Tag: trainwreck

Grrlbusters: lamer than expected

That’s not offensive to men, it’s just stupid, predictable, and not even a little bit funny.

When the punchline of your very expensive Grrrl Power movie, designed to prove that Women Can Too Be Funny in spite of the evidence to the contrary consisting of the entire written history of Man, builds up to a visual riff on… wait for it, wait for it… A WOMAN KICKING A MAN IN THE CROTCH, I think it’s safe to conclude that it’s going to fail.

And do so in a positively epic manner.

This is the sort of thing that happens when you’re dumb enough to let SJWs infest your organization. The problem isn’t that it’s going to be a failure. One has to take risks from time to time. But this failure was guaranteed from the very moment it was conceived.

As Stickwick observed, girl power is literal Idiocracy. A large collection of women spent $154 million to make a Ghostbusters-flavored OW MY BALLS.

The state of Star Citizen

Derek Smart provides a detailed, and devastating, summary of the current state of the troubled project:

The exodus of key talent from the four studios around the world has also been an on-going event this past year. To the extent that the project is so toxic, that at this point, anyone working on it has basically earned themselves a Black mark on their resume. Ridicule aside. But, in an unprecedented move, that hasn’t stopped two (John Dadley, Darian Vorlick) recent departures from immediately taking to social media to stress that the sky isn’t falling. Because, you know, it’s perfectly normal to bail on such a high profile project just as the general outlook is that it’s all falling apart, gamers are being screwed etc. A project which, as of this writing, has over 60 positions that it can’t fill. And this month alone, there are rumored to be at least four more high profile people looking to leave. But everything’s fine though. That’s just normal game development turnover you know. The thing about this industry is that we never – ever – forget.

Meanwhile, Sandi Gardiner, wife of Chris Roberts and “head of marketing” (<— lol!) was recently posting pictures of staff at the LA and UK studios on social media. Funny thing, some people (including the two aforementioned people) in those pictures are actually gone. And at least four are on their way out. I guess the teams over in Frankfurt and Austin, for all the hype they get for being key parts of the game’s development, don’t get their pictures taken.

Also in the past year, most of the media hype around the project has all but died down, as most (even those gamestar.de Shillizens over in Germany are heading South with their narrative) have started hedging their bets since all of this – sadly – has all boiled down to a “Derek Smart v Chris Roberts” narrative this past year. Even as they completely ignore the plight of gamers who unwittingly put their money into this crowd-funded project, and who previously had the security of refunds and financial accountability. Heck, even with the unprecedented ToS change that happened last month, very few in the media even wrote about that. And as a media contact said to me, simply put, nobody wants to deal with Shitizens descending on their sites and turning it into a war zone. Which to me begs the question: what about when the final collapse comes?

CIG/RSI has fermented so much ill will toward most of its very own backers, that when the Feds finally come calling, it won’t be because of anything that anyone has written, but from the many complaints that are being filed with various consumer protection agencies here and in various countries (Australians have it easy, nobody messes with consumers over there – get a refund!) where backers are frantically trying to get refunds.

And if your warning alarms haven’t started going off yet, recently in a new refund rejection letter template to backers, they have started saying that CIG is no longer the entity that should be reported to agencies regarding this project and/or refunds. They’re saying that RSI – a shell company before the past month – is now the one carrying the liability. This despite the fact that almost every single backer prior to the new ToS of June 1st, 2016, has a receipt for goods sold to them by CIG or one of the other many shell companies associated with this project.

There is more. There is considerably more. The upshot is that Derek and other skeptics were right to conclude, one year ago, that Star Citizen was not going to ship as advertised, and that the project is likely to end in a debacle of proportions that will make famous game industry failures of the past, including Battlecruiser 3000 AD, look like nothing more than modest appetizers to a royal feast.

The project has gradually morphed from overly ambitious project to troubled production to what appears to be an open pyramid scheme. At this point, it wouldn’t surprise me if it ended in recriminations, lawsuits, and criminal charges.

The bonfire of science

In which it is once more demonstrated that scientific evidence is VASTLY less reliable than other types of evidence, because, in most cases, no one ever bothers to actually check the results:

A whole pile of “this is how your brain looks like” MRI-based science has been invalidated because someone finally got around to checking the data.

The problem is simple: to get from a high-resolution magnetic resonance imaging scan of the brain to a scientific conclusion, the brain is divided into tiny “voxels”. Software, rather than humans, then scans the voxels looking for clusters.

When you see a claim that “scientists know when you’re about to move an arm: these images prove it”, they’re interpreting what they’re told by the statistical software.

Now, boffins from Sweden and the UK have cast doubt on the quality of the science, because of problems with the statistical software: it produces way too many false positives.

In this paper at PNAS, they write: “the most common software packages for fMRI analysis (SPM, FSL, AFNI) can result in false-positive rates of up to 70%. These results question the validity of some 40,000 fMRI studies and may have a large impact on the interpretation of neuroimaging results.”

For example, a bug that’s been sitting in a package called 3dClustSim for 15 years, fixed in May 2015, produced bad results (3dClustSim is part of the AFNI suite; the others are SPM and FSL).

That’s not a gentle nudge that some results might be overstated: it’s more like making a bonfire of thousands of scientific papers.

It is not even remotely reasonable to take scientific evidence at face value anymore, much less the pseudoscience so often being substituted for the results produced by genuine, if often flawed, scientody.

It is not even remotely surprising that the flaw the scientists failed to pick up in this situation was statistical, for as I’ve previously observed, most scientists have very little training in math or statistics, and despite their habit of regularly citing statistics, most of them are more or less statistically illiterate.

Never forget that while there are certainly some brilliant scientists, most of them are literal midwits as there are relatively few credentialed scientists with IQs over 132. A study of all the U.S. PhD recipients in 1958 reported an average IQ of 123; the Flynn effect notwithstanding, it is highly unlikely that the average IQ of today’s increasingly diverse and vibrant PhD recipients has risen since then.

Dunning-Kruger + Gamma = Aaron

The most intellectually challenged gamma at File 770, much to everyone’s surprise, doubles down.

I disagree. I think I’m very smart. And you’re dumb. I’m easily smarter than most people on this blog, including Vox. Vox said something pretty stupid, and instead of having the balls to man up, he doubled down. I’m not impressed. At all.

Easily smarter… than people with confirmed +3SD and +4SD IQs. I have no doubt whatsoever that he believes that, as he’s an example of both Dunning-Kruger Syndrome and Vox’s First Law in action.

What’s particularly funny about this is that he’s referring to this post. Notice how much of it is devoted to intelligence and immigration. Aaron, as wounded Gammas are wont to do, leaped to attack one minor point that he interpreted to be in error, then attempted to build an entire edifice of discredit and disqualify upon it, even going so far as to claim, on that basis, that “You always double down. I’ve never seen you concede any point at any time anywhere.”

No doubt this would confuse James Miller, Robert Murphy, and Thomas Woods, to say nothing of Ian Fletcher, to whom I have conceded considerably more than just a single point. Some other readers attempted to explain to Aaron that he’d missed the salient point, which he not only ended up rejecting but also claims I did not mean despite the readily available evidence to the contrary.

So, the immigration of stupid people has created conditions that make the super smart innovators have less babies, and that many of the super smart who have babies do so with Mexican fruit pickers and Somali gangsters and such like.

THAT’S what Vox meant when he said the immigration of stupid people has led to a lower average national IQ, and thus fewer smart people to be entrepreneurs.

If you SERIOUSLY think this is what Vox meant, then that’s a perfectly coherent position, although to my mind, not plausible.

But I for one, don’t think that’s what vox meant.

Of course it is part of what Vox meant, though only part, as should be obvious to anyone who is familiar with my writing about feminism’s effect on declining Western intelligence. One wonders what else I could have possibly meant, considering the following:


As the average IQ of the population declines, the number of members of the cognitive elite being born similarly decline. If the smart population mixes with the less intelligent immigrants, or even fails to breed at replacement levels, the ABSOLUTE number of smart people will decline. Do either of those scenarios happen to apply here?

Of course, both scenarios do. Aaron’s assertion of my “error” relied upon no native-immigrant intermixing and non-declining birthrates among the native cognitive elite, both false assumptions. What Aaron is exhibiting, in addition to the usual gamma “You are wrong and stupid due to incorrect assumptions on my part”, is typical SJW reasoning in action.They are binary thinkers, which renders complexity a complete mystery to them. That’s why they think that “well, it’s more complex than that” is a sufficient rebuttal, because the possibility of unraveling the complexities and successfully accounting for more than one influential factor is not only beyond their capabilities, but beyond their actions.

Notice how the SJW ends up relying upon his interpretation of what he imagines the other person to be thinking so that he can himself the victor, regardless of what every other observer concludes. The Secret King triumphs again, if only in his own head. But usually, the gamma doesn’t pay enough attention to what others are saying to even understand them correctly.

But isn’t that exactly the point? They’re in a position of weakness, so they’re using bluster and bravado to regain momentum. Thats what I said. File this under “making my point for me again” dpt. You’re good at that, vox.

No, it’s not exactly the point. Aaron failed to understand that I was correcting his statement that “pushing through their agenda in an even more ruthless and uncompromising way is the best tactic they have to deal with a moment of weakness”.  Yes, we both agree that the EU elite is in a position of weakness, which is precisely why bluster and bravado is not their best tactic if they wish the EU to survive. To the contrary, it’s a very risky bluff, which the Euroskeptics should call and exploit to the full, in order to destroy the entire edifice.

The sad thing about the gamma is that he neither knows himself nor his enemies. That is why he is, per Sun Tzu, destined for repeated failure:

YOU’RE answering ME, but it is *I* who engage in the detestable gamma behavior of never letting things go or lashing back – and since when are you known for letting go or refraining from lashing back? I get it. When you do it, it’s super duper genius rhetoric alpha Aristotle stuff, when anyone else, why, it’s a gamma. 

Yes, you are indeed a gamma male. No, you clearly don’t get it. Let’s consider the facts.

  • I very seldom write about Aaron or pay any attention to his activities. Even when I did, recently, he was not the topic at hand. The battle on A Game of Thrones was.
  • Aaron frequently opines about me and my various activities, as a search of File 770’s comments will demonstrate.
  • Aaron is here commenting repeatedly on my blog. That’s fine, but the point is, he came here to do it because he is still feeling butthurt about his risible defense of the LEEEROY JENKINS strategy in the Stark-Bolton battle. His response was so predictable that another game-savvy reader even predicted it.
  • I often respond to critics who comment on this blog. That was not a unique event.
  • I let go of most attacks directed at me. As numerous critics who comment here can testify, I don’t even reply to most of them, let alone lash back at all of them. Moreover, I am quite willing to let bygones be bygones, as numerous commenters with whom I have had differences in the past can also testify.

Unlike the gamma, I don’t dwell upon past injuries and insults, licking my wounds and biding my time until an opportunity to lash back presents itself. Nor do I feel any need to reinterpret past defeats as victories, or pretend to myself and others that my failures are successes. I don’t pretend to understand why gammas behave in this way, but I have observed the pattern of behavior often enough to be able to reliably predict it. Since most male SF-SJWs are gammas, it’s not hard to anticipate their reactions to any given stimulus.

UPDATE: Oh dear. Timing, it seems, is everything.

Aaron: It is masculine to admit when you’re wrong. Just very few people do it, and certainly not vox.

Two hours ago on Twitter:

Supreme Dark Lord ‏@voxday
Daikatana was, like my Rebel Moon designs, too ambitious for its own good.

John Romero ‏@romero
it wasn’t an ambitious design that was Daikatana’s problem

Supreme Dark Lord ‏@voxday
I stand corrected.

The military geniuses at File 770

I never stop finding it amusing how the File 770 idiots will defend literally ANY position rather than accept the fact that I am correct about anything, no matter how obvious. Aaron is reliably the least intelligent commenter there, as he demonstrates with this comment in defense of the tactical incompetence demonstrated by military commanders Jon Snow and Ramsay Bolton on A Game of Thrones:

I wonder if Beale actually watched the show, or if he just had it badly recounted to him. Bolton sent his cavalry first after goading Snow into the open, clearly hoping to kill Snow before help could arrive. It was only because the Stark cavalry counter charged that there was a cavalry battle. There was never an option for Bolton to receive the Stark cavalry with pikemen, because the Stark cavalry weren’t going to charge them but for Snow being exposed. For their part, the Starks had no pikemen to deploy against the Bolton cavalry.

All of Beale’s complaints about the battle that follow assume that Bolton could have simply waited for the Stark forces to launch their cavalry at the Bolton line and stop them with pikes, which would have required abject stupidity on the part of Snow. The complaint about not being prepared for the Knights of the Vale to arrive assume that Bolton could see the future and predict the arrival of reinforcements that even Snow didn’t know were coming. To be fair, Bolton should have had scouts out to look for additional forces, but he thought he knew the entire disposition of the Stark forces already.

In short, it seems that Beale didn’t pay attention to what was shown on screen, and didn’t understand what was happening.

That conclusion seems entirely credible, as anyone who has ever read A Throne of Bones, read any of the books by Lind or van Creveld published by Castalia, or played ASL will no doubt agree.

  1. Aaron is defending how Ramsay sent out his ENTIRE cavalry to ride down a single man on foot instead simply killing Snow with a single arrow himself, or having his entire archery contingent turn him into a pincushion with dozens of arrows. Bolton had absolutely no need to put his cavalry at risk, or even to issue an order to anyone at all, to kill the enemy general.
  2. What competent general would fail to understand that the enemy cavalry might ride out if he was dumb enough to give up his tactical and numerical advantages advancing it while leaving his infantry behind? At least the British tank commander who drove past his American infantry screen into the sights of the German tank destroyer in Band of Brothers was obeying what he knew to be suicidally stupid orders.
  3. There was an option for Bolton to receive the Stark cavalry with pikemen; all he had to do was order his cavalry to disengage and circle back as soon as the Stark cavalry charged while advancing his pikemen. Ancient and medieval armies did this sort of thing all the time, particularly experienced, well-equipped, well-trained armies of the sort Bolton was commanding. That would have actually been a barely credible ruse that would depend upon the Stark cavalry being dumb enough to a) believe Bolton was launching a cavalry-first attack and b) respond to it with their own charge.
  4. First, Bolton could have simply waited for Stark to launch their cavalry, or their infantry, for that matter, at them. Stark was attacking, after all, and Bolton had the leisure to choose to engage or not, as he saw fit. Second, the statement that it was implausible because it would have required “abject stupidity on the part of Snow” is laughable, considering that Snow is observably dumb enough to single-handedly charge the entire enemy army by himself.
  5. Bolton didn’t need to see the future to know the Knights of the Vale were on their way to the battlefield. As a West Pointer noted yesterday, this marks the fourth time on the show that reinforcements have unexpectedly arrived and saved the day, because apparently no one in Westeros has ever heard of pickets, patrols, or even establishing a command post on a hillside that provides good visibility of the surroundings in all four directions. And it’s not as if Bolton was unaware of the relationship between Littlefinger and his wife or should have failed to at least anticipate the possibility of the Vale’s intervention. Remember, Ramsay Bolton was the commander who beat the man lauded as the best general in Westeros.
  6. And there it is. The Gamma tell: “it seems….”

It’s clear that neither the producers of the episode, nor Aaron, has any idea how cavalry was, and is, used on the battlefield. It is a secondary arm; it is the infantry that is “the queen of the battlefield”. Hollywood likes horses because they are exciting and dramatic, but one should never allow oneself to be misguided into thinking that the tactics one is seeing on the screen are even remotely reasonable, let alone realistic or historically plausible.

It’s too bad, because during the planning session, it sounded as if they were setting up for a recreation of the Battle of Cannae and its famous double-envelopment. I wasn’t surprised when they didn’t, though, as soon as I saw the cavalry being prominently featured. Contra Hollywood, cavalry is primarily used to launch flanking and rear attacks, to strike the killing blow, and to exploit the victory that the infantry has already won, not to play the primary role in the outcome of the battle.

You can’t kick us out; we already left

This is a remarkable demonstration of the cuckservative’s complete failure to understand the #AltRight. He actually thinks that calling us racist, then calling for us to be read out of the conservative movement is something meaningful to any of us.

When my colleague here at PJ Media, Walter Hudson, wrote an article about the alternative right (or alt-right) titled “The Alt-Right Is Evil and Must Be Opposed,” I hoped that they would strike back by showing him that he was wrong about them.

We don’t care what the cuckservative Right to which we are the alternative thinks, says, or hopes. We know perfectly well that they will follow their masters’ leads in calling us evil and opposing us. We are not on their side, as they are merely the controlled opposition for the SJW-dominated Left.

These commenters all share some specific views — views that are diametrically opposed to traditional conservatism. First, they look at people as part of “a tribe,” a word they actually use rather frequently. There is the “white tribe,” the “black tribe,” and the “Hispanic tribe.” They identify with the former: the “white tribe.” This makes them collectivists.

Fine. Liberalism has transformed into progressivism. Libertarianism has revealed itself to be irrelevant and insane. Individuals are not capable of ensuring human freedom on their own; that is something that can only be done through a collective effort. The Constitution of the United States is one example of such a tribal and collective effort. But it is wrong to say the #AltRight uniformly identifies with the white tribe. We support the right of tribes of every kind to exist, regardless of which one we happen to identify with.

Just as one can subscribe to Holocaustianity without being a Jew, one can support the efforts of the white tribe to survive intact and preserve Western civilization without being white.

Secondly, they all seem to believe that there is a grand conspiracy aimed at destroying the “white race.” Neo-Nazis have used the phrase “white genocide” for decades, but until recently, normal conservatives didn’t want to have anything to do with it. Clearly, the alt-right has embraced the concept.

There is, and you have to be an absolute idiot to fail to notice it. We even know the name of the plan adopted by the global elites, the Kalergi Plan, originally conceived by the half-Austrian, half-Japanese father of the European Union, Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi.

“The man of the future will be of mixed race. Today’s races and classes will gradually disappear owing to the vanishing of space, time, and prejudice. The Eurasian-Negroid race of the future, similar in its appearance to the Ancient Egyptians, will replace the diversity of peoples with a diversity of individuals.

“Instead of destroying European Jewry, Europe, against its own will, refined and educated this people into a future leader-nation through this artificial selection process. No wonder that this people, that escaped Ghetto-Prison, developed into a spiritual nobility of Europe. Therefore a gracious Providence provided Europe with a new race of nobility by the Grace of Spirit.”
– Richard Nikolaus Coudenhove-Kalergi, Practical Idealism, 1924

One can’t really dismiss it as “conspiracy theory” when one can read it right there on Wikipedia.

Third, the alt-right believes that American culture is related to “whiteness.” To them, American culture is white culture. This means that the struggle to “preserve” American culture is actually a struggle to preserve the “white race.”

American culture is white culture. It has been from the start, and it was intended to be limited to that from the start.

In all of the naturalization acts from 1790 to 1906 the privilege of naturalization was confined to white persons [260 U.S. 178, 193], although the exact wording of the various statutes was not always the same. If Congress in 1906 desired to alter a rule so well and so long established it may be assumed that its purpose would have been definitely disclosed and its legislation to that end put in unmistakable terms….
– TAKAO OZAWA v. United States, 1922

America and American culture will not survive the mestizoation of the Kalergi Plan. It is not intended to survive it. Neither is Germany or German culture, Britain or British culture, Japan or Japanese culture, India or Indian culture. This is why the Alt-Right is more than just the defense of the white tribe and Western civilization, it is the defense of humanity in all its glorious diversity against its forced amalgamation into La Raza Cosmica.

These people have nothing to do with conservatism. More precisely, they represent the complete opposite: conservatism is focused on individuals; they are focused on groups or, as they call them, tribes. They’re collectivists, and racist collectivists at that. Decades ago, the conservative movement purged itself of  the John Birch Society. It’s up to modern conservatives and libertarians to get rid of the alt-right.

Go ahead, cucky. We’re amazed that it took you this long to figure out that we’re not even on your side. You see, we already decided to abandon both conservatism and libertarianism because your ideologies are incoherent, your histories are false, your ideals are irrelevant, and your failures are manifest and manifold. To survive, Western civilization is going to need something else. Western civilization is going to need an alternative.

UPDATE: It gets even better. This great champion of conservatism is a Dutch convert to Islam. Once more demonstrating that conservatism conserves nothing.

Ladies and gentlemen, your third party candidate!

Bill Kristol’s Israel First party unveils their stealth Trump killer, who we are reliably informed is “an independent candidate–an impressive one, with a strong team and a real chance.”

Yeah, so, about that…. it appears Kristol was talking about David French. National Review’s David French. By whom, we mean this sad sap.

Hi-freaking-larious. In an nationalism-driven election, Israel First is going to try to beat the nationalist candidate with a literal cuckservative. No wonder even the #NeverTrump types are completely underwhelmed.

Laura Ingraham Verified account ‏@IngrahamAngle
Kristol’s pick! That would be the same David French who defended Kevin Williamson?

Byron York Verified account ‏@ByronYork
My sense is much of the commentary isn’t really about David French. More about implausibility of choice after so much hype.

David Burge ‏@iowahawkblog
I think David French would be a better prez than Trump/Hillary/Bernie, but then again so would Fat Bearded Libertarian Guy in Thong

Ben Shapiro Verified account ‏@benshapiro
Trumpsters are going to have a rough time convincing people that it’s somehow David French’s fault if their man doesn’t win.

A.J. Delgado ‏@AJDelgado13
I only know that David French name bc I think i’ve seen it in a few NRO articles I hated…

Ed Morrissey Verified account ‏@EdMorrissey
The “major figure” for an indie bid is … @DavidAFrench? I like and respect David, but this can’t be right.

Ricky Vaughn ‏@Ricky_Vaughn99
DAVID FRENCH FOR PRESIDENT: “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for our wives’ sons.”

 “I gather Donald Trump said I’m a loser. I’ve won some and I’ve lost some, but one thing I’ve always tried not to be is a roaring jackass.”
– Bill Kristol

Can’t say that anymore, Billy. Do you hear that sound? That is the ENTIRE INTERNET laughing at you. Even Susan Estrich, the architect of the Dukakis debacle, is shaking her head and wondering what planet you think you’re orbiting.

Anyhow, I think concerns about the potential effects of a third-party candidate on Trump’s prospects can be safely dismissed now.

SJWs are worse than Nazis

That’s what so many SJWs and neocons simply don’t understand.

Charlie McGregor ‏@CharlieMcGrego6
I am anti jew, never claimed not to be. Trump is who people are claiming is racist and xenophobic. Don’t strawman.

Jett Goldsmith ‏@JettGoldsmith
Oh my, and you live in the same state as me. Hold on while I capture your tweets and get you fired.

Jett Goldsmith ‏@JettGoldsmith
I’m trying to career police this guy, at this point. America doesn’t take kindly to Nazis.

Supreme Dark Lord ‏@voxday
That’s what you don’t understand. Most Americans prefer actual Nazis to you SJWs.

Why are SJWs worse than Nazis? Because Nazis are authoritarian rather than totalitarian. Nazis are willing to leave most people alone. And Nazis actually support the national interest. Nazis are not dyscivilizational; a society founded on National Socialist principles may not be what you or I would prefer, but it is actually capable of functioning.

SJWs, on the other hand, are totalitarian, less tolerant than Nazis, unwilling to leave anyone alone, and are hostile to the national interest. SJWs are dyscivic and dyscivilizational; an SJW-converged society will collapse in disarray and demographic decline nearly as fast as any SJW-converged institution.

Now, I am not a Nazi. I am a nationalist, not a socialist, and I support far less of the National Socialist program outlined in the Munich Manifesto than the average Democrat does. As a student of military history, my mind boggles at the outrageous stupidity of both the Nazi and the EUzi attempts to imitate Napoleon and impose a continental system on the nations of Europe.

But if my choices are limited to choosing between SJWs and National Socialists, if I must choose between totalitarian globalists and National Socialists, like most Americans, like most Europeans, then I will choose the latter every single time.

It should go without saying that recognizing one devil is worse than another does not make one a devil-worshipper, although that won’t stop the usual suspects from falsely characterizing one’s preference. Because SJWs always lie.

Let them screech. The Freedom Party is on the rise. AfD is on the rise. The Swedish Democrats are on the rise. The Volkspartei is on the rise. Movimento 5 Stelle is on the rise. Golden Dawn is on the rise. The West is facing an existential crisis and we have much bigger concerns than those responsible for it calling us outdated and ludicrously inaccurate names.

What in the actual….

Cruz/Carly 2016: What’s the point, exactly?

U.S. Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz, in a last-ditch bid to slow front-runner Donald Trump’s momentum, named former business executive Carly Fiorina on Wednesday as his vice presidential running mate should he win the nomination.

After crushing losses to Trump in five nominating contests in the Northeast on Tuesday, Cruz praised Fiorina, a former presidential rival, as a principled fighter for conservative values who would be a valuable ally on the campaign trail.

“Carly is a vice presidential nominee who I think is superbly skilled, superbly gifted at helping unite this party,” the U.S. senator from Texas told a rally in Indianapolis, the capital of Indiana.

The Midwestern state is the next battleground for selecting the Republican and Democratic presidential candidates for the Nov. 8 presidential election and is shaping up to be Cruz’s best – and perhaps last – chance to block Trump’s march to the nomination.

Cruz acknowledged it was unusual to choose a running mate so early in the race. Traditionally, the winners of the Republican and Democratic nominating races announce their running mates in the period between clinching the nomination and summer’s national conventions.

I didn’t take seriously the claims that Ted Cruz might be autistic until now. Seriously, on what planet is anyone going to support HP-killer Fiorina, particularly in California? I have no idea what he’s trying to accomplish with this except perhaps to submarine his campaign without actually shutting it down.

They certainly make a fascinating pair from a visual perspective. Both their faces look about 15 percent melted.

As I said previously, it’s over. Like it or not, Donald Trump is the Republican Party nominee.

Cargo Cult debate

One thing science fetishists can’t bear is to have their obvious ignorance of science pointed out:

Babak Golshahi ‏@bgolshahi1
I love being able to back up what I say with hard evidence, peer reviewed scientific consensus.

Supreme Dark Lord ‏@voxday
50 percent of which is proven to be wrong when replication is attempted. You’re out of date.

Babak Golshahi ‏@bgolshahi1
replication of what? You got a peer reviewed piece or really any article that backs up your claim? Waiting.

Supreme Dark Lord ‏@voxday
Mindlessly repeating the words “peer review” and citing “articles” shows you’re a low-IQ ignoramus.

Babak Golshahi ‏@bgolshahi1
you apologize for that or you’re blocked

Supreme Dark Lord ‏@voxday
Block away, moron. It won’t fix peer review or change the fact that you’re both stupid and ignorant.

Babak Golshahi ‏@bgolshahi1
You are blocked from following @bgolshahi1 and viewing @bgolshahi1’s Tweets.

I wish more of these morons would use Randi Harper’s anti-GG autoblocker, so I wouldn’t be subjected to their repetitive idiocy.

It is important to understand that if you’re prone to demanding “peer reviewed pieces” or shouting “logical fallacy” at people with whom you are arguing, you’re probably a midwit who doesn’t really understand what you’re talking about. In both these, and other similar cases, what we have is a person who has seen someone else win an argument successfully refuting another individual’s argument by comparing scientific evidence or identifying a specific logical fallacy being committed, and trying to imitate them without understanding what the other person was actually doing.

But if there is no genuine substance behind the demand or the identification, if you don’t have your own competing scientific evidence or you can’t point out the actual logical fallacy – and there is a massive difference between the set of flawed syllogisms and the subset of logical fallacies – then you have no business talking about such things.

The failure to cite a peer-reviewed study means nothing in the absence of competing citations. The claim of logical fallacy means nothing when the precise fallacy is not identified. If you don’t understand those things, stop embarrassing yourself by arguing with people and start reading.

Otherwise, you’re no different than the ignorant South Pacific islander building runways in the hopes that the magic sky machines will descend bearing gifts.