Tag: media

Never Talk to the Media

A Washington Post reporter laments that more and more people are recognizing that the media is their self-appointed enemy and are refusing to talk to them.

Some people think it’s a good idea not to talk to reporters, that they’ll only make you look bad. Even if true (it’s mostly not), you give up any chance of making your case and countering any assumptions. The benefits are far greater than the risks.

It’s an excellent idea to not talk to reporters. There is absolutely no point in attempting to “make your case” and “counter any assumptions”, since the reporter is going to write the story from the perspective that the editor assigned him regardless of what you tell him. They use a massive bag of rhetorical tricks to undermine what you say in contradiction to their narrative, ranging from “X claimed” to “(real name: X)”, all of which are consciously designed to make what you say appear false and thereby bolster their narrative.

But it is interesting that enough people are refusing to talk to reporters that it is making their job more difficult and reducing the credibility of their stories for lack of actual sources. A number of those who responded on Twitter called the reporter out on his assumptions.

This is an exceedingly optimistic assumption of good faith on the part of reporters, my friend.

That there seems to be a sort of unintentional admission in your tweet escapes no one.

To which the reporter responded in characteristically dishonest terms.

Yes, and widely misunderstood, too. My comment about “assumptions” is about the would-be source, not the reporter. If the source assumes the reporter has a distorted understanding or will get something wrong, talking to him/her might clear that up. This happened to me lately where a bunch of people banded together to see to it that sources wouldn’t talk to me for my reporting, thinking this would punish me. But it only meant that they silenced themselves and their voices could not be heard in my reporting.

No, talking to a reporter will NEVER clear up their distorted understandings. Never, ever, ever. The only thing the inclusion of your voice will provide them with is a target and evidence for their manufactured indictments. And he’s not fooling those who have engaged with him.

You silence us anyway. Far better not to talk to you so our words can’t be twisted.

Exactly. On a not-entirely-unrelated note, the criminal trial for one of the reporters who published the most recent hit piece on me will begin in July. Contrary to their assumptions, reporters are not above the law. Never talk to them. Never respond to their texts or emails, not even to tell them “I won’t talk to you.” Nothing good will ever come of any engagement with the media.

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The Treason Interview

The Washington Post omitted significant sections of its recent interview with Vladimir Zelensky. From Russia Today:

The Washington Post has deleted a large tract of an interview with Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky in which he lashed out at alleged “traitors” in his ranks. RT is publishing the entire section that the US newspaper would rather keep hidden.

The following section appeared in an interview with the Ukrainian president published on Saturday. By Sunday it had been removed with no explanation. After discussing a trove of recently leaked Pentagon documents, which revealed – among other things – that the US monitors Zelensky’s communications, the newspaper presented him with a fresh allegation that has not yet been reported in the US media.

Note that Evgeny Prigozhin is the founder and head of the Wagner Group, a Russian private military company currently fighting in the Donetsk People’s Republic.

WaPo: The documents indicate that GUR, your intelligence directorate, has back-channel contact with Evgeny Prigozhin that you were aware of, including meeting with Evgeny Prigozhin and GUR officers. Is that true?

Zelensky: This is a matter of [military] intelligence. Do you want me to be convicted of state treason? And so, it’s very interesting, if someone is saying that you have documents, or if someone from our government is speaking about the activities of our intelligence, I would also like to ask you a question: With which sources from Ukraine do you have contact? Who is talking about the activities of our intelligence? Because this is the most severe felony in our country. Which Ukrainians are you talking to?

WaPo: I talked to officials in government, but these documents are not from Ukraine, they are from…

Zelensky: It doesn’t matter where the documents are from. The question is with which Ukrainian official did you talk? Because if they say something about our intelligence, that’s treason. If they say something about a specific offensive plan of one general or another, this is also treason. That’s why I asked you, which Ukrainians are you talking to?

WaPo: About these specific documents? You are the first person I am talking to about them.

Zelensky: Okay.

WaPo: And I can read you what information exactly there is about Prigozhin and the GUR. On February 13, Kirill Budanov, chief of Ukraine’s Main Directorate of Intelligence, informed you about a Russian plan to destabilize Moldova with two former Wagner associates. Budanov informed you that he viewed the Russian scheme as a way to incriminate Prigozhin because “we have dealings” with him. You instructed Budanov to inform Moldovan President Maia Sandu, and Budanov told you that the GUR had informed Prigozhin that he would be labeled a traitor who has been working with Ukraine. The document also says that Budanov expected the Russians to use details of Prigozhin’s secret talks with the GUR and meetings with GUR officers in Africa…

Zelensky: Listen, to be honest, well, you just read something, you say something. I just don’t understand where you get it, whom you talk to and so on. You talk about how I met with Budanov. This suggests that you – how do you put it? It looks like you have people who have some records or you have some evidence or you have something, because that’s what it looks like.

Here are the Zelensky ‘treason’ quotes the Washington Post deleted, Russia Today, 14 May 2023

It’s becoming increasingly apparent that Zelensky knows the days of the Kiev regime are numbered. Both the USA and the UK are taking bigger and bolder risks with their anti-Russian activity while the media clowns are cranking their narrative machine up to eight or nine in the hopes that they can somehow alter the situation through their word spells.

And, in the meantime, both China and Russia are saying less and less, even as the Russian Air Force begins to strike more heavily at targets in western Ukraine. It feels as if something has to break soon, but what and when cannot be known with any degree of confidence.

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Elon Musk Lied to You

Karl Denninger proves, conclusively, that Elon Musk is not “adamant about defending free speech” no matter what he claims to be.

I posted the following about his new CEO in response to the NY Post (they asked “who is this chick?”):

@nypost A: A WEF lackey and jab-happy mastermind who in fact conned 2/3rds of this nation, on purpose, into taking said jabs under false pretense. She deserve the gallows but then again Musk has billions of reasons to not care about the PEOPLE in this country and, indeed, worldwide.

This drew me an INSTANT 12 hour suspension for “harassment.”

It is, according to Twitter, harassment and “abusive behavior” to factually state that she is indeed a WEF lackey (she JUST spoke there) and that she in fact while at NBC Universal, as her last major project, did indeed work to advertise and promote the jabs — which we now know were in fact based on the lie that you would not get Covid if you took them.

Let’s be clear folks: It is considered “abusive” by Twitter to state two truths about a public figure and call for them to be punished as a direct consequence of the harms that occurred to others due to their own personal and willful actions which they took for the purpose of profit, whether professional, monetary, political or otherwise.

Elon Musk is observably not on the side of the Good, the Beautiful, and the True. And yes, my @voxday account is still “permanently suspended” and that status was recently confirmed to be correct by Twitter customer support.

As Karl points out, the reports about Tucker Carlson making Twitter the foundation of his next platform tends to raise serious questions about which side Mr. Carlson truly serves.

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Like the Lambada, Only Math

Forrest Bishop dares to go where few have gone before: the Forbidden Equation!

There are two great branches of Physics, dating back centuries, called Mechanics and Electromagnetism, with the more recent Electrodynamics as a blending of the two. Mechanics is about billiard balls and roller coasters, buildings, rockets, and cars, stuff like that. Electromagnetism is about electricity & magnetism, optics, radio, the juice that courses through your devices.

Mechanics has a few foundational, algebraic equations, F = ma (force equals mass times acceleration) is as close to its core as any. Everything to do with engineering moving machines is built on F = ma, all the airplanes, satellites, the works. And yet it’s just three little letters and an equal sign. It may seem like such a trifle, but it is arguably the most useful equation in the world, far more so than the famous e = mc2 of Electrodynamics.

Electromagnetism has its foundational algebra, too, which precedes and enables all the fancy squiggles and Greek letters. There’s F=kQlQ2/r2, P = FV, and a few others. But there is one seemingly little trifle that sits right at its core, three little letters and an equal sign: i = qc. It plays a role similar to F = ma. being the condition precedent for Maxwell’s Equations, Quantum Electrodynamics, and the Standard Model. And it is arguably the most Forbidden Equation in the world.

One gets the sense that Dan Brown could write an incredibly bad novel with a title like that. Frankly, I’m tempted…

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The Cult of Free is Over

It was always fake, gay, and propped up by free money handed out to the ticket-takers. And now that the free money flow has been shut off, the propped-up organizations are failing one after another.

The American-Canadian digital media and broadcasting company Vice is preparing to file for bankruptcy, New York Times has reported citing two people with knowledge of its operations.

This news of bankruptcy comes just days after after the well-regarded TV and online video outlet laid off staff and canceled its flagship program Vice News Tonight. Last week, Vice Media said it will cancel popular TV program “Vice News Tonight” as part of a broader restructuring that will result in job cuts across the digital media firm’s global news business, capping years of financial difficulties and top-executive departures.

Vice, which operates a cable channel of the same name and creates documentaries and other video content for its own outlets and others, was once valued at $5.7 billion. Investors included Walt Disney Co. and Fox Corp., although their equity may now be worthless, the Times said. Its largest debt holder is Fortress Investment Group, according to the newspaper.

This potential bankruptcy also comes at the time when several other media and technology firms have had to downsize in recent months due to a challenging economy and a weak advertising market.

This is why it is so important to support projects like Arkhaven, Castalia Library, and UATV with your subscriptions. And the strong foundation provided by the subscribers is why these projects not only survive, but continue to thrive, while their much larger competitors are collapsing.

The deplatforming and demonetization by various platforms actually did us a favor when viewed in retrospect, as it forced us to prepare for times such as these several years in advance. Sometimes, the silver lining proves more significant in the long-run than the black cloud.

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Gell-Man Amnesia in Action

It’s fascinating to see how completely the media fails to understand both the socio-sexual hierarchy and the sigma male.

Men online are more lost than ever, to the point of turning an actual psychopathic killer into a point of reference. Bateman is hailed for not conforming to the models of masculinity that’ve arisen on the web 2.0. He’s neither an alpha (a dominant asshole at the top of the social hierarchy) nor a beta (a submissive loner who’ll never get a girl). Bateman represents a new model of masculinity: The “sigma male”, inexplicably named with another random ancient Greek letter.

According to Google trends, the “sigma male” search term first appeared in early 2021 and quickly gained popularity over the past two years. In 2023, #sigma has over 46 billion views on TikTok. Sigmas “are known as the rarest males on earth, which makes them irresistible to women,” says TikToker Sel Nakim in an explainer video with almost 900,000 likes. “They’re at the top with the alphas, but they’re outside the hierarchy.”

Instead of boasting about their status like alphas, sigmas tend to be mysterious loner types. They think outside the box; they accept themselves and are proud to be different. They attract success and respect. Basically, they’re perfect. And Bateman – a man sophisticated enough to wear a suit to murder a homeless person – is their aesthetic king.

As it happens, the term “sigma male” was coined in 2011. But given the complete inability of the media to even understand which party is winning the war in Ukraine, it can hardly be surprising that they understand neither the concept nor its genesis.

Neither fictional characters created by Brett Easton Ellis nor serial killers have anything to do with sigma males. And they are very far from perfect; to the contrary, there is usually something fundamentally broken in them that prevents them from being able to operate within the hierarchy.

Nevertheless, the ideas, they propagate.

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Tucker Leaves Fox News

FOX News Media and Tucker Carlson have agreed to part ways. We thank him for his service to the network as a host and prior to that as a contributor. Mr. Carlson’s last program was Friday April 21st. Fox News Tonight will air live at 8 PM/ET starting this evening as an interim show helmed by rotating FOX News personalities until a new host is named.

It will be interesting to see if Tucker is bigger than Fox now or if it was Fox that was propping him up. Either way, he’s in a remarkable position going forward, and if he plays his cards right, he could set up an organization capable of competing successfully with CNN and MSNBC before the end of the year.

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Experts vs Media: A Retrospective

Peter King revisits the big draft question of 25 years ago, and in doing so, underlines my point about the mainstream media. Which is, namely, never believe anything it tells you.

A quarter-century ago this week … A couple of months before the draft in 1998, I took a VHS tape with 30 to 35 plays each of Tennessee QB Peyton Manning and Washington State QB Ryan Leaf, the presumptive top two picks in the draft, around the country to show six people and to ask: Who would you pick among these two players? (VHS qualified as high-tech in 1998.) My panel of experts: Hall of Fame coach/QB guru Sid Gillman, retired Niners coach Bill Walsh, Giants QB Phil Simms, Denver coach Mike Shanahan, Tampa Bay director of player personnel Jerry Angelo and UCLA coach Bob Toledo (who’d faced both players).

There was some debate over who should go first that year. ESPN published a long magazine story opining the easy pick was Leaf. “Come 2018, Ryan Leaf, not Manning, will be strutting up to a podium in Canton,” was one line from that story, one of the great wish-we-had-that-back lines ever. ESPN wasn’t the only one to go all-in on Leaf. But I sat with each expert and asked the question.

The vote: Manning 6, Leaf 0. “Now this is a pro quarterback,” the 86-year-old Gillman said in his Carlsbad, Calif., home. “Is that a beautiful throw, or is that a beautiful throw? I’d draft this kid in a second.” The iconoclastic Walsh favored Manning over Leaf, but also said he’d pick another position first in the draft, then chose Brian Griese in the second round.

When I wrote the story in early April, I remember a few stories like the ESPN one, or ones quoting anonymous scouts or GMs saying they’d pick Leaf. I wondered if I’d picked the wrong guys to poll. But sitting with Gillman, a seminal figure in quarterback history, and Shanahan, and hearing their this-is-no-contest tone, I thought Manning was the guy. “Peyton will handle the inferno of going to a 3-13 team. He’s a sure player,” Angelo said. And he was.

Forget sports. Forget the NFL. Forget the converged reporter concerned. The salient point here is the massive gap between the unanimous position of the proven experts and the expressed conclusion of the media. The experts consulted by Peter King had unparalleled and unquestioned chops. ESPN could have consulted them even more easily than King did.

And yet, the mainstream media organ somehow managed to present a conclusion diametrically opposed to the conclusion of the experts. This is par for the course. Never forget that.

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