Arkhaven backers

Check your email. Please follow the directions, do NOT ask any questions here and do NOT email any questions to me. All the relevant questions will be addressed in detail at the proper time later this month.

UPDATE: I will be sending out an email Thursday night to the hundreds of respondents. The entire team is blown away by the strength of your response. Thank you all.

UPDATE: There are now 50 40 10 5 0 slots left. Thanks to everyone who is participating. Please follow the emailed instructions to get registered and approved ASAP.

Always read the fine print

WordPress, which recently deplatformed Chateau Heartiste, really needs to hire better lawyers. Consider the two following sections of its Terms of Use.

15. Jurisdiction and Applicable Law.
Except to the extent any applicable law provides otherwise, the Agreement and any access to or use of our Services will be governed by the laws of the state of California, U.S.A., excluding its conflict of law provisions. The proper venue for any disputes arising out of or relating to the Agreement and any access to or use of our Services will be the state and federal courts located in San Francisco County, California.

16. Arbitration Agreement
Except for claims for injunctive or equitable relief or claims regarding intellectual property rights (which may be brought in any competent court without the posting of a bond), any dispute arising under the Agreement shall be finally settled in accordance with the Comprehensive Arbitration Rules of the Judicial Arbitration and Mediation Service, Inc. (“JAMS”) by three arbitrators appointed in accordance with such Rules. The arbitration shall take place in San Francisco, California, in the English language and the arbitral decision may be enforced in any court. The prevailing party in any action or proceeding to enforce the Agreement shall be entitled to costs and attorneys’ fees.

So, WordPress requires arbitration through the JAMS system, and they require the arbitration to take place in California. Not only that, but they declare that whoever wins can claim costs and attorneys’s fees. This, of course, is meant to dissuade people like Heartiste from taking them to arbitration.

But not so fast. JAMS enforces the following standards, which are based on California law.

Consumer Arbitration Minimum Standards

JAMS will administer arbitrations pursuant to mandatory pre-dispute arbitration clauses between companies and consumers only if the contract arbitration clause and specified applicable rules comply with the following minimum standards of fairness.

The consumer must have a right to an in-person hearing in his or her hometown area.

With respect to the cost of the arbitration, when a consumer initiates arbitration against the company, the only fee required to be paid by the consumer is $250, which is approximately equivalent to current Court filing fees. All other costs must be borne by the company, including any remaining JAMS Case Management Fee and all professional fees for the arbitrator’s services. When the company is the claiming party initiating an arbitration against the consumer, the company will be required to pay all costs associated with the arbitration.

In California, the arbitration provision may not require the consumer to pay the fees and costs incurred by the opposing party if the consumer does not prevail.

In other words, Chateau (or any of his readers) can bring an arbitration against WordPress for $250, can do it in his hometown area rather than on WordPress’s turf, and cannot be forced to pay costs or legal fees even if he loses.

Always read the fine print.

Ben Shapiro humiliates himself on the BBC

Ben Shapiro has mega TANTRUM on the BBC
Ben Shapiro is the famous, fast-talking pundit who regularly ‘owns’ aggressive campus students with his quick wit and rapid repartee. Alas, Shapiro isn’t so ‘crazy smart’ when he comes up against difficult questions from a real interviewer. Yesterday he just couldn’t cope with an interrogation from the BBC’s Andrew Neil. He decided that Neil must be a typical BBC leftist and had an epic tantrum. Oh dear — should have done your research Ben. The idea that Andrew Neil, who just so happens to also be chairman of The Spectator, is some sort of rabid leftist is hilarious to anybody who has a clue about British media. As Cockburn knows, he is often attacked for being too unacceptably un-left for the BBC. He was just doing what interviewers should do: challenging his guest to justify his views.
What a nasty little creature. It’s hilarious to see how badly the Littlest Chickenhawk humiliated himself. And it should be obvious why he wants absolutely no part of debating either Milo or me. He’s never, ever, going to be ready for prime time.

Arkhaven backers

Check your email. Please follow the directions, do NOT ask any questions here and do NOT email any questions to me. All the relevant questions will be addressed in detail at the proper time later this month.

UPDATE: I will be sending out an email Thursday night to the hundreds of respondents. The entire team is blown away by the strength of your response. Thank you all.

UPDATE: There are now 50 40 10 5 slots left, so if you want to be involved, this is the time to jump in. Also, assuming that everyone follows through, the light just flashed green. There is no need to email asking for further instructions. They will arrive in due course.

The end of women’s sports

It’s hard to feel bad for the feminists:

When two high school athletes who were born male but identify as female took first and second place at Connecticut’s girls indoor track championship this year, it wasn’t just a local news story.

To some, it was a story of triumph and courage. The winner, a junior from Bloomfield High School, set a girls state indoor record of 6.95 seconds in the 55-meter dash, and went on to win the New England titles in both the 55-meter dash and the 300-meter dash.

To others, it was a story of shock and disappointment: Is this the end of women’s sports?

To Selina Soule, a 16-year-old runner from Glastonbury, it was personal.

A junior, Selina missed qualifying for the 55-meter in the New England regionals by two spots. Two spots, she said, that were taken by biological boys.

Had the boys who identify as girls not been allowed to compete, Selina would have placed sixth, qualifying to run the 55 in front of college coaches at the New England regionals.

Instead, she placed eighth, watching the 55 from the sidelines after qualifying in only the long jump, an event in which the transgender athletes didn’t compete.

It’s more than a bit amusing to see feminists getting shut down for daring to contradict the SJW narrative.

The End of the Boomer Age

The time of the Boomers is drawing to a close. The question now is how long any of the nations they inhabited survive them.

The Boomer Age is drawing to its close.  When one speaks of this group, it tends to mostly focus on white Boomers (not that others are outside the group, but to such a great extent, it really does mean those of mostly European background, if for no other reason than they have been the largest demographic group).  When that age does end, we will see an ever-dwindling European demographic majority in many Western nations (Canada and the USA are almost certainly the first, soon followed by a variety of European nations).  That significant point of majority will be fading, as the numbers precipitously drop until below 50{f50d4126b30a4b8775ab6f2d7b1f889a5b05b2c1f19981bd6101ecb574a7fa8a}.  The question looming then is, what is next?  Will it be the glorious Brave New World of harmonious multiculturalism or an uneasy balkanization that trends ever more to tribalism and violence?  Based on existing evidence and studies, I believe that it will be closer to the latter.

A major demographic shift is impacting most Western nations, some more than others.  This shift will lead to a far more multicultural/ethnic scenario, with those of European background as the minority within the next few decades.  At first blush, many will say this is not a problem, holding out the wonders of civic nationalism and existing relative stability and prosperity with an already highly mixed demographic.  The problem here is that this position doesn’t really hold water in the long term, as can be demonstrated by existing nations who have not been able to sustain a similar state of peaceful existence and by studies that point in the same direction.

While one can’t blame the Boomers for the mass invasions that began in the 60s, one can certainly blame them for aiding, abetting, and celebrating them. And when they smugly point out that the shattered demographics of the West will not be their problem, all we can say is that at least they won’t be around to interfere with their successors who have taken on the task of solving it.

A tale of two blasphemies

It is now abundantly clear that the self-appointed champions of “free speech” never actually believed a word they were saying. They merely wanted to replace the blasphemy laws of Christian society with the hate speech laws of anti-Christian society. But the Christian societies of Eastern Europe aren’t falling for the free speech lie that has trapped most of the West:

A woman has been arrested on suspicion of offending religious sentiment, after posters bearing an image of the Virgin Mary with her halo painted in the colours of the rainbow flag appeared in the city of Płock in central Poland.

The Polish interior minister, Joachim Brudziński, announced on Twitter on Monday that a person had been arrested for “carrying out a profanation of the Virgin Mary of Częstochowa”.

A Płock police spokeswoman confirmed a 51-year-old woman had been arrested over the alleged offence. The woman had been abroad, but upon her return, the police entered and searched her home, where they found several dozen images of the Virgin Mary with the rainbow-coloured halo.

Offending religious feeling is a crime under the Polish penal code. If convicted, the woman could face a prison sentence of up to two years.

Brudziński, who described the posters as “cultural barbarism” when they appeared overnight in April, said: “Telling stories about freedom and ‘tolerance’ doesn’t give anyone the right to offend the feelings of believers.”

Poland’s ruling rightwing Law and Justice party (PiS) has sought to mobilise its core electorate in the run-up to the European elections by raising the spectre of the country being overwhelmed by western liberal social values.

“We are dealing with a direct attack on the family and children – the sexualization of children, that entire LBGT movement, gender,” said the PiS leader, Jarosław Kaczyński, speaking to supporters last month. “This is imported, but they today actually threaten our identity, our nation, its continuation and therefore the Polish state.”

Make the blasphemy laws great again. After all, many of them are still on the books.

That’s great

Bounding Into Comics is restored on Facebook:

Facebook restored the 250k+ strong Bounding Into Comics fan page late at night.

The page was restored around 10:30 p.m. ET on Wednesday, May 8th. However, while the page was restored, we still have not received any communication from Facebook indicating why the page was taken down in the first place.

Upon a brief look at the page, no content appears to have actually been removed. In fact, the Spider-Man: Far From Home trailer article is currently the last post on the page.

We are still reaching out to Facebook to try to get an explanation of why the page was actually removed.

That’s great. Now, get off Facebook!

Break up Facebook

Even one of Facebook’s founders is now calling for the breakup of Facebook:

The government must hold Mark accountable. For too long, lawmakers have marveled at Facebook’s explosive growth and overlooked their responsibility to ensure that Americans are protected and markets are competitive. Any day now, the Federal Trade Commission is expected to impose a $5 billion fine on the company, but that is not enough; nor is Facebook’s offer to appoint some kind of privacy czar. After Mark’s congressional testimony last year, there should have been calls for him to truly reckon with his mistakes. Instead the legislators who questioned him were derided as too old and out of touch to understand how tech works. That’s the impression Mark wanted Americans to have, because it means little will change.

We are a nation with a tradition of reining in monopolies, no matter how well intentioned the leaders of these companies may be. Mark’s power is unprecedented and un-American.

It is time to break up Facebook.

The easiest way to check the power of the corpocracy is simply to punish juridical persons as the actual persons under law that they legally are. If the corporation commits a crime, the corporation goes to jail. No natural person is permitted to engage in normal business operations when in jail, neither should juridical persons be allowed to do so.

But in the absence of this eminently sensible system, breaking up Facebook would be a reasonable thing for the Trump administration to do.