, which may have reached its peak under the Empire on which the sun never set. Now your empire is gone, your confidence is shaken, your faith is exhausted, your pews are empty, your cities are invaded, and you are ruled over by a hostile Continental power.

The current situation is what those great British leaders of the past, who from Napoleon to Hitler fought to prevent the domination of Europe by a single power, were desperate to prevent. Your nations were finally brought to heel through deceit rather than force, through persistent lies and propaganda rather than military might.

But today, you have been presented with an opportunity that is all too rare. You have been given the opportunity to reclaim your heritage, reclaime your birthright, reclaim your independence, reclaim your sovereignty, reclaim your freedom, and reclaim your nation. And you have been given the chance to do this peacefully!

Do not listen to those who have relentlessly lied to you for the last 65 years. Do not listen to the very voices that brought about your surrender and submission. They do not have your interests at heart, they simply want you to obediently accept your fall from a Great Power to a minor administrative region in their empire. Do not give into fear and despair and fatalism. As for my English readers, do not allow yourselves be the last English generation to be governed by the Magna Carta, Parliament, the Common Law, and the Rights of Englishmen!

Don’t be afraid of your freedom. Don’t be afraid to vote LEAVE today. And if you’re even modestly inclined to help your nation escape the chains of the European Union, stop reading this, drop everything, and go out and vote yourself free.

#Brexit

VASSAL doesn’t work on Windows 10

I can’t seem to get VASSAL working on Windows 10 with the latest Java. It installs fine, but upon running it, nothing happens. Anyone seen this before?

UPDATE: I tried installing a 32-bit version, Version 8 Update 91. Still no joy.

UPDATE 2: Finally figured it out. There was a VASSAL directory in the hidden User/Name/Appdata/Roaming directory, and the error log was showing old dates, presumably from a previously installed version of VASSAL. I deleted that VASSAL directory, emptied the Trash, then double-clicked on the VASSAL icon. It works like a charm, although I did need to re-select my VASL boards directory in order to get my ASL boards to show up properly.

Thanks to everyone who suggested fixes.

UPDATE 3: I’ve changed the name so it will show up on Google searches. If VASSAL 3.16 doesn’t run on Windows 10 with Java 8, the problem may be a previous installation. Don’t worry, there is a fix.

  1. Go to your C:/Users/YOURNAME directory, and under View, check the hidden items checkbox. This will reveal the hidden Appdata directory.
  2. Go to C:/Users/YOURNAME/Appdata/Roaming. There will be a VASSAL directory there. 
  3. Delete the VASSAL directory.
  4. Now try launching VASSAL again.

“We are going to put America first”

Donald Trump pulls no punches in his speech today on why he is running for president:

Our country lost its way when we stopped putting the American people first.

We got here because we switched from a policy of Americanism – focusing on what’s good for America’s middle class – to a policy of globalism, focusing on how to make money for large corporations who can move their wealth and workers to foreign countries all to the detriment of the American worker and the American economy.

We reward companies for offshoring, and we punish companies for doing business in America and keeping our workers employed.

This is not a rising tide that lifts all boats.

This is a wave of globalization that wipes out our middle class and our jobs.

We need to reform our economic system so that, once again, we can all succeed together, and America can become rich again.

That’s what we mean by America First.

Our country will be better off when we start making our own products again, bringing our once great manufacturing capabilities back to our shores.

Our Founders understood this.

One of the first major bills signed by George Washington called for “the encouragement and protection of manufactur[ing]” in America.

He’s got both economics and history on his side, regardless of what the corrupt globalist economists and historians will tell you.

I have to say, Trump the Candidate is saying far more of the right things than I would have even expected to hear from Ron Paul.

Joooooon Snow!


At this point, one would assume even the drooling halfwits at File 770 would be able to recognize that neither Jon Snow nor Ramsay Bolton were exactly liable to give Hannibal or Alexander a run for their money. One would assume wrongly, of course, but it’s understandable that one would be inclined to do so.

The military geniuses at File 770

I never stop finding it amusing how the File 770 idiots will defend literally ANY position rather than accept the fact that I am correct about anything, no matter how obvious. Aaron is reliably the least intelligent commenter there, as he demonstrates with this comment in defense of the tactical incompetence demonstrated by military commanders Jon Snow and Ramsay Bolton on A Game of Thrones:

I wonder if Beale actually watched the show, or if he just had it badly recounted to him. Bolton sent his cavalry first after goading Snow into the open, clearly hoping to kill Snow before help could arrive. It was only because the Stark cavalry counter charged that there was a cavalry battle. There was never an option for Bolton to receive the Stark cavalry with pikemen, because the Stark cavalry weren’t going to charge them but for Snow being exposed. For their part, the Starks had no pikemen to deploy against the Bolton cavalry.

All of Beale’s complaints about the battle that follow assume that Bolton could have simply waited for the Stark forces to launch their cavalry at the Bolton line and stop them with pikes, which would have required abject stupidity on the part of Snow. The complaint about not being prepared for the Knights of the Vale to arrive assume that Bolton could see the future and predict the arrival of reinforcements that even Snow didn’t know were coming. To be fair, Bolton should have had scouts out to look for additional forces, but he thought he knew the entire disposition of the Stark forces already.

In short, it seems that Beale didn’t pay attention to what was shown on screen, and didn’t understand what was happening.

That conclusion seems entirely credible, as anyone who has ever read A Throne of Bones, read any of the books by Lind or van Creveld published by Castalia, or played ASL will no doubt agree.

  1. Aaron is defending how Ramsay sent out his ENTIRE cavalry to ride down a single man on foot instead simply killing Snow with a single arrow himself, or having his entire archery contingent turn him into a pincushion with dozens of arrows. Bolton had absolutely no need to put his cavalry at risk, or even to issue an order to anyone at all, to kill the enemy general.
  2. What competent general would fail to understand that the enemy cavalry might ride out if he was dumb enough to give up his tactical and numerical advantages advancing it while leaving his infantry behind? At least the British tank commander who drove past his American infantry screen into the sights of the German tank destroyer in Band of Brothers was obeying what he knew to be suicidally stupid orders.
  3. There was an option for Bolton to receive the Stark cavalry with pikemen; all he had to do was order his cavalry to disengage and circle back as soon as the Stark cavalry charged while advancing his pikemen. Ancient and medieval armies did this sort of thing all the time, particularly experienced, well-equipped, well-trained armies of the sort Bolton was commanding. That would have actually been a barely credible ruse that would depend upon the Stark cavalry being dumb enough to a) believe Bolton was launching a cavalry-first attack and b) respond to it with their own charge.
  4. First, Bolton could have simply waited for Stark to launch their cavalry, or their infantry, for that matter, at them. Stark was attacking, after all, and Bolton had the leisure to choose to engage or not, as he saw fit. Second, the statement that it was implausible because it would have required “abject stupidity on the part of Snow” is laughable, considering that Snow is observably dumb enough to single-handedly charge the entire enemy army by himself.
  5. Bolton didn’t need to see the future to know the Knights of the Vale were on their way to the battlefield. As a West Pointer noted yesterday, this marks the fourth time on the show that reinforcements have unexpectedly arrived and saved the day, because apparently no one in Westeros has ever heard of pickets, patrols, or even establishing a command post on a hillside that provides good visibility of the surroundings in all four directions. And it’s not as if Bolton was unaware of the relationship between Littlefinger and his wife or should have failed to at least anticipate the possibility of the Vale’s intervention. Remember, Ramsay Bolton was the commander who beat the man lauded as the best general in Westeros.
  6. And there it is. The Gamma tell: “it seems….”

It’s clear that neither the producers of the episode, nor Aaron, has any idea how cavalry was, and is, used on the battlefield. It is a secondary arm; it is the infantry that is “the queen of the battlefield”. Hollywood likes horses because they are exciting and dramatic, but one should never allow oneself to be misguided into thinking that the tactics one is seeing on the screen are even remotely reasonable, let alone realistic or historically plausible.

It’s too bad, because during the planning session, it sounded as if they were setting up for a recreation of the Battle of Cannae and its famous double-envelopment. I wasn’t surprised when they didn’t, though, as soon as I saw the cavalry being prominently featured. Contra Hollywood, cavalry is primarily used to launch flanking and rear attacks, to strike the killing blow, and to exploit the victory that the infantry has already won, not to play the primary role in the outcome of the battle.

Up and over their heads

MC listened to the Day-Murphy debate on free trade:

I was unable to attend on Friday, but I just listened to the audio.  Excellent debate, loved the format.  Really should make anyone stretch their thinking as well as help them come to their own conclusion.  Admittedly I heard things I had not heard before and my knowledge base was expanded and continues to be with these debates. 

One point you made that “Let reason be silent when experience gainsays it’s existence”.  This seems to be the problem with most economists and Austrians is that they are so sold on their theories and their ability to come to a conclusion that is elegant reasoning, they totally miss the forest for the trees.  I think most economists lose the common man because the common man lives in the real world and knows that those elegant theories have failed to bring about a better result in reality.  The previous debate and this one has shown me that these economists are not too acquainted with real life and the practical effects free trade has had on this country. 

I did not vote to make my country poorer so as to make the rest of the world richer.  I am a Christian, but my benevolence is my decision, not one forced on me by my government.  I don’t think that is what God had in mind when he asked me to help the poor. 

Anyway, both of these debates are more instructive than anything I learned in college and infinitely more practical.  Please keep these coming.     

I wasn’t crazy about the format in practice, as it prevented either interlocutor from really pinning the other down, but I think it was both fair and useful in that it illuminated the arguments for both sides, at least for those capable of following them. I suspect it can be improved, but regardless, it wasn’t bad for a first experiment.

On the other hand, it has been rather remarkable to witness the slack-jawed astonishment of the lesser free trade advocates, who completely lack the ability to even begin processing the simplest of my anti-free trade arguments.

Who is this guy? I highly question his economic understanding.

All five of his opening arguments are extremely weak. For example, he puts forward the notion that decreased real incomes and increased indebtedness proves free trade doesn’t work. I mean, are you serious? How can anyone make such a stupid argument? As if free trade is the only determinant of real incomes and indebtedness, that domestic economic and fiscal policy has nothing to do with it? How naive must he be to think everything bad that happens domestically can only be explained by free trade. People give this Day guy too much credit.

This is further evidence of the inability to communicate across the 30-point IQ gap. The gentleman clearly doesn’t realize that he is attacking the same correlation-causation argument that I am, only he is doing so considerably less competently because he doesn’t understand that I am not making an anti-free trade argument per se, but rather, explaining the falsity of a very common free trade argument.

He makes the same mistake twice,in fact, as he also fails to understand that I am citing an empirical failure of the theoretical free trade model when it comes to quality:

The example he provides to show that protectionism promotes quality products was the example of Parmesan cheese in the EU, where producers of a definite kind of Parmesan of a cultural value get the legal monopoly on labeling the product vis-a-vis imported versions. In his opinion, the protected cheese is of much better quality.

Well, I guess that’s the case for government imposition of restrictions on trade, to ensure the nation state has high quality cheese.

Notice how free trade advocates are reliably dishonest, in that they make appeals to exceptions when it suits them and deny the legitimacy of such appeals even when the exception is valid because it disproves the free trade model. I could as easily say that one very common case for the removal of government restrictions on trade is to ensure the nation state has high-quality automobiles.

How is it intellectually legitimate for free traders to point to low-quality American autos in the 1970s as a meaningful example, but illegitimate for anti-free traders to point to high-quality Italian cheeses in the 2010s as an equally meaningful one? Especially when the latter clearly disproves the assertion that government protection necessitates lower quality goods for the domestic market.

What I found particularly amusing were those critics who simultaneously complained that I was making non-economic arguments, then insisted that my position was immoral or in violation of the human right to freely engage in economic activity. It never even crossed their mind that their arguments were considerably less economic in nature than my own.

One thing I’ve noticed is that midwits reliably fail to understand the difference between a positive argument and the critique of an opposing argument. This explains why so many people are, on the one hand, saying that my arguments are weak while so many others are impressed at how I have methodically destroyed the pro-free trade arguments. It rather reminds me of the atheist response to TIA, in which many of them expressed disappointment in the weakness of my arguments for the existence of God.

But they were only weak in that they did not exist at all. They were an altogether different creature, being critiques and debunkings of dozens of arguments against the existence of God.

The inanity of Pink SF/F

It goes well beyond that, of course, but it serves as a useful example. John Wright explains how what he calls “the Twenty Firsters” cripple their own entertainment:

These are basic rule of psychology that everyone knows, or should know, if his brain is not gummed up with political correctness.

Basic rules of storytelling 101: the tale cannot violate the basic rules of psychology 101. (See Mark Twain’s description of Leatherstocking Tales for details.)

The writer can have the characters in odd situations, and, in a superhero yarn, the oddness can involve countless impossible absurdities of time travel, cloning, robots, talking apes, necromancers, mind readers, secret societies, immortals, revenants from the dead, parallel dimensions, millionaire playboys dressed like Robin Hood, and anything else you like: BUT the character’s reaction to these impossible things, no matter how absurdly impossible, must not only be possible, but likely and reasonable for a real human being in the unreal situation, or otherwise the writer shatters the suspension of disbelief.

A man can be a superman with ninescore ninety and nine impossible super powers plus one, but he has to act like a man, and not like a cardboard clockwork robot or a sockpuppet yanked out of his established character to go through a jerky, awkward pantomime to make today’s public service announcement on behalf of politically correct obsessions about problems solved before I was born.

If eccentric billionaire wants to build a supersuit out of dwarf star matter so he can shrink down to atom-size and fight very small crimes, I will buy that and come back for more, bringing my friends with me, and throw money at the writer. But if smoking hot computer genius girl kisses the first kiss, that breaks me out of the spell of the story, and I sit glowering at how unbelievable the writing is.

Women make all the first moves in Twenty Firster mythology, because the simple truth that weak men drive women insane, and insane women make men weak, has simply been ignored.

First, the notion of female pursuit is directly related to the socio-sexual rank of the male writers. To the Gamma, women are inexplicable. They have no idea why the woman abruptly decides to take her clothes off, so anytime you read of an attractive woman, who has hitherto exhibited absolutely no interest in the intelligent protagonist who has been intensely respecting her by showing absolutely no interest in her, suddenly crawling into the sleeping bag of said protagonist, you can be 100 percent certain that the author is a Gamma.

Second, most writers of Pink SF/F, in any format, are not only ignorant, but proudly so. The battle scenes in the most recent episode of A Game of Thrones were so shockingly inept and historically ignorant that I found myself wondering if Kameron Hurley had been hired as the historical consultant.

As one wag put it on Twitter: A cavalry charge? I’d better put my pikes in reserve!

And while I’m at it, I’ll refrain from ordering my archers to fire at them as they approach. Then I’ll send my infantry in to surround the survivors, so they can’t break and run, thereby preventing my cavalry from riding them down and slaughtering them from behind. And when the totally predictable enemy reinforcements arrive just in the nick of time, because I’ve been busy posturing rather than simply destroying the surrounded enemy, instead of withdrawing my army and retreating to my fortress, I’ll just stand around and watch them get entirely wiped out before fleeing by myself.

It was the second-most retarded battle scene I’ve ever seen, topped only by Faramir leading Gondor’s cavalry against a fortified position manned by archers in The Return of the King. I was always curious about what the cavalry was intended to do if they somehow managed to survive the hail of arrows and reach the walls that no horse could possibly climb.

Anyhow, the Twenty Firster inanity goes well beyond psychology, because both logic and history are mysteries to them as well.

Today’s lesson in rhetoric

An SJW white knight was attempting to attack Mike Cernovich over his observations concerning false rape claims. I joined in, and things went pretty much how you might expect from there.

Avram Meitner @AvramMeitner
Feminists aren’t responsible for rape! Spoken like a true misogynist.

Supreme Dark Lord ‏@voxday
True. Feminists are responsible for fake rape, near rape, virtual rape, and regret rape. None of which is actually rape.

Avram Meitner ‏@AvramMeitner
Anonymous rape advocate.

Supreme Dark Lord ‏@voxday
Why do you advocate rape? Is it a personal hobby or do you think rape is good for society?

Avram Meitner ‏@AvramMeitner
Anonymous rape advocate now tries to deflect from his rape advocacy.

Supreme Dark Lord ‏@voxday
“I’d like to amputate part of your healthy baby, suck his penis and give him herpes.”
– Avram Meitner, rape advocate

Sick!

Supreme Dark Lord @voxday
You not only advocate rape, you advocate child rape! Get help, you sick paedo.

Avram Meitner ‏@AvramMeitner
When a rape advocate is exposed, they naturally rely on dishonesty to squirm out of it.

Supreme Dark Lord @voxday
Exactly. You falsely accused me. I accurately quoted you.

Supreme Dark Lord @voxday
You lied, Avram. And you brought inferior rhetoric despite your obvious vulnerability to it. You failed Sun Tzu 101.

You are blocked from following @AvramMeitner and viewing @AvramMeitner’s Tweets.

It’s like clockwork. Never forget the Third Law of SJW: SJWs Always Project. They have no capacity for defense, and their inclination towards hypocrisy means that they won’t hesitate to complain about the very behavior that they exhibited first. This leaves them extremely vulnerable, especially in public, as others won’t hesitate to point out that hypocrisy.

They’ll start with rhetoric, then try to retreat to pseudo-dialectic; don’t fall for it, just stick with the rhetoric. If it wasn’t working, they wouldn’t be retreating.