Tag: rabbitology

The Lord of Hate engages

This may explain why the pinkshirts are so remarkably shy about engaging with the Evil Legion of Evil:

Dude, please. You’ve got 45 fucking Hugo nominations. Disqualify would be saying your opinion doesn’t count because you are a white male and have privilege. Shit. Looking at that picture you’ve got Santa Privilege.

Instead the fact that one dude has 45 nominations is a pretty damned good indicator that your little pond has gone stagnant. That isn’t disqualification. That is stating the obvious. I said you guys were a tiny little clique, but I didn’t realize it was that inbred. That is something so absurd that when I learned your blog had 28 it blew my mind. It was so ridiculous that when somebody else pointed out that you actually have FORTY FIVE in total, I didn’t believe them. I scoffed at first. Even me, the guy who started this big open public conversation we’re finally having about the Hugos being broken, thought to myself, naw, that’s impossible. There’s no freaking way they’d give some individual 45 nominations and 9 Hugos.

Nope.

So, then when a guy with 45 Hugo noms writes about me, what… What are you up to now? Six? Eight articles about Sad Puppies? And in said articles misconstrues damn near everything, and repeatedly assures his readers, don’t worry, comrades, the system is fine, system is our friend, and only bad people work outside of system… Well, that’s just fishy.

It isn’t disqualification to note that somebody benefiting directly from a broken system might be in favor of said system. In your case it is just extra pathetic and kind of sad. It also explains why you seem to actually believe that I’m driven by a desire to get a trophy. I really don’t want your people’s approval and I truly don’t give a shit about me winning (and don’t worry, if I’m nominated again, I will prove it beyond a shadow of a doubt).

“No wonder you won’t engage”

Engage what? You specifically? Your bullshit is no different than the other narrative bullshit, so I respond to them in mass. Honestly Glyer 45 Hugos, internet arguing is a spectator sport, frankly your 28 Hugo Fanzine doesn’t have enough traffic for me to justify the time responding there (Which is why, I’m going to cut and paste this response over to Facebook when I’m done).

I’m kind of busy engaging the entire SJW internet to spend much time worrying about your bad Shakespeare. But it shows what an interesting selective memory you’ve got there. I’ve written in depth and rather openly about what I’m doing. You write about it and make shit up to explain to your clique what their narrative should be. I’ve repeatedly written since clarifying things, but you just ignore, and make more shit up about what I *really* meant.

And I didn’t bother with your last one, because I don’t think Dogberry was compiling links to actual quotes of his opponents being assholes.

But while I’m thinking about it, here is an interesting thought on “engaging”. Do you realize that in all this time, and all this controversy, not a single one of my opponents has actually taken the time to contact me to speak about this directly? I’ve been contacted by a bunch of people who are secretly on my side, and I’ve been contacted by many moderate fence sitters and people genuinely concerned for the future of the Hugos. But the side opposed to what I’m doing? None. None of the interview places, none of the award winning fanzines, none of the SJW bloggers with their fingers on the pulse of fandom. Zip. Zero. No engagement, just ignore what I actually say and do, and make up bullshit instead.

Now, I’ve talked to Mike Glyer via email and he actually strikes me as being on the saner and more reasonable side of Pink SF. I may not share his taste in authors, but he does a credible job of keeping fandom informed of what is going on in the science fiction world. Nothing wrong with that. He doesn’t have 45 Hugo nominations because he lobbied for them, but because people in fandom liked what he was doing. Unlike the Scalziettes, he clearly recognizes that Brad wants to save the Hugo Awards from themselves and that I could not be any less interested in winning approval from the SF rabbits.

And therein lies the problem. If even the more reasonable and clear-sighted people on the other side, even those among the very few willing to communicate directly with us, are unable to see what we, and a considerable number of science fiction and fantasy readers, very clearly see as a genre-killing cancer at work, then there isn’t any form of rational compromise possible.

Which, of course, may well be the case. If so, time and technology are on our side. It’s not going to be us eradicating them, but rather, the fact that the gatekeepers who formerly enabled them are going out of business. We’ll know the game is over when those who attacked us as vile and so forth come crawling to us, hat in hand, begging for the opportunities that they denied us when they were in power.

Not that it is all about revenge. I’ve never cared about cons and fandom. It’s not my scene. And perhaps that is what many of them hate most about us. We legitimately don’t care what they do, what they think, or what they say.

UPDATE: We have detente! Larry has come out firmly in favor of reading books for which one votes and Mike concurs:

I don’t have to say this but I think he means it. If the rest of the people behind Sad Puppies 3 take his statement to heart, and don’t just treat it as some kind of dogwhistle, they will end up enriching the award’s representation instead of merely doing a hack on it.

How fortunate that everyone supporting Rabid Puppies has read Tom Kratman, Steve Rzasa, and John C. Wright. And anyone who hasn’t, the situation is easily rectified given the links provided.

Brain-hacking the rabbits

It’s really rather remarkable how much rabbit behavior is explained by the r/K model. It puts into perspective so much of what looks completely inexplicable to the sane and more conservative mind that is neither ruled by rhetoric nor dependent upon social status.

The Anonymous Conservative has cogitated upon the matter and thinks he may have come up with a means of helping the poor, frightened rodents escape the limits of their failed ideology through hacking their brains.

When John Scalzi claimed 50K unique visitors per day on his blog, it
didn’t matter whether he had that accomplishment or not. What mattered
from the rabbit perspective is if he could create that impression. As in
all of rabbitry, the reality flows from the impression, which itself
need not flow from any tangible reality. Scalzi claimed it, it was
parroted in an article, people got the impression that he had social
status, and as a result, social status flowed from the impression.

This offers the prospect of creating interesting brain hacks, if the
K-strategist can train themselves to operate within the liberal
cognitive framework. Presently Conservatives concern themselves with
reality, and ignore social status. We assume that success is Thomas
Edison, and not Kim Kardashian, and our arguments are formed around that
assumption.

Instead, the Conservative should focus more on creating memes which
socially diminish and denigrate liberals, making them appear impotent
and inferior. Since to the leftist, reality flows from impression, and
social dominance is all important, you must create memes which tie an
anchor of inferiority and impotence to leftists, and let the reality
flow from that.

As an example, what the rabbit meme Vox created does at its core is
create an impression of inherent inability, unfitness, weakness, and
social inferiority, and attach it cleverly to those who embrace the
r-strategy of liberalism. Once those circumstances are created, and the
meme’s permeation is great enough that the rabbit cannot escape it, it
will prove amazingly unsettling to the rabbits, for whom impression is
reality, and reality is impression. Here is a popular impression saying
liberals are weak and impotent. Since to the rabbit truth is what other
people think, if they self-identify as a liberal, then they will be
accepting that people will think they are weak and impotent, and this
will make them weak and impotent. (In many ways the rabbit’s perception
is actually an accurate read of the reality in a r-selected world.)

At that point, a liberal brain will have only one pathway to
alleviate the amygdala angst generated by the social damage it sees
flowing from that meme – the rabbit can only tell itself that it isn’t a
rabbit. To divorce itself from rabbitry, it must abandon every issue
that is a part of the rabbit’s r-selected reproductive strategy, and
then turn its back on the rest of the warren of rabbits.

No wonder they so hate being called rabbits. What I find remarkable about what AC is doing here is the way he is articulating and putting into practice some of the principles that Aristotle first elucidated in his Rhetoric. After all, of whom do you think Aristotle was writing when he described those whose minds cannot be changed by information?

Speaking of rhetorically limited minds where reality flows from the impression, I found this comment by a rabbit to be all too typical”:

David W. on February 6, 2015 at 7:16 am said:
Sorry, but a DNA test result doesn’t make one a “Native American”, but
the writers of this horsecrap couldn’t care less about fact, obviously.

Fascinating. One wonders what would suffice to make one a “Native American” if not DNA, particularly when it says “Native American” on the DNA results and the Bureau of Indian Affairs issues Certificates of Indian Blood.

I know it was you, Fredo

I always knew that John Scalzi was primarily responsible for the SFWA “expulsion”*, but I didn’t realize that I had proof of it sitting right in front of me the entire time. Consider this statement from page 23 of “Evidence regarding the complaints made against Theodore Beale, Report to the Board of Directors of SFWA”, dated July 1, 2013.

Most prominently, an outgoing Board Member indicated that he intended to let his membership lapse until Beale was no longer a member: “My membership is due and I can’t in good conscience renew it until SFWA finds the means or moral backbone or whatever’s ultimately required to expel someone as hateful and wilfully destructive as Beale—notjust from the organisation but from the culture present within it.”

And from Twitter less than two hours after I announced the Board’s action against “an unidentified member”:

John Scalzi @scalzi
I just renewed my @sfwa membership!
2:18 PM – 14 Aug 2013

P Nielsen Hayden ‏@pnh Aug 14
@scalzi So did I! What a coincidence! @sfwa

Now, you might rightly say that these remarks by the outgoing president of the organization and the most influential member of the organization (Patrick Nielsen Hayden is a Senior Editor at the largest SF publishing house and gives his address in the SFWA membership directory as the Tor Books address on Fifth Avenue in New York City), are merely circumstantial evidence. And that would seem be true, since there were five outgoing SFWA Board Members in 2013. However, only two of those outgoing members were male. Compare the two successive lists of Board Members from the 2013 SFW Directory.

Board Members beginning July 1st, 2013
Steven Gould, President
Cat Rambo, Vice-President
Susan Forest, Secretary
Bud Sparhawk, Treasurer
Sarah Pinsker, Eastern Regional Director
Lee Martindale, South-Central Director
Jim Fiscus, Western Regional Director
Tansy Rayner Roberts, Overseas Director
Matthew Johnson, Canadian Director

Board Members through June 30th, 2013
John Scalzi, President
Rachel Swirsky, Vice-President
Ann Leckie, Secretary
Bud Sparhawk, Treasurer
Catherynne Valente, Eastern Regional Director
Lee Martindale, South-Central Director
Jim Fiscus, Western Regional Director
Sean Williams, Overseas Director
Matthew Johnson, Canadian Director

So, we know beyond any shadow of a doubt that either Sean Williams or John Scalzi was responsible for threatening to quit the organization if I was not purged from it, and that John Scalzi did let his membership lapse precisely as the “outgoing Board Member” threatened to do. We observe that the outgoing Board Member is not a particularly coherent writer. And we also know that John Scalzi has evinced considerably more interest in my career over the last 10 years than Sean Williams, who lives in Australia and has hitherto exhibited no signs of even knowing that I exist.

But although that is sufficient evidence to surmount the standard of reasonable doubt, it is not absolute proof of Mr. Scalzi’s guilt, since it is remotely possible that both outgoing Board Members happened to let their memberships lapse at the same time for different reasons. Therefore, in the interest of historical accuracy, I have contacted Mr. Williams and asked him to either confirm or deny responsibility for the statement quoted.

While we’re on the subject, it is interesting to compare the list of 2012-2013 Board Members to the recent list of Hugo and Nebula winners. Note that last year’s Novelette winner, Mary Robinette Kowal, was previously SFWA’s Secretary and Vice-President. Perhaps award-watchers should keep an eye out for Mr. Gould, Ms Rambo, and Ms Forest inexplicably outperforming in 2015 and 2016.

* Assuming that it was, in fact, a genuine purge. More than one lawyer has looked at the case and informed me that I am still a member in good standing of SFWA despite the public pretensions of the SFWA Board. There was never a vote of the entire membership, which under Massachusetts law, is clearly required to expel a member. This is why I have not filed a lawsuit; I have no damages of which to complain. The “expulsion” was a legal charade concocted to placate certain elements of the membership, as the bylaws under which I was “expelled” did not come into force until 15 May, 2014, ten months after SFWA’s announcement of an SFWA Board vote on 14 August, 2013.

Notice that SFWA has never officially announced my expulsion. That’s because it never took place. They informed me privately of the Board vote for my expulsion, which was true, but they could not announce my expulsion publicly because “the Board’s decision” was not, in August 2013, sufficient to actually expel a member. Note in particular the reference to “ the existing Massachusetts By-Laws” in the 2013 announcement.

Title XXII, Chapter 180, Section 18: No member of such corporation shall be expelled by vote of
less than a majority of all the members thereof, nor by vote of less
than three quarters of the members present and voting upon such
expulsion.

Fine for me, but not for thee

Jason Sanford attempts the difficult trick of condemning two different Hugo slates while simultaneously trying to defend his own.

For some reason my picks for the Hugo and Nebula Awards are being held up as the opposing slate against the Sad Puppies campaign of Larry Correia, Brad Torgersen, and Vox Day. Evidently my nominations, in some deranged way, legitimizes the Sad Puppy campaign to stuff the Hugo ballot box.

Please.

I’ve never organized a campaign to stuff the Hugo Awards ballot. Have I stated the authors and stories I’m voting for? Yes. I’ve done this for many years. Have I encouraged others to consider the stories I liked and, if they also like them, consider them for a nomination? Yes. Because that’s what you do in the marketplace of ideas and beliefs which we call life. It’s part of what we call “Having a damn opinion!”

And yes, I’ve been overly eager about trying to get people to check out the stories I’ve enjoyed and consider them for the awards. I do this because I love our genre and it’s still a kick that I can nominate stories and authors for awards. In my recent post about my award picks, I even used the word “amazing” four separate times, which as an author I find embarrassing. But I used the word so many times because I’m excited about these stories and want others to share in this excitement.

But I’ve never picked my nominations by race or ethnicity or the author’s political views.

First of all, note that Jason tried more egregiously to “stuff the Hugo ballot” than Brad did with Sad Puppies. Jason has five recommendations for every category, Brad does not. Even I don’t have five recommendations in every category, although I do in all the categories that Jason has recommended thus far.

Verdict: If anyone is guilty of “Hugo ballot stuffing” it can only be Jason Sanford. How on Earth can he claim the right to do what he condemns others for doing? Could he be more blatantly hypocritical? Does he really want to openly claim that no one on the SF Right has the right to express an opinion?

Second, Jason is rightly embarrassed about his repeated use of the word “amazing” after I mocked him for it on Twitter. Like all SJWs, he is forced to resort to the use of superlatives to impress the reader, because what he is describing is not sufficiently impressive in and of itself. But he might consider using different superlatives. That would be amazing.

Verdict: SJWs communicate like inarticulate teenage girls and actresses attempting to curry favor with directors. This is not news.

Third, ballot-stuffing is not a function of the basis by which one decides to stuff the ballot. It doesn’t matter why Jason picked his nominations, the fact of the matter is if the presentation of a slate is deemed to be tantamount to ballot-stuffing, Jason observably stuffed the ballot to a greater extent than me, Brad, or Larry last year.

Verdict: Sorry, Jase, still guilty as charged.

The token cuddly liberal

Fourth, Jason clearly did select his nominations on the grounds of race and ethnicity. Sure, it’s remotely possible that he just happened to select works translated from the original Khoisan and available only in the basement of a small Nigerian bookstore in Peckham, but the odds are against it. Neither Larry, nor Brad, nor I did that; we didn’t justify them at all. Latino Larry nominated both white Brad and Native American Vox last year. Brad may be an Indian-hating cowboy for all I know, as he left me (feather, not dot), off his slate. I don’t even know what race or ethnicity most of the writers I recommended are. Hell, I don’t even know what race or ethnicity most of the writers I edit and publish are. 

Furthermore, both the Sad Puppies and the Rabid Puppies slates are observably more politically ecumenical than Jason Sanford’s lockstep leftist list. We both have writers of the right and left. Jason may have had one moderately right-wing writer TWO YEARS AGO, but he doesn’t appear to have any in the slate that is presently being condemned.

Fifth, Jason both predicted and welcomed “The coming Hugo Awards ballot-stuffing arms race” ten months ago. He wrote: “But having everyone engage in this vote campaigning might also be the
only way to force the Hugo Awards to finally change. To force the
reality of our ever-more-diverse genre down Worldcon’s throat. So I welcome the coming Hugo Awards ballot-stuffing arms race.”

Verdict: Guilty, guilty, guilty on all counts. And racist against Native Americans to boot. For shame!

The banning of an SJW

One of Wikipedia’s worst SJWs, the anti-GamerGate Ryulong, has been banned indefinitely for his all-too-typical thought-policing:

Ryulong banned

5.3) (Was 4.5) Ryulong (talk · contribs · logs · edit filter log · block log)
is indefinitely banned from the English Language Wikipedia. They may
request reconsideration of the ban twelve months after the enactment of
this remedy, and every twelve months thereafter.
Support:

  1. (first choice) As always, banning someone is not something we should want
    to do, but sometimes it is the best thing for the project. Ryulong has
    acted very poorly in this topic area, and it is clear that previous
    sanctions and blocks have failed to have the desired effect of ending
    disruptive behavior. A revolving door of speedy topic bans, chasing the
    problem from area to another, is not the answer. This is. I sincerely
    hope that at some point in the future he will be able to return and be a
    productive member of this community again, but for now he needs to go. Beeblebrox (talk) 23:15, 19 January 2015 (UTC)
  2. Will prioritise later if need be,  Roger Davies talk 23:38, 19 January 2015 (UTC)
    Equal first choice,  Roger Davies talk 11:31, 21 January 2015 (UTC)
  3. First choice. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs(talk) 23:56, 19 January 2015 (UTC)
  4. Last Choice I would love to not do this but I don’t think anything else has a snowball’s chance of passing —In actu (Guerillero) | My Talk 01:15, 21 January 2015 (UTC)
  5. First choice. Salvio Let’s talk about it! 10:46, 21 January 2015 (UTC)
  6. Last choice of presented options (Right now). I think if we’re
    dealing with this on a purely pragmatic level this might be best for the
    project, but I do think that it would only be fair to attempt to apply
    some of the alternatives first, although I’m a bit concerned as to their
    potential efficacy, given the history. NativeForeigner Talk 07:26, 23 January 2015 (UTC)
    Nonetheless, support. NativeForeigner Talk 19:48, 27 January 2015 (UTC)
  7. T. Canens (talk) 17:12, 23 January 2015 (UTC)
  8. If the 1RR does not pass, then first choice of what’s left. Still
    oppose if the 1RR somehow moves back to passing. The more I look at the
    history here, the more I am sure the problems are far wider than just
    this single topic, as I see it, Ryulong doesn’t seem able to “hold his
    fire”, and not get into edit wars. This also, per his block log, is
    independent of topic areas. Without very, very strong measures to stop
    them from continuing to edit war throughout the encyclopedia, I don’t
    think we have any other choice. Also, even to this morning, I still see
    evidence of ongoing battleground mentality. I really, really don’t like
    this, but I can’t support their staying on the project without a strict
    1RR and a topic ban at this point. And only one of those is going to
    pass. Courcelles 22:02, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

Oppose:

  1. My mind is open on the other proposed remedies, but I will certainly not be supporting this. Newyorkbrad (talk) 03:41, 20 January 2015 (UTC)
    • Neither will I. Need to contemplate the rest of it, but this is not the solution. Courcelles 03:48, 20 January 2015 (UTC)
    • Excessive in the circumstances. I’m open to some alternative. DGG ( talk ) 05:33, 20 January 2015 (UTC)
    • I would like to try something else. —Guerillero | My Talk 07:53, 20 January 2015 (UTC)
  2. I’ve decided to oppose this, albeit weakly. I’m hoping that the
    other remedies regarding Ryulong will end this situation, but I don’t
    quite think a siteban is the best course forward here. GorillaWarfare (talk) 02:32, 23 January 2015 (UTC)
  3. — Euryalus (talk) 05:13, 23 January 2015 (UTC)
  4. Given the circumstances here, I don’t think this is called for. For
    clarity’s sake, though, this is very likely the absolute last chance. Seraphimblade Talk to me 01:14, 24 January 2015 (UTC)
  5. LFaraone 18:45, 24 January 2015 (UTC)

Abstain:

  1. I find my view on this changing from day to day, so it would be fairer if I abstained. DGG ( talk ) 20:47, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

Comments:

Noting that I skipped this intentionally—still thinking on it and will come back soon. GorillaWarfare (talk) 17:23, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

  • @NativeForeigner: I tried to fix the numbering, but clarification of your exact meaning would be useful here. Courcelles 20:01, 27 January 2015 (UTC)

Of course, a perusal of the process tends to illustrate why Wikipedia is so hapless when it comes to policing outrageous behavior by its editors. Because it was started by an SJW-sympathetic individual and was rapidly taken over by SJWs of varying rabidity, the site remains hopelessly biased and largely worthless on anything of even moderate political contention.

 That being said, it is good to see that Wikipedia is trying to clean up its act, even if it is going about it in a manner that makes Sisyphus look productive. But they simply refuse to see that the way they cherry-pick which sources are deemed reliable and which are not is what produces the intrinsic left-wing bias. The SJW editor who sits on the Wikipedia page about me and tries to publicize as much negative information as possible while minimizing any positive information shows how he evades the point on the Talk page there:

Many of the recent additions to this article seem to be the direct result of Mr. Beale’s recent blog post
in which he commented that Wikipedia is unfairly and dishonestly
excluding material on his views: “Does [the ‘Views section in the
Wikipedia article] describe my views at all? Are the totality of my
views really limited to little more than a feud with John Scalzi and my
expulsion from SFWA? Do I have no opinions on economics, politics,
philosophy, literature, and religion despite having written books on the
former and the latter? It’s telling, too, to observe that if the
so-called feud and the expulsion are the only significant aspects of my
views, there is no mention of the connection between the former and the
latter.”

Mr. Beale then gave a brief description of his views on economics — he feels that the Austrian School
is currently the best explanation available, but is ultimately flawed
for various reasons — and stated that “(t)hose are my actual views on
the subject. That is the absolute truth. Post them on Wikipedia and
they’ll be suppressed within 24 hours.”

This, I believe, is indicative of a general misunderstanding. Of
course Mr. Beale has a great many more views than are provided in this
article; for instance, he has expressed an appreciation for the writing
of Frank Herbert and a dislike for that of Patrick Rothfuss.
I’m certain he also has food preferences, and opinions on the best way
to teach mathematics to children. He may even have discussed these views
in posts to his blog. But the mere fact that Mr. Beale has a view on a
subject does not indisputably lead to the conclusion that the view
should be included in Wikipedia’s biography of him, not even if he has
made a blog post in which he explicitly states that view. Rather, the
views which are (or should be) included are those which have drawn significant independent external attention. I hope that this explanation will satisfy the readers of Mr. Beale’s blog, and possibly even Mr. Beale himself. DS (talk) 14:42, 8 August 2014

This is the height of absurdity. I misunderstand nothing. Nor do you, my readers. There is FAR MORE significant independent external attention that has been paid to my views on economics, religion, and the history of war than have ever been paid to my views on immigration or race, much less my “Feud with John Scalzi”. I have NEVER done an interview about the latter; Scalzi himself did only one. I did over thirty interviews, some on national radio, about economics subsequent to the release of THE RETURN OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION and more than twenty related to THE IRRATIONAL ATHEIST.

Transcripts and links to some of those interviews are available on my blog. My views are clearly expressed in them – again, on national radio shows, and even in one case, television – and yet every last trace of those views have been methodically scrubbed from Wikipedia by the likes of DragonFlySixtyseven.

Here is just one of many possible examples pulled from my email. There are over 75 similar emails from different media outlets ranging from Fox News to the Saturday Evening Post. But in the impartial eyes of the Wikipedia editors, the cumulative total of that independent external attention is less significant and notable than John Scalzi talking about himself on his blog that gets less than half the traffic of this one.

INTERVIEW CONFIRMATION
NAME:  Vox Day                     
TOPIC:  The Irrational Atheist
DATE:  Tuesday, October 21, 2008
INTERVIEW TIME:  11:15 – 11:55 am ET
LENGTH OF INTERVIEW:  40 minutes
MEDIA:  Christian Radio Network – over 200 stations in 34 states, 19 affiliates and in Canada

I can’t speak to the accuracy of the rest of Wikipedia, but my page is mostly nonsense from start to finish. I mean, it actually says that I was born in Minnesota.

Cumberblunder

As always, a public apology only compounds the error by displaying weakness to those who are always hunting for it:

Devastated’, ‘a complete fool’ and ‘an idiot’; ‘thoughtless’, ‘inappropriate’ and ‘shaming’: that is how the actor Benedict Cumberbatch described himself and his actions this week in an elegantly worded but nonetheless grovelling apology.

It was fully 150 words of heartfelt self-flagellation, in which the actor all but stripped naked and covered himself in ashes before lashing himself to the mast of public opinion.

And all for what? A well-meaning slip of the tongue.

He used the term ‘coloured’ during an interview on an American chat show. Perhaps not the most politically correct racial terminology, but certainly not the most derogatory either.

At worst, perhaps, rather old-fashioned. The kind of thing your granny might say, and which might compel you to lean over and gently whisper in her ear: ‘No one says “coloured” any more, gran, it’s not the done thing.’ To which she might reply: ‘Really, dear? I had no idea.’

A term, moreover, contained in the very name of one of America’s leading African-American civil rights organisation, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People….

Of course, in today’s world the poor fellow had no choice but to apologise.

Not only does he inhabit the oh-so-progressive world of entertainment, where to deviate even slightly from the accepted nostrums of liberalism can mean instant alienation, he also has as an ancestor an 18th-century sugar plantation owner in Barbados which, in the eyes of some, practically makes him a slave-trader himself.

As a Person of Color myself, I should like to absolve Mr. Cumberbatch of any lingering guilt over his PR faux pas. And to advise him, as I have myself been reliably informed, that time is rapidly running out on the term “People of Color” and that the next politically approved appellation for individuals of African descent residing on the North American continent is still being discussed by the Grand Council of Racial Relations and will be announced to white people sometime in the next 18 months.

I understand “Basketball American” is the present frontleader, but the situation is fluid as “Shaded Americans” or “Shades” also has its advocates. As for we Native Americans, the correct form of address will be the individual’s tribe, with all of the onus being placed on the individual addressing the erstwhile Native American to correctly identify his tribe prior to addressing him. An incorrect tribal identification will, of course, be considered greatly offensive and will require a placatory offering of money, alcohol, or sexual favors to set straight.

Don’t call me Cherokee.

Be the dragon

At Alpha Game, I comment upon the importance of being the dragon, not the self-styled paladin and self-appointed dragon-slayer. But one part of the Loneliest Paladin’s twitterstorm was relevant here for its illustration of rabbitology:

MikeBrendan @MikeBrendan
Things I don’t get: why Ghaters would rally around Vox Day. Dude is the epitome of loser.

MikeBrendan @MikeBrendan
Not only did Vox get kicked out of SFWA for being a racist homophobic sexist dipshit, he took sixth place on a five person ballot.

Note that insufficient popularity with a small and specific group is equated with being “the epitome of loser”… by someone with no friends and not much of a life. Success, in the rabbit’s world, is something that depends entirely upon the level of acceptance by the warren. Everything else is irrelevant.

Rabbits don’t understand that wolves respect strength and loyalty, even when exhibited in causes of no interest to them. Rabbits fear strength and have no loyalty, so the concepts are alien to them. They genuinely can’t understand the concept of standing up for someone because that someone stood up for you, even if you don’t like him, respect him, or want anything to do with him. For all that they are herd animals, they are not team players; in their own way they are more ruthlessly self-serving than the most ideological self-sovereign libertarian.

And speaking of rabbitology, see how the rabbits cry when their warrens are invaded and they learn they don’t possess the power they flaunted so foolishly:

GamerGate set out to writes its own story in Wikipedia – and to spread the dirt about the women who were its targets. These efforts were blocked by established editors under established Wikipedia policy. In retaliation, GamerGate planned an operation to get rid of its opponents – the “Five Horsemen” active in preserving objectivity and in keeping scurrilous sexual innuendo out of the encyclopedia. As a side-game, GamerGate also launched efforts to promote the idea that “Cultural Marxism” is a conspiracy of some Jewish academics to control the media.

The original GamerGate operation targeted the “five horsemen:” Ryulong, NorthBySouthBaranof, Tarc, TheRedPenOfDoom, and TaraInDC. All were sanctioned in the draft decision.

For months, these Wikipedia pages have been an escalating scene of daily – indeed hourly – conflict.

The Purge

Yesterday, ArbCom announced its preliminary decision. A panel of fourteen arbitrators – at least 11 of whom are men – decided to give GamerGate everything they’d wished for. All of the Five Horsemen are sanctioned; most will be excluded not only from “Gamergate broadly construed” but from anything in Wikipedia touching on “gender or sexuality, broadly construed.”

By my informal count, every feminist active in the area is to be sanctioned. This takes care of social justice warriors with a vengeance — not only do the GamerGaters get to rewrite their own page (and Zoe Quinn’s, Brianna Wu’s, Anita Sarkeesian’s, etc.); feminists are to be purged en bloc from the encyclopedia. Liberals are the new Scientologists as far as Arbcom is concerned.

No sanctions at all were proposed against any of GamerGate’s warriors, save for a few disposable accounts created specifically for the purpose of being sanctioned. The administrator who wrote, regarding Zoe Quinn’s sexual history, that

    I know other other allegations exist but will not state what those on WP are because that would be a BLP violation at the current time.

was not even mentioned. The many brand-new accounts who arrived in December with no Wiki experience, but possessing a curiously detailed knowledge of Wikipedia policy jargon, are unmentioned, save for the fact that the decision rests almost entirely on their proposals.

The extensive evidence of off-site collusion, which Wikipedia considers so improper that evidence must not be discussed on wiki but rather submitted in confidence, appears to have been entirely ignored. (I submitted such evidence myself, but received no acknowledgment or thanks; I have been told that much additional evidence was submitted.)

Notice how the upset rabbit appeals to “established editors and established policy” (better described as activist editors and self-imposed customs), despite the fact that the editors concerned were quite clearly VIOLATING Wikipedia policy, and doing so rather egregiously. What appears to have happened is that Wikipedia is finally beginning to act against the SJW thought police who make a practice of attempting to define the public narrative by exerting personal ownership over particular pages of interest.

Mailvox: of rabbits and communism

AD sees the connection:

I read these quotes and can’t help comparing to your Rabbitology posts.

“What I had failed to understand was that the security I felt in the Party was that of a group and that affection in that strange communist world is never a personal emotion. You were loved or hated on the basis of group acceptance, and emotions were stirred or dulled by propaganda. That propaganda was made by the powerful people at the top. That is why ordinary Communists get along well with their groups: they think and feel together and work toward a common goal.”
– School of Darkness, Chapter 16 (1954), Dr. Bella Dodd, head of the New York State Teachers Union , member of the Communist Party of America (CPUSA) in the 1930s and 1940s, later a vocal anti-communist

“The process of completely freeing oneself emotionally from being a Communist is a thing no outsider can understand. The group thinking and group planning and the group life of the Party had been a part of me for so long that it was desperately difficult for me to be a person again. … But I had begun the process of “unbecoming” a Communist. It was a long and painful process, much like that of a polio victim who has to learn to walk all over again. I had to learn to think. I had to learn to love. I had to drain the hate and frenzy from my system. I had to dislodge the self and the pride that had made me arrogant, made me feel that I knew all the answers. I had to learn that I knew nothing. There were many stumbling blocks in this process.”

It is hard for rabbits to break out of the warren, and even harder for them to become a not-rabbit. Don’t expect much in the way of reason from the pinkshirts, for as it is said, it is difficult to reason a man out of a position he has not reasoned himself into. This is why they switch fluidly between contradictory positions as easily as a school of fish changes direction; they’re not paying any attention to the direction of the school, they’re completely focused on the actions of the rabbits around them.

A Pink SF pet on the Oscars

Saladin Ahmed ‏@saladinahmed
Not a single one of the TWENTY actors/actresses nominated for Oscars in 2015 is a person of color. Not one. That’s called white supremacy.

Vox Day ‏@voxday
Actually, white supremacy is what prevents people like Saladin Ahmed from throwing gays off rooftops.

Mr. Ahmed, in case you were unaware, is Pink SF’s token Mahometan. He was an affirmative action nominee for the Hugo, Nebula, Crawford, Gemmell, and British Fantasy awards in 2013 for a mediocre debut novel called Throne of the Crescent Moon. It’s rather amusing to see him alternate SJW poses with statements like his post-Hebdo assault on free speech in the New York Times.

The question for writers and artists, then, is not whether we ought to limit ourselves, but how we already limit ourselves. In a field dominated by privileged voices, it’s not enough to say “Mock everyone!” In an unequal world, satire that mocks everyone equally ends up serving the powerful. And in the context of brutal inequality, it is worth at least asking what preexisting injuries we are adding our insults to. The belief that satire is a courageous art beholden to no one is intoxicating. But satire might be better served by an honest reckoning of whose voices we hear and don’t hear, of who we mock and who we don’t, and why.

‘Twas also more than a little amusing to see how quick the pinkshirts were to rush in and assure Mr. Ahmed THEY STILL CONSIDER HIM TO BE ONE OF THEM. They’ve learned absolutely nothing from the Charlie Hebdo massacres. So I suspect it’s going to be even more amusing to watch as they gradually turn on him over the next decade.

D Franklin ‏@D_Libris
Or hollow laughter at the hypocritical, mendacious evil of VD, & hugs for Saladin who has to put up with that shit

Charlie Stross ‏@cstross
congratulations! You’ve drawn the ire of SF’s very worst self-defeating loser. You level up!

Haralambi Markov ‏@HaralambiMarkov
That’s not cute. That’s just insulting. Oh My Everything.

Sean ‏@Sea_Bunker
I musta missed the part where you (SA) are a violent homophobe. Vox, on the other hand…

Jim C. Hines ‏@jimchines
That … but … huh?

Always Randy ‏@RandyTheRandom
What is preventing me from throwing White Supremacist Assholes from rooftops, though?

Charlie Stross ‏@cstross
if I followed VD’s totalising logic, gay unitarians would be as dangerous to Jews as the Aryan Nations.

BenjanunSriduangkaew ‏@bees_ja
Holy shit. Sorry he’s using queer people to concern-troll you, wow.

Matt Forbeck ‏@mforbeck
Ah, what a jackass. I’d stay “stunning jackass” but we’ve come to expect it by now.

Bootleg Girl ‏@BootlegGirl
Seriously though I “love” how atheist libertarians who are massive bigots project their own desires onto Muslims

Jim C. Hines ‏@jimchines
VD stretching the truth? I am shocked. Shocked, I say!

Rae Carson ‏@raecarson 31m31 minutes ago
Ugh, Saladin, I’m so sorry you have to deal with shitbags like him.

Nightjar UrsulaV ‏@UrsulaV
Its’s like he’s got a bigot magnetic poetry kit and arranges these on his fridge.

Fledgist ‏@Fledgist
One should be measured by the enemies one attracts.

Charlie Stross ‏@cstross
Yes, but going by VD is like measuring yourself against the stench of the dog turd you just stepped in.

One subtle irony that will probably escape the average reader is the way Benjanun Sriduangkaew is attempting to worm her way back into the warren here. She was quasi-excommunicated from the Pink SF community two months ago when her alternate identity was exposed as being the notorious Requires Only That You Hate.

UPDATE: See, the pinkshirts are really all about the tolerance. And free speech.

Really Tired Wanker ‏@benfromcanada
@saladinahmed god damn these people

Pity the poor professors

If this isn’t an excuse for well-justified schadenfreude, I don’t know what is:

“Deplorable, deeply regressive, a sign of the corporatization of the university.”  That’s what Harvard Classics professor Richard F. Thomas calls the changes in Harvard’s health plan, which have a large number of the faculty up in arms.

Are Harvard professors being forced onto Medicaid? Has their employer denied coverage for cancer treatment? Do they need to sign a corporate loyalty oath in order to access health insurance? Not exactly. But copayments are being raised and deductibles altered, making their plan … well, actually, their plan is still extraordinarily generous by any standard:

    The university is adopting standard features of most employer-sponsored health plans: Employees will now pay deductibles and a share of the costs, known as coinsurance, for hospitalization, surgery and certain advanced diagnostic tests. The plan has an annual deductible of $250 per individual and $750 for a family. For a doctor’s office visit, the charge is $20. For most other services, patients will pay 10 percent of the cost until they reach the out-of-pocket limit of $1,500 for an individual and $4,500 for a family.

The deepest irony is, of course, that Harvard professors helped to design Obamacare. And Obamacare is the reason that these changes are probably necessary.

Demonstrating, yet again, that nothing is more short-sighted than an activist rabbit. Give them exactly what they want, provide them exactly what they are agitating for, and they are outraged!

“When I demanded more comprehensive government services requiring more taxes, I didn’t mean that I wanted to pay for them myself!”

Is it any surprise that college educations are increasingly worthless, given that idiots like these are supposedly the creme de la creme of the professoriat?