A game designer gets it

The designer of Sense: A Cyberpunk Ghost Story has some excellent advice that sounds rather familiar:

Widdowson then puts forth four tactics, “never apologize,” cease any support for “people that engage in this behavior (on all sides),” minimize “engagement with these people,” and speak “with your wallets,” and states that these tactics are “the only way to stop this stuff from happening”:

“– Never apologize to the mob, if enough people stop doing the corporate non-apology, or the “I’m sorry, I’m woke now”-apology then the mob loses it’s power and the “game” stops being exciting for the hangers-on. An apology is a vindication, a self-defeat, a statement saying you acknowledge you did something worth an apology. Don’t do it.

– Stop supporting the people that engage in this behavior (on all sides), and stop supporting the companies that employ them. Money talks, eventually…

– Minimize engagement with these people. Starve them of attention; make them feel like they are screaming into a void of exactly 0 people that care. Remember, these people subsist purely on outrage, anger, and discomfort. You don’t have to. So if you really need to engage with these people though, make sure you do it in a way that benefits you. We’ve connected with some great fans and new customers thanks to this.

– Speak with your wallets, if you see a large company bend the knee to the mob, stop giving them your money at all. You don’t need the next AAA  EA/Activision/whoever published game, but they certainly need your money. You guys have 100{20631733b5a15c3694dbfcf360b60a1948a54005354f1d1bb00d126531fe1735} of the power. Never, ever forget that you determine actual success regardless of what those in “power” redefine that word to mean.”

Minimizing engagement and voting with your wallet are the two most important points. The evil power of the Devil Mouse would be significantly reduced if idiot conservatives would simply stop going to Disneyland and buying tickets to Disney-produced movies. Hollywood would be significantly less able to influence minds all over the planet if the people it hates would stop paying for its increasingly horrendous products.

No wonder they harbor such contempt for the men and women of the West. Far too many of us not only materially support, but actually pride ourselves on, destroying our own interests and our own societies.

No-evidence debunked disinformation propaganda

We haven’t seen the Democrats this publicly shook since they claimed Pizzagate was “debunked” about thirty seconds after news of it broke:

Democrats say the State Department watchdog used a closed-door briefing on Wednesday to give them “conspiracy theories” tied to Ukraine, former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch and former Vice President Joe Biden.

“It’s essentially a packet of propaganda and disinformation and spreading conspiracy theories. Those conspiracy theories have been widely debunked and discredited,” Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) told reporters after an hourlong briefing with State Department Inspector General Steve Linick.

The closed-door, hour-long briefing was part of a hastily assembled meeting requested by the State Department watchdog.

Ahead of the meeting, there had been speculation that it could be tied to a whistleblower complaint about President Trump’s July 25 phone call with Ukraine’s president, which is at the forefront of the impeachment probe.

Instead, Democrats say the packet of documents handed over by the State Department watchdog mentions Biden and his son Hunter Biden, Yovanovitch and CrowdStrike, the cybersecurity firm that investigated breaches at the DNC in the lead up to the 2016 election.

“They appear to contain long-debunked theories and false statements about the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine and one of President Trump’s political opponents,” said Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), whose staff attended the briefing…. A Democratic source familiar with the briefing said that the documents came from the White House to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. The paperwork was organized in multiple Trump Hotel folders and included together in an envelope labeled “White House.”

“Those folders contained notes from interviews that took place at Rudy Giuliani’s NYC office with various Ukrainians about debunked conspiracies related to Ukraine. This was just another attempt by the White House to peddle Rudy Giuliani conspiracy theories,” the source added.

Republicans have doubled down on calls for an investigation into Biden’s role in the ouster of a Ukraine prosecutor in 2016, despite no evidence of wrongdoing.

The media seems to think that if it just says the magic words often enough, the problem goes away. We already know that Creepy Joe lied. We already know that his adulterous, crackhead son who banged his brother’s widow was being paid ludicrous sums of money for doing nothing by the Ukrainians.

The word “debunked” clearly no longer means what it used to mean. But what level of truth can you reasonably expect from people who also claim that “man” means “woman”, “cat” means “dog”, and the number six means “purple”.

SFWA member arrested for child porn

SFWA member and convicted child molester Ed Kramer has gotten himself in legal trouble again:

Former owner and co-founder of Dragon Con, Edward E. Kramer, was charged with possession of child pornography again. This comes after an investigation into Kramer et al for attempting to hack the court’s computers.

According to WSB-TV Atlanta, Kramer had a warrant issued against him on Monday, September 30th, 2019 for having multiple pictures of child pornography.

The warrant was issued after investigators began scouring Kramer’s computer and found that he and a private investigator, TJ Ward, attempted to hack into a county’s computers because another judge – Kathryn Schrader – suspected a prosecutor of monitoring her computer. Kramer, Ward, and Schrader were apparently all working together to hack into the county’s systems, but the trio’s plot was foiled when a wiretap and additional investigators began investigating Kramer, Ward, and Schrader, as detailed in a separate report by WSB-TV from back in mid-September.

Kramer’s fellow SFWA members, including the current president, tried to pretend he wasn’t a member the last time he was in the news, back in 2014. But, then as now, he was merely inactive, which meant that he hadn’t paid his dues while he was in prison; he was still listed in the online member’s directory.

To the best of my knowledge, he has still not been expelled from the organization, which has a long and sordid history of defending him.

This is pure essence of Gamma

SullyRob goes full gamma-rage because he didn’t get the attention he craved.

This is probably the last time vox will let me post here, I tried being nice to him for a while and that never got me anywhere with him or anywhere else on this blog. So since he refused to ever engage with me when I tried being respectful to him in the past. I see no reason to exit gracefully.

Gamma meltdown. Quelle surprise. Anyhow, comments are now locked-down, as per usual.

Ware the omega

I’ve talked about the importance of keeping gammas out of your organizations, but omegas are certainly capable of posing a problem as well:

A deaf computer scientist slaughtered four of his colleagues in a knife rampage at the police headquarters in Paris today.

The attacker, believed to be a 45-year-old who had worked for Paris police for 20 years, was shot dead in the courtyard after murdering his colleagues with a ceramic knife.

At least one of the dead is a policewoman and witnesses described a ‘panic’ in the building as the attack unfolded at Thursday lunchtime.

The motive for the bloodbath is not yet clear but investigators suspect it was caused by a workplace row.

Union officials said there had been ‘tensions’ between the man and his supervisor and described the attack as a ‘moment of madness’.

Colleagues described the knifeman as a trusted, long-serving employee who had full security clearance and had never caused problems before.

It also tends to raise the question of relying upon the police to protect you from criminals with guns when they can’t even defend themselves from one deaf nerd with a kitchen knife.

Falsifying a theory

There was an idea in the early 20th century that the so-called liberation of women was going to significantly improve human society. After all, they made up half the human race! Surely unlocking all that untapped potential couldn’t help but have incredibly positive results, right? As it turned out, that isn’t exactly what happened.

With Intersectionality ascending to an unquestionable dogma lately, the establishment press has come to believe that it is immensely important to find out what young women of color have on their minds. They must have come up with some incredibly great ideas during their 400 years of marginalization.

So, the media have increasingly turned over their platforms to young women of color.

And what messages do they have for us?

After having read hundreds of their op-eds and the like over the past few years, I’ve discovered that the No. 1 topic young woman-of-color journalists want us to listen to them talk about is…their hair.

They definitely have a lot to say about their hair.

Why?

Well, first of all, because they are young women. Looking nice is very important to young ladies and it takes up a lot of space in their brains.

Forget the anti-suffragists. If most of the early suffragists had any idea how utterly humiliating the consequences of their grand cause have turned out to be, they never would have pursued it in the first place.

But it’s not a bad thing for young women to look nice and be concerned about looking nice. Quite to the contrary, looking nice is extremely helpful when it comes to accomplishing the only two things young women absolutely must do for the good of their society and their species, which is get married and have children.

The future belongs to those who show up for it.

Relentless satanry

It never, ever, stops. Devil Mouse Wars is very pleased to announce its first gay pairing:

In a recent interview with the Coffee With Kenobi podcast, Star Wars Resistance producer Justin Ridge confirmed that Orka and Flix, a pair of alien starship-parts salesmen featured in the Star Wars Resistance cartoon, are the first openly gay couple on screen in the Star Wars mythos.

This exciting “news” comes just after the announced ret-conning and reduction of Emperor Palpatane with the revelation of the real power behind the Empire:

Star Wars has revealed the woman who was actually keeping the Empire together all those years, despite its incompetent leader: Imperial Minister Pitina Voor.

Every fan is going to want to know the woman born Pitina Mar-Mas Voor, twenty-five years before Sheev Palpatine began his rise to power. Married to a lame duck bureaucrat in the Empire’s ruling class of competing officers and governors, Pitina saw history repeating itself. That below all the bravado, intimidation, and posturing… the expansion of the Empire through brute force was killing it even as it spread (running out of both soldiers and money). And Pitina just might have led the Galactic Empire to total success, if not for once crucial weakness: Emperor Palpatine had absolutely no idea how to lead.

To the SJW, creativity and story-telling means replacing normal people with homosexuals, white people with black people, and men with women. So brave. Thank you for this.

Red Bernie is done

First Creepy Joe went down. Now Red Bernie has been medically disqualified.

Bernie Sanders’ campaign said Wednesday that the Democratic presidential candidate had a heart procedure for a blocked artery and was canceling events and appearances “until further notice.”

The 78-year-old Sanders was in Las Vegas when, according to a campaign statement, he experienced chest discomfort during a campaign event Tuesday and sought medical evaluation. Two stents were “successfully inserted” and that Sanders “is conversing and in good spirits,” according to the campaign….

He is one of three candidates over age 70 in the Democratic primary, which has spurred debate over whether the party should rally behind a new generation of political leaders, and President Donald Trump is 73. Sanders’ health issue is certain to revive that discussion in the weeks before the next presidential debate this month.

The Democratic establishment wants to unite the factions behind Injun’ Elizabeth as soon as possible, so the 78-year-old Sanders is not going to get the pass on his medical issues the way Hillary Clinton did on hers in 2016. Sanders won’t go away willingly, and he’ll try to stick it out, but it’s inevitable now.

Diversity & Comics reviews Cyberfrog

Jon Del Arroz reviews the long-awaited Cyberfrog, and in the process, demonstrates that one man’s cucking is another man’s opportunity. It’s amusing to see idiots trying to claim that a brand still belongs to someone who literally fled from it.

As for the review itself, it appears to be in line with the general consensus. Very good art, very mediocre writing. This is not exactly a surprise; Image Comics proved, a long time ago and rather conclusively, that it’s as foolish to have the illustrators do the writing as it is to have the writers do the illustrating.

Castalia Deluxe

A reader emails concerning his interest in the new Castalia Deluxe line we are currently in the process of creating:

I am interested in the Castalia House leather bound books you have been proposing. My commitment is firm.

After growing up with reading being a prominent pastime, I had become post-literate myself. I had stopped reading for fun or leisure for over a decade.

Why? Because, increasingly, nearly everything that was readily accessible or recommended to me was subverted, converged, perverted, plain wrong, incompetent, amounted to nothing more than propaganda, was revisionist garbage, etc., etc. I had not finished a book in years that did not leave me feeling distorted, disgusted, or contributed to my mounting nihilism in some way. The same has been true for movies, TV, and pop culture generally which I have also abandoned. The odds were too good it would be utter *@!$.

Castalia House has been a welcome relief to my literary drought. Since I discovered you and Castalia House, aside from my professional and academic duties, I have read more in the last few months than I have in years. It’s not just the books Castalia publishes, but also Castalia’s blog, your blog, and the other resources you have exposed me to that has allowed me to reliably track down things worth reading. Things that leave me with a sense of the good, the true, and the beautiful.

A Throne of Bones was excellent. (Looking forward to A Sea of Skulls). David Eddings’s The Belgariad series was an effortless, enjoyable read. A History of France by John Julius Norwich wasn’t revisionist garbage. I am about to crack the first volume in my 1910 edition of Charles Oman’s The History of England.

Thank you for Castalia House and all you do. Keep up the good work.

P.S. Sometimes the presence of gatekeepers make people aware there’s a gate. Despite my growing disdain for Jordan Peterson, I took notice of his interview with Milo. I wondered what had changed because, for lack of a better phrase, one was authorized and the other wasn’t. When I watched the interview, Peterson reminded me you existed with his “Say hi to Vox for me” line. I quickly realized what had changed is Jordanetics was published. Jordanetics clearly articulated why I had developed such disdain for Peterson. This led me to Castalia House, Vox Popoli, and the Darkstream.

So, thanks, Jordan.

For those who aren’t aware, over the last week I’ve been working on expanding the concept of the requested deluxe leatherbound Castalia Junior Classics to an entire line of high-quality Castalia Deluxe books in the vein of Easton Press and Franklin Mint. The interest in this has been unexpectedly high, even among the presumably post-literate video crowd, and the project is looking extremely viable due to the way in which it builds directly on what we’re already doing at Castalia House.

The current plan is to offer a 50/month subscription to Castalia Deluxe, which will provide six books per year to the subscriber, delivered every other month. These subscriber books will NOT be limited editions, but they may have some features that the regular Deluxe books do not, such as gilded page edges and bookmark ribbons. The Castalia Junior Classics will NOT be part of the subscription, but both the regular hardcover and Deluxe editions will be available for sale.

We will offer a discount on non-subscription Deluxe books to subscribers, probably on the order of 5 or 10 dollars per book. We MAY also offer free shipping if we can ship a purchased book with a regular subscription shipment.

The first two books we will send to subscribers will be The Missionaries and Summa Elvetica & Other Stories. And in answer to some more of the frequently asked questions I’ve been getting:

Where do I sign up for the Deluxe subscription?
You don’t yet. We still have to decide how we want to set this up exactly, most likely through the Arkhaven store, and confirm that all the numbers add up correctly. But if you are seriously interested – by which I mean an 85 percent chance you believe you will sign up for a subscription if and when it becomes available – email me now with CASTALIA DELUXE in the subject.

How do I get the Castalia Junior Classics?
Through the crowdfunding campaign that is expected to begin in 2-3 weeks. The Junior Classics are NOT a part of this subscription program. The only connection is that we stumbled upon the idea of a new product line as part of figuring out how to offer a Deluxe edition of them.

Are you only going to be offering Castalia House books in Castalia Deluxe?
No. We’re just starting the Deluxe line with books we already publish because that is one less issue to sort out at the start. We’re trying to keep the degree of difficulty to a reasonable minimum. In addition to some of the usual classics, we want to publish great reference works of history, science, and philosophy. For example, I’d particularly like to bring back the first edition of The Cambridge Medieval History.

Will A THRONE OF BONES/AWAKE IN THE NIGHT LAND be available as part of the Deluxe subscription?
Yes, they will probably be included in the first year. We need to re-layout AWAKE, otherwise it would replace SUMMA as the second subscription book. And beginning with a monstrosity like ATOB would not be minimizing the degree of difficulty.

Will large books like ATOB cost more for subscribers?
No. Some books will cost us more, some will cost us less. This may affect the retail price, but will not affect the subscriptions.

Is the paper for the Deluxe editions going to be acid-free?
Yes, the paper is acid-free and meets ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 standards for archival quality paper.

Will you be publishing THERE WILL BE WAR in Deluxe editions?
Absolutely. They’re very near the top of the list.

I’m an author. Will you publish a Deluxe edition of my book?
That depends. Is your name “Nick Cole” or “William Gibson” or “Arturo Perez-Reverte”?

Will the Deluxe editions ship outside the USA?
Yes, although it is POSSIBLE that an international surcharge to cover shipping will be required for the subscription shipments.

UPDATE: the initial response has been enthusiastic.

Count me in for $50 a month! I find your literary curation absolutely invaluable. This year alone you’ve been the driving force behind me digging into Richard Adams, Hesse, Wodehouse, Umberto Eco, William Gibson, Owen Stanley, Quigley, Norwich, Van Creveld and more. It’s been an incredibly rewarding and transformative process.