Book of the weekend

This week, I’m a little late on the book of the week, which essentially makes it a book of the weekend, but for those who are interested in the subject of the Singularity, Dr. Miller, my past and future debate opponent, has made the audio introduction to his book on the technofuture, Singularity Rising, available for listening. How will the Singularity affect our daily lives—our jobs, our families, and our wealth?

Singularity Rising: Surviving and Thriving in a Smarter, Richer, and More Dangerous World
focuses on the implications of a future society faced with an abundance
of human and artificial intelligence. James D. Miller, an economics
professor and popular speaker on the Singularity, reveals how natural
selection has been increasing human intelligence over the past few
thousand years and speculates on how intelligence enhancements will
shape civilization over the next forty years.

Miller considers several possible scenarios in this coming singularity:

  • A merger of man and machine making society fantastically wealthy and nearly immortal
  • Competition with billions of cheap AIs drive human wages to almost nothing while making investors rich
  • Businesses rethink investment decisions to take into account an expected future period of intense creative destruction
  • Inequality drops worldwide as technologies mitigate the cognitive cost of living in impoverished environments
  • Drugs designed to fight Alzheimer’s disease and keep soldiers alert on
    battlefields have the fortunate side effect of increasing all of their
    users’ IQs, which, in turn, adds a percentage points to worldwide
    economic growth

Singularity Rising offers predictions
about the economic implications for a future of widely expanding
intelligence and practical career and investment advice on flourishing
on the way to the Singularity. Sadly, no word on okapis.

A question for the readers

Which would you rather have first, A Sea of Skulls or SJWs Always Double Down? I’ve been focusing on the former, given how long Selenoth fans have been waiting, but it occurs to me that it might make sense to, you know, actually ask the core market what it prefers.

On a somewhat related note, the first novel in what could reasonably, but will not be, described as a New Heinlein series, Mutiny in Space by Rod Walker, will be published soon. It’s an intentional attempt to capture the style and spirit of Robert Heinlein’s classic SF juveniles. I think you’ll find it is considerably more successful in doing so than some of the previously declared New Heinleins.

UPDATE: The readers have spoken. The current schedule will remain in place. First A Sea of Skulls, then SJWs Always Double Down.

Minnesota mourns

The artist known as Prince has died. He was 57.


Prince’s body was discovered at his Paisley Park compound in Minnesota early Thursday morning.


Multiple sources connected to the singer confirmed he had passed.

I’m very sorry to hear this. Like many who grew up in Minnesota, his music was the soundtrack to my youth. Playing on stage at First Avenue was surreal, because it was the stage he had owned. Playing on stage at his own club, Glam Slam, was an incredible experience. I met him several times, usually at The Perimeter, and he was unfailingly civil. For a world-famous pop superstar, he was astonishingly approachable, and I never heard anything negative about him from my many friends and acquaintances who encountered him everywhere from the nightclubs and recording studios to the car wash.

There are some people who seem larger than life, and it seems impossible that they can die. Prince Rogers Nelson was a unique musical talent who had a special relationship with his hometown. His music will live on. Here is hoping that his huge collection of unreleased recordings will one day be released to the world.

Convergence at ESPN

It’s no secret that ESPN is fully SJW-converged. But now they’re not even bothering to hide it:

ESPN has fired Curt Schilling over his recent anti-transgender comments on social media.

Schilling, a baseball analyst for ESPN and former Boston Red Sox pitcher, shared a Facebook post this week that lampooned critics of recent laws passed in North Carolina and other states restricting transgender men and women from using the public restrooms that correspond with their gender preferences. Schilling added his own comment to the post, criticizing transgender people.

“A man is a man no matter what they call themselves,” Schilling wrote. “I don’t care what they are, who they sleep with, men’s room was designed for the penis, women’s not so much. Now you need laws telling us differently? Pathetic.”

The original post featured a man in a wig with his breasts exposed, captioned, “LET HIM IN! to the restroom with your daughter or else you’re a narrow-minded, judgmental, unloving racist bigot who needs to die.”

After first announcing Wednesday that it would review Schilling’s comments, ESPN announced later in the day that it had fired him. “ESPN is an inclusive company,” the network said in a statement. “Curt Schilling has been advised that his conduct was unacceptable and his employment with ESPN has been terminated.”

I quit reading ESPN years ago. But they are clearly an excellent demonstration of my Impossibility of SJW Convergence in action, which states: The more an institution converges towards the highest abstract standard of social and distributive justice, the less it is able to perform its primary function. 

ESPN can’t even employ an intelligent Hall-of-Fame commentator to discuss baseball if he doesn’t publicly submit to the SJW Narrative. That is full convergence. Sports is no longer ESPN’s primary function.

Why I support Donald Trump

At the Heat Street editor’s request, I wrote an article explaining why I support Donald Trump for the Republican nomination and the U.S. presidency:

I am often asked why I, a Christian libertarian and intellectual, would publicly support Donald Trump, a man of no fixed ideology, no apparent religious beliefs, multiple marriages, visible ties to the Clintons, and whose taste and sophistication tends to resemble that of a nouveau riche rhinoceros. It is a reasonable question. After all, how can anyone support a candidate whose public statements are, to put it mildly, inconsistent—when they are completely self-contradictory.

The answer is as simple as it is conclusive and convincing. Donald Trump is the only candidate in either major party whose personal interests are aligned with those of the American public rather than with the interests of the anti-nationalist elite who see America as nothing more than lines on a map and Americans as nothing more than 300 million economic units in the global economy.

The reason I trust Donald Trump, despite all his rhetorical meanderings, is that he is a traitor to his class. Unlike Hillary Clinton and Ted Cruz, both ordinary people who sold their souls in order to be granted a seat at the table of the Great Game, Donald Trump was born a member of the elite and he has always been welcome in the inner circles of both political parties. When I met him in 1988, it was at the Republican National Convention in New Orleans, where he was the personal guest of George Bush in his private suite there. Like the Bushes, like the Clintons, Trump is truly neither Republican nor Democrat. He is a lifetime member of America’s bi-factional ruling party.

Read the rest of it at Heat Street. And much respect for Louise Mensch, who could not be more opposed to Trump, but nevertheless asked me to make what I considered to be the best case for him.

Target goes full-tranny

If you’re opposed to the latest SJW Narrative, take Target off your list:

The Target department store chain has jumped into the transgender bathroom debate by declaring that men who claim to be women may use whatever bathroom or changing room they choose.

“Inclusivity is a core belief at Target,” a new company statement reads. “It’s something we celebrate. We stand for equality and equity, and strive to make our guests and team members feel accepted, respected and welcomed in our stores and workplaces every day.”

The retailer added, “We welcome transgender team members and guests to use the restroom or fitting room facility that corresponds with their gender identity.”

“Everyone deserves to feel like they belong,” the statement concluded. “You’ll always be accepted, respected and welcomed at Target.”

Target spokeswoman Molly Snyder added that the policy statement is a public confirmation of its longstanding policy. “It’s just us being very overt in stating it,” she said.

Customers and potential customers almost immediately spoke out against Target’s decision to ignore the biological difference between men and women.

The thing is, there is nothing wrong with unisex bathrooms. In Japan, for example, many of the bathrooms are unisex because space is at a premium and there is only room for one bathroom in many establishments.

But we’re not seeing the elimination of sex-segregated bathrooms, we’re seeing the demonic “five lights” strategy, forcing people to submit to the Narrative and admit to something they know to be untrue.

All ur hashtag are belong to us

The Global Warming charlatans are planning a propaganda push. This is from a science activist mailing list.

Climate Feedback works like this: Using the new web-annotation platform Hypothesis, scientists verify facts and annotate online climate articles, layering their insights and comments on top of the original story. They then issue a “5-star” rating so readers can quickly judge stories’ scientific credibility. Recognized by NASA, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and California Gov. Jerry Brown among others, Climate Feedback is already improving journalistic standards by flagging misreported climate science in mainstream outlets; earlier this month, for example, scientists took apart Bjorn Lomborg’s misleading op-ed in the Wall Street Journal. This is only a hint of what Climate Feedback has in store as it begins to aggregate those credibility scores into a wider index, rating major news sources on their reporting of climate change as part of a new Scientific Trust Tracker.

To that end, Climate Feedback is launching a crowd funding campaign on April 27 around the hashtag #StandWithScience, supported by leading climate minds like Profs. Michael Mann, Naomi Oreskes and others. I invite you to take a look at this sneak preview of our campaign (NOTE: please do not share publicly before April 27). The Exxon climate scandal has already made its way into the 2016 election season, but few have discussed the role the media has played enabling corporate interests to sow doubt about the science of climate change, which has long confused the public and undermined political support for dealing with the issue. As 350.org founder Bill McKibben said of Climate Feedback: Scientists are just about ready to come out of the lab and get more active and when they do, it will make a remarkable difference.

Let’s disrupt it. VFM, you know what to do. Political activism is not science. #StandWithScience.

Intel and labor mobility

Two points concerning labor mobility.

  •  Intel will lay off 11% of its global workforce, up to 12,000 employees, a painful downsizing aimed at accelerating its shift away from the waning PC market to one more focused on cloud computing and connected devices. In an email to employees, CEO Brian Krzanich said that after the restructuring, “I am confident that we’ll emerge as a more productive company with broader reach and sharper execution.” Intel CFO Stacy Smith said that half the workforce reduction, 6,000 people, will be accomplished by the end of this year.
  • Intel Corporation has filed 6147 labor condition applications for H1B visa and 4238 labor certifications for green card from fiscal year 2013 to 2015. Intel was ranked 14 among all visa sponsors. Please note that 602 LCA for H1B Visa and 689 LC for green card have been denied or withdrawn during the same period. Intel had filed 8065 LCA and 3423 LC from fiscal year 2001 to 2010

Interesting how those numbers are so similar, is it not? It would be informative to know how many of the 12,000 are in the USA.

Star Citizen: the final nail

Derek Smart explains why he believes Chris Roberts’s statement about a “minimum viable product” is an extinction level event:

WHY I BELIEVE THIS TO BE THE FINAL NAIL IN THE STAR CITIZEN COFFIN.

None
of the arguments people are making are relevant. And White Knights,
Shitizens, and Shillizens are doing what they always do: obfuscate,
attack, confuse, distort.

These are what’s relevant; all the points from my latest blog.

1)
The game he originally pitched simply cannot be built once he increased
the scope. Period. All the features already cut out, are evidence of
this.
2) The CryEngine which he chose to build the game with, is
simply not capable of building it. And yes, even though they now have a
custom version of it, that’s more about re-inventing the wheel, than it
is about making sure the wheel is still round. The latter being the
basis of using a core engine from which a custom engine is derived.
3) Following my first July 2015 blog in which I made the statements I said as:

“Without
disrespect to anyone, I’m just going to say it: it is my opinion that,
this game, as has been pitched, will never get made. Ever. There
isn’t a single publisher or developer on this planet who could build
this game as pitched, let alone for anything less than $150 million. The original vision which I backed in 2012? Yes, that was totally doable. This new vision? Not a chance.
The technical scope of this game surpasses GTAV, not to mention the likes of Halo. Do you have any idea what those games cost to make and how long they took? Do
you know how many games which cost $50 million to make took almost five
years to release? And they were nowhere in scope as Star Citizen?“

He wrote an entire missive and said this:

“You
all know that already; you’ve lived that. You’ve seen Star Citizen
evolve and start to come together. You’ve watched our atoms form
molecules, our modules form a real, playable game (that you can boot up
and play today!). There are people out there who are going to tell you
that this is all a BAD THING. That it’s ‘feature creep’ and we should
make a smaller, less impressive game for the sake of having it out more
quickly or in order to meet artificial deadlines. Now I’ll answer those
claims in one word: Bullshit!
Star Citizen matters
BECAUSE it is big, because it is a bold dream. It is something everyone
else is scared to try. You didn’t back Star Citizen because you want
what you’ve seen before. You’re here and reading this because we are
willing to go big, to do the things that terrify publishers. You’ve
trusted us with your money so we can build a game, not line our pockets.
And we sure as hell didn’t run this campaign so we could put that money
in the bank, guarantee ourselves a profit and turn out some flimsy
replica of a game I’ve made before. You went all in supporting us and
we’ve gone all in making the game. Is Star Citizen today a bigger goal
than I imagined in 2012? Absolutely. Is that a bad thing? Absolutely
not: it’s the whole damn point.“

As with all his
previous statements and promises, you can flush this one down the
toilet too. Chris evolved to be more of a salesman, than a game
developer/designer. And a patently dishonest one.
How coincidental is it that – again – shortly after my latest blog dropped, and which I said this:

“And
as I have stated before, Chris being a dreamer, I don’t believe that he
set out to scam gamers. However, the only right thing that he can do
now is to come clean, explain to the backers what he can and cannot do,
what went wrong and how, provide the financials to the backers who are
entitled to it, and stop taking money for a project he knows all too
well that he simply cannot deliver as originally promised.”

He does this latest 104TC in which he reveals that the short-term goal is to deliver a MVP.

“So,
really what we’re doing with Star Citizen is we’re working on the game,
adding features for an incredibly ambitious design – I don’t think
there is any other game that is trying to do as much as we’re trying to
do.  So, degree of difficulty 11, not 10.  And, we’ll have what we
determine is a minimum viable product feature list for what you would
call Star Citizen the commercial release which is basically when you
say, “Okay, we’ve gotten to this point and we’ve still got plans to add a
lot more cool stuff and more content and more functionality and more
features…” – Which by the way includes some of the later stretch goals
we have because not all of that is going to be for ‘absolutely right
here’ on the commercial release.  But we’ll have something that we’ll
think, ‘Okay yeah, not everyone can play it but it doesn’t matter – you
can load it up, it plays really well, it’s really stable, there’s lots
of content, there’s lots of fun things to do, different professions,
lots of places to go, we’ve got a really good ecosystem.’  So, when we
get to that point that’s when we would say, “Now it’s not alpha, it’s
not beta, it’s Star Citizen 1.0.”

We spent two hours discussing this at Brainstorm a few months ago, and considering the way in which Derek managed to impress even his most inveterate skeptics and haters with his expertise and technical observations during that session, I see absolutely no reason to doubt him now.

Cruz curb-stomped in New York

60.5 Trump
24.8 Kasich
14.7 Cruz

From the Decision Desk results, it looks as if Trump will take as many as 94 of the 95 delegates. So, obviously, the most important consequence is that it puts Trump back on track to win the 1,237 delegates he needs.

But the primary result also makes clear that Cruz is not a serious national candidate. No one who has observed the way he is attempting to lawyer himself into the nomination while getting repeatedly destroyed at the polls can possibly conclude that he is a viable Republican nominee, considering how he can’t win in either the more liberal northeastern states or more conservative southern ones.

His core constituency appears to be cuckservatives in states with sufficiently low immigration who are still unaware of the realities of the great issue of our day.