Tag: trainwreck

Words are magic

A minor dialogue on Twitter cracked me up today. To put it in context, some scientists and science fetishists on Twitter were in an uproar over my assertion that SCIENTIFIC PEER REVIEW was not only unreliable, but was nothing more than glorified proofreading. They argued that SCIENTIFIC PEER REVIEW was all about replicating experiments and testing conclusions, not merely reading over the material in order to make sure the author wasn’t smoking crack.

One guy even demanded to know if I knew what “peer” meant. Because, you know, that totally changes the process.

Finally, I asked a scientist how many peer reviews he had done. Between 10 and 30 was the answer. Fair enough. Then I asked him how many experiments he had replicated as part of those SCIENTIFIC PEER REVIEWS.

None. Or to put in scientific mathematical terms, zero. Also known as “the null set”.

And what did he actually do in scientifically peer-reviewing these papers? Well, he read them and occasionally made some suggestions for improving them.

[INSERT FACE PALM OF YOUR CHOICE HERE]

That is why I am strongly considering changing my title from Lead Editor of Castalia House to Lead Scientific Peer Reviewer. Because then, you see, we won’t merely be publishing fiction, we’ll be publishing PEER REVIEWED SCIENCE.

UPDATE: This was Real Live Scientist with More than TEN Proofreads Peer Reviews David Whitcombe’s response to finding out that scientists with considerably more experience agreed with me.

David Whitcombe ‏@hauxton
Ooh
You wrote a blog.
Still misunderstanding peer review.
Over your head in guess
 
David Whitcombe ‏@hauxton
Laughable Dunning Kruger

Thereby supporting my hypothesis that SJWs always double down.

Confessions of a sociopath

Either John Scalzi gets a little forgetful when he’s virtue-signaling or he is even more openly sociopathic than his stone cold “give no fucks” mentality would indicate:

John Scalzi Verified account ‏@scalzi 4 February 2016
Related, writing something that shows you’re a horrible person and then proclaiming “it’s satire!” neither makes it satire or excuses you.

Apparently this is neither satire nor excusable:

“I’m a rapist. I’m one of those men who likes to force myself on women without their consent or desire and then batter them sexually. The details of how I do this are not particularly important at the moment — although I love when you try to make distinctions about “forcible rape” or “legitimate rape” because that gives me all sorts of wiggle room — but I will tell you one of the details about why I do it: I like to control women and, also and independently, I like to remind them how little control they have.” – John Scalzi, 25 October 2012 

So, which is it, Johnny? Are you a rapist? Or is it satire?

“The embodiment of white nerd privilege”

Wil Wheaton has been called out for going against the SJW Narrative. It was inevitable, of course. After all, we have been reliably informed that as a white man, he is playing on the Easiest Difficulty Level:

Like many of you, I’ve been aware of Wil Wheaton’s outspoken position as a Bro-Feminist for quite some time. Occasionally, he’ll retweet or even say something that might seem profound. But I’m also not alone in suspecting that, beneath his “yay, feminism!” facade, lies deep-rooted misogyny. Recently, he proved my suspicions correct when he attempted to brand Clinton supporters a rather disgusting sexist slur that I will not repeat.

Make no mistake. Wheaton is the embodiment of white male nerd privilege. This “actor” had one role back in the 1980s that people actually remember, and somehow he’s more famous than the trailblazing women who had more prominent roles than him in the same fucking series. He’s parlayed his “I’m just like you!” nerd celebrity status into a recurring role as himself on a hit sitcom. He doesn’t even have to act, he literally just shows up and gets paid just for being him. How much more privileged can a creepy white dude get?

No wonder he’s loved so much by nerds. He’s the epitome of what all nerds want to be – rewarded by everyone just for being their precious, nerdy selves. He even got a “hit” YouTube series where he gets to hang out and play board games with people who have actual accomplishments. He even drags his wife on the show every now and then, as if to prove to all his little nerdling fans that hot girls really do like him.

Speaking of which, how creepy is it that his YouTube show seems to be an excuse for him to spend time with women who wouldn’t give him the time of day otherwise?

Anyway, back to my point. Wheaton has shown his true colours with his recent sexist campaign against Hillary Clinton…. Frankly, the man reminds me of the rapist Jian Ghomeshi. His espousing
of progressive values is nothing more than a mask. And we’ve just seen
his mask slip, giving a peek at the sexist evil hidden beneath.

Wait, hold on… okay, never mind. Wil Wheaton apologized. And as we all know, an apology always suffices to make the SJWs go away.

A predictable outcome

The Oregon Militia situation finally turned lethal:

“I want the world to know how my father was murdered today. His hands were in the air and he was shot in the face by the American authorities. Ammon Bundy reported there are 6 witnesses to this evil.”
Posted by Thara Tenney on Tuesday, January 26, 2016

Her testimony was echoed by another eyewitness, Victoria Sharp, who was in the car with Finicum when the group were pulled over by cops and federal agents. Sharp claims that Finicum put his hands out of the car window and asked the police to allow the women to leave the car.

“They shot at him, but they missed him,” said Sharp, adding that the group then attempted to drive away in the car but were shot at again by police.

“When we crashed and stopped for a second, he got out of the car, he had his hands in the air, he’s like ‘just shoot me then’….and they did, they shot him dead,” said Sharp.

“He was just walking, with his hands in the air, I swear to God, and they shot him dead and after he was down on the ground, shot him three more times,” said Sharp, adding that the vehicle was again “bombarded with bullets” as well as tear gas rounds.

Sharp says that the group tried to “find something white” so they could display it as a sign of surrender. She challenges news reports that only six shots were fired, asserting, “they shot at least 120 shots altogether.”

Sharp also claims that none of the individuals in the car pulled out a gun at any point and that the incident was an “ambush” with “FBI snipers in the trees” surrounding the vehicle.

Whatever. I have no idea what these people were thinking they were going to accomplish by occupying a wildlife refuge center, but I can testify, from my father’s experience, that no one is going to “wake up” and no one is going to be inspired to do anything as a result of it. They’re just going to be vilified, jailed, and forgotten.

It’s like a tragic parody. And notice that the moment the government took action, they tried to surrender. Never play or posture at violence. And never threaten violence unless you are fully prepared for your enemy to resort to it.

UK debates Trump ban

And even Piers Morgan, who is far from the brightest bulb in Albion, is appalled at the stupidity on display in the UK:

Why I’m so embarrassed today for Britain. The same parliament that hasn’t banned a single UK citizen from returning after fighting for ISIS is seriously debating banning Trump from its shores

As I write this column, members of the UK Parliament are debating whether or not to ban Donald Trump from entering Britain. They’ve allocated three hours of time to do this.

Time that could have been spent debating terrorism, famine, nuclear weapons, the Middle East refugee crisis or the Syrian War.

But no, instead British law-makers have concluded their own time is best served seriously considering a proposal to ban a man who may end up being the next President of the United States.

The reason they’re doing it is, of course, is because Trump recently called for a temporary ban on all Muslims entering the U.S. in the wake of an horrific mass shooting by two Islamic terrorists. Like many, I didn’t agree with what Trump said and indeed, I wrote him an open letter at the time saying it was ‘dangerously wrong and bigoted’.

But to ban a foreign politician for expressing an opinion is utterly absurd. Particularly a foreign politician who stands an increasingly good chance of becoming leader of the world’s biggest superpower and Britain’s supposedly closest, most powerful ally.

Can you imagine a situation where President Trump, if he is elected, is actually banned? It would make Britain the laughing stock of the world, and confirm to Americans that we’re just as pathetically petty and small pond in our thinking as you’ve always suspected.

What they should do is put it to a referendum. Let the people of Britain – the actual British people, not the millions of invaders – decide if they would rather ban a) Donald Trump or b) Muslims from the UK. I suspect the Donald might not do so poorly.

But regardless, it would be hilarious if Parliament banned Trump prior to his winning the Republican nomination, and then the election. Nothing would make it more obvious that the rest of the world no longer gives a damn about what is now nothing more than a powerless, petty province of the EU.

If the UK wants to matter again, it has to get out of the EU. #Brexit.

You want orcs, you’ve got orcs

If the latest absurdity out of Germany doesn’t make you laugh, you’ve got a heart of stone:

FURY is growing in Germany over mounting evidence of ANOTHER cover-up of migrant sex crimes after it emerged a welcome party for refugees held two months before the Cologne rapes descended into a mass groping session.

Police
and victims have furiously demanded to know why organisers did not warn
them that refugees had committed abhorrent sexual harassment amid
speculation such information could have helped avert the sickening
attacks on New Year’s Eve.

Young women had to flee the welcome
event in terror after being groped by gangs of migrant men, even though
organisers repeatedly interrupted the music with messages in Arabic
urging them to stop their harassment.

Wow, even though they repeatedly interrupted the music? Unstoppable! You can imagine the total puzzlement of the German organizers. “But vee have TOLD zem to stop attacking zee young vimmens! Vee told zem TWICE but zey do not stop! Do zey not know es ist verboten?”

It will be interesting to see how long the German SJWs try to deny the simple reality that orcs are going to behave like orcs and that the Magic Dirt isn’t working. Probably about as long as it takes for German economists to figure out that all this immigration is not, in fact, good for the German economy.

No, they shouldn’t have

Outsourcing your money to a self-interested outside party seldom ends well:

Finland should never have signed up to the single currency union, according to its foreign minister.

With the northernmost euro member now set to become the bloc’s weakest economy, the question of currency regime continues to resurface as Finland looks for explanations for its lost competitiveness. Timo Soini, who is also the leader of one of three members of the ruling coalition, the anti-immigration The Finns party, says the country could have resorted to devaluations had it not been for its euro membership.

The comments come as a former foreign minister gathers signatures in an effort to force the government to hold a referendum on euro membership. While polls still show most Finns don’t want to go through the process of exiting the currency bloc, there are signs that a plurality of voters think they would be better off outside the euro….

Without the option of currency devaluation, the government has calculated that Finland needs to lower its labor costs as much as 15 percent to catch up with its main trade partners, Sweden and Germany. Finland’s economy has shrunk for the past three years and Nordea, the biggest Nordic bank, predicts further contraction in 2015. Finland will be the weakest EU economy by 2017, when it will grow at less than half the pace of Greece, according to the European Commission.

Translation: when you can’t devalue your currency and share the burden equally throughout the entire nation, you have to pay all your workers less even though their expenses will remain high. So, instead of a devalued currency, you’ve lowered the quality of life of pretty much everyone who works for a living.

The sad thing is that this was all entirely obvious, and was in fact predicted, by many economists critical of the Euro. But social mood always trumps the naysayers who are battling the zeitgeist.

The Euro will fail eventually. This is not in doubt. The only question is how bad it has to get in the member nations before they reclaim their financial sovereignty.

Mailvox: the burning shame

Gammas never know when to stop. They always think that if they can just figure out the perfect thing to say, if they can somehow formulate the ideal insult and drop it at just the right time, they can completely flip the situation around and triumph like the secret kings they believe themselves to be.

By which I mean HS, or “Harry Savannah” as he calls himself, couldn’t
even flounce away properly. After loftily announcing that he
would let me “take the last word… like an obnoxious child demands,” he couldn’t quite manage to do so and emailed me a sixth time.

Did I say 16 yrs. old? Overestimated. Make that 13…Gamma.

I figured you’d be back again. You are such a Gamma that you can’t even flounce away properly. You see, when you talked about what an obnoxious child demands, that was a psychological tell. You were emotionally projecting. That’s why you’re trying to use my terms now, because you think they will hurt me the way they hurt you. But they won’t. They don’t apply.

I understand that it stings to know thousands of people are laughing at you. But that’s what happens when you are foolish enough to take on your intellectual and social superiors. Now, you can either learn your lesson and stop here, or you can keep digging yourself in deeper.

Your behavior is not Christian in the slightest, in fact, it makes Christians look more than a little bit crazy. You really should stop this now.

This is where the similarity between the SJW mindset and the Gamma mindset can be seen; both SJWs and Gammas believe that if they fake it long enough, their declarations will somehow magically come alive. It’s a sort of intellectual cargo cult; it certainly involves magical thinking.

UPDATE: Harry just. keeps. going.

You are a study, Junior, in adolescent tub-thumping. You know nothing about me but offer this blunderbuss: “…your intellectual and social superiors.” Are you for real? Can you actually be this intellectually pubescent? Also this teenage piece of work: “…that was a psychological tell.” Riiiiiiiight, Junior, that’s EXACTLY what it was…a “psychological tell”. Now I’m actually curious – how old are you?

Just a little piece of advice, lad, because I’m beginning to feel embarrassed FOR you. And it is just that. You seem to be without a capacity to feel embarrassment. Call it extreme adolescent hubris. Call it moronic, but for heaven’s sake take some adult advice at long last. Am I asking too much here?

I have warned Harry that if he persists in attempting to harass me, his email address is going on the blog. I don’t think it’s necessary to turn him over to the VFM, as he’s just an annoying Gamma male, not an SJW in attack mode. I get the feeling that he is an older individual who doesn’t really understand how social media works.

Just like a control-obsessed overweening bully – you make a threat. Very
good, the mask comes off. You persist in asking why I don’t stop
emailing you. Yet you do not seem to see that you do exactly the same.
Remarkable obtuseness. This could have stopped several steps ago in this
exchange. But, of course, you must have the last word – only to make a
threat after you’re wearied with it. But it is true that I offered to
give you that last word. So I am obligated to do so.  Let me finally say
that it is my judgment that you are a fraud as a professing Christian, a
disgrace – not even identifying as a believer a single time in this
exchange and engaging in a thoughtful manner anything of the substance
of my initial query, but preferred to petulantly complain about my being
“impolite.” Which, considering all the badinage in this tennis
exercise, seems down-right ridiculous in the end, no?

This is the second time he has implied he would stop. We’ll see. It’s really remarkable the way Gammas always seem to want to jump in, lecture you, and then have you obediently accept their very important message without saying anything.

The faithful lose their way

The Church of Star Citizen has lost a brother:

Its always going to be hard leaving a cult that I helped to build – But it was time to do it.

Not only has the game changed, but so has the community. Its hard to watch the transition between “tech savvy people with a bit of money to invest in a fun project” into “hypemachine! – you are not valid unless you invest, and subsequently don’t complain”

It is a shame that CR has not been able to admit to himself that he couldn’t handle this, and I promise – this is the same goddamn problem every single one of us have, role delegation, letting someone else take over, when we don’t have the time/skills to do it anymore.

So, assets are getting done, redone, changed, people jump off, new guys come in, hype online, the name that shouldn’t be mentioned, grey market crashing, 2.0 another disappointment, this feels like a DEMO cd from the front of a magazine in the damn 90’s… AAAARRRH……

Silence. . . .I had had enough. This project’s direction is lost within itself.

I had tried to sell my stuff, so that CIG could keep the money I had donated, but, I couldn’t even get half of what I had invested. So, I decided to just mail CIG and ask them for my money back. And they gave it to me.

We will see. But certainly events do seem to be following the direction Derek Smart predicted. Which is not at all to say that he is responsible for them going that way.