Tag: trainwreck

Sperg designs brave new world

Unsurprisingly, it fails to account for how normal human beings prefer to live their lives:

In 2008, I found myself speaking with the big boss himself, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. I was in the second year of my Ph.D. research on Facebook at Curtin University. And I had questions.

Why did Facebook make everyone be the same for all of their contacts? Was Facebook going to add features that would make managing this easier?

To my surprise, Zuckerberg told me that he had designed the site to be that way on purpose. And, he added, it was “lying” to behave differently in different social situations.

Up until this point, I had assumed Facebook’s socially awkward design was unintentional. It was simply the result of computer nerds designing for the rest of humanity, without realising it was not how people actually want to interact.

The realisation that Facebook’s context collapse was intentional not only changed the whole direction of my research but provides the key to understanding why Facebook may not be so great for your mental health.

The eventual collapse of Facebook is going to be positively epic. The entire operation is simply another attempt to fit the square peg of human behavior into the round hole of Mark Zuckerberg’s imaginary world.

The significance of this revelation, which is not exactly a surprise to those of us who have noticed Zuckerberg’s bizarre behavior, is that Facebook is going to make increasingly bad decisions based on its inherently false assumptions about people.

Don’t smoke your own supply

I regret to observe that Marvel decides to postpone its suicide.

Every year, the LGBTQ+ advocacy group GLAAD recognizes and awards a selection of television shows, films, and books that feature powerful portrayals of queer people. This year, a number of Marvel’s comics were recognized for the contributions they’ve made to queer culture, but those nominations were bittersweet for one incredibly disappointing reason: They’ve all been cancelled.

America (from Gabby Rivera and Joe Quinones), Black Panther: World of Wakanda (Roxane Gay, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Yona Harvey, Alitha E. Martinez, and Afua Richardson), and Iceman (Sina Grace, Alessandro Vitti, and Robert Gill) have each been nominated for GLAAD’s 2018 Outstanding Comic Book category, and with good reason. Over the course of their respective arcs, each series explored various parts of the queer experience in ways that, frankly, are new for comics. Iceman’s dug into Bobby Drake’s coming out as a gay man later in life; America’s focused on what it’s like to be a queer immigrant going to college for the first time; and World of Wakanda delved into the complicated intimate lives of the Dora Milaje.

But all of these books recently met their ends, as so many new, progressive comic books do these days. Low sales led to their cancellation just as an entirely new audience was sure to hear about the books, specifically because of their being nominated for GLAAD awards and other honors.

Note to self: in the unlikely event GLAAD offers to recognize or award any Arkhaven comic, decline the honor.

The ridiculous thing about trying to appeal to the LGBLT-whatever crowd is that it simply isn’t very big. And since the world of comics isn’t all that big either, you’re putting yourself in the unenviable position of selling to a fraction of a fraction. That might work for a small indy publisher, but it’s not going to be viable for the market leaders.

Argue about inclusiveness all you like, celebrate diversity and tolerance and progress if you are so inclined, but at the end of the day, your core market is always going to determine the extent of your sales potential. And since an ever-increasing number of people are sick to death of SJWs, that’s why I’m quite confident that openly anti-SJW material is going to prove to be considerably more popular than anyone expects, be it a business book, a comic book, or a beer-holder.

Fortunately, I’m confident that DC is going to more than make up for Marvel’s halting baby steps away from the precipice.

Ye cats….

Steve Sailer observes that the civic nationalists really are as dumb as they appear.

They Really Do Believe Emma Lazarus’s Poem Is “The Foundational Principle of Our Country”

Well, you certainly can’t claim that the country doesn’t deserve its fate. Especially the country that was founded in 1883. I don’t think you have to be pig-ignorant to be a civic nationalist, but it observably helps.

Mountain View quakes with fear

Google’s Colin McMillen FEARS FOR HIS LIFE because my ideas are so terrible, my mien is so frightful, and my gaze is so lethal that my mere existence on the same planet puts specific Googler’s lives in clear and present danger!

Indeed, the mere act of emailing the Supreme Dark Lord clearly amounts to recklessly endangering human lives. Or rather, it would if SJWs did a better job of passing for human. You know they’re going to blame the next earthquake in the Bay Area on me. But then, who is to say that they would be wrong to do so?

It must be quite the little witch hunt they have going there. Of course, if they ever do discover the various sources of the leaks, I’m pretty sure that at least one identity will absolutely shock them to their core.

And this is why you don’t chase money

As I wrote previously, Bannon really is not a strategic thinker. It’s much better to build a broad, self-sustaining support network than depend upon the momentary whims of the ultra-rich:

Former White House chief strategist Stephen Bannon has reportedly lost the support of billionaire backer Rebekah Mercer after he suggested he might run for president himself.

A person close to Mercer told The Washington Post that she no longer supports Bannon. According to the report, Mercer was frustrated with Bannon’s strategy in the Alabama Senate special election and pulled her funding after he told other major conservative donors that Mercer would back Bannon in his own presidential bid.

Bannon, now head of Breitbart News, supported Alabama GOP Senate candidate Roy Moore, who was dogged by allegations of sexual misconduct, in his eventual defeat to now-Sen. Doug Jones (D) in December.

“The core constituency for Breitbart is what you would call the Trump Deplorables. That’s the audience. And if they’re asked to choose between Steve and Trump, they’re going to choose Trump. That’s clear,” a person familiar with Breitbart News’s operations told the Post.

It was unclear from the report whether Mercer, who bought a stake of Breitbart News from her father in November, will continue to back the right-wing news site. The report said she is no longer backing any future Bannon projects.

To be honest, this initial support for Milo and Bannon, followed by sudden withdrawals of that support, looks more than a little strategic itself.  And seriously, the partnership was always destined to fail if a loose cannon like Bannon can cut his own supply lines with nothing more than some obviously unserious musings about his own political prospects.

Marvel’s biggest screw-up in 2017

At least, according to the SJWs in the comics media:

#1: Marvel Chairman Ike Perlmutter continues to be good friends with, official advisor to, and financial supporter of President Donald Trump

Marvel has made a big effort to brush off criticism that they’ve abandoned their commitment to diversity in 2017 after saying that they heard from retailers that people didn’t want it and then canceling a crapload of books with LGBTQ and POC leads at the end of the year. Marvel editor Jordan White even took to Twitter to ask people to please keep buying Marvel books so that they can get their diversity back on in 2018.

But how can Marvel Comics be a positive force for social justice when their Chairman is good friends with Donald Trump and financially supported his presidential campaign? Do a couple of comic books with more representation even out financial support for a President that has tried to ban Muslims from entering the country, wants to deport immigrants, has openly bragged about sexual assault on tape, and done so many other terrible things that it would take a dozen listicles to name them all? For every dollar spent on a book promoting a positive social message, how many ended up in the coffers of the Trump campaign through donations from Perlmutter? What would the ratio need to be before any positive benefit is canceled out?

Right. THAT is certainly the problem. Any more questions about what convergence is?

The jar ran out

He tries so hard to be relevant. To be significant. To matter. But not all the agent- and publisher-pumping in the world can disguise the fact that the grand decade-long attempt to transform a blogger turned midlist writer of color-by-number Heinlein pastiche into a leading author has failed.

John Scalzi@scalzi
Actual thing I just said as I was cleaning my office: “Damn it, *now* where am I going to put this special citation from the Ohio House of Representatives?!?”

(it was under a pile of books before)

Artie Fufkin, Polymer Records@FrmerJoe
Actual thing I thought while reading this tweet: “Scalzi needs everyone to know that he got citations from the Ohio House of Representatives and Senate? How pathetic is that?”

John Scalzi@scalzi
(pats head)

That’s because you’re an asshole, child.

Artie Fufkin, Polymer Records@FrmerJoe
Wow! Killer comeback! I can see why your cutting wit is feared throughout the land.

This naturally raises the question, how would a dumpy little guy like Scalzi pat anyone on the head in the first place? He’s 5’4″ and nearly 200 pounds; he’s little more than a gelatinous blob of SJW, snark, and insecurity. Anyhow, I preferred this response.

Spacebunny Day @Spacebunnyday
Actual thing I said when I was cleaning out my attic: “Damn it, *now* where am I going to put my fifth place ribbon from my jr. high track and field day?!”

The most amusing thing about this exchange is that it’s the consequence of Scalzi’s attempt to address the very uncomfortable fact that VP is now nearly ten times more popular than Whatever by his own chosen metric of importance. IT’S LIKE THE BOUNDLESS HELL OF ELEMENTARY SCHOOL ALL OVER AGAIN! IT WASN’T SUPPOSED TO BE THIS WAY! NETFLIX! PARAMOUNT! MOBILE GAMES! SPECIAL FREAKING CITATION!

Well, Scalzi certainly is special, to put it mildly. Whatever happened to that jar of ZFG? It must have run out.

A Christmas parody

I’ve seldom been more proud of my progeny. We went to a local church tonight for a Christmas Eve service, but instead of the intellectually formidable young pastor who normally preaches there, it was a woman who apparently serves the church in some administrative capacity officiating.

As you might expect, she promptly began talking about herself, then talked about herself some more, then invited all the children to come forward in order to bask in her proximity. She proceeded to completely ignore the congregants in favor of trying to charm the children, prompting me to observe that women in religious leadership inevitably resort to either a) entertaining the children or b) sacrificing them.

After about half an hour of this performance art, one child commented that the ersatz pastor had yet to mention either God or Jesus Christ. And when she did finally get around to addressing Christmas, it was to tell the story from the perspective of a 12-year-old girl living in Bethlehem. For a moment, I thought I was going to have to physically restrain another child from going full “bullwhips in the Temple” on the woman; we finally left in the middle of her animated monologue about what that first Christmas would have felt like to her younger self had her she been there before any of the kids removed a shoe and winged it at her head. Nor were we the only people who walked out early.

The rest of the family was surprised when we returned home much earlier than expected, but as I pointed out, we would have had a considerably more genuine Christian experience had we simply stayed home and watched A Charlie Brown Christmas again. But for all of that, it was an early Christmas present for me in seeing first-hand how the younger generation is more than ready to go full Deus Vult on the cursed churchians.

And speaking of the unlikely Christmas cartoon classic:

Peanuts creator Charles Schulz was a man of deep faith, and was unwavering in his insistence that the Christmas special featuring his beloved characters also feature the reason for the holiday itself: the birth of Jesus Christ.

Schulz ingeniously developed the script so that Linus’ soliloquy about angels telling the shepherds the good news about the Savior’s birth is central to the plot. There is no way to edit out the Bible verse and still have the story make sense. Tweaks have been made to the special over the years — minor edits to color and sound effects, references to sponsor Coca-Cola removed after the original broadcast — but Jesus always remained.

And so we have this wonderful annual reminder of the true meaning of Christmas, delivered by a child’s voice in an animated cartoon.

Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace and goodwill towards men. 

Like a prince to the slaughter

It is increasingly evident that Meghan Markle is going to chew up Prince Harry before she spits him out and walks off with millions. She is a female superpredator – there are even fairly reliable rumors that she did an amount of escorting before her big television break – and he clearly has absolutely no idea what he is in for. I find it astonishing that the monarchy is permitting him to marry this woman even though there is almost no chance he’ll ever get anywhere near the throne.

Prince Harry will not be taking part in the traditional royal Boxing Day shoot because he doesn’t want to upset his fiancee Meghan Markle.

The 33-year-old was just 12 when he took part in his first festive shoot but has pulled out because Miss Markle is a keen animal rights campaigner.

Miss Markle, 36, doesn’t like hunting and Prince Harry is said to have shocked gamekeepers at Sandringham after he informed them he won’t be there on December 26.

Instead, his brother Prince William, 35, and 69-year-old father Prince Charles, will take part in the shoot. A royal source told The Sun: ‘The Boxing Day shoot was always going to be a tricky issue. Meghan is a keen animal rights campaigner and doesn’t like hunting in any form. ‘Harry loves it and has always been out there on Boxing Day. But if it means breaking with long-standing royal traditions to avoid upsetting her, so be it.

This promises to be the worst ending for an English royal since King Charles I met the headman. And, you may recall, that started with an unwise wedding too. It’s just… embarrassing, really.

What ARE the odds?

Such a coincidence….

The third man killed in the deadly Amtrak derailment south of Seattle has been identified as an Auburn child pornography collector and an outspoken proponent of child sexual abuse, whose crimes were first detailed in a 2013 SeattlePI story.

The days since the deadly Amtrak derailment between Tacoma and Olympia saw two of the three fatally injured victims, Jim Hamre and Zack Willhoite, celebrated for their love of trains. Hamre, 61, and Willhoite, 35, were close friends and volunteers on the board of All Aboard Washington, a rail advocacy organization.

Benjamin Gran’s story is more complicated.

Gran, a leading member of an online forum dedicated to promoting the sexual abuse of children, served a federal prison term after he was caught with a vast collection of child pornography videos.

The Pierce County coroner’s office said Wednesday that Gran, 40, died of multiple traumatic injuries sustained in Monday’s crash. His death came six years after child pornography investigator came knocking on his apartment door.