Prediction: spectacularly bad

The Wheel of Time wasn’t any good in book form. One shudders to think how bad it will be by the time Amazon gets through with it:

Amazon’s highly anticipated TV series adaptation of the beloved book series The Wheel of Time has found its star. It was announced today that Oscar-nominated actress Rosamund Pike will play the lead role of Moiraine in the TV adaptation of Robert Jordan’s fantasy novels.

The Wheel of Time is set in a sprawling, epic world where magic exists, but only women can use it. Meaning that in this series — women hold the keys to power. The story follows Moiraine, a member of the shadowy and influential all-female organization called the ‘Aes Sedai’ as she embarks on a dangerous, world-spanning journey with five young men and women. Moiraine’s interested in these five because she believes one of them might be the reincarnation of an incredibly powerful individual, whom prophecies say will either save humanity or destroy it. The series draws on numerous elements of European and Asian culture and philosophy, most notably the cyclical nature of time found in Buddhism and Hinduism.

The Wheel of Time had a very good introduction. Then it promptly started going downhill in the first chapter and didn’t stop until it reached its nadir at Book Seven. But it was essentially unreadable beginning with Book Four. It’s never a good sign when a series is said to improve by its fans after the author’s death. I very much doubt the TV series will survive to the finish either.

I am, however, genuinely curious to learn who will play the most annoying character in fantasy literature, Rand al’Thor. Whoever he is, one hopes that he will possess a sufficiently punchable face in order to properly play the part. I suggest David Hogg.

No, no, HELL no!

What sort of drooling moron is going to give Mark freaking Zuckerberg control over his money, however virtual?

The much-hyped launch of Facebook’s cryptocurrency Libra has met a brick wall of institutional skepticism as politicians and regulators take one look at CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s privacy record and raise a collective eyebrow.

Calibra, the new Facebook subsidiary which will operate Libra, has made no secret of its ambitions to branch out from funds transfer into credit, bill payments and other more sophisticated products. Such consolidation of power in the hands of a company that already has a monopoly on online social interaction for its 2-billion-plus users – and a terrible record of protecting users’ privacy – has understandably worried the skeptics.

I already deactivated my Facebook account – and I’ll activate it only to delete it entirely. There is literally ZERO chance I will ever make any use of Libra. I’d rather trade in seashells.

Now on Unauthorized

Now that we have our logo sorted, we can finally begin the process of rolling out the platform-specific apps for which many viewers have been requesting. We also anticipate launching the Medieval History series very soon. This has been a big month for Unauthorized, so if you haven’t subscribed yet, it’s an excellent time to do so and ride with the outlaws of the Internet.

We’re also going to have a special badge for Unauthorized subscribers on SocialGalactic 2.0, which is rapidly approaching Alpha testing.

Convergence in credit cards

As it is written, every organization that becomes converged loses its ability to perform its primary function. Mastercard is in the process of doing so:

Every time someone in the trans or nonbinary community has to whip out their credit card to rent a car or buy dinner, they may be required to prove a credit card that misidentifies them is actually theirs. That can mean a string of uncomfortable, personal questions that may feel like harassment masquerading as security concerns, and it can make going about daily life not only emotionally draining, but downright dangerous.

According to one survey, nearly one-third (32{f33784e39f95a4a537f95eb029d837fe676a3542b2380ed2d704b841b03a8c5e}) of individuals who have shown IDs with a name or gender that did not match their presentation found themselves being harassed, denied services, and/or attacked. That is a lot to deal with when you’re just trying to buy groceries, see a movie, get your hair done, or just exist in the world.

Now Mastercard is taking one step toward making life a little easier for people in this situation. The company just announced the True Name card, which will allow people to use their true names, not deadnames, on cards without the requirement of a legal name change. The True Name card will make lives easier and safer.

One of the primary functions of a credit card is to correctly identify the person to whom credit is being provided. Now imagine the myriad of ways this new security hole is going to be exploited by thieves and credit card scammers.

Clerk to tall bearded man: “Why does your credit card say Penelope Chao?”

Penelope: “That’s my True Name.”

Clerk: “You didn’t steal this card from that little Asian woman whose purse was snatched in front of the store yesterday?”

Penelope: “Of course not! Can’t you tell I identify as a woman?”

Clerk: “My apologies, Ms Chao. No offense intended.”

Penelope: “None taken. Hey, gimme three packs of Marlboro Reds too.”

They’ve learned nothing

One has to seriously wonder what Indiegogo thinks they are doing by determining that not only its campaigns, but its campaign contributors, are too risky for it. Apparently they want to add a few thousand more backers to their growing number of legal disputes.

This is particularly ironic as they never seem to have any problem with campaign owners who rip off their contributors and don’t actually deliver any products.

It’s an interesting business strategy, Cotton. We’ll see how it works out for them.

Color me dubious

This Reddit analysis strikes me more as revolution porn than a revelation of actual government wargaming analysis, but nevertheless, it appears to be generally correct with regards to the essentials:

The United States Government has extensively studied the concept of second American Civil War. Their conclusion is as follows: They don’t have a snowball’s chance in Hell of winning. The moment civil war is declared, the government loses. No scenario or outcome ends in their success. Period. It’s just a matter of how long it takes.

A longer analysis will follow, but here are the salient points.

30{f33784e39f95a4a537f95eb029d837fe676a3542b2380ed2d704b841b03a8c5e} of the American population will actively revolt.

This alone is enormous and damning. Historically, you only need 10{f33784e39f95a4a537f95eb029d837fe676a3542b2380ed2d704b841b03a8c5e} of the population to actively participate in a rebellion to successfully overthrow the establishment: We only had 15{f33784e39f95a4a537f95eb029d837fe676a3542b2380ed2d704b841b03a8c5e} of the population actively attempting to throw out the British during the Revolutionary War; roughly 70{f33784e39f95a4a537f95eb029d837fe676a3542b2380ed2d704b841b03a8c5e} of what remained was neutral and simply stood by. By contrast, 30{f33784e39f95a4a537f95eb029d837fe676a3542b2380ed2d704b841b03a8c5e} of Americans in modern America would support a revolution to stop their own government if it happened tomorrow That’s how discontent the people are and how much the people don’t support the government.

The government would need infrastructure more than rebels would.

Already working with significant handicaps, the establishment would need electricity, access to the Internet, bridges, and airports to coordinate any active campaign against the rebellion. By contrast, the rebellion can work in the dark. Considering how easy it would be to sabotage US infrastructure, one of the first things the rebellion would do is collapse bridges, destroy, or seize power plants, and cover the Interstate in IEDs. This is relatively simple to accomplish, and it would inflict enormous damage on the establishment’s ability to restore order. It would also cost an enormous amount of time and effort to fix any sabotage, because the establishment would need to provide military protection to any workers attempting to rebuild, which is a drain their active fighting personnel resources that they could not afford.

It would certainly make for an interesting wargame design challenge. And it also is in harmony with what we know of the Clinton adminstration’s study of the various militia groups and the government’s inability to suppress them. As a general rule, there is very, very little that governments can do about 4GW insurrections; a government that lacks the ability to suppress illegal organizations such as MS-13 and the Gulf Cartel isn’t going to be able to do much about ideological rebels either.

Stop eating people!

It’s not the heat, it’s the kuru:

German Chancellor Angela Merkel dismissed concerns about her health after visibly trembling at an official ceremony, saying she was just a bit dehydrated in the heat.

Merkel appeared unsteady and was shaking as she stood in the midday sun in Berlin on Tuesday next to visiting Ukraine’s new president Volodymyr Zelensky, whom she was welcoming to her office building with military honours.

Mrs Merkel’s whole body visibly shook and she pursed her lips as she tried to contain the situation as she stood with Zelenskiy in the 28C (82F) heat while a military band played their national anthems outside the chancellery.

It’s rather strange how all these evil globalists exhibit symptoms that are usually only seen among cannibals, is it not?

Reprehensibly stupid

MGTOW are not only cowards and liars, they are reprehensibly stupid, as one Hop Light demonstrates on YouTube in response to my Darkstream entitled Men Going Evil’s Way:

Absurd stream.

“Is the legal system stacked against men? Yes.”
“Are there really bad outcomes? Well, yes.”

But…uh statistics are just statistics.

Vox, you’re smarter than this. It is only a true gamma fool of a man who gets married in this day and age. Completely suicidal in some states. It’s not fear, it survival and adaptation. It’s what men do.

I’m certainly considerably smarter than he is. My point was that the statistics are not applicable. What MGTOW do is attempt to apply GENERAL statistics derived from a population of millions to their own individual situation despite the fact that such statistics are totally meaningless when applied to ONE SPECIFIC individual.

What they’re doing is analogous to deciding one can afford to buy a $2 million house with a 7.84 percent mortgage interest rate because the average US housing price is $279,500 and the average mortgage interest rate is 4.39 percent.

Sounds like a good start

But we’ll see whether there is any follow-through on the words or not, or if it’s just more bluster:

President Donald Trump said on Monday that U.S. authorities would begin next week removing millions of immigrants who are in the United States illegally.

“Next week ICE will begin the process of removing the millions of illegal aliens who have illicitly found their way into the United States,” Trump tweeted, referring to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. “They will be removed as fast as they come in,” he said. He did not offer specifics.

There are an estimated 12 million immigrants who are in the United States illegally, mainly from Mexico and Central America.

The real problem, of course, is with legal immigration. Because the fundamental problem involves quantity, not quality, much less legality.

Ben Shapiro is an intellectual drag queen

I’ll be going on with Alex Jones very soon, presumably to discuss Iran. But we’ll see… we always seem to end up off on a tangent that I didn’t see coming.

UPDATE: Yeah, we really didn’t discuss Iran. And I did NOT see those particular tangents coming.