The first to die

But it is very unlikely that Keith Broomfield will be the last American to die fighting the neo-caliphate of the Islamic State:

Hundreds of people turned up in the Kurdish town of Kobani to bid farewell to Keith Broomfield before his body was handed over to family at the Mursitpinar gate, said Idriss Naasan.

Broomfield, from Massachusetts, died on June 3 in battle in a Syrian village near Kobani, making him likely the first U.S. citizen to die fighting alongside Kurds against the Islamic State group.

He had joined the People’s Protection Units known as the YPG on Feb. 24 under the nom de guerre Gelhat Rumet. The YPG are the main Kurdish guerrilla battling the Islamic State group in Syria.

It wasn’t even two years ago when the usual anklebiters were scoffing at the idea of a revived caliphate. And yet, an American has already died fighting it.

All ur SSN are belong to us

It would be amusing if they start thieving government identities now that they have all the data they need to produce them:

Hackers stole personnel data and Social Security numbers for every federal employee, a government worker union said Thursday, saying that the cyber theft of U.S. employee information was more damaging than the Obama administration has acknowledged.

Perhaps the federal government should have abided by the wisdom of the Founders, and respected the Fourth Amendment.

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

No citizen should ever be required to give any information to the government, barring a Warrant. They might as reasonably be required to post it on the front door of their house for anyone passing by.

Day vs Sandifier: the transcript

Upon reading this, I think I made a better case against THE WASP FACTORY than for ONE BRIGHT STAR TO GUIDE THEM, but on the whole, I’m content with how the debate turned out.

Day: And this also touches on my third part, which is: this is an idiot plot. I mean, this is what Roger Ebert described as – you know, he said that “the idiot plot is any plot that would be resolved in five minutes if everyone in the story were not an idiot.” So, you’ve got somebody who literally has never looked in her pants to discover that she’s got a vagina, you’ve got the father who is beyond idiocy with the whole story about the dog and the creation of the fake genitals just in case she ever asks, and then of course you’ve got Eric, who apparently never figured out that his sister was actually his sister either. I mean, this is an idiot plot. There’s no way around that.

Sandifer: This is grotesque, it’s a grotesquery. I think that the ludicrousness of it is a joke in the same spirit as “killing three people was just a phase I was going through.” I don’t think it’s an idiot plot so much as it is a parody of rural grotesquery that is deliberately at the absolute limits of what is even remotely plausible.

Day: I personally think it’s well beyond those limits, and, you know, I’m not saying that there’s no humor to it, but, you know, I didn’t find it funny, for the most part. The occasional one-offs, like you mention, you know, those were mildly amusing, but just to wallow in that depth of depravity and violence and murder, you know, it’s literally disgusting, and I didn’t find it funny, I didn’t find it edifying. Like I said, the plot is a literal idiot plot. Whether you want to say it’s because it was parody or not, it’s still an idiot plot. I’m not one of those people who finds… What’s that show, the guy from The Office…

Sandifer: U.S. or U.K.?

Day: Ricky Gervais.

Sandifer: Yes.

Day: He has that television show where he pretends to be retarded or something, and every ad he’s gurning, you know what I mean? It’s a relatively new show. I don’t find that funny either. And so, maybe the fact that it’s got an idiot plot but it’s a parody, therefore it’s supposed to make it intelligent, but to me, the plot is still what the plot is, and so I found it very, very disappointing, because the whole plot is totally dependent on the three major characters being and behaving like complete idiots.

And the problem I have when you talk about the whole psychosocial aspect of Frank is Banks, in my opinion, gets the characters completely wrong. Frank is not convincing in any way, shape, or form as a girl who believes she’s a boy, and that sort of thing. I’m pretty sure that Iain Banks never had any daughters, because if you’re a parent, and you’ve got both boys and girls, there is not a chance in hell that a little girl, even if you raise her as a boy, is going to behave like a boy.  This is where I think it goes beyond parody and is a level of absurd that is not credible. I would have found it much more credible if Frank had some female attributes and characteristics in his thinking that he couldn’t explain. But instead, like you said, he’s more of a parody of a hyper-male, and that to me makes no sense whatsoever.

Sandifer: I agree that there’s an element of extreme implausibility, obviously, to some of the plot elements. I do think, going through, I note that Banks takes care to find some explanation for pretty much all of the elements of it, so that he at least has a sort of nice Aristotelian unity, where everything is either made necessary or likely by some other event, even if the characters are certainly very extreme. But it seems to me like your objection is less that you don’t believe that Frank would have physically figured it out – because there is the explanation, for instance, of the male hormones enlarging the clitoris so that it looked like the stump of his penis.

Day: Yeah, I get that, but where did the vagina come from?

Sandifer: I would assume that Frank just assumed it was the mutilated and tattered remnants of the wound.

Day: Well, except for the fact that the urine is not coming of the stump of the clitoris. And the fact that it kind of goes pretty deep. I mean, we’re dealing with somebody who is literally retarded, which we know from his behavior he’s not.

Moshe Feder doubles down… twice

The Associate Editor of Tor Books doubled-down on Facebook:

I’ll be happy to say right now, here on my _personal_ FB page, speaking for myself and not Tor, that I agree with Irene that Vox Day can be fairly described as a neo-Nazi.
– Moshe Feder, Associate Editor, Tor Books

It’s a very strange to accuse a self-declared Zionist who edits and publishes Israeli authors of being a neo-Nazi, but then, these are the same people who insist that Brad Torgersen is racist despite his marriage to a black woman. Mr. Feder then proceeded to double down again:

The approval of Tom Doherty’s statement from those with Puppy sympathies or at least tolerance, and the disapproval of it by those — like most of my friends — whom the Puppies would dismiss as Social Justice Warriors or CHORFs, is hardly surprising. It must be accounted a tactical victory for those who chose Irene Gallo as a target and put Tor in the position of feeling it had to respond. This has gone well beyond the usual purely rhetorical combat of fan feuds to threatening someone’s career status because of their personal opinion. It’s dirty pool in my eyes and sets a terrible precedent.

There’s been plenty of heated commentary in the aftermath yesterday and today, often pretty wild-eyed, some condemning Irene and calling for her to be fired, others condemning Tom and Tor as sexist for singling her out while Patrick and I went unmentioned. In response, I’d like to suggest a calm consideration of proportionality and a return to the practical realities of this year’s Hugo Awards.

As far as I can tell, Irene didn’t start her personal blog page intending to malign any Puppies, either Sad or Rabid. Rather, she responded in a spontaneous, unpremeditated way to a request for an explanation about the Hugo controversy, in the process accurately describing Theodore Beale as a neo-Nazi. Since her answer to the query was so brief, the Sad Puppies were mentioned in close proximity to that description, which understandably left them very uncomfortable. (Eric Flint’s analysis concluding that this was all a deliberate subtle ploy on Irene’s part to use guilt by association against them gives her too much credit. Like many visual artists, she is a spontaneous writer and not a calculating one.)

Irene has never been known for her diplomacy — I say that as someone who’s knocked heads with her more than once on work-related matters — but I think the reaction to her off-the-cuff statement is more extreme and over-the-top than the statement itself. After all, in the end, it was just one person’s opinion, readily ignorable by those who differ with it. (In fact, it went unnoticed for _weeks_ until someone decided to weaponize it.) It’s _trivial_ compared to Brad and Larry’s premeditated, organized effort to violate a social compact of 60 years standing. If you want to express outrage, that’s where it should properly be applied.
– Moshe Feder, Associate Editor, Tor Books

We don’t approve of Mr. Doherty’s statement. We consider it to have been woefully insufficient. And Mr. Feder just happened to leave out the minor fact that Irene Gallo attacked Tor’s customers and described the works written by Tor authors as “bad-to-reprehensible”. The important thing to Mr. Feder, apparently, is repeating and trying to justify the “neo-Nazi” libel of a well-known libertarian.

As for setting a “terrible precedent”, that is downright absurd. Gallo’s firing will not be anything close to a precedent. The SJWs set these ground rules and we have already seen many examples of people losing their jobs for everything from a six-year-old political donation to a single Facebook comment, examples as recent as yesterday.

The principal of North Miami Senior High School has lost his job over his Facebook comment defending the Texas police officer caught on video pushing a teen girl to the ground in an incident at a community pool.

“Miami-Dade County Public Schools employees are held to a higher standard, and by School Board policy, are required to conduct themselves, both personally and professionally, in a manner that represents the school district’s core values.”

In light of these additional provocations by a Tor Books employee, I sent an email to Tom Doherty, Publisher at Tor Books, requesting that he deal directly with the public misbehavior of his Associate Publisher and his Associate Editor. I trust that he will address the situation in a professional and decisive manner.

It should be obvious, at this point, that I am far from the only individual being attacked by his employee,s and that the unpleasantries are not going to end until those employees are held fully accountable for their ludicrously unprofessional actions.

Darrell Schweitzer 
The Puppies are entitled to their literary opinions and tastes, but to my mind any of them who do not repudiate Vox Day are neo-Nazis by association. You are responsible for who you associate with or take as an ally.

Guilt by association. That’s new. Given that precisely zero Sad Puppies and Rabid Puppies have repudiated me, apparently we’re supposed to believe that you’re all neo-Nazis too. Meanwhile, SJWs force a Nobel laureate to resign over a single comment:

    A Nobel laureate has resigned from his position as honorary professor at a UK university after he made comments about the “trouble with girls” in science. University College London (UCL) said Sir Tim Hunt – a Royal Society fellow – had resigned from his position within its faculty of life sciences.

    He told a conference that women in labs “cry” when criticised and “fall in love” with male counterparts.

    He told the BBC he “did mean” the remarks but was “really sorry”.

    A statement from the university read: “UCL can confirm that Sir Tim Hunt FRS has resigned from his position as honorary professor with the UCL faculty of life sciences following comments he made about women in science at the World Conference of Science Journalists on 9 June.

    “UCL was the first university in England to admit women students on equal terms to men, and the university believes that this outcome is compatible with our commitment to gender equality.”  

Reddit is dead

Roosh absolutely called this one after Pao was appointed CEO. Ruled by SJWs, Reddit is a dead site walking:

When failed discrimination plaintiff Ellen Pao was appointed CEO of Reddit last January, many predicted that it would herald a new age of censorship on the link-sharing and discussion site. Those predictions appear to have come true, as a number of communities on the site (known as “subreddits”) have just been unilaterally shut down.

The sudden move resulted in the removal of one popular subreddit, /r/fatpeoplehate, which until its closure was the 13th-most active community on Reddit. The subreddit was dedicated to mocking fat people and the “fat acceptance” movement, although it was not known for engaging in any off-site harassment. Other Redditors have cited the subreddit as an important source of motivation to maintain a healthier lifestyle.

The crackdown came after a week of censorship on Reddit, including the mass deletions of links to media stories and even satirical cartoons concerning CEO Ellen Pao. There was also a bizarre incident in which a moderator of a gaming community demanded a user write a 500-word essay on trans acceptance before being unbanned. The user’s crime was using the word “trap”: a common, but not derogatory, term of Internet slang to describe crossdressers. Despite protestations from transwomen who said they were not offended, the moderator refused to relent.

There are early indications that the Reddit admins may have finally crossed the Rubicon on the road to alienating their user base. User activity on their main competitor, Voat.co had been rising steadily since social media censorship became an issue during the #GamerGate controversy, but in the past few hours their figures have skyrocketed.  At the time of writing, there are over 3,700 active users on Voat’s alternative to /r/fatpeoplehate —almost double its number of subscribers.

The lesson that conservatives and even liberals have to learn is that there can be no toleration for SJWs. There can be no support for SJW organizations and institutions. Their entryists must be guarded against. The prideful, self-centered declaration that you are above all cultural war and will nobly go down to graceful defeat rather than dirty yourself by choosing a side doesn’t mean that you have higher ideals and standards, it means that you are observably stupid and self-defeating.

Fence-sitting doesn’t make you a better person. Especially when the fence is in the process of being knocked down by SJW bulldozers.

Yes, but…

A File 770 SJW frets that we won’t be satisfied with Gallo’s resignation:

And “Tor employs people who openly call their authors and their customers Nazis” will be written into the anti-SJW litany to be recited with all the other sins of the enemy as part of the Puppy creed as often as possible, along with others like “John Scalzi was mean to VD” and “They call us wrongfans having wrongfun” and “SWIRSKY!” No matter what happens as an outcome for Gallo, which is why it infuriates me even more that they are trying so hard to get her fired. They would wreck her life and dance in the wreckage and go right on complaining what an awful hive of SJW-ness Tor is.

Well, that all depends on how many SJWs Mr. Doherty and/or Macmillan have the good sense to stop inflicting on science fiction. But (and this is the relevant point), thousands of current customers attacked by Ms Gallo won’t stop buying their books. If Gallo was a fry cook or a sales clerk, she’d be gone already. You don’t show that kind of disrespect and hatred for your customers and keep your job. You simply don’t.

I am under no illusion that anyone at Tor or Macmillan like me or wish to do me any favors. But I do assume that they are capable of doing basic math and grasping the lesson of Fox News. Of course, if they instead decide that they want to play the role of CNN and sell only to the left one-third of the population, well, that is certainly their prerogative.

UPDATE: Mr. Doherty, you clearly have a very serious problem at Tor Books. You need to resolve it. Now.

I am not only not “a neo-Nazi”, but I cannot “fairly be described” as
one. I am, as it happens, one of the Internet’s leading libertarians. One has to be remarkably stupid, or shamelessly dishonest, to claim that a well-known libertarian is a National Socialist of any kind.

Sad Puppies stop rape!

I just can’t how what wow just wow:

Sad/Rabid Puppies are ultimately self-defeating. They want long stories about traditional white men raping and killing things in traditional fantasy settings — but every time they do something else to disrupt the Hugos, George RR Martin, the current king of long stories about traditional white men raping and killing things in a traditional fantasy setting, stops writing Winds of Winter and writes a novel-length essay on his LiveJournal about why the Puppies are ruining his favorite awards.

We haven’t been on the field. That’s the only possible answer for how we’ve been losing to these utter lunatics for the last three decades. That’s a comment from the Gawker piece on Tor’s failure to ask Irene Gallo for her resignation… yet.

Meanwhile, John Scalzi is showing his childhood scars on Twitter again.

I know of someone whose biggest life achievement is being a bigoted shithole of a human being. He’s going to be very sad on his deathbed

Actually, I expect I’ll be rather looking forward to seeing what comprises Level 2. One can only laugh at the degree of Gamma required to not only formulate, but make public that sort of lame passive-aggression. You’ll show them once you grow up, Johnny! Your time is coming. You’ll show them one day!

Johnny, I’m not one of those boys who made fun of you when you couldn’t go out and play at recess with everyone else. And I wouldn’t have done so had I been there. So grow the fuck up already and get over it.

Peter Grant issues a second warning

Does Tor really want war to the knife? Peter Grant counsels action:

I’ve been . . . not astonished, really, because I’ve seen it all before, but . . . taken aback, at least, by the depth of ignorance, prejudice and blind, religious-fervor-style ‘group-think’ displayed by many of those arguing in favor of Ms. Irene Gallo’s comments that precipitated the crisis concerning Tor….

Those tactics are not going to work in this case.  I’ve had enough.  So have many other people. Ms. Gallo’s words were the last straw for us, as I explained in my earlier posts.  They’re merely the latest example of a long-standing pattern of behavior by senior employees at Tor.  I’m not joking about my response, either.  I’m willing to give Tor a few days – a week at most – to rectify the situation and deal with all those involved, not just Ms. Gallo.  If the company fails to do so, I will call for a boycott of its products and publications . . . and I won’t do so alone.  I’ve consulted with a large number of fellow authors and other individuals about this over the past few days.  There are some influential figures involved, as Tor may soon find out to its cost.

If that happens, some readers may be surprised to learn how widespread is the anger and bitterness that has built up during the past few months and years concerning the individuals I’ve identified at Tor.  Their conduct and attitudes have become inseparably intertwined in the minds of many – including myself – with the conduct and attitudes of their employer.  We don’t believe they can be separated.  It’s for Tor to prove us wrong . . . but I suspect that’s not about to happen, because to my mind – our minds – Tor really is standing behind them, despite Mr. Doherty’s attempts to distinguish between the company and its senior staff.

I truly hope it doesn’t come to a boycott . . . but if it does, so be it.  We no longer have anything to lose by acting.  Tor, on the other hand, risks losing everything by not acting.  I say that as a former director of companies, with post-graduate business education and a good understanding of the financial pressures on Tor and companies like it.  (Yes, individuals at ‘some companies’ do talk about such things to outsiders, particularly when they’re also angry over what’s happening internally.  The numbers are . . . interesting.)

Your move, Tor . . . for a short time.  I truly hope you make the right one before it’s too late.

The Evil Legion of Evil has not yet called for a boycott by the many Tor customers attacked by Ms Gallo. It has, after all, only been two days since the management at Tor Books learned about her attack on them. But the one thing they must understand is that an apology is not enough. We expect a resignation.

Sooner or later, Ms Gallo will resign. It’s only a question of how much damage Tor Books, and perhaps more importantly, Macmillan, are willing to take first.

Meanwhile, John C. Wright clarifies a previous statement:

A reader asked what I meant when I said, that as a matter of formality, Irene Gallo’s pro forma and possibly insincere apology for her pro-forma and possibly insincerely insult satisfied my sense of honor.

It is difficult for me to explain something that is second nature to me, which is alien to the modern world at every point. In the military, the soldier is obligated to salute the uniform wore by officers of higher rank, not the man wearing it, and the man wearing it is obligated to behave as the uniform requires. The salute satisfies the formality.

An apology satisfies the demand for apology; if the person proffer it did so with deceptive intent, God Almighty, who sees and knows the hearts of the sinners, will punish the falsehood with penalties nightmarish, vehement, absolute, and infinite, that my heart quails to contemplate them. I cannot burn a disembodied soul in hell forever, and neither can I read minds and hearts. Hence, I am not in a position judge the sincerity of an apology, nor do I have the least desire to do so.

Honor is an external thing, a matter of form. If the form is satisfied, honor is satisfied. Refusing an apology on the grounds of it insincerity is a privilege reserved to women.

In the case of Irene Gallo, I do not need any further words from her, nor does she owe me anything more. I look forward to working with whomever Mr Doherty hires to replace her.

Mailvox: favorites in A GAME OF THRONES

AL is curious about the characters in A GAME OF THRONES:

Who is your favorite character? Would you be interested at all in a discussion on that on your blog? Maybe you discussed it before but after searching through your posts I couldn’t find who you thought your favorite character is.

I think one has to distinguish between the characters as written in the books and the characters in the TV show. For example, I think Roose Bolton is creepy and disgusting in the books, but I rather like him on the show. The former is The Leech, the latter is not.

On the show, easily my favorite figure is Littlefinger, Lord Peter Baelish. He might occasionally overreach himself, but I like his ambition, his ruthlessness, his confidence, and his style. I don’t like the Littlefinger of the books as much, as that Littlefinger is more of a self-conscious social-climber who tends to lack the confidence and style of the TV Littlefinger.

In the books, I liked the two Starks, Ned and Robb, although I found their cluelessness about the nature and behavior of evil, untrustworthy men to be as frustrating as it is realistic. I see them in many a conservative who is determined to lose as nobly and graciously as possible. I liked Tywin Lannister of the books and absolutely loved Charles Dance in that role – how could you not – although I found his hatred for Tyrion to be somewhat inexplicable given that he has no other heirs. I also found it highly implausible that he didn’t free Jaime from his Kingsguard oath; these are not people who respect oaths, priests, or gods.

The female character I find most attractive is Myranda, the psycho little daughter of the kennelmaster. The female character I most disliked was Caitlyn Stark, in the books and on TV. She was nasty to Jon Snow and kept trying to interfere, ineptly, in things of which she knew nothing. The showrunners were wise to leave her undead version out of the TV show. And the Sansa of the TV show is much more interesting and complex than Martin’s Sansa, who appears to exist mostly to absorb Martin’s Gamma hate for female innocence and hope.