The freedom fighters

It’s a surreal moment when you discover that a) ISIS has a blocklist, and b) you’re on it. Granted, they only copied anti-GamerGate’s blocklist, but you’d think it would give the more self-aware aGGs pause to realize that the Islamic State is following their lead.

But it does tend to show how much commonality there is across statist totalitarians, whether they are of the #LoveWins or #GravityWins variety.

Speaking of freedom fighters, Trigger Warning is an example of people getting off their posteriors and attempting to fight back. They’ve been great, doing some of the only reviews of Castalia House books that have appeared, such as Ann Sterzinger’s review of Martin van Creveld’s EQUALITY: THE IMPOSSIBLE QUEST.

They’re looking to raise money on IndieGoGo, so go and have a look at supporting them, especially if you’ve been reading their site. Natasha Marie Phoenix’s piece on Generation Hugbox was particularly good.

Some have called it “political correctness.” I find this phrase overused and meaningless. What we are witnessing is a passive totalitarian control of the public discourse.

Although as we’ve seen everywhere from SFWA to the Supreme Court, that passive control is increasingly showing signs of going active. You’re going to have to stand up and fight sooner or later. Might as well start now.

This is what happens

When you put women in the pulpit  It doesn’t surprise me in the least. Notice how wide the approval is; the deputies were just itching to have an excuse to turn canon into parody.

The Episcopal Church officially joined Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and the United Church of Christ this week in becoming the third mainline denomination to embrace gay marriage rites — a move that comes just days after the U.S. Supreme Court legalized same-sex unions.

The new liturgy extending marriage to gays and lesbians was widely approved with a vote of 184-23 by the Episcopal Church USA’s House of Deputies during the denomination’s 78th General Convention; it will become available for use on November 29, Deseret News reported.

In a separate vote of 173 to 27, the institution of marriage was changed from being comprised exclusively by a man and a woman to being between two persons more generally, with the line “both parties understand that Holy Matrimony is a physical and spiritual union of a man and a woman” being axed from the canon.

Once the women start preaching, it’s only a matter of time before Jesus Christ himself is axed from the canon. Refuse to accept the authority of God’s Word in one thing, you may as well refuse to accept them all, because sooner or later, that’s where you’re headed.

The headline is wrong, however. The Episcopal Church ceased to be a Christian church some years ago.

Social justice

Male SJWs are usually men who have never understood the difference between women approving of something and women being attracted to something. Women may well approve of men who share their insane ideals or take their ideological babbling at face value. And those same women are attracted to men who ignore it or treat it with the intellectual contempt it deserves.

So, it all comes down to whether you prefer female approval or female attraction. But the latter does not follow from the former. Of course, if SJWs were capable of logical analysis, they wouldn’t be SJWs.

A public service announcement

Don’t update iTunes to 12.2:

I just installed iTunes 12.2 and turned on iCloud Music Library and my library is getting corrupted, song names are getting swapped and then marked as duplicate, only the artwork for the original song remains.

I would also advise against using Apple products for reasons both technical and ideological, but I realize few who are already caught in the throes of Apple addiction are going to stop now.

Stamping out sexism in science

Nature has a few ideas on that score. And if we lose a few male Nobel Laureates along the way, what does it matter? After all, the vast influx of female talent that is certain to replace the old sexist dinosaurs will more than make up for any losses, right?

The problem is serious and long-standing. But there are plenty of ways to tackle it. Nature has discussed and promoted them before, and is happy to do so again. Here is a list of measures to consider afresh:

  • Recognize and address unconscious bias. Graduate students given
    grants by the US National Institutes of Health are required to undergo
    ethics training. Gender-bias training for scientists, for example, would
    be a powerful way to help turn the tide.
  • Encourage universities and research institutions to extend the
    deadlines for tenure or project completion for scientists (women and
    men) who take parental leave, and do not penalize these researchers by
    excluding them from annual salary rises. Many workplaces are happy to
    consider and agree to such extension requests when they are made. The
    policy should simply be adopted across the board.
  • Events organizers and others must invite female scientists to
    lecture, review, talk and write articles. And if the woman asked says
    no — for whatever reason — then ask others. This is about more than mere
    visibility. It can boost female participation too. Anecdotal reports
    suggest that women are more likely to ask questions in sessions chaired
    by women. After acknowledging our own bias towards male contributors, Nature, for example, is engaged in a continued effort to commission more women in our pages.
  • Do not use vocabulary and imagery that support one gender more than
    another. Words matter. It is not ‘political-correctness-gone-mad’ to
    avoid defaulting to the pronouns ‘him’ and ‘he’, or to ensure that
    photographs and illustrations feature women.
  • In communication and promotional materials, highlight women who have
    made key contributions to previous work, whether in your own lab or
    within your research discipline more broadly.
  • Be aware of the importance of informal settings and social
    activities to workplace culture, and people’s sense of their place
    within it. Senior scientists can, where possible, make such events
    inclusive.

Can one really say the Law of Unintended Consequences applies when the consequences of a proposed action are so entirely obvious to anyone with half a brain? How many Shakespeares, Dantes, or even JRR Tolkiens have been produced since since the liberation of women from the male oppression that forcibly prevented them from putting pen to paper 40, or 80, or 97 years ago?

And what is the price of trading a few Watsons and Hunts for the scientific equivalents of Stephanie Meyers and E.L. James going to be?

Now, obviously I support women in science; I publish more female scientists than 99.9 percent of my critics do. But I don’t support female thought police in science, which is really what Nature is advocating here. It is the thought police, of both sexes, who truly have NO PLACE whatsoever in science.

RPinDC

GK sends the word of a DC-area Puppies meetup:

Saturday, July 11th
8-10 PM
Rock Bottom Brewpub
Ballston Commons Mall (Lower Level)
Arlington, Virginia

All Sad Puppies and Rabid Puppies welcome. We don’t particularly care which flavor of Puppy Supporters show up. The Browncoats flag will be flying.

If you’re interested, get your bark on. And if you carry Glock, be prepared to be mocked! (Says the man who still kind of misses his G23.)

How much longer

Will they “fucking love science”? I wonder. Heartiste takes no little amusement in pointing to the potential ideological challenges to the secular orthodoxy increasingly being posed by genetic science:

“People really do see the world differently,” says lead author Rebecca Todd, a professor in UBC’s Department of Psychology. “For people with this gene variation, the emotionally relevant things in the world stand out much more.”

The gene in question is ADRA2b, which influences the neurotransmitter norepinephrine. Previous research by Todd found that carriers of a deletion variant of this gene showed greater attention to negative words. Her latest research is the first to use brain imaging to find out how the gene affects how vividly people perceive the world around them, and the results were startling, even to Todd.

“We thought, from our previous research, that people with the deletion variant would probably show this emotionally enhanced vividness, and they did more than we would even have predicted,” says Todd, who scanned the brains of 39 participants, 21 of whom were carriers of the genetic variation….

Compared to non-carriers, carriers of the ADRA2b deletion variant gene estimated lower levels of noise on positive and negative images, relative to neutral images, indicating emotionally enhanced vividness, or EEV. Carriers of the deletion variation also showed significantly more brain activity reflecting EEV in key regions of the brain sensitive to emotional relevance.

About the gene

The ADRA2b deletion variant appears in varying degrees across different ethnicities. Although roughly 50 per cent of the Caucasian population studied by these researchers in Canada carry the genetic variation, it has been found to be prevalent in other ethnicities. For example, one study found that just 10 per cent of Rwandans carried the ADRA2b gene variant.

So, an aggression-linked gene is 500 times more common while an empathy-linked gene is one-fifth as common in various gene pools. But aggression and empathy probably wouldn’t have anything at all to do with actual human behavior, would they?

It’s always fascinating to see how quickly those who claim their opinions and morality are guided by science are to throw science out the window whenever it contradicts their actual beliefs and values.

You can’t accommodate the Left

Sultan Knish explains the futility of trying to talk to, reason with, or accomodate the SJWs:

You can’t accommodate the left on social issues. You can’t accommodate it on fiscal issues. You can’t do it. Period.

The left exists to destroy you. It does not seek to co-exist with you. Its existence would lose all meaning. Any common ground will be used to temporarily achieve a goal before the useful idiots are kicked to the curb and denounced as bigots who are holding back progress.

The purpose of power is power. The left is not seeking to achieve a set of policy goals before kicking back and having a beer. The policy goals are means of destroying societies, nations and peoples before taking over. If you allow it a policy goal, it will ram that goal down your throat. It will implement it as abusively as it can possibly can before it moves on to the next battle.

It’s not about gay marriage. It’s not about cakes. It’s about power.

More fundamentally it’s about the difference in human nature between the people who want to be left alone and those who want power over others.

He’s absolutely right. There is ample historical precedent for their behavior and the eventual consequences of it. The moderate position is a complete nonstarter, as Brad Torgersen, among others, has learned. Read the whole thing.

The hysteria crescendos

Chris Hensley appears determined to provide conclusive evidence of the Three Laws of SJW:

Chris Hensley on June 30, 2015 at 9:46 am said
I will make this point, again. I will repeat his point until I am blue in the face. Vox Day and his Rabid Puppies are a hate group. They are extreme-right wing, white supremacist, homophobic thugs. Their actions are racist, misogynistic, homophobic and the list goes on. I have shown my evidence of their bigotry, repeatedly. Everyone else who has made those claims here has shown their evidence, repeatedly. You have not shown a shred of evidence to the contrary. There is no war, there are no sides. The only people talking about a war are Vox Day and his supporters. They are thugs, because they behave like thugs. Despite your claims to the contrary, they are not behaving as reasonable men. They are behaving as bullies and cowards.

You can admit those facts. You can provide evidence showing that their actions towards the Worldcon, Irene Gallo, and a great many others does not constitute harassment and cowardice. If you are willing to do neither then there is nothing to discuss. If you continue to defend their actions, if you cover for them while they harm others, then you share responsibility for those actions.

We see all Three Laws of SJW on display here.

    1. SJWs always lie.
    2. SJWs always double down.
    3. SJWs always project.

      If this Hensley is to be taken seriously, a collection of individuals voting on an award, and doing so in considerably less lockstep than numerous confirmed historical bloc votes, are “a hate group”? Spending $40 and filling out a ballot makes us “thugs”? Indians and Latinos and Asians and blacks are “white supremacists?” A writer with a gay fan club and three electronic dance hits on a gay record label is “homophobic”? Simply not buying books from a publisher that has openly and publicly attacked us is “behaving as bullies and cowards”? Nominating books we like instead of books they like constitutes “harassment and cowardice”? 

      That is not taking liberties with the truth. That is not twisting and contorting the truth to present a false image. That is holding the truth hostage in the cellar, chaining it to a bed, and repeatedly raping it in a futile attempt to father a false narrative. It is very easy to observe that our actions are not any of the things the SJWs claim them to be. Entertainment Weekly had to issue multiple retractions after being foolish enough to take the SJW claims at face value. Other publications will eventually do the same.

      But all the various lies that Chris Hensley and the other SJWs keep hurling in the futile hope that they will finally stick and disqualify aren’t interesting. Most of them are literal repetitions of the same narrative Johnny Con has been selling to no avail for several years now. What is interesting is how their level of hysteria has observably increased. Why, one wonders, is it necessary for them to lie until they are blue in the face? Why are they even more desperate to disqualify me now than they were back in April or May?

      Why are they still babbling incoherently about us while simultaneously insisting on our totally irrelevant wrongness?

      I don’t know. Perhaps they fear that the record influx of Supporting Members are not all reliable SJWs and Truefen flooding in to defend the Hugo Awards by voting to not give out any awards. Perhaps they notice that my site traffic has continue to rise, and that support for both Sad and Rabid Puppies continues to grow as more sane people observe the behavior of the SJWs and realize we were not exaggerating. Perhaps it is simply a reflection of the wider cultural war that has heated up of late. Perhaps it is a reflection of the economic instability that now haunts even those who don’t pay much attention to the economy. Perhaps it is because we use their tactics against them more effectively than they do.

      But whatever the reason, it is clear that they are afraid of me, of you, and of the growing number of people who realize that they are incoherent lunatics who possess an insane and immoral vision for society. Let them hurl spurious labels and tell ridiculous lies. It’s what they do. We are immune to all their pointing and shrieking and posturing and preening attempts to DISQUALIFY.

      We don’t care. And as for the idea that the “only people talking about a war are Vox Day and his supporters”, see: the First Law of SJW. And note that this reference to a cultural war happening in fiction precedes the existence of Rabid Puppies by five months.

      UPDATE: Mike Glyer has noticed the increased activity as well.

      Activity in June was so intense that 19 of last month’s posts now rank among this blog’s 25 most-viewed of all-time.
      The reason is the huge amount of dialogue in the comments section. Five posts drew over 1,000 comments.
      “Lord Foul’s Baying,” the June 14 roundup, is not only the month’s top post but trails only the photo essay about the Bradbury house teardown as this blog’s most-read entry. It collected over 1,300 comments.

      I’m sure that intensity is simply the result of the SJWs being so interested in talking about the books they love. It wouldn’t have anything to do with their insane obsession with shoring up their crumbling Puppy Narrative, as we are reliably informed that we don’t matter, we’re totally irrelevant, we’re only bots with a bunch of fake Twitter accounts, and absolutely no one pays any attention to anything we write, say, think, or boycott. Also, unrepentant bad-to-reprehensible racist misogynistic homophobic neo-Nazi hate group thugs.

      Protecting the competitive edge

      Apple loses, E-book decision stands:

      In a major decision, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, by a 2-1 margin, has affirmed Judge Denise Cote’s 2013 finding that Apple orchestrated a scheme to fix e-book prices.

      “We conclude that the district court correctly decided that Apple orchestrated a conspiracy among the publishers to raise e-book prices, that the conspiracy unreasonably restrained trade in violation of the Sherman Act, and that the injunction is properly calibrated to protect the public from future anti-competitive harms,” wrote Debra Ann Livingston, for the court. “Accordingly, the judgment of the district court is affirmed.” Judge Dennis Jacobs, who made headlines with his tough questions at oral arguments, dissented.

      In addition, the court also upheld Cote’s final injunction, rejecting an appeal by Macmillan and Simon & Schuster which argued that the final order illegally amended their consent decrees.

      This is good news for independents and self-publishers, as it prevents the major publishers from ganging up against them to protect their margins.

      As we’ve seen from Tor Books, some publishers believe they are too big and too important to be held accountable. But unless Citi or Goldman get into publishing, that’s unlikely to be the case.