Black Iron Girl

I actually rather enjoy it when white SJWs attempt to write diversity of one sort or another. It’s reliably hilarious how they believe they’re totally pulling it off when they are doing nothing more than writing men with tits, married suburban housewives with penises, or white people with dark skin.

There’s a new Iron Man. Well, Iron Man for now. She’s still working on the name. The events at the end of the comic-book event series Civil War II will result in Tony Stark stepping out of the Iron Man suit and a new character, Riri Williams, taking over, Marvel tells TIME. (Note: Tony’s departure doesn’t mean you know the end to Civil War II yet.)

Riri is a science genius who enrolls in MIT at the age of 15. She comes to the attention of Tony when she builds her own Iron Man suit in her dorm. Creator and Iron Man writer Brian Michael Bendis spoke exclusively to TIME about the creation of Riri Williams with comic-book artist Stefano Caselli and Marvel’s increasingly diverse cast of characters.

How did you come up with the character of Riri Williams?

One of the things that stuck with me when I was working in Chicago a couple of years ago on a TV show that didn’t end up airing was the amount of chaos and violence. And this story of this brilliant, young woman whose life was marred by tragedy that could have easily ended her life — just random street violence — and went off to college was very inspiring to me. I thought that was the most modern version of a superhero or superheroine story I had ever heard. And I sat with it for awhile until I had the right character and the right place.

As we’ve been slowly and hopefully very organically adding all these new characters to the Marvel Universe, it just seemed that sort of violence inspiring a young hero to rise up and act, and using her science acumen, her natural-born abilities that are still raw but so ahead of where even Tony Stark was at that age, was very exciting to me.

One presumes RihannaRiri – even the name comes from the writer’s extensive knowledge of African-American culture; I’m only surprised it wasn’t Beyonce –  must be exceptionally intelligent, considering that she’s been able to fund her technologically advanced R&D with an EBT card.

I’m looking forward to the plot twist when, like her real-world predecessor, Riri drops out of both MIT and the Avengers in order to work as a stripper.

From Twitter:

Supreme Dark Lord @voxday
If the comics imitated life, Riri aka Black Iron Girl would drop out of both MIT and the Avengers to work as a stripper in Atlanta. #IronMan

A ‏@atmaybury
If @voxday was a halfway competent author, he wouldn’t have to run his own vanity press.

Supreme Dark Lord @voxday
That “vanity press” is on track to become the largest publisher in science fiction. The Hugos were just a warning shot.

We are going to have some very interesting announcements around the end of the month. And I have no doubt that when Castalia passes up the twitching corpse of Tor Books, the event will serve as a tribute to what can be described, at the very least, my competence as well as my vanity.

The state of Star Citizen

Derek Smart provides a detailed, and devastating, summary of the current state of the troubled project:

The exodus of key talent from the four studios around the world has also been an on-going event this past year. To the extent that the project is so toxic, that at this point, anyone working on it has basically earned themselves a Black mark on their resume. Ridicule aside. But, in an unprecedented move, that hasn’t stopped two (John Dadley, Darian Vorlick) recent departures from immediately taking to social media to stress that the sky isn’t falling. Because, you know, it’s perfectly normal to bail on such a high profile project just as the general outlook is that it’s all falling apart, gamers are being screwed etc. A project which, as of this writing, has over 60 positions that it can’t fill. And this month alone, there are rumored to be at least four more high profile people looking to leave. But everything’s fine though. That’s just normal game development turnover you know. The thing about this industry is that we never – ever – forget.

Meanwhile, Sandi Gardiner, wife of Chris Roberts and “head of marketing” (<— lol!) was recently posting pictures of staff at the LA and UK studios on social media. Funny thing, some people (including the two aforementioned people) in those pictures are actually gone. And at least four are on their way out. I guess the teams over in Frankfurt and Austin, for all the hype they get for being key parts of the game’s development, don’t get their pictures taken.

Also in the past year, most of the media hype around the project has all but died down, as most (even those gamestar.de Shillizens over in Germany are heading South with their narrative) have started hedging their bets since all of this – sadly – has all boiled down to a “Derek Smart v Chris Roberts” narrative this past year. Even as they completely ignore the plight of gamers who unwittingly put their money into this crowd-funded project, and who previously had the security of refunds and financial accountability. Heck, even with the unprecedented ToS change that happened last month, very few in the media even wrote about that. And as a media contact said to me, simply put, nobody wants to deal with Shitizens descending on their sites and turning it into a war zone. Which to me begs the question: what about when the final collapse comes?

CIG/RSI has fermented so much ill will toward most of its very own backers, that when the Feds finally come calling, it won’t be because of anything that anyone has written, but from the many complaints that are being filed with various consumer protection agencies here and in various countries (Australians have it easy, nobody messes with consumers over there – get a refund!) where backers are frantically trying to get refunds.

And if your warning alarms haven’t started going off yet, recently in a new refund rejection letter template to backers, they have started saying that CIG is no longer the entity that should be reported to agencies regarding this project and/or refunds. They’re saying that RSI – a shell company before the past month – is now the one carrying the liability. This despite the fact that almost every single backer prior to the new ToS of June 1st, 2016, has a receipt for goods sold to them by CIG or one of the other many shell companies associated with this project.

There is more. There is considerably more. The upshot is that Derek and other skeptics were right to conclude, one year ago, that Star Citizen was not going to ship as advertised, and that the project is likely to end in a debacle of proportions that will make famous game industry failures of the past, including Battlecruiser 3000 AD, look like nothing more than modest appetizers to a royal feast.

The project has gradually morphed from overly ambitious project to troubled production to what appears to be an open pyramid scheme. At this point, it wouldn’t surprise me if it ended in recriminations, lawsuits, and criminal charges.

The Wikipedian war

High-ranking SJWs at Wikipedia – or in Gamaliel’s case, formerly at Wikipedia – are up to their usual tricks in attempting to disemploy journalists who fail to submit to the SJW Narrative:

Wikipedia bills itself as “the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit.” In reality, it’s a bureaucratic mess dominated by a small clique of established editors who exploit their position to bully, smear, and intimidate anyone who challenges their authority.

Their latest target is David Auerbach, a highly regarded technology columnist for Slate and a fellow at the New America Foundation. Auerbach has been in the editors’ crosshairs ever since he wrote a series of damning exposes of Wikipedia’s bureaucratic elite in 2014.

In one of these columns, Auerbach described how the Wikipedian aristocracy maintain their power.

As it turned out, I’d run into a couple of what one Wikipedia administrator terms “The Unblockables,” a class of abrasive editors who can get away with murder because they have enough of a fan club within Wikipedia, so any complaint made against them would be met with hostility and opprobrium.

Longtime editors, wrote Auerbach, “have developed a fortress mentality in which they see new editors as dangerous intruders who will wreck their beautiful encyclopedia.” According to Auerbach, the combination of hostility to new editors, and the precipitous drop in longstanding ones (MIT Tech Review counted only 31,000 active editors in 2013, compared to a peak of 51,000 in 2007) “increases pressure to retain other long-standing editors, even incredibly acerbic ones, reinforcing the fortress mentality.”

Previously, Auerbach’s opponents targeted him on Wikipedia, attempting to smear him in public articles, and  have his own page deleted — both favorite tactics of editors looking to damage someone’s public image. Although those efforts failed, Auerbach’s opponents — who hold senior positions in the Wikimedia Foundation’s DC outreach unit — are now targeting his job.

Robert Fernandez, a member of Wikimedia DC’s Board of Directors and Audit committee, who goes by the pseudonym “Gamaliel” on Wikipedia, was the primary culprit, accusing Auerbach of being “pro-Brexit, pro-GamerGate” and “anti-SJW,” as well as a “libel machine.”

One tweet in particular was amusing:

It’s good to know that I am the Dark Lord haunting SJW nightmares. Which, for some reason, happens to remind me of something. There will be a Brainstorm tomorrow, for Brainstormers and OGs only, at 7 PM Eastern. Keep an eye out for the email this evening and be sure to register, as we’ll be launching Round Two and providing a progress report tomorrow.

Two weeks

Adam Piggott, Gentleman Adventurer, reviews Owen Stanley’s The Missionaries:

When I lived in Uganda there was an old joke that would routinely do the rounds:

“In Africa, what’s the difference between a tourist and a racist?”

Answer: “Two weeks.”

Occasionally I would recount this joke to a particularly inane group of Swedes who were about to depart for a gorilla trekking excursion into the remote Bwindi forest. They would get all self-righteous and mutter at my blatant prejudice and soon after they would depart. It was not uncommon to bump into them again after they had returned from their excursion.

“Ya, now your joke, we understands.”

Like all good jokes its premise is founded in truth and also of shared experience.

“The Missionaries,” by Owen Stanley, depicts a fictitious land known as Elephant Island, located somewhere in the confines of the Bismarck Sea, its people closely resembling the ways and mannerisms of Papua New Guinea. As colonialism no longer allows the natives to practice their favorite pastime of headhunting, the burden of keeping law and order falls to a small group of misfit expats, who despite their individual shortcomings, keenly understand the idiosyncrasies of the local population….

I have not enjoyed a novel as much as this in a very long time. In fact,
this novel could not have been published by the regular publishing
industry as it skewers the type of people who haunt that industry as
much as NGOs in misbegotten locales in the far corners of the globe. It
is a credit to Castalia House that the author has sought them out and I
sense that this will be a breakthrough work not just for Stanley but for
this small publishing house as well.

It appears his instincts are correct. Not only have we recently signed a number of new authors about whom we are extremely enthusiastic, but some of the existing authors have stepped up their game as well. Just as Mutiny in Space will not be our only SF juvenile and Brings the Lightning will not be our only Western, The Missionaries will not be our only literary satire.

The media comes after the Alt-Right

As I mentioned a few days ago, it’s a big mistake for anyone on the Right to talk to the mainstream media. As I was explaining to one of the Dread Ilk yesterday, only a complete amateur believes he can somehow spin media coverage to his advantage, and only a complete innocent believes the media is genuinely interested in his story, giving him the chance to set the record straight, or wants to present both sides of the situation.

When a journalist contacts you, he already has the story outlined, the narrative is already established, and often, it has already been approved by an editor. Unbeknownst to you, your role has already been established, and if you are on the Right, you are almost certainly playing the role of the villain of the piece. The reason they are calling you, and will spend up to six hours talking to you, is to glean that single sentence or two they can use to put you on stage in your appointed character as Richard III or Iago.

You’re not going to play them. The average journalist has successfully played hundreds of people and is an expert at pretending to be a new and sympathetic friend before ritually sacrificing you before the public. They don’t hesitate to edit and elide, to insert nonexistent dialogue and false reaction faces, in order to present an intentionally false version of events. They are more cunning and insidious than you suspect. Consider that despite my customary caution, Amy Wallace of Wired managed to disarm my defenses by first interviewing Larry Correia and Brad Torgerson in an entirely friendly manner, then reading the pre-release version of SJWAL before interviewing me.

She then spent three freaking hours talking to me about the Hugos and science fiction, when all she was really after was a means of character-assassination required to support the SF-SJW Narrative of racist Puppies. She didn’t care about Correia or Torgerson or the Hugo Awards, I was the target all along. The only reason she failed was due to her being a parochial American; she didn’t realize the kill-quote that sounded so horrendously racist to Americans was, in fact, an accurate reference to a genuine and widespread problem in Europe, an issue that soon after broke into the English-language media via the UK.

Anyhow, several major news organization are now working on a stories about the Alt Right and connecting it to the rise of Trump. All of us have refused to talk to them, which means that they will have to make do with putting on their Kabuki play without an on-screen villain, or at best, a foolish lesser player or two dressed up in the villain’s clothes.

As Cernovich rightly points out, they need us more than we need them. We can help them sell their Narrative if we are foolish enough to play along, but we have no need of their exposure or their false promises of presenting our side of the story to the public. We will do that ourselves, and we will ultimately replace them as people increasingly turn to us for the simple reason that we tell the truth exactly as we see it, we do not knowingly push false narratives on the public and pretend that they are true.

My media policy is fairly straightforward. I will only do recorded radio or podcast interviews with Alt Right-friendly parties who are not part of any mainstream organization. Any interview with a newspaper or a blog must be written; no telephone or Skype interviews. No television period. No radio unless it is live and the purpose of the interview is clearly provided beforehand.

UPDATE: One of the organizations has asked me if I am willing to respond in writing to their written questions. While I’m not quite certain how that will work in a broadcast environment, I have agreed to do so, partly as an experiment, but mostly because I would prefer to provide the quotes being utilized rather than have them resort to cherry-picking them from my various writings.

Hillary skates again

Well, Justice Thomas already warned us that the Rule of Law no longer applies to the United States of America:

FBI Director James Comey on Tuesday announced the agency is not recommending the Justice Department bring charges against Hillary Clinton, while also denouncing the former secretary of state and her aides for the way they handled classified information through private email servers.

“Although we did not find clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information, there is information that they were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information,” Comey told reporters in Washington, D.C., noting that the probe has found that the former secretary of state used several different email servers and numerous devices during her time in office.

Even so, Comey added later, “Although there is evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information, our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case. Prosecutors necessarily weigh a number of factors before deciding whether to bring charges.”

Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon said the campaign was happy the FBI probe was now in the rearview mirror. “We are pleased that the career officials handling this case have determined that no further action by the Department is appropriate,” Fallon said in a statement on Tuesday afternoon. “As the Secretary has long said, it was a mistake to use her personal email and she would not do it again. We are glad that this matter is now resolved.”

Seriously, how on Earth does this woman continue to get away with everything? I mean, even if you were a Power That Be, why would this, of all women, be the one that you’d go out of your way to protect no matter what she does?

They can’t find anyone more competent? They can’t find anyone less cartoonishly hateful?

How to avoid raising SJWs

Jean-Batave explains seven ways to avoid inadvertently turning your children into SJWs:

1. Be present

As simple as that. Be there. Listen to them. Spot the early signs of SJW friendly attitude and nip them in the bud. A girl with an absent father, like a ship with no rudder, will turn to an ocean of cocks. A boy with an absent father will turn to crime, or worse, feminism.

Keep them close in their formative years. You are a rock, an example. Live by what you preach. There is only so much you can do. The idea here is to create a strong, independent mind that will be curious, hard to manipulate and ready to question the pre-conceived ideas that the exterior world will feed them.

2. Find the ideal environment

It starts by choosing the right mate. More on that here. Avoid criminogenic urban hives. Make sure that you approve of the local community before you move in somewhere. Don’t let them go to university. Make them learn something that will bring them a stable future.

3. Be direct but constructive

Tell them that life is unfair, that family is sacred and explain what death is, among other things. Explain clearly what are the concepts of hard work, merit, strength and beauty, that men and women are very different. That physical appearance and money are important, but that they are not the panacea. No matter what they say, no man wants to hear that he is weak and no woman wants to hear that she is unattractive.

The idea of not sending one’s children to university will be controversial, and hard for many Americans to even contemplate, but the reality is that most young men and women don’t belong at university and learn nothing that is useful or beneficial there. Even those pursuing professions that legitimately require a university degree will likely benefit from working a year or two before returning to school.

An eighth way is to teach them the value of honesty, particularly with the importance of being honest with oneself. No one who values truth and honesty will ever become an SJW, because a necessary aspect of SJWdom is a willingness to lie to oneself and others.

Gamaliel unmasked

The Witchfinder General unmasks the anti-GamerGate Wikipedia administrator Gamaliel, who was, until recently, an Arbitration Committee member, Wikimedia DC board member, and the editor-in-chief of Wikipedia’s quasi-newspaper, The Signpost.

Unmasking Gamaliel

Your author has decided to name Gamaliel. Last year I concluded that there was no public interest in unmasking Gamaliel. He was a mere administrator and there is a convention that only in exceptional circumstances is a low ranking person in a large organisation named.

Recent events have caused me to review that decision and I have concluded that it is in the public interest now to name Gamaliel and reveal his occupation and employer—The former Wikipedia Arbitrator and Administrator known as Gamaliel is known as Robert Manuel Fernandez in real life.

1. Gamaliel is no longer junior. He held an international, policy-setting, elected position on the Wikipedia Arbitration Committee.
2. Gamaliel read my article ‘Paedophiles of Wikipedia’ and breached policy by not banning an admitted paedophile.
3. Gamaliel works in an educational institution as an assistant professor and a librarian and is in a position of trust.
4. Gamaliel has made potentially ruinous allegations against users of Wikipedia like The Devil’s Advocate and afforded them no opportunity to respond – indeed this blog treated Gamaliel and Jimmy Wales better and allowed them the opportunity to comment in advance.
5. When I put this article on hold out of pity for Gamaliel, his acolytes claimed contacting his employers was, ‘extortion’ … before doing far worse to David Auerbach.

Gamaliel is Robert Manuel Fernandez, Assistant Professor, Reference / Instructional Librarian at Saint Leo University, Florida.

I don’t know that it’s much of an “unmasking”, actually, but regardless, Fernandez is the poster boy for a considerable amount of what is wrong with Wikipedia. He is also a useful study in SJW entryism, even though Wikipedia itself is an SJW-controlled organization, in light of how he continually wormed his way towards positions of internal influence.

I suspect an inordinate number of Wikipedia administrators are low-level academics at lesser institutions. That’s why they have no shortage of time to spend thought-policing Wikipedia pages for any content that might call the SJW Narrative into question. It also explains why they almost invariably demonstrate terminal midwittery.

The bonfire of science

In which it is once more demonstrated that scientific evidence is VASTLY less reliable than other types of evidence, because, in most cases, no one ever bothers to actually check the results:

A whole pile of “this is how your brain looks like” MRI-based science has been invalidated because someone finally got around to checking the data.

The problem is simple: to get from a high-resolution magnetic resonance imaging scan of the brain to a scientific conclusion, the brain is divided into tiny “voxels”. Software, rather than humans, then scans the voxels looking for clusters.

When you see a claim that “scientists know when you’re about to move an arm: these images prove it”, they’re interpreting what they’re told by the statistical software.

Now, boffins from Sweden and the UK have cast doubt on the quality of the science, because of problems with the statistical software: it produces way too many false positives.

In this paper at PNAS, they write: “the most common software packages for fMRI analysis (SPM, FSL, AFNI) can result in false-positive rates of up to 70%. These results question the validity of some 40,000 fMRI studies and may have a large impact on the interpretation of neuroimaging results.”

For example, a bug that’s been sitting in a package called 3dClustSim for 15 years, fixed in May 2015, produced bad results (3dClustSim is part of the AFNI suite; the others are SPM and FSL).

That’s not a gentle nudge that some results might be overstated: it’s more like making a bonfire of thousands of scientific papers.

It is not even remotely reasonable to take scientific evidence at face value anymore, much less the pseudoscience so often being substituted for the results produced by genuine, if often flawed, scientody.

It is not even remotely surprising that the flaw the scientists failed to pick up in this situation was statistical, for as I’ve previously observed, most scientists have very little training in math or statistics, and despite their habit of regularly citing statistics, most of them are more or less statistically illiterate.

Never forget that while there are certainly some brilliant scientists, most of them are literal midwits as there are relatively few credentialed scientists with IQs over 132. A study of all the U.S. PhD recipients in 1958 reported an average IQ of 123; the Flynn effect notwithstanding, it is highly unlikely that the average IQ of today’s increasingly diverse and vibrant PhD recipients has risen since then.