Tag: SJW

Of math and the SJW

In which McRapey totally pwns the math:

Vox Day (@voxday)
The @torbooks boycott has reduced @scalzi’s Bookscan sales by 68%! http://t.co/kYXVBeBBo7 #SadPuppies

John Scalzi ‏@scalzi
1. A detractor trying to show his “boycott” of Tor was working claimed a 68% drop in my Lock In sales since the boycott, citing Bookscan…

2. His only problem is that he read the data backwards. Literally backwards. My booksales went UP in that time, not down.

3. And people wonder why I occasionally say I wish I had a better class
of detractor. Even being able to math would be an improvement!

4. (To be clear, the week-to-week number movement have nothing to do
with boycotts or anything else. They’re the usual sales up and downs.)

5. Those curious can see discussion of it here:
http://file770.com/?p=23709 . Note the first comment, which catches the
math error.

You know, I haven’t been caught out this badly since I observed that Kim Stanley Robinson was, on the basis of the picture on his web site, a remarkably ugly bearded woman. If nothing else, you’d think the exclamation point on a single tweet would have given it away, but apparently anything short of a “LOL”, a smiley face emoji, and a (jk) will be lost on these masters of the social arts.

Johnny Con’s attempted derision of his nameless detractor’s inability to do math is amusing because there is no mathematical error involved. There is absolutely no indication of not “being able to math”. And he would appear to have failed to realize that I was mocking Jason Sanford for a) pretending that an obviously irrelevant snapshot of data was relevant, b) listing the dates in the reverse of the usual order, and c) proceeding to reach a backwards conclusion. See, unlike Scalzi, I don’t assume the other side is completely retarded; I find it impossible to imagine that Sanford is genuinely dumb enough to believe that the data he cited is meaningful in any way, shape, or form.

SJWs like Scalzi are so easy. All you need to to do make them jump is offer them a “mistake” they can attack in order to disqualify you and show how totally smart and superior they are. As Scalzi demonstrates, they will ignore literally everything that is relevant to the argument at hand in their desperate eagerness to strike their pseudo-superior poses.

Sanford wrote: “Lock In by John Scalzi (hardcover) 65 copies on 7/05, 39 on 6/28, 74 on 6/21, 63 on 6/14, 46 on 6/7, 54 on 5/31, 21 on 5/24.” The chart, on the other hand, begins with May 24th and ends with July 5th, with the data running in the more conventional left to right manner, which made his reversal obvious even for those who don’t know how to read dates in the American manner. There is no math error; 21/65 = 0.32, which would indicate a 68 percent decline; more importantly, as Mike Glyer correctly notes, the dates Sanford cites to “prove” the ineffectiveness of the boycott are invalid because he cites data from three successive weeks before the boycott began.

When I aggregated the sales for these 10 books from the week of June 21, the latest unaffected by the boycott (announced on June 19), and the sales from the week of July 5 (the latest reported by Sanford), that gave me 1,740 vs. 1,667 books. Therefore, the July 5 sales of these 10 books were 95.8% of what they were before immediately before the boycott.

In fact, Scalzi’s Bookscan sales have observably declined since the boycott began: from 74 the week of June 21 to 65 the week of July 5. That is a 12.2 percent decline. Clearly, if we are to take Mr. Sanford’s numbers seriously, the Tor boycott has been effective.

Of course, what will likely be of considerably more concern to Tor Books than the effectiveness or lack of effectiveness of the boycott is the fact that the writer for whom they blew off 523 new writers is selling as few as 21 copies of his “best-selling” hardcover per week.

Remember the First Law of SJW: SJWs always lie.

SJWs rewrite the Reddit narrative

It’s Silicon Valley 2, Ellen Pao 0: Fighter of Sexism Is Out at Reddit

Ellen Pao became a hero to many when she took on the entrenched male-dominated culture of Silicon Valley. But sentiment is a fickle thing. Late Friday she fell victim to a crowd demanding her ouster as chief executive of the popular social media site Reddit.

Ms. Pao’s abrupt downfall in the face of a torrent of sexist and racist comments, many of them on Reddit itself, is quite likely to renew charges that bullying, harassment and cruel behavior are out of control on the web — and that Silicon Valley’s well-publicized problem with gender and ethnic diversity in its work force persists….

More than 213,000 people signed a petition demanding Ms. Pao’s resignation. After her departure was announced, Reddit users celebrated in an over-the-top fashion. “Rejoice internet brethren,” wrote one. “The great evil has been slain.”

Why are the SJWs at the New York Times lining up behind Ellen Pao and trying to rewrite the narrative? For the same reason the media lies about GamerGate and lies about the Puppies. They are terrified at the resistance being shown by the broad spectrum anti-SJW movement. As I told GGinParis last night, without #GamerGate there is no Rabid Puppies. Without #GamerGate, Ellen Pao is still running Reddit into the ground.

And the SJWs are right to be terrified. They are not only meeting resistance now, but they are being actively pushed back from territory they’d previously claimed. This is only the beginning; eventually we will drive them entirely out of the various industries and being identified as an SJW will be as totally unacceptable to most people as being a Nazi, a Communist, or a KKK member.

The built-in bias of Wikipedia

I’ve commented before on how the editors at Wikipedia doggedly turn every article about a left-leaning public figure into a defense case, while every one about a right-wing figure is prosecutorial in nature:

Neil Tyson, a prominent popularizer of science (he even has his own television show) was recently found to have repeatedly fabricated multiple quotes over several years. The fabrications were not a one-off thing. They were deliberate and calculated, crafted with one goal in mind: to elevate Tyson, and by extension his audience, at the expense of know-nothing, knuckle-dragging nutjobs who hate science. Tyson targeted journalists, members of Congress, even former President George W. Bush. And what was their crime? They were guilty of rejecting science, according to Tyson.

There’s only one problem. None of the straw man quotes that Tyson uses to tear them down are real….

After I published my piece about Neil Tyson’s fabrication of the George W. Bush quote, several users edited Neil Tyson’s wiki page
to include details of the quote fabrication controversy. The
fact-loving, evidence-weighing, ever-objective editors of the online
encyclopedia did not appreciate the inclusion of the evidence of Tyson’s
fabrication. Not at all.

According to a review of the edit history of Tyson’s page,
one long-time Wikipedia editor deleted an entire pending section
summarizing the issue of Tyson’s fabricated quotes. Another editor
attempted to insert a brief mention of Tyson’s fabrication of the George
W. Bush quote. That mention was also deleted. When it was reinserted,
it was deleted yet again by an editor who describes himself as a childless progressive and an apostle of Daily Kos (h/t @kerpen).

Literally every single mention of Tyson’s history of fabricating quotes has been removed from Tyson’s Wikipedia page.

Meanwhile, the Wikipedia page about me contains more about NK Jemisin and John Scalzi than it does about a professional career that has been covered everywhere from the New York Times to Computer Gaming World, casts doubt on my heritage, and reduces my entire personal life to two of the four languages I speak. I mean, at the very least, you’d think they’d mention that I speak English, that my blog is the most highly trafficked one in science fiction and fantasy, or my son is the youngest male author ever published.

But, of course, anything that might reflect well on me, or poorly on Tyson, is something that the Wikipedia editors are determined to excise. And that’s why you should never take anything you read on Wikipedia as anything but a starting point.

George Martin opposes the Tor boycott

George Rape Rape Martin takes time out of his daily fetish-writing to urge everyone  to oppose the Tor boycott, which is totally irrelevant and futile and doesn’t matter in the slightest, which is precisely why it must be denounced and opposed. It’s frankly a shame that he’s been distracted in this way, as old RapeSquared had been working on a smashing scene involving the violation of Arya Stark wearing the face of Cersei Lannister by two Sparrows, seven nuns, Ser Robert Strong, and King Tomas’s adopted kitten. It was really going to blow everyone’s socks off when West of Eros: The Epic Rapes of George R. R. Martin appears in 2017.

In one of the more recent developments, the Rabid Puppies and some of their allies and fellow travellers have declared a boycott of Tor Books. I say “Rabid” here because Beale is backing the boycott, while Larry Correia says the Sad Puppies are not boycotting anyone… though Correia and some of the other Sads certainly seem deeply sympathetic to the boycott.

I am not, needless to say. Neither is most of fandom.

Which makes this a perfect time to BUY SOME TOR BOOKS!!

So if you would like to strike a blow for free speech and decency, and support all the good people at Tor, go ye forth and buy a book today… from the Cocteau, or Amazon, or anywhere… and let your voice be heard.

[Martin adds in the comments:] “The Tor boycott is an ugly attempt to try and cost some good people their jobs. It needs to be denounced and opposed.”

Good people? On what planet can the likes of lying, libelous, Code of Conduct-violating individuals such as Irene Gallo and Patrick Nielsen Hayden be reasonably described as “good people”? Observably not this one. And as for the “free speech and decency” Martin claims to be defending, let’s recall the speech itself:

 “There are two extreme right-wing to neo-nazi groups, called the Sad
Puppies and the Rabid Puppies respectively, that are calling for the end
of social justice in science fiction and fantasy. They are
unrepentantly racist, sexist and homophobic. A noisy few but they’ve
been able to gather some Gamergate folks around them and elect a slate
of bad-to-reprehensible works on this year’s Hugo ballot.”
– Irene Gallo, Creative Director of Tor Books and Associate Publisher of Tor.com

That is a clear and undeniable violation on several counts of the Macmillan Code of Conduct. It is a completely unprovoked, absolutely unprofessional attack on Tor’s customers as well as several of Tor’s own authors. If Irene Gallo was a fry cook at McDonalds or a minimum-wage greeter at Walmart, she’d be gone already, and it is as disingenuous as it is stupid to pretend otherwise.

RapeSquared was promptly called on his little omissions by a few of his readers and didn’t hesitate to take some liberties with the facts. Because, after all, George Martin is an SJW, and SJWs always lie.

lordevaco
Jul. 7th, 2015 09:00 pm (UTC)
I just thought it was weird to leave out why there is a boycott in the first place, so I googled it. I didn’t even know about it, but apparently it’s because someone at Tor denounced all of them as “neo-Nazis” and “unrepentantly racist, misogynist, and homophobic” and Tor didn’t do anything about it.

That’s not cool at all either.

grrm
Jul. 7th, 2015 10:45 pm (UTC)
If you googled it, you should also have read that not one but TWO apologies were issued for that tweet, one by the person who posted it, one by the publisher of Tor. That should have closed the book on the affair. Instead we have a boycott and calls for firings.

And I have yet to see anyone on the Puppy side apologize for anything, though their name-calling has far exceeded that coming from the fans.

lumbridge
Jul. 8th, 2015 12:43 am (UTC)
Why are the sad puppies boycotting Tor books? By the way which fantasy titles would you recommend that Tor publishes?

grrm
Jul. 8th, 2015 01:27 am (UTC)
It’s the Rabid Puppies boycotting Tor, not the Sads. Plus some unaffiliated or semi-affiliated allies.

I will not attempt to explain the whole thing. In a nutshell, a Tor employee categorized the Puppies in a nasty way, some of them got outraged and demanded an apology, an apology was issued, but the Rabids decided that was not enough and now want resignations and firings. (Which they are never going to get, by the way).

We’ll see. Corporate actions tend to move along very slowly and then happen all at once. Macmillan’s CEO just returned from his sabbatical this week and I have been directly informed by a Macmillan executive that no decision on how to address the situation has yet been made. And while I suppose it is possible that Mr. Sargent could simply throw out the company Code of Conduct in order to retain the services of an arrogant, entitled employee who believes she can treat his company’s customers and authors with total contempt and still retain her job, I tend to doubt it.

I will not be even remotely surprised if both Ms Gallo and Mr. Nielsen Hayden leave Tor Books in the near future. Macmillan quite clearly had no idea what sort of inmate-run asylum it has on its hands, and it’s not surprising that it would take a little time for them to figure out what needs to be done in order to set it straight.

If it were my problem, I would clean house. After all, how many of the big SF/F franchises of the last 20 years has the biggest publisher in SF/F published? If one considers how hit SF/F franchises Tor Books has missed on, including Martin’s ASOIAF, it’s not as if their management team can considered irreplaceable. But it’s not my problem and not my decision. I’m simply not going to buy any Tor Books, not even those written by the excellent Mr. Wright, while Irene Gallo and Patrick Nielsen Hayden are still employed there.

The SJW review of books

And they wonder why we so blithely ignore their idiotic, ideologically-driven opinions. An SJW “reviews” RIDING THE RED HORSE:

Disappointing and uneven collection
By Elisabeth Carey on June 12, 2015
Format: Kindle Edition
Theodore Beale (Vox Day) is nominated for Best Editor, Long Form, and also Best Editor, Short Form.

This collection is included in the Hugo Voters packet in support of Theodore Beale’s nomination for Best Editor, Short Form.

Unfortunately, it’s a very uneven collection. It includes the very good The Hot Equations, by Ken Burnside, and the very disappointing Turncoat by Steve Rzasa. There is, early on, a casual endorsement of the probable “necessity” of genocide on the grounds that Those People aren’t smart enough to modify their behavior. A point Beale’s fans will have difficulty with is that such inflammatory language makes it less likely that readers will take in the point the author was attempting to make. A better editor would have caught it and told the author to dispense with pointless provocation and just make his point.

If this is the best evidence Beale has to offer, he has no place on the ballot.

I don’t know about you, but I’m convinced. Then again, if one takes the opinion of actual mil-SF fans and science fiction readers into account, there can be very little doubt that if the Hugo Award for Best Editor, Short Form, was actually based on editorial merit, I would not only have a place on the ballot, but win the award on the basis of RIDING THE RED HORSE.

  • “The first great mil-SF anthology since Jerry Pournelle tapered off in the 90s.”
  • “This is a great collection of short stories. I’m not a huge fan of military sci-fi but I very much enjoyed this collection.”
  • “If you’ve been waiting for a new anthology in the spirit of Pournelle & Carr’s THERE WILL BE WAR series, stop waiting and buy this. Includes new and classic combat SF, nonfiction articles on warfare and science, and good introductions by Vox Day.”
  • “First science fiction anthology
    I’ve read and enjoyed since the Asimov days. Every SF story was fast
    moving and kept my interest including interest in the technology
    envisioned by the authors.”
  • “As an anthology of futuristic
    military-scifi, interspersed with essays ranging from an introduction to
    the 4th Generation of War to the advancement of laser technology and
    how it will shape the wars of our future, Riding the Red Horse really
    hits the spot for both entertainment and intrigue.”

Now, it is true, there are those who agreed with Elisabeth Carey and gave the anthology but a single star. Their opinions speak eloquently for themselves; these are the reviews in their entirety:

  • “What a piece of tripe. Exactly
    the kind of fiction that appeals to men who are insecure in their
    masculinity. My only regret is that one can’t rate this book any less
    than one star.”
  • “Bad”  

But what will be will be. It is of little import one way or the other. What is much more important is that Jerry Pournelle was sufficiently impressed with RIDING THE RED HORSE that he decided Castalia House was the right place to reprint and revive his excellent THERE WILL BE WAR anthology series. And as far as I’m concerned, that’s the only award that matters and the only vote that counts.

I should mention that RIDING THE RED HORSE Vol. 2 is shaping up to be even more formidable than the original anthology. Many of the Vol. 1 contributors are back with a vengeance, and the new contributors include Martin van Creveld, Larry Correia, David Van Dyke, and Sarah Salviander.

Ayn Rand foresaw World War T

Adam Hobbes explains why it’s necessary to resist the SJW attempt to control the he/she language:

“The uncontested absurdities of today are the accepted
slogans of tomorrow. They come to be accepted by degrees, by precedent,
by implication, by erosion, by default, by dint of constant pressure on
one side and constant retreat on the other—until the day when they are
suddenly declared to be the country’s official ideology.”
– Ayn Rand

The public debut of “Caitlyn” Jenner represents a watershed moment
for American culture. Though most have not realized it, Jenner’s coming
out party constitutes a significant “trial balloon” on the part of the
progressive left and the media. It is an attempt to cash in on years of
carefully managed stories on transgender “discrimination,” sympathetic portrayals of transgender characters in entertainment, and the generally successful campaign of the gay rights movement and social justice activists.

The goal is simple: normalize transgenderism to such an extent that
any criticism of the concept or its practitioners will not be tolerated.
They must not be allowed to succeed. Whether the silent majority of
Americans realize it or not, the transgender issue represents the last
best opportunity to turn the tide in the culture wars. Make no mistake:
the progressives are winning.

Twenty years ago a person could openly
criticize homosexuality. Today, thanks to the Supreme Court, people who
do not enthusiastically endorse gay marriage are branded as bigots, disqualified from high-profile business positions, and generally dismissed as ignorant hicks whose views are outside of the scope of acceptable thought.

Tolerance is not a virtue. Tolerance is “the sin of Jeroboam”. Tolerance is the little compromise that leads gradually to intellectual obliteration.

Another SJW lie

As with the marriage parody, SJWs are using the public high ground to create a false picture of changing public views with regards to the Confederate flag.

Washington (CNN)American public opinion on the Confederate flag remains about where it was 15 years ago, with most describing the flag as a symbol of Southern pride more than one of racism, according to a new CNN/ORC poll. And questions about how far to go to remove references to the Confederacy from public life prompt broad racial divides.

The poll shows that 57% of Americans see the flag more as a symbol of Southern pride than as a symbol of racism, about the same as in 2000 when 59% said they viewed it as a symbol of pride.

In other words, nothing has substantially changed, but the government-media-corporate alliance has teamed up in order to sell their version of reality. Confederate flag backers can puncture this propaganda by following the lead of the pro-gun forces and destroying the careers of every politician who supported the attack on the flag, beginning with South Carolina governor Nikki Haley.

Of course, it should come as no surprise that the former Nimrata Nikki Randhawa would completely fail to understand Southern Pride. Along with Sen. Edward Kennedy, she is Exhibit A in the inability of second- and third-generation immigrants to understand the spirit of America, even though they were born inside its geographical boundaries, and even though they believe themselves to love and be loyal to America.

Social justice

Male SJWs are usually men who have never understood the difference between women approving of something and women being attracted to something. Women may well approve of men who share their insane ideals or take their ideological babbling at face value. And those same women are attracted to men who ignore it or treat it with the intellectual contempt it deserves.

So, it all comes down to whether you prefer female approval or female attraction. But the latter does not follow from the former. Of course, if SJWs were capable of logical analysis, they wouldn’t be SJWs.

Stamping out sexism in science

Nature has a few ideas on that score. And if we lose a few male Nobel Laureates along the way, what does it matter? After all, the vast influx of female talent that is certain to replace the old sexist dinosaurs will more than make up for any losses, right?

The problem is serious and long-standing. But there are plenty of ways to tackle it. Nature has discussed and promoted them before, and is happy to do so again. Here is a list of measures to consider afresh:

  • Recognize and address unconscious bias. Graduate students given
    grants by the US National Institutes of Health are required to undergo
    ethics training. Gender-bias training for scientists, for example, would
    be a powerful way to help turn the tide.
  • Encourage universities and research institutions to extend the
    deadlines for tenure or project completion for scientists (women and
    men) who take parental leave, and do not penalize these researchers by
    excluding them from annual salary rises. Many workplaces are happy to
    consider and agree to such extension requests when they are made. The
    policy should simply be adopted across the board.
  • Events organizers and others must invite female scientists to
    lecture, review, talk and write articles. And if the woman asked says
    no — for whatever reason — then ask others. This is about more than mere
    visibility. It can boost female participation too. Anecdotal reports
    suggest that women are more likely to ask questions in sessions chaired
    by women. After acknowledging our own bias towards male contributors, Nature, for example, is engaged in a continued effort to commission more women in our pages.
  • Do not use vocabulary and imagery that support one gender more than
    another. Words matter. It is not ‘political-correctness-gone-mad’ to
    avoid defaulting to the pronouns ‘him’ and ‘he’, or to ensure that
    photographs and illustrations feature women.
  • In communication and promotional materials, highlight women who have
    made key contributions to previous work, whether in your own lab or
    within your research discipline more broadly.
  • Be aware of the importance of informal settings and social
    activities to workplace culture, and people’s sense of their place
    within it. Senior scientists can, where possible, make such events
    inclusive.

Can one really say the Law of Unintended Consequences applies when the consequences of a proposed action are so entirely obvious to anyone with half a brain? How many Shakespeares, Dantes, or even JRR Tolkiens have been produced since since the liberation of women from the male oppression that forcibly prevented them from putting pen to paper 40, or 80, or 97 years ago?

And what is the price of trading a few Watsons and Hunts for the scientific equivalents of Stephanie Meyers and E.L. James going to be?

Now, obviously I support women in science; I publish more female scientists than 99.9 percent of my critics do. But I don’t support female thought police in science, which is really what Nature is advocating here. It is the thought police, of both sexes, who truly have NO PLACE whatsoever in science.

You can’t accommodate the Left

Sultan Knish explains the futility of trying to talk to, reason with, or accomodate the SJWs:

You can’t accommodate the left on social issues. You can’t accommodate it on fiscal issues. You can’t do it. Period.

The left exists to destroy you. It does not seek to co-exist with you. Its existence would lose all meaning. Any common ground will be used to temporarily achieve a goal before the useful idiots are kicked to the curb and denounced as bigots who are holding back progress.

The purpose of power is power. The left is not seeking to achieve a set of policy goals before kicking back and having a beer. The policy goals are means of destroying societies, nations and peoples before taking over. If you allow it a policy goal, it will ram that goal down your throat. It will implement it as abusively as it can possibly can before it moves on to the next battle.

It’s not about gay marriage. It’s not about cakes. It’s about power.

More fundamentally it’s about the difference in human nature between the people who want to be left alone and those who want power over others.

He’s absolutely right. There is ample historical precedent for their behavior and the eventual consequences of it. The moderate position is a complete nonstarter, as Brad Torgersen, among others, has learned. Read the whole thing.