How can I help?

That is the question we should be asking ourselves regularly, advises Mike Cernovich:

Luck rules our lives, although we can increase our odds of winning – of getting lucky – by taking more spins of the wheel. Thus you must stay busy.

Your life is the sum total of your activities and the people in your life. Be useful to other people. Find ways to meet market demands. Be good to your friends. When is the last time you emailed a friend to say, “How can I help you?”

People are doing poorly at being useful as they believe simply being around a person adds value to their lives. Yet many people are vampires.

Too many people are out for themselves, trying to extract as much value from others as they can.

That’s one way to live, but it doesn’t work for me.

I find ways to be useful to other people, and it works for me.

Instead of wondering why people don’t reach out to you or old friends fall away, why not stop working angles on people, being a manipulator, and simply saying, “Is there anything I can do for you?”

Too many of us practice a warped secular churchianity, where we congratulate ourselves for donating a modicum of money here and there to savages we don’t know in lieu of helping our friends and allies.

But you’re not a better person for helping the stranger and ignoring your neighbor. You’re a worse person, you’re a performance artist. As Jesus himself said, even the tax collectors love those who love them and even the pagans greet their own people.

Now what does it say about you if your own behavior doesn’t even rise to their level?

Just as only the strong can turn the other cheek, only those who help their own first can help others.

This is not a criticism; the readers of Vox Popoli are well-known across the Internet for their strength of support. You not only support me, but you support my allies and you support each other. But it is a reminder, to me, if no one else, that instead of waiting for others to ask if they need our help, we should proactively go to our friends and ask if there is anything we can do.

In that vein, I know there are a number of people here who would very much like to attend the Dev Game course, but cannot afford to do so. Perhaps you lost your job. Perhaps your kids need braces. Perhaps you’re a young man who probably shouldn’t be reading here in the first place, but wants to get into game development.

So, in the interest of following Mike’s lead, I’d like to offer seven free course passes to readers who would have signed up for Dev Game if they’d had the ability to do so. Write me an email today with DG in the subject and a one-paragraph description of what you’d like to do in the game industry; I will select the seven I believe will most benefit from the course and send them registration links.

And be sure you can actually attend on Saturdays before emailing me.

UPDATE: A donor, who wishes to remain anonymous, has made 10 additional seats available for those who cannot afford it. So, if you would like to utilize one of those seats, let me know.

Metaphor and harbinger

No doubt the Swedish family of the 7-year-old girl murdered by an immigrant are pleased to know that although they are burying their little girl, at least no one will be able to call them racist:

A seven year old girl was stabbed to death in an apartment in Upplands-Bro in northern Stockholm on 25 July this year by a 36 year old man, Daniel Gebru. Ten months earlier Gebru arrived as a welfare of migrant from Eritrea to Sweden…. Gebru has not been able to give any concrete reasons for why he cut the throat of the seven-year girl in the bathroom of her home. He had previously been living in the apartment.

Sooner or later, reality always punishes insanity. Immigration is societal suicide. At this point, it seems the only thing that will save Sweden is a) a new Northern Crusade or b) the blood eagle.

Sic semper cuculis.

Dev Game registrations

All right, I finally got the Dev Game emails sent out with the registration links. If you signed up but did not receive an email tonight, please email me right away and I will send it to you.

You don’t need anything except a mike setup and perhaps something with which to take notes.

The small-ship navy

In USA TODAY. Now, I wonder where Instapundit might have come across this bit of discussion on reshaping the military?

When it comes to the Navy, we can have a big fleet of small ships, or
a small fleet of big ships.  For quite a while now, we’ve gone with the
big ships, but some people are arguing that that’s a mistake.

One of those is Commander Phillip E. Pournelle, U.S. Navy, who recently wrote in the Proceedings of the U.S. Naval Institute that
“In an age of precision-strike weapon proliferation, a big-ship navy
equals a brittle fleet. What’s needed is a revamped force structure
based on smaller surface combatants.”

He makes some excellent points. Currently, the U.S. Navy dominates the seas. A U.S. Navy Carrier Battle Group can project power
in a way no other nation’s navy can approach, essentially placing a
large airbase within striking range of pretty much any place on the
planet worth striking. Of course, the problem with this is that
aircraft carriers aren’t just powerful. They’re also big, expensive and
vulnerable. (The non-carrier part of a Carrier Battle Group is basically there to protect the carrier from submarines and missiles).

However, the fact is that regardless of how the USN reconfigures, it can’t expect to dominate the coastlines like it did in the heyday of the aircraft carrier. Great Britain managed the transition from the age of the ship-of-the-line to the age of the battleship without losing its dominance of the high seas, but there is no guarantee that the USA will be able to do so.

In fact, in light of the demographic changes and consequential decline in national capabilities, I expect that China will surpass the USA as the leading naval power before the 22nd century.

“We have lost the city”

It’s hard to feel too sorry for the lutefisk-eating surrender monkeys of Norway:

Grønland is only two subway stops from the Parliament, and one from the Central Station, fairly close to the government offices that were bombed by Breivik.

It looks like Karachi, Basra, and Mogadishu all rolled into one. People sell drugs openly just next to the Grønland subway station.

It’s not Norway or Europe anymore, except when there is welfare money to be collected. The police have largely given up. Early in 2010 Aftenposten stated that there are sharia patrols in this area, and gay couples are assaulted and chased away. “Immigrant Fatima Tetouani says that ‘Grønland is more Muslim than Morocco.’”

Readers should remember that Aftenposten, which is the largest newspaper in the Oslo region, is normally pro-Islamic and very Multicultural.

Sturla Nøstvik (36) did not suspect any danger when the barrel of a pistol was smashed into his forehead. That was the beginning of fifty minutes of hell as a hostage of the robbers.

The women are being raped at night in Oslo, and the men are robbed more than ever.

In just the past ten years more than 4,000 people have been robbed in the town center and the area of the Grønland police station [an immigrant ghetto]. Most of them are young men. Sturla Nøstvik is robbery-victim 351 from Grønland just from this year, the same period in which around fifty assault-rapes have been reported in Oslo. The robbers play on fear, violence, and severe threats that leave a mark on the victims. Police superintendent Inge Sundeng in Grønland describes them as the “somewhat-forgotten victims”.

The police visited Sturla Nøstvik in the emergency room after the robbery. They told Nøstvik that a gang of robbers had committed many similar robberies in Grünerløkka and surrounding areas in thee past weeks. They told him that everybody should have the right to feel safe, but that they had no way of halting the robberies. “We have lost the city,” they said…

It’s a good thing they burned dead Vikings rather than bury them. Because if they had graves, they’d certainly be spinning in them at the sight of their descendants meekly accepting conquest without any resistance, out of nothing more than fear of being called racist or jailed by their treasonous leaders.

So you’ve lost the city. Big deal. Go take it back, or lose the rest of the country.

To H or not to H

There is some doubt over whether North Korea’s H-bomb test was successful or not:

North Korea dictator Kim Jong Un vowed to celebrate the New Year with ‘the thrilling sound of our first hydrogen bomb’ when he signed to order for today’s nuclear blast.

The hermit state claimed it had detonated a ‘successful’ hydrogen bomb this morning, triggering a 5.1-magnitude earthquake and propelling Kim on a new collision course with world powers.

But experts have been quick to cast doubt on the claims, saying the size of the explosion and resulting earthquake was far too small to have come a failed H-bomb and was likely disguised to appear like one.

I fail to see why it matters all that much either way. North Korea clearly has acquired what it wants, which is the ability to deter any U.S. aggression against it. In light of the numerous U.S. attacks on countries everywhere from Serbia to Syria, it would be very strange if governments around the world did not make a priority of acquiring similar nuclear deterrence.

SJWs, exposed

The SJW calling himself Hawk S. Rabidus made a risibly false claim.

Nobody else is organizing or manipulating things on Goodreads (or the Hugos) using concerted action. There is no cabal.

There most certainly is, as in both cases, the emergent behavior of the various individuals who share an interest in pushing social justice is observably manifest. In the case of the Hugos, the editors at Tor Books have been engaging in concerted action for decades. They have, by their own admission, decided when new awards will be created, when they will win those awards, and when they will step back and permit others to win them. In the case of Goodreads, it is a group of petty SJWs and SJW librarians who have collectively sought to lower the ratings of right wing authors. Thanks to Sean O’Hara, we were able to put together the list of all 100 or so, including moderators like rivka, and librarians like banillah, Bryan Young, davidofterra, and Getty Hesse.

 SJWs Always Lie: Taking Down the Thought Police
by Vox Day, Milo Yiannopoulos (Foreword)
Getty Hesse’s review
Jan 04, 16

did not like it

I’m putting this review up because the book desperately needs a lower rating. One does not need to read this book. The very blurb is resplendent with contradictions.

SJWs subject the world to “their intolerant thought and speech policing,” and yet the VERY NEXT SENTENCE speaks of “the SJW agenda of diversity, tolerance, inclusiveness, and equality.” Tolerance cannot be intolerant. Vox Day is saying here that something is not itself. And he doesn’t even suggest that their “agenda” is something else masquerading as “diversity,tolerance, inclusiveness, and equality,” oh no, rather these things contradict “both science and observable reality.” I’m not even going to bother to explain why that statement is incredibly idiotic. Anyone with half a brain cell should be able to figure it out.

And, for the record, Vox Day is not “the most hated man in science fiction.” He’s the most laughed at.

If SJWs could do logic, they wouldn’t be SJWs. Forgive the digression, but Getty Hesse’s pseudo-dialectic makes my teeth itch. It’s true that X cannot be Not X, but Y most certainly can be. In much the same way Tom Brady is not the New England Patriots playbook, SJWs are not the professed SJW agenda. As usual, both Vox’s First Law and the First Law of SJW can be seen here.

What is interesting about Goodreads is that it provides an excellent way of publicly identifying where people stand on the socio-political spectrum. Aside from the amusement that this latest showdown has provided, it has sparked some very interesting discussions in our tech circle, including some things we’re going to discuss in our next Brainstorm, where we will talk about the planned fork of Wikipedia and the shape of its eventual replacement.

More importantly, this has finally allowed me to answer the core question with which I have been wrestling: do we create something that is a right-wing alternative to Wikipedia or do we shoot to replace it entirely with something better that the left can be safely permitted to use without converging it like they always do?

Speaking of things that provoke laughter, Rolf Nelson received an email from The Goodreads Team explaining why they would not be removing an obviously fake review in which it was apparent that the reviewer could not possibly have read the book.

Goodreads policy allows users to rate a book as soon as it is listed on the site. We do not dictate on what basis Goodreads members form their personal opinions about a book, so we have no rules about reading the full text of a book before rating and reviewing it. We recognize that not everyone will agree with this policy, but it is one that has worked well for the Goodreads community over time.

Users are entitled to express their honest opinions about the book,
even if others feel them to be misguided or wrong. We don’t evaluate a
reader’s opinions based on how, when, or why they made a judgement about
the work that they read. Given the subjective nature of reviews, it’s
hard to designate one review as “wrong” and another “right.” Even if we
could, it would be impractical to manually verify the authenticity of
every statement made in a Goodreads review, and we have to be consistent
in how we apply our policies.  

That would explain why they were able to ban me in good conscience: they have no need to be consistent about how they apply their unviolated non-policies.

But we shouldn’t be surprised that Goodreads’ policy permits the review of books one hasn’t read, as it even permits the review of books that don’t exist. Two Goodreads librarians have one-starred a book that I supposedly wrote for Ben Bella that was never signed to a contract, that I never wrote, and Ben Bella never published. It’s nice that ignoring reality has worked well for the Goodreads community over time, but history is quite clear on the way that reality tends to impose itself in the end.

One more tangent, if you don’t mind. Ben Bella graciously returned to me the audiobook rights to The Irrational Atheist and we expect it to be available on Audible from Castalia House sometime in the February-March timeframe.

Viktor Orban was right

What a pity that the British didn’t come around as quickly when they were warned by Enoch Powell:

Like most members of Hungary’s liberal intellectual elite, George Konrad, a distinguished novelist, loathes his country’s stridently illiberal prime minister, Viktor Orban.

“He is not a good democrat and I don’t believe he is a good person,” said Mr. Konrad, a veteran of communist-era struggles against dictatorship.

All the same, he thinks Mr. Orban, the self-declared scourge of mainstream elites across Europe, was right and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany was wrong about how to respond to the chaotic flood of migrants seeking refuge from war and poverty — perhaps Europe’s most serious crisis since World War II.

“It hurts to admit it, but on this point Orban was right,” Mr. Konrad, 82, said, lamenting that in the absence of a joint European effort to control the flow, Hungary was wise to seal its borders and sound the alarm over the perils of allowing hundreds of thousands of migrants, mostly Muslims, to enter Europe willy-nilly.

Quietly, and often with similar misgivings, a growing number of people in Hungary and beyond are wondering whether, despite his shrill and often bigoted message, Mr. Orban had a clearer view of the scale of the migration crisis and its potential hazards than technocrats in Brussels and leaders in Berlin and other European capitals….

In a recent interview with European newspapers, Donald Tusk, president of the European Council, the body that presides over European Union summit meetings, described Ms. Merkel’s welcoming approach to migrants as “dangerous”
and endorsed the view long promoted by Mr. Orban — that most of the
asylum seekers entering Europe were not Syrians fleeing war but economic
migrants seeking jobs.

If Europeans are forced to choose between Muslims and nationalists, they will choose nationalists. If they are forced to choose between Muslims and fascists, they will choose fascists. And if they are forced to choose between Muslims and neo-nazis, they will choose neo-nazis.

The secular elites who have welcomed this invasion should rethink their attempt to cling to power and manage the situation they themselves created. They are the problem, not the solution. And all that trying to prevent those who warned them of the consequences of their actions from addressing the situation will accomplish is ensure that more extreme measures are taken.

Very nearly everyone with whom I have spoken is furiously angry. The situation is extremely unstable, and I suspect there will be more than a few newsworthy events in 2016. The mass sexual assault at the Cologne train station is merely the first of many to come.

“There is a shift to the extreme right because the left, or what is left
of the left, and the moderate center right were offering answers that
were wrong,” said Mr. Gyarmati, who heads the International Center for
Democratic Transition, a group that promotes democracy. “Now we are in a
situation where the answers are unpleasant to say the least.”

Sooner or later, reality always imposes itself, no matter how many people insist that 2+2 equals 37.

Review fun with Sean O’Hara

So, it turns out that Sean’s got some really… interesting… reviews. I liked this one of, ahem,  Bodacious Space Pirates, of all things. Apparently if you stare too long into the abyss of hyperspace, you’ll eventually see some oversized tits.

Bodacious Space Pirates: Abyss of Hyperspace Vol. 1
Sean O’Hara’s review
Sep 14, 15

liked it
bookshelves: manga, space-pirates, space-opera, science-fiction
Read on September 13, 2015

I wish the novels would come out in English. This just isn’t a very good substitute.

I wonder why he is reading Bodacious Space Pirates if he can’t read Japanese? Sadly, Sean can’t even get the “review the editing non-review” right, and today introduced the innovative “review the non-editing non-review”:

Riding the Red Horse
Sean O’Hara’s review
Jan 04, 16

did not like it

This book claims to have been edited by Tom Kratman and Teddy Beale. This is a lie. They couldn’t edit an elementary school newsletter. To call what they did here “editing” is an insult to editors the world over. It’s more like they got their friends together and had everyone shit on a plate. And for some reason they’re inordinately proud of what they produced.

But then again, there’s a good chance a similar pile of shit will become President, so maybe they have a point. 

Fascinating. He’s attacking everyone from Jerry Pournelle to William S. Lind. While declaring that the book – the book – claims it was edited by people who did not edit it. I wonder who did? And were they bodacious?

And then there is this, which one would have thought defied description. And yet, Sean somehow manages the trick.

Princess Jellyfish, Vol. 1
Sean O’Hara’s review
Jul 20, 15

really liked it
bookshelves: manga, josei, romance
Read on July 15, 2015

How to sum up the plot of Princess Jellyfish…? Well, it’s a romance involving a love triangle between a nerdy girl, a transvestite, and the transvestite’s brother who’s a rising star of the political world. Also, real estate plays a big role, as does fashion design and of course jellyfish.

Of course jellyfish! How could there not be jellyfish when there are transvestites?

I think it goes without saying that what we have here is a gentlemen who has never, ever, kissed a real live girl. And there is more, there is literally 548 reviews more. You have to read them to believe them; they are too freaking funny!

Better than the story

Quite possibly longer as well. This is an epic review of “If You Were a Dinosaur, My Love”:

I thought it was cool that the girl narrator loves dinosaurs so much. I
mean, really, who doesn’t love dinosaurs? Especially the T-Rex. The
Biggest, Meanest Big Bad of the Big Bads. Awesome. Well, ok, a five foot
ten inch T-Rex. So not the biggest, but at least the meanest right? And
she feeds it live meat and it’s gory, so still cool, right?

Then
the T-Rex starts singing lullabies, and performing musical theater.
Then it gets married. Whoa. What happened? That’s not the Biggest,
Meanest Big Bad of the Big Bads – that’s Hugh Jackman! Which would still
be cool if it was Wolverine Hugh Jackman, but it’s not. It’s The Boy from Oz
Hugh Jackman. The gay Hugh Jackman. Not that there’s anything wrong
with being gay. I love gay men. Well, I mean, not like that, I enjoy gay
– yes, people, gay people. They’re wonderful.

So just as my
attention starts to wander and I’m thinking about Hugh in all his tight
glitter clothes and sparkley man glory, well, then suddenly the story
twists into this awesome piece of violent dinosaur revenge porn! Just
like Man on Fire with Denzel, but toothier!

Now it’s
got me again, Hugo award for sure! Men soaked in gin and malice? Oh,
yeah, baby, bring me some of that! Ah, I mean, what a beautiful word
picture. Men, gin, malice… mmmm… beautiful. So now there is blood
everywhere, evil cackling laughter, widows and orphans – wooo! I’m out
of my seat cheering on the five foot ten inch T-Rex – and then she’s
back talking about a wedding again for gosh sakes. And it’s not even a
blood soaked Carrie kinda wedding, but a green chiffon wedding – does Hugh have green eyes? I guess I’ve never looked at his eyes.

Then
we find out that the narrator actually hates her fiance because he’s a
pussy who can’t win a bar fight! In her imagination she loved this
awesome man mincing T-Rex that waded through pools of revenge blood but
in real life he was just… a disappointment. He wasn’t the bar fight
winning, beer drinking, tattooed, six foot six inch, 300 pound Hells
Angel alpha male she wanted, just some New York hipster in skinny jeans
who couldn’t take a pool cue across the face.

She wrote this
whole story to rip away the tiny bit of masculinity her fiance still
possessed. A masculinity wax job. That. Is. Cold. I mean, not every man
can be Wolverine Hugh Jackman, but please, why does she hate gay Hugh
Jackman so much?

5 Stars for awesome dinosaur revenge porn – minus 4 stars for the homophobia.