Tag: trainwreck

Remember the Biden!

Biden set to visit Tel Aviv and Amman as Israel-Gaza conflict intensifies. President Biden plans to head to the region ahead of what’s expected to be an intense ground battle inside Gaza as Israeli forces look for Hamas militants involved with the Oct. 7 attacks.

You just know some string-pulling Master of the Universe is sitting in darkness somewhere, stroking his chin and reflecting upon the fact that dementia-addled octogenarians are considerably less expensive than aircraft carriers.

Seriously, what geopolitical genius decided that it’s a great idea to send the President of the United States, even a fake and unelected one, into an active war zone?

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Why You Don’t Sell

Less than five years after founder Aaron Schatz sold the popular Football Outsiders site, it’s dead, done, and dusted.

Football Outsiders was founded in 2003 by Aaron Schatz. What began as his passion project grew into a fully fledged website for advanced football analytics and statistics such as DVOA (Defense-adjusted Value Over Average). Football Outsiders went on to strike partnerships with ESPN and became a popular source for hardcore football nerds and casual fans alike. In 2018, Schatz sold Football Outsiders to a company called EdjSports. He stayed on as editor-in-chief, and, according to longtime Football Outsiders writer Mike Tanier, the site continued to operate as normal.

Then, in September 2021, Champion Gaming, co-founded by Simmonds and Hershman, entered the picture. It acquired EdjSports, and Football Outsiders along with it, in late 2021 as part of a “reverse takeover,” a way for private companies to go public quickly without having to go through an Initial Public Offering. As part of the deal, Champion Gaming merged with a shell company called Prime City One Capital. According to a news report from the time, “the group closed a funding round of $3.65 million (CAD $4.62 million), giving it a roughly $12.3 million post-money valuation, and it is on track to begin trading in a few weeks.”

Champion Gaming had ambitions to expand beyond NFL coverage. It struck a licensing deal with Inpredictable, an NBA analytics website run by Mike Beuoy, and partnered with SharpRank, a sports betting resource. The terms and status of these partnerships are unclear; Beuoy and SharpRank did not respond to queries. Champion Gaming also brought on Chris Spagnuolo to oversee content (for a particular microgeneration of sports media consumers, Spagnuolo is best known as the guy who left Barstool Sports after writing a blog calling Rihanna fat), and hired ESPN’s Katie George to be a brand ambassador and create video content. Spagnuolo declined to comment. Defector was not able to reach George for comment.

By the summer after the takeover, changes at the top of the company were underway. In June 2022, Simmonds took over from Hershman as CEO; Wickham took over as CFO; and the company’s president, Chief Innovation Officer, and director all resigned. The company framed the changes as an exciting new chapter. Of Simmonds’s ascent to CEO, Hershman said in a press release, “Given his previous experience as a public markets CEO and his extensive background in online gambling, the board of directors and I determined that his leadership of the Company would be both ideal and appropriate to steer us going forward as we build a leading sports content and data intelligence business.”

But by the fall there were signs that the company was floundering. According to financial documents filed in November 2022, which are publicly available through Sedar, Canada’s securities filing system, the company had little cash flow and was carrying significant debt, especially relative to its revenues. In the first nine months of 2022, Champion Gaming reported $969,789 in revenue and $5,619,803 in losses. (All monetary figures cited in the filings are in CAD.) As of Sept. 30, 2022, the entire company had only $55,776 in cash, with even less coming in. As of the same date, the accounts receivable, meaning revenue the company accrued, but which they still needed to be paid, was only $13,911. On page six of the same filing, the company wrote: “These material uncertainties cast significant doubt as to the Company’s ability to continue as a going concern.”

The company’s main form of cash flow came from issuing equity and borrowing money.

Now, if your sole focus is money, it may make sense to literally sell out. Schatz probably made a nice bit from the initial sale, although he didn’t make the big score that would have resulted from the money guys going public or selling it to a big public corporation would have.

An operation like FO, despite its popularity, never makes all that much money. A million dollars sounds like a lot, but FO probably didn’t do much more than provide a reasonable living to its owners due to the need to pay for all the contract-based content produced. And as usual, the people who practically invented the NFL analytics game are about the only ones not profiting much from it.

“It’s just really disheartening to see this niche, special interest, really passionate sports blog that blossomed into a pretty influential sports analytics company, just get sucked dry so quickly,”

It is always disheartening to see how quickly, and how comprehensively, the financial parasites manage to destroy great little companies. So if you’re doing what you love, if it’s truly a passion, why sell out and run the very high risk of seeing your creation destroyed? For every sell-out that scores big, there are probably ten or more that end up dessicated, defunct, and forgotten. It’s amazing how many organizations that could have continued doing what they were doing almost indefnitely have disappeared as a result of cashing in and cashing out.

That’s one reason why Castalia subscribers need not worry about their source of world-class leather books going away, as long as enough people continue to subscribe to it. I am fully aware of the realities of the merger and acquisition market, which is why I won’t even agree to have “a conversation” with the financial pirates when they “reach out” to see if we’re interested in “exploring mutual opportunities”.

And speaking of Castalia, I would be remiss if I did not point out that CARAVAN OF THE DAMNED, Chuck Dixon’s Conan #2, is back in stock on Amazon.

Anyhow, at the end of the day, a man needs to ask himself: what is my purpose? And also, is money a necessary evil or is it the prime objective?

UPDATE: Caravan has also reached the fulfilment house for those who bought direct. The cover colors look brilliant.

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Never Back Down

Don’t ever back down on the transsexual issue; as bad as it is, the next dominos are almost beyond imagining. No matter how much they threaten and posture and spazz out, do not back down in the slightest. Because it’s not just madness, it is spiritual wickedness driving the poor unfortunates to madness.

The following meme is excellent rhetoric, because it illustrates the complete detachment from reality and willingness to self-harm required.

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E-Cars are the New Vaxx

I don’t care how convenient or environmental electric cars are. Because you’d have to be either suicidally depressed or unimaginative in the extreme to buy a car with self-driving capabilities.

A terrified electric car driver has revealed he was kidnapped by his runaway £30,000 MG ZS EV after the vehicle suffered a ‘catastrophic malfunction’ in a bizarre case which forced him to dodge red lights and roundabouts before calling police to ram it into their van.

Brian Morrison, 53, claims he was heading home from work at around 10pm on Sunday when his new Chinese-made fully electric car began driving itself at 30mph.

Unable to use the brakes, the Glaswegian – who runs his own social enterprise – called police who stopped the vehicle by allowing it to slowly crash into their van.

Logan’s Run would have been a lot shorter if the Sandmen had been able to simply commandeer and crash the vehicles carrying black-palmed citizens who’d aged out of their society.

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The Baen Brigade Keeps Biting Ankles

Brad Torgersen and the Baen Anklebiter’s Brigade are STILL going on about Jon Del Arroz for no reason that anyone outside of their little Real Conservatives Club can discern.

This is a desperate and unconvincing attempt to reverse-DARVO. Remember, this was posted after Torgersen went out of his way to point out that JDA is divorced and even posted a link to the public record of the divorce filing.. Now, Torgersen was never a rocket scientist, but yes, if you’re publicly attacking someone over the state of their marriage, they are indeed the party who is being wronged.

It should be noted that JDA’s wife filed for divorce in November 2022.
– Brad Torgersen, Oct 1, 2023

Duly noted, Torgersen. Duly noted. Just remember, you’re the one who established that marriages are fair game.

Now, regular readers already know what writers active in the community have to say about JDA. Supporting that is this email I received yesterday:

I thought I’d add my two cents regarding the character of Jon Del Arroz — when I reached out to him on Gab as a complete nobody writer in 2017, he gave me an excellent blurb for my book in a couple of weeks despite his presumably busy schedule. Afterwards, he took the time to follow up on the release and when he found out that I hadn’t sold any copies yet, he posted in a bunch of private groups to try and drum up some sales for me. Great guy and I’ll never forget his help.

It’s going to be hilarious when Baen finally shuts down and all these wannabes and never-weres finally stop pretending that they’re the only real professional writers because someone once offered them a book contract for $5,000. What’s so amusing about their bizarre pretensions is that real writers with the talent to get signed by the major houses and the literary houses – which is to say, writers like me – have always scorned the talentless genre writers signed to specialty imprints like Baen.

Note: I said writers like me. Not me personally. I’ve never scorned independent or genre writers and after repeatedly getting paid to not write books from the major houses, the only reason I talk to Random House and Simon & Schuster these days is to acquire rights from them.

But perhaps the funniest thing about this Baen Books professional in the business is that he has all of 3,087 Twitter followers.

UPDATE: Another creator with direct experience working with JDA provides her testimony.

Authors Larry Correia and Brad Torgosen have been attacking their fellow author Jon Del Arroz, I think because he uses internet controversy as a marketing strategy. Apparently that’s a no-no? And they’ve attempted to use personal family troubles of Del Arroz as a weapon in their campaign, which is despicable. So I thought I should add my voice to the character witnesses for Del Arroz.

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The Satanic Morality

When your message of “morality” consists of contorted legalistic rationalizations for why it’s morally acceptable to rape very young boys and girls, hedonistic expectations about ruling over humanity with hundreds of slaves to personally service you, and evil plans for destroying those nations foolish enough to permit you residence and influence, your lack of popularity among everyone you hope to abuse should not be a mystery to you or to anyone else.

Even a fallen world hates them. Imagine how God regards them. No wonder they hate Him and His Creation so much.

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Green is Innumeracy

There is absolutely no way for any country, least of all one that is industrially developed, to come anywhere close to meeting the various ecological goals set for them by their various Green parties.

Germany’s flagship airline Lufthansa has warned that it would need to consume half of the country’s entire electricity output if it were to shift to green fuels such as e-kerosene, Bloomberg reported on Monday.

Lufthansa CEO Carsten Spohr reportedly stated that synthetic fuels manufactured using renewable energy represented the best approach to decarbonize aviation. However, it is unlikely that there is sufficient green electricity in Germany to generate them, the executive warned.

“We would need around half of Germany’s electricity to create enough of the fuels,” Spohr was quoted as saying at an aviation conference in Hamburg. “I don’t think Mr. Habeck is going to give me that,” he added, referring to Economy and Energy Minister Robert Habeck.

Normally, I’d say one doesn’t have to be innumerate to be Green, but it helps. Except the fact is that one literally has to be totally incapable of understanding math, numbers, and basic addition to genuinely support Green Party policies.

And if you want to get a lot of cars off the roads, it’s very simple and easily accomplished in less than one year. Just ban auto loans. 89 percent of new cars and 55 percent of used cars are purchased with debt.

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Another Marketing Genius

Coffee so good you’ll cut your tits off!

Clown World is incapable of learning. They keep trying to make trannies a thing, but they will never, ever, be a thing. Even so, it really makes the whole bit about God’s wrath, the Second Coming, and the angels pouring out terrible bowls of judgment seem a lot more understandable from the human perspective.

Come, Lord Jesus, and by all means, bring your sword.

Also, don’t ever drink Costa coffee again.

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Red Flags Waving

This is when a young man really needs to not merely walk away, but run for his life:

HELP I NEED ADVICE. My fiance and I are having lots of issues right now, we can’t stop fighting and I don’t know what to do. I quit my job because wedding planning was taking up so much time, and my fiance is refusing to get a second job. He doesn’t understand that I don’t have time to get ready for work, drive to work, be somewhere else all day, and drive home. I need to be HOME to plan this wedding. I’m trying to find a job from home but it is difficult. I asked him to get a second job and he won’t. It really pisses me off because we are spending $80,000 on this wedding and he keeps saying that we should spend less. UH, HELLO, NO. This is MY WEDDING I have been dreaming of since I was little and I REFUSE to have anything but my dream wedding. How can I convince him to work a second job to pay for this? What happened to “happy wife, happy life”???????????

And if he is foolish enough to fail to heed the giant flashing red lights, he really shouldn’t affect too much surprise when she eventually leaves him because she isn’t happy or because he isn’t maintaining her in the style to which she would like to become accustomed.

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The Non-Diplomacy Dance

It’s rather amusing to watch Clown World attempting to do diplomacy without actually going through the traditional diplomatic exercises in order to maintain its facade of complete control of the situation.

NATO leaders will “send a clear and positive signal” to Kiev regarding Ukraine’s aspiration to join NATO, Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told journalists ahead of a two-day summit in Lithuania. The country will be able to skip one of the normal steps for candidates, he predicted.

The official said he proposed to member states to “remove the requirement for Membership Action Plan (MAP)” for Ukraine. This will change the accession path “from a two-step process to a one step process,” he explained during a conference on Tuesday.

In absolutely-related news, Turkey has unexpectedly dropped its opposition to Sweden’s entry into NATO.

NATO has cleared the way for Sweden to join the Western military alliance by persuading Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to end his opposition to Stockholm’s bid.

Persuading = large cash payments. But hey, whatever works, right?

All of this frantic non-diplomacy diplomacy is meant to “send a message” to Russia, which is completely futile since Russia doesn’t consider NATO or the USA to be “agreement-capable” and the entire world now knows that NATO is ‘victory-incapable”. The idea is to threaten Russia with a full-scale direct confrontation with NATO, and the problem is that the threat is simply not a credible one now that NATO’s ammunition and armor stores have been significantly depleted.

Meanwhile, Russia is growing stronger by the month, as its productive capacity is growing and it is building more tanks and APVs than it is losing. More importantly, the NATO calculation relies upon its own alliance while completely failing to take into account the extent to which Russia’s allies are capable of assisting it, both in terms of supplies and siphoning off NATO resources to other theaters.

I’d always thought that it would be the loss of several aircraft carriers that would signify the end of the US empire. But it increasingly appears that it is the combination of economic and military futility being exposed in Ukraine that will do so instead. And the longer this process continues to play out and methodically weaken the infrastructure of Clown World, the better it will be for the sovereign nations and the American posterity.

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