No sympathy

If you want LGBTQWTF equality, then you deserve it, good and hard:

Andraya Yearwood hears the comments, usually from adults and usually not to her face.

She shouldn’t be running, they say, not against girls.

Yearwood, a 17-year-old junior at Cromwell High School, is one of two transgender high school sprinters in Connecticut, transitioning to female.

She recently finished second in the 55-meter dash at the state open indoor track championships. The winner, Terry Miller of Bloomfield High, is also transgender and set a girls state indoor record of 6.95 seconds. Yearwood finished in 7.01 seconds and the third-place competitor, who is not transgender, finished in 7.23 seconds.

Miller and Yearwood also topped the 100-meter state championships last year, and Miller won the 300 this season.

Critics say their gender identity amounts to an unfair advantage, expressing a familiar argument in a complex debate for transgender athletes as they break barriers across sports around the world from high school to the pros.

“I have learned a lot about myself and about other people through this transition. I always try to focus most on all of the positive encouragement that I have received from family, friends and supporters,” Yearwood said. “I use the negativity to fuel myself to run faster.”

Connecticut is one of 17 states that allow transgender high school athletes to compete without restrictions, according to Transathlete.com, which tracks state policies in high school sports across the country. Seven states have restrictions that make it difficult for transgender athletes to compete while in school, like requiring athletes to compete under the gender on their birth certificate, or allowing them to participate only after going through sex-reassignment procedures or hormone therapies.

The other states either have no policy or handle the issue on a case-by-case basis.

Yearwood acknowledges she is stronger than many of her cisgender competitors, but says girls who are not transgender may have other advantages.

“One high jumper could be taller and have longer legs than another, but the other could have perfect form, and then do better,” she said. “One sprinter could have parents who spend so much money on personal training for their child, which in turn, would cause that child to run faster.”

Miller, who declined to be interviewed for this story, has said that if she felt a competitor had an unfair advantage, it would simply push her to try to improve.

One of their competitors, Selina Soule, says the issue is about fairness on the track with wider implications. The Glastonbury High School junior finished eighth in the 55, missing out on qualifying for the New England regionals by two spots.

Soule believes that had Miller and Yearwood not run, she would be on her way to race in Boston in front of more college coaches.

“We all know the outcome of the race before it even starts; it’s demoralizing,” she said. “I fully support and am happy for these athletes for being true to themselves. They should have the right to express themselves in school, but athletics have always had extra rules to keep the competition fair.”

If you fully support these athletes, then stop crying about losing to them. Frankly, I don’t see how separate boys and girls competitions can be permitted any more than separate black and white competitions are.

In fact, isn’t it totally unequalitarian to deny people who don’t have the good fortune to attend high school, or be of high school age, the right to compete in high school track meets?

If equality is the standard, then impose complete equality across every single social construct. And if you won’t do that, then you obviously don’t believe in equality and we’re just arguing over where to draw the lines between various differences.

Corrosion in audio

Corrosion (The Corroding Empire, Book One)

Written by Johan Kalsi and narrated by: Jon Mollison. 7 hours 3 minutes. DRM-free ebook included in both Kindle and Epub formats.

Galactic society is ruled by algorithms. From interstellar travel and planetary terraforming to artificial intelligence and agriculture, every human endeavor has become completely dependent upon the hypercomplex equations that optimize the activities making life possible across hundreds of inhabited worlds. Throughout the galaxy, Man has become dependent upon the reliable operation of 10 million different automated systems.

And when things begin to go wrong and mysterious accidents begin to happen no one has any idea what is happening, except for a sentient medical drone and the First Technocrat of Continox. But their ability to even begin to try fixing the unthinkably complicated problem of galaxy-wide algorithmic decay is made considerably more difficult by the fact the former is an outlaw and the latter is facing a death sentence.

Johan Kalsi is Finland’s hottest science fiction author. An accomplished geneticist as well as a 6’3″ ex-Finnish Marine, in Corrosion, Kalsi shows himself to be more Asimovian than Asimov himself. Corrosion marks his English-language debut.


Jaggis was unsurprised when he was permitted to take his customary seat in the center of his colleagues, as it may as well have been the witness stand. All eyes were on him. There was an audience in attendance; the room was packed, almost entirely with media.

He wondered if he would be thrown to the mercy of the Human League immediately or if the process would be drawn out. A part of him wished they would simply get the business over with quickly, and without requiring him to participate in the charade.

As he expected, the Third and Fifth Technocrats were running the show. Although Rikker-Smythe was nominally presiding—he wore the sparkling digital sash that had hitherto been Jaggis’s prerogative as First Technocrat—one could see by the way he looked to Harraf and St. Asko for approval that appealing to his common sense would be fruitless. Did the Human League have something on the Second Technocrat? Or was it simply his natural weakness of character permitting the two predatory politicians to dominate him?

He shrugged. It didn’t matter now. What he needed to know was if Harraf was merely attempting to unseat him or if he had more nefarious intentions. He found it difficult to believe that either man was a genuine Humanist, but the fact that he’d been arrested on the same day as the assassination attempt smacked of St. Asko’s meticulous, belt-and-suspenders approach to life.

“As the initial order of business, it falls to me, as Second Technocrat, to ask the First Technocrat to recuse himself from this discussion,” Rikker-Smythe said. He sounded authoritative, he looked authoritative, with his thick white hair and patrician features, but Jaggis knew the noble appearance was misleading. The Second Technocrat was a junior officer in an admiral’s body, and had made a career of successfully shying away from all responsibility. “It would not be appropriate for him to participate in this discussion, as he is to be its subject.”

“If he’s the subject, he’s going to have to participate, Mikke!” The Eighth Technocrat, a fleshy New Tejan, cracked, but subsided when Harraf glared at him.

“Well, I mean to say, he cannot participate as a participant-”

“Oh, for Space’s sake!” Harraf broke in. “I move that Caden Jaggis be temporarily stripped of his seat on the Council while the matter of his alleged criminal negligence concerning the growing incidence of algorithmic decay throughout Continox.”

“Seconded,” St. Asko said, barely beating three others who echoed him.

“It’s not necessary,” Jaggis said quietly.

“What’s that?” Rikker-Smythe asked.

“I will recuse myself from the Council today in order to permit the consideration of my actions, so long as they are limited to this specific accusation of criminal negligence under Statue 245.856, subsection 28b.”

Rikker-Smythe looked at Harraf, who looked thoughtful before glancing quickly at St. Asko, who gave no sign of acceptance or approval. Harraf nodded, and Rikker-Smythe cleared his throat. “The First Technocrat has graciously offered to recuse himself from our deliberations, therefore I shall preside until such time as he resumes his duties or a new First Technocrat is named.”

The latter looked to be a much more likely proposition, Jaggis thought. But would it be Harraf or St. Asko who would replace him? Was it the taciturn Fifth Technocrat who was the real force behind this, and not his openly ambitious colleague?

“I will now open the floor to questions, in order of precedence. Tech Harraf, you may proceed.”

“Thank you, Tech Rikker-Smythe.” Harraf nodded to the Second Technocrat and flashed him an obsequious smile. “And I should like to, if I may, commend the way you have handled this unfortunate situation with the utmost fairness to all the parties involved.”

Jaggis sighed and tried not to roll his eyes as Rikker-Smythe beamed and murmured some self-deprecatory nonsense. He really should have done a better job of promoting stronger allies on the Council; all the Second Technocrat really wanted was to be petted by his colleagues and admired by the public. Harraf’s shameless flattery was rendering the man as pliable as molten plastic.

“Now,” said Harraf staring down his long, elegant nose at Jag. “How long have you been aware of the potential problem of algorithmic decay?”

“In theory or in practice?”

“In theory.”

“Twenty-five years.” Jaggis knew they were expecting a denial, or at least an evasion, and smiled at their murmurs. He wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of going through the pointless drama of pinning him down. “We’ve all known it was at least a potential problem since the Curbotron Incident. No one really took the theory seriously at the time, but it’s a matter of public record. I expect even you might have come across the concept at a cocktail party on occasion, Mellam.”

The Third Technocrat flashed his white teeth again, but there was death in his eyes. Like most politicians, he bitterly resented any suggestion that he owed his place more to his networking skills than his technical expertise. But he kept his cool.

“Twenty-five years,” he replied calmly. “You’ve known about the problem for twenty-five years. And when did you begin to investigate the subject?”

“About three months ago.”

“And would you say algorithmic decay is a trivial problem, a significant problem, or a major problem?”

“I would say it is somewhere between a planetary catastrophe and an existential threat to the species.”

His statement was met by was considerably more murmuring and shifting of seats on the part of the councilors. But the audience was even more affected, as there were gasps and inadvertent outcries on the part of those watching who had been hitherto unaware of the situation.

“What measures have you taken to in an attempt to address the problem?”

“None,” Jaggis answered Harraf. “And you, Mellam, what have you done.”

Harraf glared at Rikker-Smythe, who harrumphed and intervened.

“Tech Jaggis, you will address the Member of the Council as Technocrat or Tech Harraf.”

“Very well, let me rephrase that. What have you done, Technocrat?”

Harraf gestured and rows of figures began to spill across the huge screen behind him. “I took the initiative to establish a full research investigation of the problem, an investigation that you initially deemed unnecessary, ignored, and eventually, stifled.”

“I did nothing of the kind!” Jaggis couldn’t help raising his voice.

Harraf smiled coldly and gestured again. Jaggis heard his own voice, declaring in his own words, that algodecay was not real, that there was no need to do any research into it, and that the very idea it was real was likely the product of a diseased mind. It was a recording of one of his early conversations with Servo, and Jaggis winced as he heard the arrogance and disdain that fairly dripped from his voice.

“Wait, I can explain–”

“The Council has obtained a quantity of your written communications in which you repeatedly state similar opinions, despite the best efforts of various parties to bring the issue to your attention, Mr. Jaggis. Is it necessary for us to read them out loud or do you admit to obstructing efforts to research the causes and consequences of algorithimic decay?”

“I… it’s not quite…”

“Are the allegations true or not, Mr. Jaggis!” Harraf was insistent.

“They are true,” Jaggis said reluctantly, knowing he had no choice but to admit as much. And they were true, he had to admit. But his words were being taken out of context! Surely the other Technocrats had to understand that.

No church can serve two masters

The African Methodists choose Jesus Christ over Mammon:

Please hear me when I say as graciously as I can: we Africans are not children in need of western enlightenment when it comes to the church’s sexual ethics. We do not need to hear a progressive U.S. bishop lecture us about our need to “grow up.”

Let me assure you, we Africans, whether we have liked it or not, have had to engage in this debate for many years now. We stand with the global church, not a culturally liberal, church elite in the U.S.

We stand with our Filipino friends! We stand with our sisters and brothers in Europe and Russia! And yes, we stand with our allies in America.

We stand with farmers in Zambia, tech workers in Nairobi, Sunday School teachers in Nigeria, biblical scholars in Liberia, pastors in the Congo, United Methodist Women in Cote d’Ivoire, and thousands of other United Methodists all across Africa who have heard no compelling reasons for changing our sexual ethics, our teachings on marriage, and our ordination standards!

We are grounded in God’s word and the gracious and clear teachings of our church. On that we will not yield! We will not take a road that leads us from the truth! We will take the road that leads to the making of disciples of Jesus Christ for transformation of the world!

I hope and pray, for your sake, that you will walk down that road with us. We would warmly welcome you as our traveling companions, but if you choose another road, we Africans cannot go with you…. Some Africans have been told that if a gracious exit petition is passed our evangelical friends in the U.S. will go their own way and no longer support efforts in Africa. That is not true.

Many of us in Africa have developed deep and long lasting friendships with our brothers and sisters in the U.S. Those relationships will not be severed if a gracious exit petition passes.

Unfortunately, some United Methodists in the U.S. have the very faulty assumption that all Africans are concerned about is U.S. financial support. Well, I am sure, being sinners like all of you, some Africans are fixated on money.

But with all due respect, a fixation on money seems more of an American problem than an African one. We get by on far less than most Americans do; we know how to do it. I’m not so sure you do. So if anyone is so naïve or condescending as to think we would sell our birth right in Jesus Christ for American dollars, then they simply do not know us.

We are seriously joyful in following Jesus Christ and God’s holy word to us in the Bible. And in truth, we think many people in the U.S. and in parts of Europe could learn a great deal from us. The UM churches, pastors and lay people who partner with us acknowledge as much.

Please understand me when I say the vast majority of African United Methodists will never, ever trade Jesus and the truth of the Bible for money.

What a bold and admirable man of God! God will bless those African churches for their faithfulness and bless their nations through them. Those enlightened liberal American churches will die, for they have forsaken Jesus Christ in the name of sin and worldly approval.

Darkstream 20k

To celebrate this subscriber milestone for the Darkstream, I’ve uploaded this one-hour 43-minute excerpt from the Jordanetics audiobook, which includes Milo’s Foreword, my own Introduction, and chapters one and five. If you haven’t read or listened to the book yet, this extended audio sample provides a solid foundation for the book’s case against Jordan Peterson and his evil philosophy.

It includes one of my favorite sections of the book, which addresses the oft-heard claim that Jordan Peterson’s thinking is simply too advanced for less-refined intellects to understand. The claim is particularly amusing for me in light of how few recognize, or even notice, my occasional literary pyrotechnic.

Objection 1: Jordan Peterson is a complex thinker with a Platonic approach that is easily misunderstood by those who don’t carefully follow him. You just don’t understand him.

I answer that, It is true that Peterson is inclined to excessive wordiness and run-on sentences, his references are often obscure, and the examples he provides are frequently too loosely connected and meandering for the average person to easily follow. But the nebulous word salad Peterson customarily presents in lieu of logical arguments is not at all typical of a genius-level intellect, to the contrary, it is much more commonly observed among academic poseurs who wish to be mistaken for one.

If you have actually read the great thinkers of whom Peterson is almost entirely ignorant, one thing that will often strike you is the intense clarity of their thought processes. Their genius stems from the way in which they enlighten the reader, from the way they turn dark chaos into orderly light. They do not confuse, to the contrary, they clarify.

As an exercise, compare the following four sentences, all of which are more complex than the norm these days. I ran each of them through the Gunning-Fog Index, a weighted average of the number of words per sentence, and the number of long words per word. The index provides a number that is supposed to indicate that the text can be understood by someone who left full-time education at a later age than the number; the higher the number, the more complicated the text. But it’s really just an objective measure of textual complexity.

  • We must be able to employ persuasion, just as strict reasoning can be employed, on opposite sides of a question, not in order that we may in practice employ it in both ways (for we must not make people believe what is wrong), but in order that we may see clearly what the facts are, and that, if another man argues unfairly, we on our part may be able to confute him. (GFI 31.6)
  • In like manner the poet with his words and phrases may be said to lay on the colours of the several arts, himself understanding their nature only enough to imitate them; and other people, who are as ignorant as he is, and judge only from his words, imagine that if he speaks of cobbling, or of military tactics, or of anything else, in metre and harmony and rhythm, he speaks very well –such is the sweet influence which melody and rhythm by nature have. (GFI 21.9)
  • The great dramatists and religious thinkers of the world have been able to grasp this fact, at least implicitly, and to transmit it in story and image; modern analytic thinkers and existential theorists have attempted to abstract these ideas upward into “higher consciousness,” and to present them in logical and purely semantic form. (GFI 18.2)
  • We have considered that students in this doctrine have not seldom been hampered by what they have found written by other authors, partly on account of the multiplication of useless questions, articles, and arguments, partly also because those things that are needful for them to know are not taught according to the order of the subject matter, but according as the plan of the book might require, or the occasion of the argument offer, partly, too, because frequent repetition brought weariness and confusion to the minds of readers. (GFI 40.2)

Were you able to distinguish the Peterson quote from the Aquinas, the Aristotle, and the Plato quotes? If you noticed, the Peterson sentence, which is the third sentence, is considerably shorter and less structurally complex than the other three examples, but it is also observably less clear than them. Whereas the Aristotle sentence in particular is rich with meaning, as it implies a vital distinction between rhetoric and dialectic that many today have trouble grasping even when it is explained to them in no little detail, but nevertheless clarifies the relevant point for the reader, the Peterson sentence unnecessarily complicates what is a fairly simple and straightforward observation about the mythopoetic human response to the concepts of good and evil.

And yes, the GFI on that last sentence was a respectable 36.3. But it wasn’t actually that hard to follow or understand, was it? Complexity is neither ambiguity nor nebulosity, and insight does not require complexity. Also, in case you’re interested, the authors of the four sentences, in order, were: Aristotle, Plato/Socrates, Peterson, Aquinas.

All-male military draft unconstitutional

The inevitable consequence of the drive to put women in the military is on the verge of arriving:

A federal judge in Texas has declared that the all-male military draft is unconstitutional, ruling that “the time has passed” for a debate on whether women belong in the military.

The decision deals the biggest legal blow to the Selective Service System since the Supreme Court upheld the draft in 1981. In Rostker v. Goldberg, the court ruled that the male-only draft was “fully justified” because women were ineligible for combat roles.

But U.S. District Judge Gray Miller ruled late Friday that while historical restrictions on women serving in combat “may have justified past discrimination,” men and women are now equally able to fight. In 2015, the Pentagon lifted all restrictions for women in military service.

The case was brought by the National Coalition For Men, a men’s rights group, and two men who argued the all-male draft was unfair.

Men who fail to register with the Selective Service System at their 18th birthday can be denied public benefits like federal employment and student loans. Women cannot register for Selective Service.

The ruling comes as an 11-member commission is studying the future of the draft, including whether women should be included or whether there should continue to be draft registration at all.

Regardless of what the needs of the U.S. military may be now, we know there will be military drafts in the future because there will be war in the future. And now, thanks to the feminists, young women who don’t want to serve in the military will be drafted and forced to risk their lives in combat.

Feminism has always been focused on destroying Christian Western civilization. And turning young women who should be wives and mothers into sterile worker bees and amazons is an important part of that goal.

The end of the Jewish Labour Party

The UK appears to be about eight-to-ten years ahead of the USA, as the imported populations brought in by the political Left are now driving their Neo-Palestinian predecessors out of the very political vehicles that were empowered by bringing them in:

A Jewish Labour MP who was subjected to a ‘Soviet show trial’ by party members was last night at the centre of claims that she will be the next MP to defect from Jeremy Corbyn’s party. Just hours after Mr Corbyn claimed that there was no ‘widespread’ problem of anti-Semitism in the Party, Dame Louise Ellman was barracked by supporters of the Labour leader during a bruising meeting of her Liverpool Riverside constituency party on Friday evening.

The hard-Left activists overwhelmingly passed a motion supporting the activists who targeted fellow Liverpool MP Luciana Berger, leading a friend of Dame Louise to say: ‘Louise will not be in the party for much longer.’

Ms Berger, who is also Jewish and required a bodyguard at last year’s Labour Party Conference after receiving death threats, quit Labour on Monday saying the party was ‘institutionally anti-Semitic’ – a day after The Mail on Sunday revealed that she was on the brink of forming a breakaway movement in protest at Mr Corbyn’s failure to tackle the problem.

She was one of the seven Labour MP founders of The Independent Group.

This newspaper reported last year that Mr Corbyn and others on his staff had been heard describing Dame Louise as ‘the Honourable Member for Tel Aviv’, a claim which the Corbyn camp denied.

The so-called Independent Group is a small collection of mostly Jewish former Labour Party and anti-Brexit former Tory Party members. With one or two exceptions, they are totally unelectable in their own boroughs now, which is why the “new party” is almost certainly going to cease to exist after the next election. Peter Hitchens is one of the British observers who is entirely unimpressed by The Independent Group, which can perhaps be best understood as a collection of Never-Corbyn neocons.

When I travel round this country, observing its many problems and troubles, I seldom meet anyone who says: ‘What we need here in Britain is more political correctness.’ Nor do I hear many people saying: ‘The trouble with Britain is that fashionable, liberal views do not get much of a hearing, or have much influence. What this country needs is more foreign rule, more mass immigration, more failing comprehensive schools, more broken marriages, more crime and more drugs; not to mention less Christianity, lighter punishments for criminals and less freedom of speech.’

What we are seeing play out is, I suspect, the consequence of the Jewish nation’s historically nomadic nature, and it appears that instead of slowing the process down as had been widely assumed would be the case, representative democracy is speeding it up. Contra Jordan Peterson, the reason Neo-Palestinians are what he described as “over-represented in positions of authority, competence and influence” is because they are very adept at utilizing identity politics to benefit their immigrant community at the expense of their native hosts.

Historically this was done through their close financial relationship with the native king and aristocracy, which in many cases was little more native than they were. But democracy, even representative democracy, also requires numbers to acquire political influence, and so in the democratic era the Jews of the diaspora have adopted a standard policy of bringing in as many immigrants as possible in order to augment their own electoral influence. However, this is a policy with a time limit, because sooner or later, the immigrant allies are no longer content to follow Neo-Palestinian leadership and seek to wield their influence directly on behalf of their own identity rather than being content with whatever crumbs they are given by the existing leadership.

This development was entirely predictable, and in fact, I described its inevitability three years ago, in 2016, when Ilhan Omar, now a newly-elected Congresswoman, defeated 22-term State Representative Phyllis Khan for her seat in the Minnesota State Legislature.

Now that low-altruism minorities are approaching 50 percent of the US electorate, identity politics are permanently replacing ideological politics, and a Jew like Khan is never going to be elected in any district where Somalis, or Arabs, or Indians, or Chinese are the majority. And they’re also increasingly unlikely to be elected in black-, white-, or Hispanic-dominated districts.

Further complicating matters is the fact that the rise of Donald Trump and American nationalism means the “hello, fellow white people” schtick is not going to work much longer, particularly now that the inordinately Jewish “conservative media” has unmasked itself as globalist rather than pro-American, and viciously opposed to any America First nationalist ideology.

So, setting up Pedro, Peng, Pasha and Prodosh to fight Paul for the benefit of Peter has, over time, put Peter in a no-win situation. If Pedro and company win, Peter is permanently excluded from power and may even be actively persecuted by the rainbow coalition he helped build. And if a newly self-interested Paul wins, he’s no longer likely to listen to Peter or pay any attention to Peter’s interests.

This leaves Peter with three options. Try to shut down democracy, accept the gradual decline of power, wealth, and influence, or leave.

This isn’t a matter for debate, nor will crying Holocaust or engaging in philosemitic virtue-signaling make any difference here here. It’s simple demographic math combined with an observation of historical group voting patterns. US whites are willing to vote outside their identity. US non-whites strongly prefer to do as the Jews do and vote their identity.

The end of the era of Neo-Palestinian influence in the Western democracies threaten to be uncommonly interesting times for everyone. Remember, the Holocaust was an anomaly, and it’s much more common for Europe’s nomads to simply move on to a new territory when the current one becomes less amenable to their traditional practices. The strategic complication, of course, is that the friendliest and most obvious destination will require the nomads of the diaspora to follow the lead of the modern Israelis by giving up their exploitative nomadic ways and transforming themselves into farmers and builders and settlers.

They can do it. But will they do so? That is the question that may well shape the course of more than a few of the 21st century’s wars.

The obvious implication of hoax crimes

It is regrettable that Jonah Goldberg refuses to embrace truth where it conflicts with his identity politics, because he’s still quite good when he’s able to be honest with himself. In a recent G-File, he observes an obvious implication of the frequency of hoax crimes in the United States:

Here’s something you might not know: In Nazi Germany, very few Jews staged bogus hate crimes against themselves.

Here’s some more trivia: Very few blacks in the Jim Crow South went to great lengths to pretend that they were harassed or attacked by racists.

You know why? Because that would be incredibly stupid. What, exactly, would the German Jew who staged an assault on himself gain from it? Where would he or she go to ask for sympathy or recompense? Conjure any horror story you like, the Nazi official you brought it to would say, “Yeah, and . . . ?” The black sharecropper who took the time to make his own cross and burn it on his own property would benefit . . . how?

Why am I bringing this up? Well, for a bunch of reasons. I have more points to make than can be found at an English Setter competition.

First, people who live under real oppression have no need to fabulate oppression. To paraphrase Madge from the old Palmolive ads: They’re already soaking in it.

Second, when you live in an oppressive country, there’s no one you can take your grievances to because that is what it means to live in an oppressive country! For God’s sake, people, you’re making me use exclamation points and italics here. If you’re an inmate in the Shawshank prison, you can’t go to the guards to complain. When you live in North Korea, you can’t go to the local police and gripe about your working conditions or the sawdust in your bread.

Jonah is correct. The very need to fake these crimes in the first place is evidence that the problem they supposedly highlight does not actually exist. But unfortunately, he couldn’t actually finish the piece without meandering into anti-Americanism:

There will be a hoax involving MAGA hats, but the fake victims will be those wearing them. We already saw the hunger for this kind of thing in the Covington case — but those kids were in fact victims. President Trump invited that kid named Trump to the State of the Union precisely because he wanted to exploit this great reservoir of pity. And the coverage of this legitimate outrage will no doubt encourage others to get a piece of that on the cheap.

As I said, regrettable. But identity almost always wins out in the end. The great irony of those who make a virtue of decrying identity politics is that they are observably some of the most relentless practitioners of identity politics around.

TIA extended audio

I expect most of the Dread Ilk will have read TIA in one form or another given the fact that it’s been out for over a decade, but if you haven’t, I’ve posted a two-hour audio sample that consists of the first three chapters on the Darkstream. If that inspires you to pick up the whole audiobook, you can do so at Arkhaven.

Mailvox: got a question for Jordan Peterson?

An Australian reader informs us that you can submit questions for Jordan Peterson to answer during his upcoming appearance on QANDA, an Australian panel show where audience members can ask questions via a video upload.

Ask a Question

Do you have a question for the Q&A panel?

Q&A is our national conversation. We want questions from every corner of Australia.

Send us the text of your question on this web form or by using your ABC account.

Include your contact details and if we shortlist your question, we’ll get in touch to show you how to ask your question by Skype, video or web.

Have fun, if you are so inclined. In the meantime, the New Zealand media is deciding that Jordan Peterson is more tedious than a threat of any kind:

On Wednesday, the crowd can hardly contain their excitement. As we wait for Peterson, someone brings a couple of water bottles on the stage and applause breaks out. When Peterson enters, people stand up and roar with delight. He sits down, opens his laptop and starts talking.

Soon, tired self-help advice comes: “Look for beauty during dark times”; “Wake up at the same time every day”. Peterson says if you want to achieve anything in life, you need to make sacrifices. When he was a PHd student and trying to write a book, he used to party and drink a lot. He realised that in order to achieve his goals, he had to sacrifice his drinking. Wow, what triumph of the will. What a brave tale of conquest against all odds.

After about half an hour, he finally says something I don’t know. When we dream, our body is paralysed so we don’t act out our dreams and only our eyes are moving. Sometimes we don’t quite wake up and we can’t move and that’s when people hear voices and see aliens. Well, I have experienced this half-awake state without realising it was perfectly normal to be paralysed for a few seconds, and it was terrifying. I feel a bit like that now – the room is hot, the guy next to me is manspreading and I am in the middle of the row so I can’t move. I feel trapped in Peterson’s interminable stream of consciousness. My chaotic brain is lost and wishing for some male order. I keep yawning uncontrollably. The thought of getting an ice cream after the show keeps me awake.

I was expecting sensational insights, or at least controversial thoughts, but most of what we are getting is self-help gibberish. Maybe Peterson is not so such a threat to humankind after all.

Put Facebook in prison

Facebook is relentlessly spying on people in a myriad of ways:

Facebook enabled its Android app to track and collect data from unwitting customers in order to increase advertising revenue, according to a cache of confidential internal emails that were leaked online. Some 60 pages of documents – including emails between Facebook executives – were posted anonymously on Github on Friday. The files were taken from a lawsuit between Facebook and Six4Three, an app developer, with most of them never having been published in fully unredacted form until now.

One email exchange from 2012 details plans by Facebook to use its Android app to track the location of its customers and pass data on single Facebook users to dating sites. The company also discussed providing data to organizations that wanted to target users with political ads – a business strategy that has led to scandal in the wake of alleged disinformation campaigns operating on the platform.

“This is a big win for the dating vertical specifically, but also supports our efforts to examine ‘good’ revenue opportunities resulting from policy relaxation/changes,” Marne Lynn Levine, then vice president of global public policy, wrote in support of the company’s plans.

In another message, Levine gloats about a meeting between General Martin Dempsey, then chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, and Sheryl Sandberg, noting that Dempsey and his wife are “both active Facebook users.”

The leaked documents also include a memo about a meeting between Facebook and the head of California’s eCrime unit to discuss then-California attorney general Kamala Harris’s office of privacy protection. Harris, now serving in the US Senate, announced her candidacy for president in January.

The Facebook representatives were told that Harris views the company “as a good actor” and that the privacy office “will keep communications with us open (we will not unknowingly be the subject of an investigation).”

But it’s even worse than that. Facebook also collects the data from apps used by people who are not even Facebook users.

It’s time to shut Facebook down altogether. It clearly merits the corporate equivalent of life in prison. Which raises an obvious question. If corporations have rights based on their personhood, why don’t they bear the responsibilities and potential consequence of people? A corporation that is found guilty of committing a crime should be no more able to earn an income than any other criminal who is sentenced to prison.