The Importance of Engagement

This is the sort of engagement that we are told is so important that it’s necessary to put up with a constant stream of abusive vulgarities, obscenities, and blasphemies.

@GENESPLICER: As much as I have tired to ignore you, I’ve watched you year after year worm your way into more relevant streams and comment of much more relevant and viable people in a sad attempt to leech off of them. You are simply a sad poser who cannot unless he leeches onto those who can.

@VOXDAY: You’re lying. Go ahead, name a single person with whom I’ve made any attempt whatsoever to “worm my way in”. You won’t be able to do so. I’m a publisher. As a general rule, people contact me. It’s not the other way around.

@GENESPLICER: You are not worth my time to do so. To assume so mean you think your worth is more than it is. It is simply not for such a casual observation.

Gammas are always going to Gamma. Every single time. They are incapable of doing otherwise; their pattern of behavior is firmly fixed. This is why there is absolutely no point in showing them any mercy, any consideration, or any benefit of the doubt. I had absolutely no doubt that this guy was a liar, or that he would immediately produce some excuse to avoid answering after being called out.

This, of course, is why they are wailing about the Gammacaust. Because they are projecting their own inability to back up their groundless assertions on everyone else.

Anyhow, this should suffice to demonstrate my lack of concern about the potential loss of engagement resulting from Gab’s new comment moderations features.

DISCUSS ON SG

Free Speech is Anti-Christ

Free speech is a satanic concept that was developed by anti-christian atheists to attack Christian civilization during the Enlightenment. It is neither a Christian nor a conservative value. You don’t need to take my word for it, though. Read A HISTORY OF THE FREEDOM OF THOUGHT by historian JB Bury, who was a strong proponent of free speech.

That is one of two books I would recommend to read if you would like to understand how we went from Christian civilization to Clown World. The other one is AN AUSTRIAN PERSPECTIVE ON THE HISTORY OF ECONOMIC ANALYSIS by Murray Rothbard. Whereas Bury describes the historical degradation of the anti-blasphemy laws, Rothbard describes the successful centuries-long assault on the anti-usury laws.

“The entire idea of free speech is a farce. It is a lie. It is not real.”

DISCUSS ON SG

Tuesday Arktoons

MIDNIGHT’S WAR Episode 60: Alert Alert

BOB Episode 96: Belong

VEGFOLK FABLES Episode 171: The Yankee Doodle X-Factor

BEN GARRISON Episode 84: Barrel of Faucis

CHUCK DIXON PRESENTS: COMEDY Episode 71: Christmas at Greyfriars

STONETOSS Episode 148: Organ Failure

CHUCK DIXON’S AVALON Episode 86: Welcome Home

MIDNIGHT’S WAR

As the campaign winds down with only four days left, MIDNIGHT’S WAR gets a bit… darker. These vampires do not sparkle and they are not, even remotely, the good guys. Don’t forget that you can now add the limited edition hardcover of OUT OF THE SHADOWS to your backing.

UPDATE: The bankruptcy of Aftershock Comics is just a harbinger of the failures that are in the process of sweeping the comics industry. Thanks to the continued support of the backers, Arkhaven Comics continues to grow slowly, and steadily, and anticipates being one of the only survivors. The failure of Aftershock tends to demonstrate that we were a) correct to avoid traditional distribution and b) did well to make the pivot to Arktoons.

Can’t imagine how it could have possibly have failed…

BULLS OF BEACON HILL

The comic follows Doctor Christopher Boldt, a surgeon running for Boston City Council. Unbeknown to the wider public, his father, Orin Paige, is one of Boston’s most notorious gangsters. Until now, Paige had been happy “to deny any connection to his queer son, who he sees as a liability in the mob world. Now, Chris’s political aspirations have put father and son on a collision course.

WITCH HAMMER

Witch. The word conjures images of hags in black robes and crooked hats, standing over cauldrons of bubbling brew. But witches are among us, and we do not realize it. They are our friends and neighbors. They are our family members. They are our idols.

DISCUSS ON SG

The Chinese Listened

I was reading an old Jerry Pournelle anthology from the 80’s – the first Imperial Stars book – one that could be characterized as There Will Be Government in Space, when I was struck by a remarkable passage, the significance of which had eluded me in previous readings, from the concluding essay by Dr. Pournelle entitled The Stars at War.

Military establishments, ours among them, have always been inefficient, and better organized for the last war than the next. If we wait for perfection, we may well wait forever.

Thus three facts stand out:

  1. The Soviets have an enormous military establishment, and we are not going to match it tank for tank and gun for gun.
  2. Our present course of buying some of this and some of that, more tanks here and more planes there, isn’t an adequate, or indeed reasonable, response to the threat, and “reform of the Pentagon” and other efforts to “trim the fat and reduce waste” aren’t likely to succeed very quickly, if at all.
  3. We have to do something and soon.

This reasoning was the starting point for Lt. General Daniel O. Graham’s strategic analysis. If what we’re doing isn’t going to work, and we have to do something, where can we go? Graham concluded that we needed a bold new approach, a strategic sidestep; that we had to stop competing with the Soviets in areas in which we can’t win, and begin to compete where we have the advantage.

The Stars at War, Jerry Pournelle, 1986

In other words, 13 years before the two Chinese colonels published Unrestricted Warfare, Jerry Pournelle was already writing about a US general’s strategic analysis that essentially laid the foundation for the Chinese defeat of the US military.

Because this is the essence of the asymetric strategy that underlies the decades-long Chinese implementation of unrestricted warfare: stop competing with the Soviets in areas in which we can’t win, and begin to compete where we have the advantage.

That’s exactly what the Chinese have been doing since 1999. This is perhaps the most important material difference between China and Clown World. China pays close attention to the best minds of the East and the best minds of the West. Clown World ignores the best of the East and attempts to silence the best of the West.

DISCUSS ON SG

Debt Bubble Close to Popping

There are serious warning signals coming from a variety of markets, including the used-car loan market.

Every Friday I conduct a team meeting to recap our week.

This morning, one of our General Managers opened up DealerTrack — a portal that dealers use to communicate with auto lenders — and highlighted something very concerning: 9 of our lending partners have started WAIVING “open auto stipulations” for consumers.

Wait, wtf does that even mean? Let me explain using a simple, hypothetical scenario:

1) Consumer takes out an auto loan in 2020/2021 on an overvalued car
2) 2022 comes around and that overvalued car is now rapidly declining in value
3) With the car declining in value, consumer now owes more on the car than it is worth
4) Consumer no longer wants the car. Maybe they outgrew it. Or maybe it keeps breaking. So consumer wants to trade it in.
5) But dealer can’t trade the car in because the consumer owes WAY too much on it.
So dealer asks consumer for lots of money down to cover the difference.
6) But of course, the consumer doesn’t have $1,000s to cover the difference between what they owe on the car and what it’s worth. And here comes the perfect storm…
7) Dealer can’t sell consumer a car, consumer can’t buy a car, and, you guessed it, lender can’t finance a car! Everybody loses! Oh no! So what happens next?
8) Lender knows that most consumers are stuck in this situation, and does the following:

WAIVES THE OPEN AUTO STIPULATION.

Meaning, the lender lets the consumer buy the car KNOWING that they already have an open auto loan with another bank!

It’s becoming apparent that 2023 has the potential to be worse than 2008. How much worse, we will have to wait and see. In the meantime, it’s a very good idea to be prepared to lower your standard of living and focus your spending on a) things you really need, b) things that will last, and c) things that provide high value for the money.

Live well within your means and you’ll be all right. This is not the time to live a champagne lifestyle on a discount beer budget.

DISCUSS ON SG

Monday Arktoons

HOW TO SUCCEED LIKE A DARK LORD Episode 23: Something Overlooked

CHUCK DIXON PRESENTS: WAR Episode 77: Marine Raid on Munda

EVIL MONKEY MEMES Episode 69: Can I Get A Witness

DEUS VULT Episode 18: Left to Die

CHUCK DIXON PRESENTS: COMEDY Episode 70: Christmas at Greyfriars

There is a bit of a historical Easter egg in today’s HOW TO SUCCEED. A free ebook to the first person who can correctly identify what it is. Hint: it’s also in the previous two episodes.

DISCUSS ON SG

On Thought Leadership

Earlier today, I was accused of considering myself to be “a thought leader”. Let me hasten to make it clear that I do not consider myself a thought leader, nor do I even believe it is possible for me to become a thought leader. Over the last five decades, I have reliably observed that most people are constitutionally incapable of following my thought processes for various reasons that are usually, though not necessarily, related to the Bell Curve.

Communication is very difficult across two standard deviations, which is why most “thought leaders” are, by necessity, midwits. I’m not a thought leader because I’m one of the various individuals that the thought leaders read in order to formulate their thoughts.

As I have said many times, I don’t expect you to agree with me. I don’t even expect you to understand.

DISCUSS ON SG

Gammacaust on Gab

Remove Reply and Remove Reply and Block are two killer features that will help Gab continue to grow. @a and his team are absolutely killing it. Only retards and losers with zero reach are opposed to these new features, because it limits their ability to spam threads and their attempts to hijack the posts of others. The vast majority of users will greatly appreciate the ability to ignore the retards.

Gab has, with one fell swoop, successfully targeted its biggest weakness, which was the ability for the ill-intentioned to target and harass users on their own posts. This was extremely detrimental to Gab’s most important users, namely, those with large followings, because they are the ones who possess microphones worth hijacking.

Of course, the very retards and losers who are most affected by the fact that most users would very much like to pretend they don’t exist are now screaming “censorship”, which is literally retarded. Gab isn’t censoring anyone. This is not censorship, this is freedom, because forcing people to listen to those they don’t want to listen to is the exact opposite of freedom.

But it should surprise no one that the Gammas on Gab are viewing these new features as a Gammacaust. Now they are only guaranteed the ability to talk about others on their own posts, which means that everyone else has the ability to exclude them and go back to completely ignoring them. And there is no greater fear for the Gamma than being excluded by his social superiors. They’re apoplectic about losing their self-perceived ability to correct, condemn, and criticize people who have no interest in anything they have to say.

UPDATE: In response to the wailing and gnashing of teeth, I added the following:

Dear Self-Appointed Gab Police,

It is amusing to see how you pretend every response is an intelligent and substantive critique that merits serious contemplation on the part of the original poster. This is not even close to being the norm.

The fact is that overwhelming number of “critical” responses are posted by a) retards, b) gammas, c) fedposters, d) paid hasbara accounts, and e) bots. Most of those responses are, at best, a complete waste of time and an insult to human intelligence.

For Gab to give its users the ability to ignore the constant stream of retardery and fake comments is not censorship, it is freedom and user-empowerment. It’s not taking any power away from you, to the contrary, it is giving you and everyone else the freedom to choose how to engage with others on the platform.

If you wish to respond politely and substantively to this post, please do so, whether you agree with me or not. And if you wish to respond in a retarded and vulgar manner, you can certainly do that too.

I just don’t have to put up with that nonsense anymore, thanks to the wisdom of the Gab team.

Regards,
Vox

UPDATE: Torba weighs in with the only two cents that matter. The key being the “hands off” objective. What he’s doing is the exact opposite of censorship.

Gab’s goal has always been to be as hands off as possible with user content. Instead we want to give you the community the tools to create and shape your own experience. Freedom of association is just as important as freedom of speech.

We have a new feature today that gives you the user more control over your own content and your own experience on Gab. Users now have the ability to moderate comments under their own posts. When you post original content on your profile you are the moderator of the conversation happening under that content because it’s your content on your profile.

The comments are not removed completely from the site, they will still be in the “comments” section of someone’s profile who left the comment–but they will no longer be in the comment section under your content when you remove them.

Users also cannot moderate “quote post” replies to their content because those are new pieces of content on someone else’s page. This is a healthy balance that allows for dissent to still be discovered in quote posts and for spam to be removed from the comment section.

No one in entitled to an audience on someone else’s content. If you want to “dunk” on people’s posts with your own take you can always do so with a quote post to your own audience.

DISCUSS ON SG