Playing the Red Card

I’ll leave the kid’s actual Twitter address out of it because he obviously doesn’t know any better, but I suspect some of you will find this as amusing as I did:

    Feminist Frequency ‏@femfreq
    There are not two sides to this. This is a war on the women, critics, and feminists who care about making gaming more diverse and inclusive.

    Vox Day ‏@voxday
    @femfreq We like our games the way they are. You want different games, make your own damn games.

    Elijah @elijah
    yea make your own games unless your @zoequinnzel or @Spacekatgal than don’t cus reasons or ethics, yeah ethics

      Vox Day ‏@voxday
    Let them make whatever they want. No one cares about that. I certainly don’t.

    Elijah @elijah
    I know right why cant games continue to revolve around my entitled white maleness???

    Vox Day ‏@voxday
    I’m an Indian, Elijah. Feather, not dot, with an actual tribe, casino, and everything.

    Elijah @elijah
    @voxday Yo i’m sorry man I shouldnt assume that if someone says something stupid that they’re white that is racist

Hey, I don’t make the rules. I just play by them. If they hand you a hammer, it’s only polite to hit them with it. What else is it there for? But it certainly is amusing to see how fast they shift into reverse.

By the way, all members of the Dread Ilk have my formal permission to use the term “Redskins” in the context of the Washington football team. I take no offense at it, and you are certainly welcome to cite said permission in the event of an SJW objecting to it.

Dishonest pinkshirt doubles down

Gawker’s Max Read makes it clear that #GamerGate is winning in writing what may have been the dumbest, most self-destructive opinion piece ever written:

On October 1, the computing giant Intel pulled its ads from Gamasutra, a trade website for game developers, over an essay called “‘Gamers’ don’t have to be your audience. ‘Gamers’ are over” by a journalist named Leigh Alexander. Intel had been successfully harassed by a small, contemptible crusade called “Gamergate”—a campaign of dedicated anti-feminist internet trolls using an ill-informed mob of alienated and resentful video game-playing teenagers and young men to harass and intimidate female activists, journalists, and critics.

Unable to run Alexander out of game writing, as they had with the writer Jenn Frank, or force her from her home, as they did to the developer Brianna Wu, or threaten her from public engagements, as they did the following week to the critic and activist Anita Sarkeesian, Gamergate went after her publisher. And, in an unbelievable and embarrassing act of ignorance and cowardice, Intel capitulated. The company’s laughable “apology,” released late on that Friday afternoon, didn’t cover up the fact of Gamergate’s victory: Intel was not replacing its ads.

Failing to adequately cover this act of spinelessness was the first big fuck-up we at Gawker committed. Intel surrendered to the worst kind of dishonesty, and we allowed it to do so without ever calling it out. So let’s say it now: Intel is run by craven idiots. It employs pusillanimous morons. It lacks integrity. It folded to misogynists and bigots who objected to a woman who had done nothing more than write a piece claiming a place in the world of video games. And even when confronted with its own thoughtlessness and irresponsibility, it could not properly right its wrongs.

Last week, a Gawker writer tweeted “bring back bullying.” He, and later I, made the tactical mistake of publicly treating Gamergate with the contempt and flippancy that it deserves. As a consequence, our advertisers were quickly inundated with the same kinds of emails that spooked Intel. Gamergaters were passing around a sample letter and list of advertiser contacts to coordinate the campaign; the Washington Post’s Caitlin Dewey wrote an excellent breakdown of the efficient mechanism by which the relatively small group of Gamergaters was able to make itself immediately annoying to advertisers:

    Step 4: Plug all of your choices into one of the many form e-mails that leaders of Disrespectful Nod have helpfully written already. […]

    Step 5: Keep it up, even when you get no response, and be — to quote the operation’s guide! — “an annoying little s—.” A representative for a high-profile communications company that advertises on Polygon confirmed that he’d received “dozens” of e-mails from Gamergate supporters over a period of several weeks.

    Operation Disrespectful Nod also encourages Gamergaters to reach out to the bosses and managers of journalists who have written “negative” stories, demanding the reporter in question be fired or asked to resign. Topping their most-wanted list, at present, is Gawker Media’s Biddle, who tweeted a string of jokes about Gamergate on Thursday. In context, at least, the jokes were an obvious — if tongue-in-cheek — commentary on the movement’s well-documented, often hateful, idiocy. Critics construed them as an endorsement for bullying. (Biddle later apologized for the tweets.)

Transparent and documented though it was, the obsessive campaign worked. Mercedes-Benz—listed on the site as a former partner, and therefore a target—briefly paused its ads on a network that serves ads to Gawker. I’ve been told that we’ve lost thousands of dollars already, and could potentially lose thousands more, if not millions. Consequently, the editorial director of Gawker Media, Joel Johnson, took to the front page of Gawker to clarify that Sam Biddle does not want to bully anyone, and that Gawker Media as a company and institution is not pro-bullying. (Let’s note here that the admitted goal of our Gamergate trolls is not to eke an apology out of Sam, or the company, but to literally put us out of business entirely.)

If this seems bizarre to you, you’re not alone. I feel like I went to sleep in the regular world and woke up in an insane new one where “bullying” is something that it’s possible to be seriously and sincerely “for.” Yesterday, Adobe wrote to one Gamergater on Twitter that it had asked Gawker to remove its logo from the advertising site because it did not support bullying; a few confused hours later, Adobe was forced to clarify to the world:

    We are vehemently opposed to bullying of any kind and would never support any group that bullies.
    — Adobe (@Adobe) October 22, 2014

Brands like Adobe and Intel, willing to distance themselves from independent publishers over the spurious claims of a limited but dedicated group of misogynists and trolls, share an important core value with Gamergate: Misogyny. Kidding! Kidding. The value that defines both Gamergate and brand response is cynicism. A brand that honestly believes it needs to clarify that it is “vehemently opposed to bullying of any kind”—as though there are or have ever been genuine corporate supporters of bullying, and as though anyone was ever in danger of thinking the makers of Photoshop might be among their number—passes on to its adult customers the same corroding cynicism that the opportunistic reactionaries running Gamergate imbue in their maladjusted teenage followers. Releasing into the world a statement as vacuous as Adobe’s tweet, or as inane as Intel’s “apology,” demonstrates not that those brands stand against something (how else can anyone possibly feel about bullying?) but that they stand for nothing.

Maybe that’s too much to expect from a brand. But it seems like the bare minimum to expect from ourselves. Gawker is rarely perfect, but it strives to be honest and fearless. For us to have apologized for a joke—to have even clarified—in the face of such breathtaking cynicism and dishonesty, from both “ad partners” and the enemies who leverage those brands’ fearfulness to silence opposing voices, feels like an utter abdication of those responsibilities. Frankly, that sucks. If anyone is owed an apology, it’s our readers. So: Sorry.

I’ll be very surprised if Gawker Media keeps this lunatic loose cannon around much longer. Despite all his lies, misrepresentations, and ad hominem attacks, the piece is very interesting for what it admits.

  1. GamerGate is clearly winning. Advertisers correctly understand that GamerGate is a broad-spectrum movement of gamers who do not trust the games media and oppose the interference of the SJWs attempting to, in LW1’s words, “make gaming more diverse and inclusive.” Intel’s reaction is particularly important because they are much more keenly attuned to the gaming market than most big corporations, because they depend upon it more heavily than most people realize. I worked closely with them on the release of their MMX chips in 1996 and 1997 – I was one of 12 CEOs (and with Ubisoft and Epic, one of three game dev CEOs) brought in to spend a day consulting with Andy Grove concerning Intel’s marketing of the MMX prior to its release – and they will never, ever blow off gamers. And they also understand that the games media is not to be confused with the gaming community itself.
  2. Neither Biddle nor Read feel any remorse for their actions. They are only sorry that they PUBLICLY treated “Gamergate with the contempt and flippancy that it deserves”. They have learned nothing.
  3. GamerGate’s is correctly focused on the media’s Achilles Heel, its advertisers. The games media is so foolish and arrogant that they don’t care what their readers think, but they do care greatly about their advertisers. That is their corporate lifesblood, and that is the place that GamerGate should continue to target its efforts.
  4. The pinkshirts still don’t understand that the numbers are not on their side. They don’t grasp that the fact that all the media organizations are on their side means nothing concerning the actual numbers of gamers who support one side or the other. Most gamers support GamerGate, to the extent they lean one way or another (they are mostly uninterested in the whole thing) the developers oppose any interference with how they design and develop their games, and the people responsible for selling products into both communities understand this.
  5. The “bullying” is simply a proxy. It could have been anything, but that happens to be the hammer that the anti-Gamergaters handed GamerGate, and so it is the hammer with which GamerGate is going to repeatedly hit them. The real issue is that the gaming media is now not only attacking its readers, it is attacking its advertisers as well.
  6. Max Read is very, very stupid. “So let’s say it now: Intel is run by craven idiots. It employs pusillanimous morons. It lacks integrity.” I suspect he’s going to bitterly regret those words soon, if he doesn’t already. If Gawker doesn’t fire him and Biddle, and promptly kowtow before GamerGate and announce its love of games, gamers, and game developers who do whatever they want to do, they’re going to see their advertising revenue continue to decline.
  7. Max Read is projecting. The only “dishonest fascists” here are the pinkshirts opposed to GamerGate.
  8. In case it isn’t clear yet, GamerGate will never quit. Because making the games we want to make and playing the games that we want to play is part of who we are.
  9. The pinkshirts don’t give even the smallest damn about “death threats” or “harassment. I’ve been getting angry emails and death threats from the Left for 13 years now and no one pretending to be so terribly concerned about the “death threats” aimed at LW1, LW2 or LWu has ever said one single word to denounce them. Here are just two examples from this year that were posted in public:

In better days, people were easily thrown out of the city and the gates were locked behind them, let them starve. We need a system like that today, people like Vox Day need to die on the vine. Anyone who holds such opinions should not be allowed in society, it doesn’t matter what the quality of their “art” is. I’m sure that there were many people who thought Hitler was a good painter. – Blackadder Apr 23, 2014 at 9:38 pm

Oh dear sweet Cthulu, I think a little part of my soul just died…  Frankly, Vox is a great big steaming pile of human garbage. He’s an absolute piece of shit. This isn’t his first set of fuckery in the SFF community, either. He ran for President of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, and part of his platform was that he’d ban all women from writing any hard sci-fi or fantasy and only allow them to write paranormal romance (I believe wereseals were specified as the only thing women should be allowed to write about. The fucking jackass doesn’t even know they’re called selkies, but that’s irrelevant). That’s the sort of shit this guy is…. Seriously, vox is an absolute piece of shit. I want him to die a slow and agonising death. – LJP · April 25, 2014

And speaking of pinkshirts doubling down, here is John Scalzi:

“If you’re still pro-GamerGate at this point, you’re a shitty human, or a shitty human’s useful idiot.” – John Scalzi

I tweeted that to @torbooks. Because while Mr. Scalzi has repeatedly announced that he doesn’t care who reads his books and as well as his hatred for GamerGate, it is possible that Tor Books, which sells considerably more HALO and other game tie-in books than it sells John Scalzi books, may feel differently.

I have written to Joel Johnson, the editorial director at Gawker Media, asking him to request Max Read’s resignation due to Mr. Read’s open disregard for the gaming community and one of its leading corporate supporters. If you wish to do likewise, Mr. Johnson’s contact information is available at his personal site.

UPDATE: Nero has a piece on the same Max Read article up on Breitbart.

The irony of Gawker’s career-destroying, far-left authoritarians squealing about fascism and bullying will not be lost on observers. “I’ve been told that we’ve lost thousands of dollars already, and could potentially lose thousands more, if not millions,” wrote Gawker’s Read last night.

UPDATE 2: On a related note, here is the posted list of Gawker’s advertisers, with contact information.

    Mrs. Wright’s new book

    L. Jagi Lamplighter, aka Mrs. John C. Wright, today published THE RAVEN THE ELF AND RACHEL. Mr. Wright describes it as follows:

    If asked, I describe the book as ‘Nancy Drew coming of age in the Roke of Sleepy Hollow hidden in the world from FRINGE hidden in the universe of Gaiman’s Sandman hidden in the multiverse of Zelazny’s Amber meets Aslan at Camp Halfblood: girl detective at magical boarding school uncovers figures from spooky New England folktales, secret weirdness and secret conspiracies, ghosts and elves and gods and greater powers beyond that, hellish and heavenly. And has a crush on a boy.’

    Before coming to Roanoke Academy, Rachel Griffin had been an obedient girl—but it’s hard to obey the rules when the world is in danger, and no one will listen.


    Now, she’s eavesdropping on Wisecraft Agents and breaking a lot of rules. Because if the adults will not believe her, then it is up to Rachel and her friends—crazy, orphan-boy Sigfried the Dragonslayer and Nastasia, the Princess of Magical Australia—to stop the insidious Mortimer Egg from destroying the world.


    But first she must survive truth spells, fights with her brother, detention, Alchemy experiments, talking to elves, and conjuring class.


    As if that were not bad enough, someone has turned the boy she likes into a sheep.


    When someone tries to kill a fellow student, Rachel soon realizes that, in the same way her World of the Wise hides from mundane folk, there is another, more secret world hiding from everyone-which her perfect recall allows her to remember.  Rushing forward where others fear to tread, Rachel finds herself beset by wraiths, magical pranks, homework, a Raven said to bring the doom of worlds, love’s first blush, and at least one fire-breathing teacher.

    Our underoos are not magic!

    This announcement betrays an almost shocking naivete concerning human nature:

    The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has declared that it is
    offended by ridicule about the undergarments worn by its faithful and
    references to them as “magical underwear”.

    A video released by the church on YouTube compared the underwear, known as “temple
    garments”, to nuns habits, priests’ cassocks, Jewish prayer shawls,
    Muslim skull caps, and the robes of Buddhist monks.

    It said: “Some people incorrectly refer to temple garments as magical, or
    magic underwear. These words are not only inaccurate but offensive to
    members of the church. There is nothing mystical or magical about temple garments and church
    members ask for the same degree of respect and sensitivity that would be
    afforded to any other faith by people of good will.”

    Look, I have zero problem with Mormons. They are, by and large, good people. Numerous readers here are Mormon. Larry Correia, Brad Torgersen, and Orson Scott Card are all Mormons. They may harbor a few strange beliefs, but then, so do I. But look, you simply cannot wear special, funny-looking underwear and expect people to find no amusement in it. You just can’t! And then informing the pulic your underwear stirs “the deepest feelings of
    the soul” is just asking, nay, demanding amusement at your expense.

    The Church would do much better to grin and bear it than try to play the offense card on that basis. Because, like it or not, underwear is intrinsically funny to most people and “magic underwear” is downright off the charts.

    UPDATE: Josh has a better solution:

    Honestly…the best way for them to handle this would be to say: “Because of our masculinity and virility, we Mormons require undergarments that offer more support for our massive penises.”

    A state of war

    Dmitry Orlov considers the current state of US-Russia relations on Zerohedge:

    So far, this all seems like typical economic warfare: the Americans want to get everything they want by printing money while bombing into submission or sanctioning anyone who disobeys them, while the rest of the world attempts to resist them. But early in 2014 the situation changed. There was a US-instigated coup in Kiev, and instead of rolling over and playing dead like they were supposed to, the Russians mounted a fast and brilliantly successful campaign to regain Crimea, then successfully checkmated the junta in Kiev, preventing it from consolidating control over the remaining former Ukrainian territory by letting volunteers, weapons, equipment and humanitarian aid enter—and hundreds of thousands of refugees exit—through the strictly notional Russian-Ukrainian border, all the while avoiding direct military confrontation with NATO. Seeing all of this happening on the nightly news has awakened the Russian population from its political slumber, making it sit up and pay attention, and sending Putin’s approval rating through the roof.

    The “optics” of all this, as they like to say at the White House, are rather ominous. We are coming up on the 70th anniversary of victory in World War II—a momentous occasion for Russians, who pride themselves on defeating Hitler almost single-handedly. At the same time, the US (Russia’s self-appointed arch-enemy) has taken this opportunity to reawaken and feed the monster of Nazism right on Russia’s border (inside Russia’s borders, some Russians/Ukrainians would say). This, in turn, makes the Russians remember Russia’s unique historical mission is among the nations of the world: it is to thwart all other nations’ attempts at world domination, be it Napoleonic France or Hitleresque Germany or Obamaniac America. Every century or so some nation forgets its history lessons and attacks Russia. The result is always the same: lots of corpse-studded snowdrifts, and then Russian cavalry galloping into Paris, or Russian tanks rolling into Berlin….

    [W]hy has war been declared now, and why was it declared by this social worker turned national misleader? Some keen observers mentioned his slogan “the audacity of hope,” and ventured to guess that this sort of “audaciousness” (which in Russian sounds a lot like “folly”) might be a key part of his character which makes him want to be the leader of the universe, like Napoleon or Hitler. Others looked up the campaign gibberish from his first presidential election (which got silly young Americans so fired up) and discovered that he had nice things to say about various cold warriors. Do you think Obama might perhaps be a scholar of history and a shrewd geopolitician in his own right? (That question usually gets a laugh, because most people know that he is just a chucklehead and repeats whatever his advisers tell him to say.) Hugo Chavez once called him “a hostage in the White House,” and he wasn’t too far off. So, why are his advisers so eager to go to war with Russia, right now, this year?

    Is it because the US is collapsing more rapidly than most people can imagine? This line of reasoning goes like this: the American scheme of world domination through military aggression and unlimited money-printing is failing before our eyes. The public has no interest in any more “boots on the ground,” bombing campaigns do nothing to reign in militants that Americans themselves helped organize and equip, dollar hegemony is slipping away with each passing day, and the Federal Reserve is fresh out of magic bullets and faces a choice between crashing the stock market and crashing the bond market. In order to stop, or at least forestall this downward slide into financial/economic/political oblivion, the US must move quickly to undermine every competing economy in the world through whatever means it has left at its disposal, be it a bombing campaign, a revolution or a pandemic (although this last one can be a bit hard to keep under control). Russia is an obvious target, because it is the only country in the world that has had the gumption to actually show international leadership in confronting the US and wrestling it down; therefore, Russia must be punished first, to keep the others in line.

    Empires always fall. The most powerful military is always eventually surpassed by its rivals. These are lessons of history that the average individual, especially the average American, never takes into account. And very, very few individuals in a society in decline ever recognize that it is in decline at the time. However, the USA is presently showing many signs of decline that have previously been observed in imperial societies of the past, including both democratic Athens and republican Rome.

    Obama’s plan to open the immigration floodgates and give out 34 million green cards on top of the 60 million immigrants already in the country may mark the final nail in the coffin, but such things are merely consequences of the country abandoning its original identity as a white Christian Anglo-Saxon nation. There is no mechanical fix for that, and it should surprise absolutely no one that an empire that is no longer predominantly a white, Christian, Anglo-Saxon nation does not abide by either the traditions or the values of white, Christian, Anglo-Saxons.

    The 18-year delta

    Ender was excited last night because, with his B team season at an end, the first team had extended an open invitation to the B team players to practice with them. It’s a chance for the coaches to see which young men are ready to play with the men, and who the eventual up-and-comers are. The first team practices at the same time my veteran’s team does, so we drove over to the clubhouse together despite a howling wind and a black sky that threatened some serious rain.

    It’s getting near the end of our season too, three-quarters of my teammates are banged up, and I discovered when I got there that a) the veteran’s practice had been canceled, and b) the first team was missing half its players due to vacations and whatnot. But I know several of the first team players and coaches fairly well because we’re permitted to field two players below 32, but over 25, and some of them play with us when they have an evening free. So, I asked one of the guys I know if they needed an extra player – thinking that they were just going to scrimmage – and he suggested that I stick around and join the practice. So, I changed, put on my cleats, and joined them in the middle of the field.

    There were about eight of Ender’s teammates there, huddled together against the cold rain that had begun to fall and vaguely intimidated by the first team players. They know who I am, of course, and were visibly startled by my presence there – let’s face it, no one is more contemptuous of a middle-aged dad than an elite teenage athlete – and were further taken aback when the player-coach leading the practice greeted me with an enthusiastic handshake-hug. What they didn’t know is that I’ve played several games up front with Stefan and we are molto sympatico on the field despite him being much better than I am. We’ve both given assists on each other’s goals, and like most stellar strikers, he prefers having a strike partner who looks to feed him the ball rather than shoot.

    However, Stefan had a full practice in mind, not a scrimmage. It wasn’t brutal, but it was strenuous, enough so that he came over twice during the repeated agility drills to make sure I wasn’t about to keel over. His concern wasn’t entirely unjustified, as I’m beyond old by first team standards; the oldest player on the team is 28. I would have been insulted, especially given the fact that I was pretty much keeping up with the tall B team defender in front of me in the line, were it not for the fact that I was fairly certain two more run-throughs would have resulted in vomiting. Ender and the midfielders were having no problem, but some of the defenders looked to be mildly in shock at doing 2.5x more repetitions, and doing them at faster speed, than they’d ever done before. Fortunately, we moved on to the team keep-away drill next, which is fast-paced, but gives you a chance to catch your breath if need be. Which was, in fact, the case.

    The bad thing about being a sprinter is that you quickly run out of steam. The good thing about being a sprinter is that you bounce back just as fast. So, by the time we were doing the final drill, which involved a 20-meter sprint to a cone, turning around to receive the ball and firing a one-touch shot on goal, most of the B team kids had slowed to a jog, but I was still running. I even managed to put a few past Ender, who was alternating with the first team keeper in net. Ender acquitted himself well, making some diving saves and drawing praise from the first-team guys, which pleased him immensely.

    I was more than a little pleased myself when, back in the clubhouse, Stefan clapped me on the shoulder and said, “hey, why don’t you come to the next one too?” Which, I have decided, I am absolutely going to do. It’s not that I will ever play for the first team, but I suspect he may find me to be useful in goading the younger players. None of them will have any excuse for falling behind, given that I’m literally three decades older than most of them. The best compliment, however, came from Ender, when I asked him if he’d found it embarrassing to have his old man running around the field.

    “Actually, Dad, I didn’t even notice except for when you were the one shooting at me.”

    I’ll take it. It’s a rare pleasure to be able to play sports with one’s son on an equal footing, so I will enjoy it, however long it lasts.

    Debating Amazon

    Joe Konrath hands Rob Spillman his head in a debate over Amazon:

    “What I can’t understand is why you would cheer for Amazon in its fight against traditional publishers. Here comes one of my analogies that you love to pull apart – -it seems like rooting for the lions against the Roman prisoners in the Coliseum.”

    I was a Roman prisoner in the Coliseum, being feasted on by lions. Those lions were big publishers. After 20 years, a million written words, and nine rejected novels, I finally landed a book contract. And I worked my ass off and published eight novels with legacy publishers, dozens of short stories with respected magazines, and went above and beyond everything that was required of me, in order to succeed.

    And I got eaten. One-sided contracts, broken promises, lousy money. But it was the only game in town. If I wanted to make a living as a writer, I had no choice.

    Then Amazon invented the Kindle.

    I first self-pubbed in May of 2009. That first month I made $1,500, publishing books that New York rejected. Those same rejected books have earned me hundreds of thousands of dollars.

    I cheer for Amazon because it saved me, and thousands of other authors, from the Coliseum. And I try to show others there is a way to make money from publishing where the terms are better, and the writer stays in control.

    “My central argument is that if Amazon crushes us all, it will be able to dictate whatever terms to anyone using its massive platform. What if it suddenly decides to flip terms and only offer you 30 percent, or decide that your books really should be sold for 50 cents?”

    Rob, that’s what the Big 5 already do. Except for an elite, tiny group of upper-tier authors, the Big 5 treat 99.9 percent of us badly. Keeping rights for term of copyright? Non-compete clauses? Twenty-five percent e-book royalty on net? I’ve had chapters cut by editors that I wanted to keep. I’ve had terrible cover art. I’ve had my titles forcibly changed. And my experience isn’t unique. I’m friends with hundreds of authors. A few were treated like kings. Most were screwed.

    You worry that Amazon might someday offer 30 percent when publishers right now offer 17.5 percent? You must see how odd that is.

    I was treated very well by Pocket Books. I have no complaints on that score. But my personal experience, which was mostly positive, doesn’t change the fact that mainstream publishing is extremely exploitative of authors; the feed-em-in-and-spit-em-out system is constantly churning and destroys the careers of the vast majority of authors who enter it.

    And speaking of independent publishing, I’m pleased to say that we should be able to announce as many as FOUR new Castalia authors in the near future.

    Accidents?

    Zerohedge appears to be more than a little suspicious:

    Three months ago, the CEO of Total, Christophe de Margerie, dared utter the phrase heard around the petrodollar world, “There is no reason to pay for oil in dollars,”  as we noted here. Today, RT reports the dreadful news that he was killed in a business jet crash at Vnukovo Airport in Moscow after the aircraft hit a snow-plough on take-off. The airport issued a statement confirming “a criminal investigation has been opened into the violation of safety regulations,” adding that along with 3 crewmembers on the plane, the snow-plough driver was also killed.

    Total, in case you didn’t know, is “the world’s 13th biggest oil producer and Europe’s 2nd largest. It’s a little strange, however, that this accident would have occurred in Russia, as one would presume that de Margerie was there as some sort of business partner or even ally of Putin. There is, after all, a long history of Russo-French alliances contra Germany, England, and now, perhaps, the USA.

    Did the defenders of the global dollar target him? Or did Putin make him an offer that he couldn’t refuse, which he neverthless refused?  Who knows? We’ll probably never know. Anyhow, it’s not for we minnows to overly concern ourselves with the struggles of the mighty sharks and whales and squids and krakens in the depths. They will sort themselves out in the end.

    However, this was not the only fatal accident of late:

    American journalist Serena Shim has been killed in a car crash in Turkey just days after Turkish intelligence services had accused her of spying. She was reporting on the siege involving ISIS in Kobani at Syria’s border. Shim was a US citizen though she worked for Iran’s state-owned Press TV as correspondent in Turkey and other regions. She was returning her hotel in the city of Suruç when her car crashed into a ‘heavy vehicle’. The Daily Mail reports the car collided with a cement truck.

    I suppose the silver lining is that even if these are targeted hits, those responsible for them still feel the need to disguise their actions. Although I have to say that banker’s “nailgun suicide” still stretches credulity. Frankly, at this point, I’m surprised that any politician is still willing to travel by plane:

    The campaign plane of Eduardo Campos, a Brazilian presidential candidate and scion of a resurgent political dynasty, crashed on Wednesday in the port city of Santos, killing him and six others and shaking up an increasingly competitive race in Latin America’s largest democracy.

    ON WAR and the CH newsletter

    We are on the verge of releasing ON WAR: The collected columns of William S. Lind 2003-2009. It is a 915-page monster that is not to be missed by anyone with an interest in military history, military theory, or current events. Featuring a Foreword by noted Israeli strategist Martin van Creveld, this insightful collection of columns reads very much like today’s news, only written ten years ago.

    As Lind himself notes, the value of any theory is in its ability to correctly anticipate events. By this measure, Lind’s 4th Generation War theory is very valuable indeed. ON WAR will first be available in two ebook formats for three days, beginning Friday, on the Castalia House store, to newsletter subscribers, at a price of $6.99. It will be available on Amazon on Monday, October 26th. Subscribers who purchase the book from Castalia in the first three days will also receive their choice of a free book from five options that will be specified in the newsletter. To subscribe to the newsletter, simply leave a comment on the Castalia House blog and check the box that says “Add me to Castalia’s New Book Release mailing list”.

    The importance of names

    Daniel writes an extended review of A THRONE OF BONES on Recommend:

    Names are important in A Throne of Bones, and I’ll highlight two: Selenoth, the continent upon which the action takes is, a nod, I believe, to the element selenium, which occurs naturally in volcanic areas. Considering the photosensitivity of the material, it seems natural that the land provides an elemental basis to the development of Selenoth’s primeval magic. Even more interesting, however is the name of the main country: Amorr. Yes, it is a play on the legendary “secret name” of Rome, which provides a clever signal that this strange society will in some way mirror the Roman republic.

    However, more deeply, it is also a direct tip to the Latin word for “love” and this is where, if the magic of Selenoth draws the bow, the arrow of Amorr strikes the heart. Day is, after all, an incorrigible romantic, and not of the hopeless variety. The nostalgia, realism and richness of Selenoth is crystalized through the lens of Amorr, and, to put a fine point on it, love is all around.

    Love in degraded, if happy, form in the camp followers and brothels among the soldiery. Love between sibling reavers on a mission to draw former victim states into an alliance against certain doom. In a scene stunning, dreadful, long-coming but still shocking scene, love grips in stoic, complex anguish.* The raw and needful love between man and wife. Long-distance love between the clever (yet earnest) and the cruel (yet sympathetic). Love of complex relational intrigues. Love of language. Love of order. Love of family, of honor, of duty. Love of dragons. Love of gold. Love of knowledge. Love of good men, of good life, of good death. A love of the hope that all things, not some or most, will pass away, and yet that all things, not some or most, will be restored by the hand of the Almighty.

    Every page, for its grit and realism, its tragedy, folly and danger, the thwarted plans, curses, whoredom, brutality, the death of youth, the loss of ideals, the temporary victory of murder and evil, is an out and out love letter to the Immaculate. Death, in all its towering, all-consuming bleakness, is small, and soon to be swallowed by a love so great it lays its life down, and in defeat, quite literally overcomes all.

    A Throne of Bones is doorstopping fantasy for far more than its physical dimensions. Metaphysically, it shuts the door to the world we know and provides an escape to a better reality, and one far more dangerous than the one in which we now dwell. It expresses longings (to master dragons, to find treasure, to save the world on a mission from God, to restore and enjoy the family, to live abundantly and in reality, enjoy and defend the relationships that matter, and many, many more) in such richness of detail.

    One of the things I enjoy most about writing books is discovering, after the fact, what others perceive I put into it. Sometimes, absolutely no one recognizes it. Sometimes, I simply fail what I set out to do. And sometimes, people perceive more than I had originally thought. But that doesn’t mean they are necessarily wrong, because the truth is that the writer isn’t always aware of everything he is doing or what all of his intentions are.

    Well, perhaps some writers are, but I’m not. I just sit down and do it, one chunk at a time, until the whole edifice is finally constructed and I’m hoping that the whole thing more or less holds together. And since I seldom go back and re-read anything, sometimes I don’t even know what it was that I wrote, especially in a book this size. Perhaps that is what John C. Wright is talking about when he discusses his Muse, I don’t know. We lesser writers are not touched by the Divine Fire; where they soar on the wings of their mighty inspirations, we trudge along, one step after another, until we suddenly realize that we have arrived at our destination.

    Book II is coming along slowly, but surely, and I think it is a better book in some ways than its predecessor. But then, that isn’t for me to say.