When the coverup fails

The SJWs of science fiction fandom have done their level best to denigrate, discredit and disqualify Daniel's historic five-part expose on predatory child abuse in science fiction over the last five decades. They want to bury their sordid past, and hide their filthy present, because they know that their embrace of criminal deviancy will cause even the liberal mainstream to turn against them if it ever comes to light.

• “[Day] is just writing stuff to fill his slate and then cackle both evilly and ineffectively.” – Chris S.
• “RE: Castalia House’s new thing. It’s a reactionary tactic called Amplification, where they use the language of progressive politics to either accuse progressives of doing something horrible, or to claim that the horrible thing they do must be accepted by progressives or they’re being discriminatory.” – Lorcan Nagle
• I haven’t stopped laughing at the weaksauce effort there yet. Even if I ignore the clearly incredibly out of context quotes as well as the utterly inaccurate paraphrasing of what people said, there’s still a great deal of it that seems to have come from an alternate universe.” – snowcrash 
• “I hate to give Castalia House credit for anything, but their usage of Search Engine Optimization tactics ain’t bad. Using science fiction and the Clarke miniseries as a traffic driver, there may be new eyeballs that are exposed to his words. Of course, there could also end up being lots of traffic driven to CH for the words “rape” and “pedophilia“. I’ll bet he thinks of that as a victory condition, too, right up to the point where the authorities start asking questions.” – Glenn Hauman
• “This blatant attempt to play “gotcha” with SF’s history of dealing with sexual abuse committed within its own community is a particularly vile and disgusting example of hypocrisy.” – McJulie
• “That’s kind of wild misreading of what Delany said.” – Aaron

As Daniel noted, these responses are not atypical, they represent the longtime position of the SF fandom community to protect the predators in its midst.

Of all 200+ comments in the threads at File770, not one fan raised the question of what should be done about the problem. If the “Safe Space as Rape Room” series hasn’t demonstrated that there is a code of silence regarding pedophilia in science fiction, the feral reaction of the fans to this “old news” certainly does.

Notably, of the above selections, three of the pedo-apologists comprise File 770’s Top 5 “most prolific” commenters of 2015: JJ, Peace Is My Middle Name, Aaron.

So if you had any doubts that these are the thoughts of core fans, those doubts should now be gone.

And, as we know, SJWs always lie. They cannot hide the truth, especially not while there are still witnesses able to call them out and expose their attempts to retroactively spin their Narrative.

Excellent, if emetic article: I am Breen’s daughter Moira Greyland, and I am glad to answer questions, though I cannot promise they will be less emetic than the article itself.

Seriously, this is very upsetting subject matter. I cried when I read your article, though I’ve been steeped in this material for awhile. Reading my father’s words is most upsetting.

I wish I knew a little less.

Another survivor is equally forthright:

Speak up:

For all the rape culture stuff that gets tossed around you can really reduce it to one word and that is: Silence.

People who rape count on you being too shocked, too thrown off, and feeling too guilty and complicit for not doing something right away to speak up. Don’t let them get away with that. Speak up. Find help. Do whatever it takes to snap back to reality. I don’t care who you are or how you vote, that’s the single best thing you can do for yourself or anyone else.

They are speaking up. We are willing to stand up, speak out, and support them, those individuals who have survived far worse from SF fandom than anything we have ever experienced at their nasty little hands.

For those who wish to question our motivations, we have but one response: "The enemy of my enemy is my friend."

And there is no friend more loyal than a Rabid Puppy.

Flying in the face of reality

I have no doubt that the Germans are going to go full-Nazi as soon as they overthrow their traitorous political class and their corporate PC lobby.

The involvement by foreigners flies in the face of Germany’s PC lobby which has ruthlessly called critics of Merkel’s migration programme ‘Nazi’ or ‘racist’.

Take 59-year-old Akif Pirincci, an outspoken Right-winger and German writer of Turkish origin, who has warned that Christian Germany is becoming Islamic. His books, one of which is called Germany Gone Mad, were best-sellers until last autumn, when big publishers and bookshops chose not to distribute them any more. It is the first time since the Nazi era that such censorship has occurred.

In another controversy, Catholic journalist Matthias Matussek lost his job at the respected German newspaper Die Welt after he posted his views on November’s massacre in Paris on his personal Facebook page, saying mildly: ‘I think that the terror in Paris will move our (German) debate about open borders and … young Muslim men in our country in an entirely new and fresh direction.’

Despite the censorship, unpalatable truths have still slipped out. Last month, the interior ministry in the large south-west state of Baden-Wurttemberg published figures on criminal offences committed by asylum seekers between January and November 2015.

They made alarming reading. Asylum seekers represent one per cent of the population of the state but were involved in five per cent (27,255) of all registered crimes, among them 1,000 cases of grievous bodily harm, 22 of attempted murder, and 700 of domestic burglary. The highest number of offenders were Syrians, committing 5,576 of the offences.

Andre Schulz, head of Germany’s criminal police association, said recently that in his experience 10 per cent of the migrants would turn to criminality, including theft, sexual assault or drug dealing.

‘The policy has been to leave the German population in the dark …ordinary citizens are being played for fools,’ he declared.

The same process is at work in the USA. It's a quantitative difference, not a qualitative one; Germany is getting hit harder and faster. This is why establishing new, Alt Right institutions is an urgent necessity. And they are being developed; I have spoken to three separate groups that are in the process of doing this, so be ready to support them and use them and police them as they begin to appear this year.

Because, like the snakes they are, the SJWs are going to throw everything they have into trying to strangle them in their cradles.

This aggression shall not stand, man!

Twitter made the mistake of punitively unverifying @nero. Now the Milos are multiplying, and multiplying rapidly.

Nous sommes Milo. Nous sommes tous Milo. #JeSuisMilo

The religion of peace meets NWA

A gunman ambushed a police officer as he sat in his marked cruiser at an intersection, striking him three times in the arm during a barrage of bullets and fleeing before being apprehended. Police Commissioner Richard Ross said the suspect fired at least 13 shots at Officer Jessie Hartnett, 33, and his car late Thursday. Hartnett is in a stable condition is in a stable condition with a broken arm and nerve damage. Ross said the officer returned fire, hitting his attacker at least three times.

Apparently the culprit was an ISIS lone wolf. How many cops have to be killed, how many women have to be raped, before Reconquista 2.0 begins?

Open borders theory failed

Considering how badly mainstream economics has failed with even a partial implementation of the free movement of people, imagine how bad it would be if the globalists ever got their way and established a borderless world:

• Immigrants make up 13 percent of the US population and 17 percent of the workforce. 
• The number of Americans not in the labor force last month totaled 94,103,000.

It's all there in Cuckservative, specifically, the chapter on economics and immigration. Free traders, you are wrong. There is no need to resort to quoting Smith, Ricardo, Hazlitt, or Mises. I know them better than you do.

The fact of the matter is that their theory was put to the test. And it failed. They are every bit as wrong in that particular regard as Marx and Keynes and Friedman were about the Labor Theory of Value, the General Theory, and monetary theory.

For decades, people opined about free trade and the free movement of peoples based solely on theory. Now, we have sufficient data to assess their predictions, and contrary to what many of us expected, (and I include myself in this regard), the free traders turned out to be completely wrong.

That doesn't mean that autarky is the correct answer or that there are not significant problems with government-limited trade, but free trade has not only impoverished the nation, the free movement of people element has already put a number of nations in risk of extinction.

An r/K theory of war

The Anonymous Conservative predicts the coming fusion of K-strategists:

In the early stage of a K-shift, while threat and harshness are still avoidable and deniable, there will be a period where splintering will occur among the right. As a result, some rightward individuals will cling to aspects of r which give them comfort, while trying to maneuver politically and for social reasons in directions other than the K-strategy, as the Cuckservatives of the US do. Other groups with amygdalae only partly trained to react to a single deviation from one aspect of the K-strategy will focus on one aspect of K, from family values and social conservatism, to nationalism, to demands for freedom from government oppression, each to the exclusion of the rest of the K-strategy. They may attempt to compromise, or reduce conflict stimuli on other aspects of K as a strategic move, driven by their amygdala’s obsessed focus.

As the apocalypse goes down, there will be a reversal of the splintering, leading the right to fuse, but this will only occur as violence and threat become undeniable and a necessity that must be addressed. If real violence and threat were actually present in everyone’s world now, the similar aspects of right-leaning ideologues would unite them as allies against the threat, overwhelming their amygdalae’s present drive to avoid conflict. It would be something which would be actively driven by a cognitive desire of the amygdala to alleviate more thoroughly the massive anxiety produced by the threat. As they say, there is nothing like common enemies.

If Muslims were going to start killing people in greater numbers to the point everyone felt vulnerable, PEGIDA would tightly and proudly ally with the other groups, to amplify their power and increase the ability of their mind to alleviate the angst produced by the threat. If rightward ideologues were conducting violent acts against enemies on a regular basis, and you were either with them or against them, this would also consolidate the K-strategists. Threat avoidance is a great rabbit motivator – far greater than morals.

That level of threat just has not arisen yet, but it will.

We're already starting to see some of this, as even Cuckservative Central has largely stopped virtue-signaling the Left and attacking the nationalists, and is beginning to start paying more attention to the threat being posed by the anti-nationalist traitors and the invaders.

You'll know the fusion is complete when the leading Alt Right figures start being given the sort of mainstream platforms from which their predecessors were expelled. Of course, the situation will probably have to be pretty dire by then.

Immigrant sex attacks in Finland

Strange, how the New Finns are behaving exactly the same way as the New Germans. Apparently the Magic Dirt in Finland isn't any more powerful than the Magic Dirt in Germany.

Finnish police reported on Thursday an unusually high level of sexual harassment in Helsinki on New Year's Eve and said they had been tipped off about plans by groups of asylum seekers to sexually harass women.

"There hasn't been this kind of harassment on previous New Year's Eves or other occasions for that matter... This is a completely new phenomenon in Helsinki," the Finnish capital's deputy police chief Ilkka Koskimaki told AFP.

Security guards hired to patrol the city on New Year's Eve told police there had been "widespread sexual harassment" at a central square where around 20,000 people had gathered for celebrations.

Three sexual assaults allegedly took place at Helsinki's central railway station on New Year's Eve, where around 1,000 mostly Iraqi asylum seekers had converged.

"Police have... received information about three cases of sexual assault, of which two have been filed as complaints," Helsinki police said in a statement.

"The suspects were asylum seekers. The three were caught and taken into custody on the spot," Ilkka Koskimaki told reporters.

Immigration is rape culture. And, as Martin van Creveld demonstrated in There Will Be War Volume X, immigration is war. If you want peace, repatriate everyone who immigrated from the Dar al-Islam in the last three decades. Otherwise, you will have civil war.

For grognards only

I have to say, I, for one, am really enjoying what Task Force Wargames has been doing over at Castalia. Reading Alex's post on the old Avalon Hill game, Air Assault on Crete, is the first time I have ever wanted to play that game. The unusual zone control rules sound fascinating, and frankly, superior to the norm.

This game is hard. Very hard. Part of why it is hard is because it is rules heavy even for a wargame, but it is doubly so because it is so different from most war games I’ve played. This difficulty is a bit asymmetrical, as many of the special rules apply only to the German player (such as conveys, paratrooper drift and air power) but you’ll find in the options of the advanced game plenty of fiddly bits to keep the Allied player scratching their head and checking the rulebook. You also can’t bring with you any mechanical assumptions you may have based on other similar wargames because so many of those assumptions would be wrong in the case of Air Assault on Crete.

In several games, fog of war rules may be limited or optional, but I can’t imagine the Allies having a chance in this without the facedown setup. The Germans have to land, take and hold at least one of the three air bases at Maleme, Heraklion and Retimo. In the basic game, the Allies win by preventing this (an almost impossible task). In the advanced game, the Allied player wins by putting up a decent fight and successfully evacuating a sizable portion of their forces. The fog of war effect is continuous throughout the game, in that any Allied units that are not adjacent to German forces or actively being targeted by German bombardment are kept face down. This allows the Allied player to mask his strength and shuffle non-combat units to evac points, but can sometimes be a bit of a hassle, as one will constantly be checking their piles for AA units and defensive artillery anytime anything happens.

This sort of thing isn't for everyone, or even very many gamers, let alone normal readers, but it is illustrate of the depth to which we intend the Castalia posts to increasingly go. If Wargame Wednesdays aren't your cup of tea, one of the other days will be. And the newly discovered HP Lovecraft letter that Jeffro posted which mentions A. Merritt's work is intriguing for any fan of the writer.

In barely tangential news, I am having a great time reading through the Domains of War rules that I acquired as part of the Sinister Stone of Sakkara kickstarter that I backed last year. If they'd been around when I was in junior high, I probably would have played a lot more RPGs. Forget role-playing as an adventurer wandering through caves and dungeons, it's a lot more interesting to role-play military campaigns and battles.

Standing by the faith

Wheaton College is showing some spine in insisting that its Christian professors actually be Christian in a theologically meaningful sense:

Wheaton College can confirm reports that on January 4, 2016, per College policies and procedures, Provost Stanton Jones delivered to President Philip Ryken and to Dr. Larycia Hawkins a Notice of Recommendation to Initiate Termination-for-Cause Proceedings regarding Dr. Hawkins.

The Notice is not a termination; rather, it begins Wheaton College’s established process for employment actions pertaining to tenured faculty members.

This Notice follows the impasse reached by the parties. Following Dr. Hawkins’ written response on December 17 to questions regarding her theological convictions, the College requested further theological discussion and clarification. However, as posted previously, Dr. Hawkins declined to participate in further dialogue about the theological implications of her public statements and her December 17 response.

This is the woman who claimed that Christians and Muslims worship the same God, which appears "to be in conflict with the College’s Statement of Faith."

And it is in conflict. Christians don't worship the same God as Muslims, which should be obvious since Christians consider Jesus Christ to be divine and part of the Godhead, whereas Muslims consider Jesus Christ to have been nothing more than a mortal prophet and a lesser one at that.

Any time you hear that Jews, Muslims, and Christians all worship the same God, you know that you're hearing little more than fatuous unitarianism.

How can I help?

That is the question we should be asking ourselves regularly, advises Mike Cernovich:

Luck rules our lives, although we can increase our odds of winning – of getting lucky – by taking more spins of the wheel. Thus you must stay busy.

Your life is the sum total of your activities and the people in your life. Be useful to other people. Find ways to meet market demands. Be good to your friends. When is the last time you emailed a friend to say, “How can I help you?”

People are doing poorly at being useful as they believe simply being around a person adds value to their lives. Yet many people are vampires.

Too many people are out for themselves, trying to extract as much value from others as they can.

That’s one way to live, but it doesn’t work for me.

I find ways to be useful to other people, and it works for me.

Instead of wondering why people don’t reach out to you or old friends fall away, why not stop working angles on people, being a manipulator, and simply saying, “Is there anything I can do for you?”

Too many of us practice a warped secular churchianity, where we congratulate ourselves for donating a modicum of money here and there to savages we don't know in lieu of helping our friends and allies.

But you're not a better person for helping the stranger and ignoring your neighbor. You're a worse person, you're a performance artist. As Jesus himself said, even the tax collectors love those who love them and even the pagans greet their own people.

Now what does it say about you if your own behavior doesn't even rise to their level?

Just as only the strong can turn the other cheek, only those who help their own first can help others.

This is not a criticism; the readers of Vox Popoli are well-known across the Internet for their strength of support. You not only support me, but you support my allies and you support each other. But it is a reminder, to me, if no one else, that instead of waiting for others to ask if they need our help, we should proactively go to our friends and ask if there is anything we can do.

In that vein, I know there are a number of people here who would very much like to attend the Dev Game course, but cannot afford to do so. Perhaps you lost your job. Perhaps your kids need braces. Perhaps you're a young man who probably shouldn't be reading here in the first place, but wants to get into game development.

So, in the interest of following Mike's lead, I'd like to offer seven free course passes to readers who would have signed up for Dev Game if they'd had the ability to do so. Write me an email today with DG in the subject and a one-paragraph description of what you'd like to do in the game industry; I will select the seven I believe will most benefit from the course and send them registration links.

And be sure you can actually attend on Saturdays before emailing me.

UPDATE: A donor, who wishes to remain anonymous, has made 10 additional seats available for those who cannot afford it. So, if you would like to utilize one of those seats, let me know.

Metaphor and harbinger

No doubt the Swedish family of the 7-year-old girl murdered by an immigrant are pleased to know that although they are burying their little girl, at least no one will be able to call them racist:

A seven year old girl was stabbed to death in an apartment in Upplands-Bro in northern Stockholm on 25 July this year by a 36 year old man, Daniel Gebru. Ten months earlier Gebru arrived as a welfare of migrant from Eritrea to Sweden.... Gebru has not been able to give any concrete reasons for why he cut the throat of the seven-year girl in the bathroom of her home. He had previously been living in the apartment.

Sooner or later, reality always punishes insanity. Immigration is societal suicide. At this point, it seems the only thing that will save Sweden is a) a new Northern Crusade or b) the blood eagle.

Sic semper cuculis.

Dev Game registrations

All right, I finally got the Dev Game emails sent out with the registration links. If you signed up but did not receive an email tonight, please email me right away and I will send it to you.

You don't need anything except a mike setup and perhaps something with which to take notes.

The small-ship navy

In USA TODAY. Now, I wonder where Instapundit might have come across this bit of discussion on reshaping the military?

When it comes to the Navy, we can have a big fleet of small ships, or a small fleet of big ships.  For quite a while now, we’ve gone with the big ships, but some people are arguing that that’s a mistake.

One of those is Commander Phillip E. Pournelle, U.S. Navy, who recently wrote in the Proceedings of the U.S. Naval Institute that “In an age of precision-strike weapon proliferation, a big-ship navy equals a brittle fleet. What’s needed is a revamped force structure based on smaller surface combatants.”

He makes some excellent points. Currently, the U.S. Navy dominates the seas. A U.S. Navy Carrier Battle Group can project power in a way no other nation’s navy can approach, essentially placing a large airbase within striking range of pretty much any place on the planet worth striking. Of course, the problem with this is that aircraft carriers aren’t just powerful. They’re also big, expensive and vulnerable. (The non-carrier part of a Carrier Battle Group is basically there to protect the carrier from submarines and missiles).

However, the fact is that regardless of how the USN reconfigures, it can't expect to dominate the coastlines like it did in the heyday of the aircraft carrier. Great Britain managed the transition from the age of the ship-of-the-line to the age of the battleship without losing its dominance of the high seas, but there is no guarantee that the USA will be able to do so.

In fact, in light of the demographic changes and consequential decline in national capabilities, I expect that China will surpass the USA as the leading naval power before the 22nd century.

"We have lost the city"

It's hard to feel too sorry for the lutefisk-eating surrender monkeys of Norway:

Grønland is only two subway stops from the Parliament, and one from the Central Station, fairly close to the government offices that were bombed by Breivik.

It looks like Karachi, Basra, and Mogadishu all rolled into one. People sell drugs openly just next to the Grønland subway station.

It’s not Norway or Europe anymore, except when there is welfare money to be collected. The police have largely given up. Early in 2010 Aftenposten stated that there are sharia patrols in this area, and gay couples are assaulted and chased away. “Immigrant Fatima Tetouani says that ‘Grønland is more Muslim than Morocco.’”

Readers should remember that Aftenposten, which is the largest newspaper in the Oslo region, is normally pro-Islamic and very Multicultural.

Sturla Nøstvik (36) did not suspect any danger when the barrel of a pistol was smashed into his forehead. That was the beginning of fifty minutes of hell as a hostage of the robbers.

The women are being raped at night in Oslo, and the men are robbed more than ever.

In just the past ten years more than 4,000 people have been robbed in the town center and the area of the Grønland police station [an immigrant ghetto]. Most of them are young men. Sturla Nøstvik is robbery-victim 351 from Grønland just from this year, the same period in which around fifty assault-rapes have been reported in Oslo. The robbers play on fear, violence, and severe threats that leave a mark on the victims. Police superintendent Inge Sundeng in Grønland describes them as the “somewhat-forgotten victims”.

The police visited Sturla Nøstvik in the emergency room after the robbery. They told Nøstvik that a gang of robbers had committed many similar robberies in Grünerløkka and surrounding areas in thee past weeks. They told him that everybody should have the right to feel safe, but that they had no way of halting the robberies. “We have lost the city,” they said…

It's a good thing they burned dead Vikings rather than bury them. Because if they had graves, they'd certainly be spinning in them at the sight of their descendants meekly accepting conquest without any resistance, out of nothing more than fear of being called racist or jailed by their treasonous leaders.

So you've lost the city. Big deal. Go take it back, or lose the rest of the country.

To H or not to H

There is some doubt over whether North Korea's H-bomb test was successful or not:

North Korea dictator Kim Jong Un vowed to celebrate the New Year with 'the thrilling sound of our first hydrogen bomb' when he signed to order for today's nuclear blast.

The hermit state claimed it had detonated a 'successful' hydrogen bomb this morning, triggering a 5.1-magnitude earthquake and propelling Kim on a new collision course with world powers.

But experts have been quick to cast doubt on the claims, saying the size of the explosion and resulting earthquake was far too small to have come a failed H-bomb and was likely disguised to appear like one.

I fail to see why it matters all that much either way. North Korea clearly has acquired what it wants, which is the ability to deter any U.S. aggression against it. In light of the numerous U.S. attacks on countries everywhere from Serbia to Syria, it would be very strange if governments around the world did not make a priority of acquiring similar nuclear deterrence.

SJWs, exposed

The SJW calling himself Hawk S. Rabidus made a risibly false claim.

Nobody else is organizing or manipulating things on Goodreads (or the Hugos) using concerted action. There is no cabal.

There most certainly is, as in both cases, the emergent behavior of the various individuals who share an interest in pushing social justice is observably manifest. In the case of the Hugos, the editors at Tor Books have been engaging in concerted action for decades. They have, by their own admission, decided when new awards will be created, when they will win those awards, and when they will step back and permit others to win them. In the case of Goodreads, it is a group of petty SJWs and SJW librarians who have collectively sought to lower the ratings of right wing authors. Thanks to Sean O'Hara, we were able to put together the list of all 100 or so, including moderators like rivka, and librarians like banillah, Bryan Young, davidofterra, and Getty Hesse.

 SJWs Always Lie: Taking Down the Thought Police
by Vox Day, Milo Yiannopoulos (Foreword)
Getty Hesse's review
Jan 04, 16

did not like it

I'm putting this review up because the book desperately needs a lower rating. One does not need to read this book. The very blurb is resplendent with contradictions.

SJWs subject the world to "their intolerant thought and speech policing," and yet the VERY NEXT SENTENCE speaks of "the SJW agenda of diversity, tolerance, inclusiveness, and equality." Tolerance cannot be intolerant. Vox Day is saying here that something is not itself. And he doesn't even suggest that their "agenda" is something else masquerading as "diversity,tolerance, inclusiveness, and equality," oh no, rather these things contradict "both science and observable reality." I'm not even going to bother to explain why that statement is incredibly idiotic. Anyone with half a brain cell should be able to figure it out.

And, for the record, Vox Day is not "the most hated man in science fiction." He's the most laughed at.

If SJWs could do logic, they wouldn't be SJWs. Forgive the digression, but Getty Hesse's pseudo-dialectic makes my teeth itch. It's true that X cannot be Not X, but Y most certainly can be. In much the same way Tom Brady is not the New England Patriots playbook, SJWs are not the professed SJW agenda. As usual, both Vox's First Law and the First Law of SJW can be seen here.

What is interesting about Goodreads is that it provides an excellent way of publicly identifying where people stand on the socio-political spectrum. Aside from the amusement that this latest showdown has provided, it has sparked some very interesting discussions in our tech circle, including some things we're going to discuss in our next Brainstorm, where we will talk about the planned fork of Wikipedia and the shape of its eventual replacement.

More importantly, this has finally allowed me to answer the core question with which I have been wrestling: do we create something that is a right-wing alternative to Wikipedia or do we shoot to replace it entirely with something better that the left can be safely permitted to use without converging it like they always do?

Speaking of things that provoke laughter, Rolf Nelson received an email from The Goodreads Team explaining why they would not be removing an obviously fake review in which it was apparent that the reviewer could not possibly have read the book.

Goodreads policy allows users to rate a book as soon as it is listed on the site. We do not dictate on what basis Goodreads members form their personal opinions about a book, so we have no rules about reading the full text of a book before rating and reviewing it. We recognize that not everyone will agree with this policy, but it is one that has worked well for the Goodreads community over time.

Users are entitled to express their honest opinions about the book, even if others feel them to be misguided or wrong. We don't evaluate a reader's opinions based on how, when, or why they made a judgement about the work that they read. Given the subjective nature of reviews, it’s hard to designate one review as “wrong” and another “right.” Even if we could, it would be impractical to manually verify the authenticity of every statement made in a Goodreads review, and we have to be consistent in how we apply our policies.  

That would explain why they were able to ban me in good conscience: they have no need to be consistent about how they apply their unviolated non-policies.

But we shouldn't be surprised that Goodreads' policy permits the review of books one hasn't read, as it even permits the review of books that don't exist. Two Goodreads librarians have one-starred a book that I supposedly wrote for Ben Bella that was never signed to a contract, that I never wrote, and Ben Bella never published. It's nice that ignoring reality has worked well for the Goodreads community over time, but history is quite clear on the way that reality tends to impose itself in the end.

One more tangent, if you don't mind. Ben Bella graciously returned to me the audiobook rights to The Irrational Atheist and we expect it to be available on Audible from Castalia House sometime in the February-March timeframe.

Viktor Orban was right

What a pity that the British didn't come around as quickly when they were warned by Enoch Powell:

Like most members of Hungary’s liberal intellectual elite, George Konrad, a distinguished novelist, loathes his country’s stridently illiberal prime minister, Viktor Orban.

“He is not a good democrat and I don’t believe he is a good person,” said Mr. Konrad, a veteran of communist-era struggles against dictatorship.

All the same, he thinks Mr. Orban, the self-declared scourge of mainstream elites across Europe, was right and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany was wrong about how to respond to the chaotic flood of migrants seeking refuge from war and poverty — perhaps Europe’s most serious crisis since World War II.

“It hurts to admit it, but on this point Orban was right,” Mr. Konrad, 82, said, lamenting that in the absence of a joint European effort to control the flow, Hungary was wise to seal its borders and sound the alarm over the perils of allowing hundreds of thousands of migrants, mostly Muslims, to enter Europe willy-nilly.

Quietly, and often with similar misgivings, a growing number of people in Hungary and beyond are wondering whether, despite his shrill and often bigoted message, Mr. Orban had a clearer view of the scale of the migration crisis and its potential hazards than technocrats in Brussels and leaders in Berlin and other European capitals....

In a recent interview with European newspapers, Donald Tusk, president of the European Council, the body that presides over European Union summit meetings, described Ms. Merkel’s welcoming approach to migrants as “dangerous” and endorsed the view long promoted by Mr. Orban — that most of the asylum seekers entering Europe were not Syrians fleeing war but economic migrants seeking jobs.

If Europeans are forced to choose between Muslims and nationalists, they will choose nationalists. If they are forced to choose between Muslims and fascists, they will choose fascists. And if they are forced to choose between Muslims and neo-nazis, they will choose neo-nazis.

The secular elites who have welcomed this invasion should rethink their attempt to cling to power and manage the situation they themselves created. They are the problem, not the solution. And all that trying to prevent those who warned them of the consequences of their actions from addressing the situation will accomplish is ensure that more extreme measures are taken.

Very nearly everyone with whom I have spoken is furiously angry. The situation is extremely unstable, and I suspect there will be more than a few newsworthy events in 2016. The mass sexual assault at the Cologne train station is merely the first of many to come.

“There is a shift to the extreme right because the left, or what is left of the left, and the moderate center right were offering answers that were wrong,” said Mr. Gyarmati, who heads the International Center for Democratic Transition, a group that promotes democracy. “Now we are in a situation where the answers are unpleasant to say the least.”

Sooner or later, reality always imposes itself, no matter how many people insist that 2+2 equals 37.

Review fun with Sean O'Hara

So, it turns out that Sean's got some really... interesting... reviews. I liked this one of, ahem,  Bodacious Space Pirates, of all things. Apparently if you stare too long into the abyss of hyperspace, you'll eventually see some oversized tits.

Bodacious Space Pirates: Abyss of Hyperspace Vol. 1
Sean O'Hara's review
Sep 14, 15

liked it
bookshelves: manga, space-pirates, space-opera, science-fiction
Read on September 13, 2015

I wish the novels would come out in English. This just isn't a very good substitute.

I wonder why he is reading Bodacious Space Pirates if he can't read Japanese? Sadly, Sean can't even get the "review the editing non-review" right, and today introduced the innovative "review the non-editing non-review":

Riding the Red Horse
Sean O'Hara's review
Jan 04, 16

did not like it

This book claims to have been edited by Tom Kratman and Teddy Beale. This is a lie. They couldn't edit an elementary school newsletter. To call what they did here "editing" is an insult to editors the world over. It's more like they got their friends together and had everyone shit on a plate. And for some reason they're inordinately proud of what they produced.

But then again, there's a good chance a similar pile of shit will become President, so maybe they have a point. 

Fascinating. He's attacking everyone from Jerry Pournelle to William S. Lind. While declaring that the book - the book - claims it was edited by people who did not edit it. I wonder who did? And were they bodacious?

And then there is this, which one would have thought defied description. And yet, Sean somehow manages the trick.

Princess Jellyfish, Vol. 1
Sean O'Hara's review
Jul 20, 15

really liked it
bookshelves: manga, josei, romance
Read on July 15, 2015

How to sum up the plot of Princess Jellyfish...? Well, it's a romance involving a love triangle between a nerdy girl, a transvestite, and the transvestite's brother who's a rising star of the political world. Also, real estate plays a big role, as does fashion design and of course jellyfish.

Of course jellyfish! How could there not be jellyfish when there are transvestites?

I think it goes without saying that what we have here is a gentlemen who has never, ever, kissed a real live girl. And there is more, there is literally 548 reviews more. You have to read them to believe them; they are too freaking funny!

Better than the story

Quite possibly longer as well. This is an epic review of "If You Were a Dinosaur, My Love":

I thought it was cool that the girl narrator loves dinosaurs so much. I mean, really, who doesn't love dinosaurs? Especially the T-Rex. The Biggest, Meanest Big Bad of the Big Bads. Awesome. Well, ok, a five foot ten inch T-Rex. So not the biggest, but at least the meanest right? And she feeds it live meat and it's gory, so still cool, right?

Then the T-Rex starts singing lullabies, and performing musical theater. Then it gets married. Whoa. What happened? That's not the Biggest, Meanest Big Bad of the Big Bads - that's Hugh Jackman! Which would still be cool if it was Wolverine Hugh Jackman, but it's not. It's The Boy from Oz Hugh Jackman. The gay Hugh Jackman. Not that there's anything wrong with being gay. I love gay men. Well, I mean, not like that, I enjoy gay – yes, people, gay people. They're wonderful.

So just as my attention starts to wander and I'm thinking about Hugh in all his tight glitter clothes and sparkley man glory, well, then suddenly the story twists into this awesome piece of violent dinosaur revenge porn! Just like Man on Fire with Denzel, but toothier!

Now it's got me again, Hugo award for sure! Men soaked in gin and malice? Oh, yeah, baby, bring me some of that! Ah, I mean, what a beautiful word picture. Men, gin, malice... mmmm... beautiful. So now there is blood everywhere, evil cackling laughter, widows and orphans - wooo! I'm out of my seat cheering on the five foot ten inch T-Rex – and then she's back talking about a wedding again for gosh sakes. And it's not even a blood soaked Carrie kinda wedding, but a green chiffon wedding – does Hugh have green eyes? I guess I've never looked at his eyes.

Then we find out that the narrator actually hates her fiance because he's a pussy who can't win a bar fight! In her imagination she loved this awesome man mincing T-Rex that waded through pools of revenge blood but in real life he was just... a disappointment. He wasn't the bar fight winning, beer drinking, tattooed, six foot six inch, 300 pound Hells Angel alpha male she wanted, just some New York hipster in skinny jeans who couldn't take a pool cue across the face.

She wrote this whole story to rip away the tiny bit of masculinity her fiance still possessed. A masculinity wax job. That. Is. Cold. I mean, not every man can be Wolverine Hugh Jackman, but please, why does she hate gay Hugh Jackman so much?

5 Stars for awesome dinosaur revenge porn – minus 4 stars for the homophobia.

Ilkotism

Two IT jobs in North Carolina:

We are looking for two senior level IT positions and are having a hard time finding good candidates.  I would love to see the positions filled by members of the Ilk.

Senior Converged Infrastructure Engineer
In this case we are looking specifically for someone who is an expert in Compute-Unix/Linux specific and Storage-EMC specific.  AIX/Red Hat, VMware, IBM Power, EMC Storage, VCE Vblock.

Senior Storage Engineer 
7+ years of direct experience managing storage in a large enterprise environment.  EMC experience is highly preferred, but possibly not required. 

No remote option.

If you're qualified and you're interested, email me with a resume attached and I'll forward it onto the relevant party.

On a tangential note, we're going to have an IT-related January Brainstorm session soon. It will be closed; I just have to work out the date with the panelists.

The Game Dev course begins Saturday. I'll send out the emails tonight.

The art of punditry

Ross Douthat doubles down. He may have been wrong about Trump before, but he's still entirely confident that Trump can't win the nomination:

I certainly overestimated poor Jeb Bush, whom I wrongly predicted would profit from Trump’s rise. But for the rest — no, I had a pretty low opinion of the right-wing entertainment complex to begin with, and I’m not remotely surprised that the white working class would rally to a candidate running on populist and nationalist themes.

I am very surprised, though, that Trump himself would have the political savvy, the (relative) discipline and yes, the stamina required to exploit that opening and become that populist. And for that failure of imagination, I humbly repent.

Of course I’m not completely humbled. Indeed, I’m still proud enough to continue predicting, in defiance of national polling, that there’s still no way that Trump will actually be the 2016 Republican nominee.

Trust me: I’m a pundit.

That's the true art of punditry. Never changing your mind, even while you are admitting that you're wrong.

No wonder I couldn't hack it. Meanwhile, Reihan Salam explains what Douthat missed, and is missing, at NRO:

“[Trump's] emergence as the voice of the anti-immigration Right is a reflection of the failure of the Republican establishment to grapple with lawlessness at the border and half a century of mass immigration. Consider the events of the past two years. Child migrants have surged into the United States from Central America, and working-class cities and towns across the country are struggling to absorb them. Before the federal courts stepped in, President Obama signed an executive order shielding roughly half of all unauthorized immigrants in the U.S. from the threat of deportation, a move he had previously suggested was out of bounds. And now the U.S. is experiencing yet another wave of Central American arrivals. Border Patrol officials report that many unauthorized immigrants believe that the U.S. is going to welcome them with open arms, and who can blame them given the president’s rhetoric?

Interesting to see that even the heart of cuckservatism is beginning to sense that all is not right with open borders.

They owe him

It's always interesting to see how SJWs continually vacillate between claiming that I am totally insignificant and can't possibly achieve anything and asserting that I am a dire threat to SJW convergence who must be stopped at all costs.

You All Owe Me

So, you may be familiar with Vox Day, the neofascist scumbag who tried to game the Hugos last year because the award always goes to so-called "social justice warrior" authors. Well recently, after people pointed out that the Goodreads Choice Awards have a wide, wide user base and still award the same type of books as the Hugos and Nebulas, he decided to take action. Over New Years weekend he announced the formation of a Goodreads group with the purpose of gaming the site. Of course the group was set to private so the evil SJWs wouldn't be able to see what he was up to.

Too bad for him the only thing keeping out the SJWs was a challenge question that could be answered with a simple Google search. By Saturday night I had access to the group. I didn't know what to do -- undermine him from the inside, play Serpico and leak screenshots on a piecemeal basis, or save them up for a big reveal. The last one seemed the best way not to get caught until I had a good collection of dirt, and I was strongly leaning in that direction.

But after reading File770's news roundup yesterday, which included a story about someone being ganged up on by Day and his goons, I decided it might be better to give warning where I could.... Since Vlad so kindly left a link to this evil librarian who had cut off his privileges, I decided to contact him with a warning. Within eight hours Vox Day's group was gone and VD's over on his blog whining about being banned here.

It doesn't seem to have occurred to Sean O'Hara, the SJW infiltrator par excellence, that I made no effort to keep out SJW entryists; I literally wrote the book on SJW entrysm, after all. And Castalia House has been under nonstop cracking attempts since last April. The supersecret question that Sean managed to puzzle out was: "What is the name of the spokesmanatee".

The goal had absolutely nothing to do with committing any vandalism on the site. The goal was to see to what extent the SJWs were running amok on Goodreads and smoke them out. I also wanted to learn the system in the build-up to the next Reader's Choice award, which is not something to which I had hitherto paid any attention, but at least superficially looked less corrupt than the Hugo Awards. We discovered how converged the site is much faster than I had anticipated, thanks to Sean and Rivka, who is not only a librarian, but a moderator.

It should be obvious that if I had any desire to wreak havoc, I would not have formed a public group of around 200 people and permitted anyone to join it. I would have simply unleashed the 466 Vile Faceless Minions sworn to mindless obedience of the Supreme Dark Lord.

In any event, this isn't over. If you want to weigh in, make a Goodreads account, follow my author page, and rate a few books that you've read. It only takes a few seconds, and obviously, it is something the SJWs there greatly fear or they would not have reacted as they did. Once more, we see that whatever they have read, it isn't Sun Tzu.

Here is an example of a one-star review that Goodreads still deems appropriate and features on its site:

Rhea rated it did not like it
Shelves: 0-stars-not-even-literature, never-ever-read

The author is a bag of shit, a brainless cockroach, a demented baboon. He (or should I call him "it"?) is racist and sexist and writes poorly-conceived, cookie-cutter, Tolkein-clone, wish-fulfillment fantasy to fill its empty life. Fuck you and fuck your mother for not having her priorities straight nine months before you were born.

Also, if you read one or two of its blog posts you will see that it has absolutely no sense of logic. I skimmed over one and apperently Vox says that because women are suffering from sex abuse at workplaces, they shouldn't work at all because their presence is causing "smart capable men" to "turn into rapists." What the honest fuck?!? WHAT KIND OF ACID DO YOU HAVE TO BE ON TO ARRIVE AT THAT CONCLUSION!?!? Is he drunk??? Is he a troll??? Is he even human??? My theory is that his father had sex with a horse...

Here is an example of a one-star review that Goodreads deemed worthy of a permanent ban and removed from their site, in addition to a four-star review of Banks's The Business and a five-star review of Haruki Murakami's A Wild Sheep Chase.

Vox Day rated it did not like it
Shelves: fiction

THE WASP FACTORY, by Iain Banks, was declared to be one of the top 100 novels of the 20th century by The Independent. That being the case, one can only presume that the Unabomber's Manifesto, a collection of the Best of The Penthouse Forum Letters, and a recipe for recycling human waste finished in the top 10.

The Wasp Factory is grotesque in almost every possible way. It is a horror story that is carefully calculated to shock and appall the senses in much the same way, and for much the same reason, that a performance artist would defecate on stage and then roll around in his own excrement. If one reads this book without feeling at least a little disgusted with the author and inclined to wonder what his problem is, there is almost certainly something psychologically wrong with you. The fact that the author succeeds in his obvious authorial intent is not an indication of "exceptional quality", but merely demonstrates the depths to which the author intended to descend.

Iain Banks is not a bad writer. Quite the opposite, and I have read and enjoyed a number of his books. But The Wasp Factory is about as egregious a misuse, as irresponsible an abuse, of an author's literary talent as one can imagine. The plot is absurd, the characters are paper-thin and completely lacking in any credibility whatsoever, and their bizarre sadism is surpassed only by that of the author in subjecting the reader to this novel.

The fact that it was highly praised is a severe indictment of the terrible state of modern literary criticism.

PEGIDA rising

The anti-Islamification movement expands into the UK:

BRITAIN'S newest political movement which has vowed to fight the "Islamification of the West" has marked its official launch today by announcing its first major rally.

The UK branch of the far right German campaign group PEGIDA will mark its introduction into the political sphere with a march throughout Newcastle later this month. The new group, which has been set up by former English Defence League (EDL) leader Tommy Robinson, announced the planned protest with a message saying: "Let's show the Islamists we show no fear."

It will be followed in February by another event, billed as a "peaceful silent walk" to take place in Birmingham. The walk is being organised in conjunction with PEGIDA branches across Europe and is centred on the theme "Save Our Country, Save Our Culture, Save Our Future".

The USA could use its own branch. Christendom will have to fight the Saracen again, the question is not if, but when. And for all the West's technology, it is weaker now than it has ever been before.

Social Justice convergence at Goodreads

This is hilarious. Goodreads not only deleted my account in less than 36 hours, but they deleted the Rabid Puppies group as well.

Hello Vox,

Your account was recently brought to our attention.  Upon review, we have decided to remove it from the site.  A CSV of the books you shelved is attached for your personal records.  You are banned from using Goodreads in any capacity going forward.

Sincerely,
The Goodreads Team

La, whatever shall I do without SJWs telling me what to read? In any event, that should certainly suffice to demonstrate what sort of playing field they have established there. It's an interesting sort of business plan that revolves around marketing only to the left side of the political spectrum.

Of course, they're not alone. Consider the open source projects that have also been converged. As I have written, keep them out, or they'll eventually kick you out.

But what these actions demonstrate is weakness and what they represent is opportunity. Every company that is converged is handing a competitor the opportunity to FoxNews them. Whether it is Mozilla or Wikipedia or Goodreads, the eventual outcome is clear: they will go the way of CNN as soon as a non-SJW competitor appears.

Recognize!

The PFT Poet sums up a sterling end to the 2015 NFL Regular Season, with the Vikings back in their rightful position atop the NFC North and AD in possession of his third NFL rushing title.

The Historic Minnesota Vikings Dynasty officially began on this day.

Oh glorious, historic Minnesota Vikings.

We have the best team in NFL History….

The Decade of Dominance is officially here, you heard it hear first.

We will cruise throughout the playoffs for a historic Super Bowl victory, in the most glorious fashion.

We just took the Green Bay Packers title away…for good.

By the time Mike Zimmer retires and wins over 7 Super Bowl Trophies, the Lombardi trophy will be renamed “The Zimmer Trophy.”

Let the purple and gold confetti fall.

Recognize Greatness.
Recognize History.

Recognize your historic Minnesota Vikings.

Preach, preacher!

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.

Repentance

Even those of whom we think the worst can repent. And when they do, it is our responsibility to accept their repentance and forgive them.

“Asking for forgiveness is certainly not an easy thing to do,” said Giromini in a YouTube video entitled “I ask Christians for forgiveness for feminist protest.” “We went way too far and ended up offending many religious and non-religious people,” she added, recognizing the stunt as a form of “blasphemy.” She adds that she is making progress in her own spiritual life, although the exact nature of her current beliefs remains unclear.

Although she left Femen in 2013 after denouncing it as a “business,” she had continued her bare-chested protests as the leader of a new feminist group comprised of both men and women, called “Bastardxs,” (allowing for both the masculine and feminine forms of the word “Bastards” in Portuguese).  She has now made it clear that she regards herself as having no affiliation with feminism at all, repudiating the movement as a religious “sect” that uses women as objects, promotes lesbianism, and covers up pedophilia in its ranks.

“For the feminist sect women are not the inspiration, they are prime matter in the worst sense of the term. They are convenient objects useful for the purpose of inflaming hatred against the Christian religion, hatred against men, hatred against the beauty of women, hatred against the equilibrium of families. That’s what feminism is, and I can guarantee it is like that because I was on the inside!”

“I saw the feminist movement cover up for PEDOPHILES,” writes Giromini. “I saw the feminist movement PERSECUTE WOMEN ... I am a witness to the fact that today in the feminist movement women are not of any importance but serve as fuel for the fires of hatred that the feminist sect cannot allow to die.”

It is hardly a surprise to learn that feminists would cover up for pedophiles. As we know, they're not the only ones to do so; SJWs and science fiction Fandom have done the same.

At the end of the day, there is only one enemy, the Father of Lies and his followers. What they call themselves today or tomorrow doesn't really matter. They are the Children of The Accuser, which is why pointing-and-shrieking is their primary weapon.

We should keep this woman's example in mind as we engage in cultural war in science fiction. Some of the SJWs we oppose will, sooner or later, be sickened by the actions of their compatriots. Some of them will reject the darkness and filth by which they find themselves engulfed and repent of their foul allegiances. And we need to be ready to accept them as penitents.

How dare we hit THEM back?

The SJWs at File 770 can't quite decide if they should be a) outraged that we are addressing their blatant abuse of Goodreads or b) pretend that anything we do is simply insignificant.

Theodore Beale is explicitly targeting for abuse a woman who posts here regularly. I certainly hope all human beings with the slightest bit of decency and compassion will recognize this for the ugly, sinister, cynical brutality it is.

Unlike Lis Carey and other SJWs active on Goodreads, Rabid Puppies are abiding strictly by Goodreads policies. Reviews that refer to AUTHOR BEHAVIOR are specifically prohibited; Lis Carey is in blatant violation of Goodreads policy and we are drawing attention to her and every other reviewer who violate that policy.

**Delete content focused on author behavior. We have had a policy of removing reviews that were created primarily to talk about author behavior from the community book page. Once removed, these reviews would remain on the member’s profile. Starting today, we will now delete these entirely from the site. We will also delete shelves and lists of books on Goodreads that are focused on author behavior.

Lis Carey is not being targeted for abuse, Lis Carey is abusing Goodreads. She is not being singled out, she is merely the first of many abusive SJW trolls who will be addressed. We know perfectly well that the first reaction of SJWs is to go running to the amenable authorities, which is why we are always careful to abide by the rules.

Is VD conceding to his ilk that they are ineffective in their use of logic?

No, he is reminding them that there is no point in utilizing logic and dialectic in dealing with SJWs. SJWs are incapable of understanding it or utilizing it; if they could, they would not be SJWs.

I suspect that VD’s minions will find that their impact on GoodReads as a whole will be far less than they think it will. They are just about to find out how tiny and trivial their group truly is.

If that were true, then why are the File 770ers so obviously concerned about their activities? As just remarked above, SJWs are incapable of understanding or utilizing logic.

One thing to note is the cowardice of VD and his minions. They are specifically targeting someone because they think she is frail and easy to harass. In short, they are sleazy, small-time cowards who are too scared to actually challenge someone they think can put up a fight. It is exactly the sort of slimy pathetic thing that perfectly encapsulates who VD and his sycophants are.

So, John Scalzi, Tor Books, George R.R. Martin, and all of Fandom are totally unable to put up a fight? SJWs always lie. We will take on any and all of you. Just give us a reason.

What is different about me is that I take on all comers, regardless of how frail and unable to fight they may be. Attack me or mine and I will hit you back twice as hard, no matter who you are. Playing defenseless or crying out in pain as you strike won’t save you.

All you have to do to avoid being counterattacked is not attack. How hard is that? How dumb do you have to be to fail to understand that, after all this time? Leave us alone, we’ll leave you alone. Attack us, we counterattack. It’s quite simple.

keep in mind that VD is such a towering, manly being that he kept expressing hysterical fear a couple of years ago, bleating with every appearance of high-strung sincerity that his physical safety was in danger from an imminent attack by Lee Martindale. (Lee is an older lady in a wheelchair.) He also bleated a number of times that year about his fear of me, claiming I had threatened him. (In reality, I had never even threatened to speak sternly to him.)

First women like Laura Resnick and Lee Martindale claim to be strong, independent womyn who are going to inflict Whedon-fu badassery on their foes, then they turn around and cry poor little womens who cain’t possibly do nothing to nobody the minute anyone responds to their threats and posturing. They're not fooling anyone.

Part of me wants to say, “Please come over to Goodreads and comment back!” but I suspect that might just encourage him and his minions, so probably not wise.

It isn't wise because doing so will only draw more attention to the way in which SJWs like Lis Carey and others are abusing Goodreads review policies. So, by all means, bring it on!

I note that File 770ers complain more about people legitimately nominating works, commenting on reviews, and rating books than they do about an active campaign by their side to blackball SF/F authors’ works from bookstores. Perhaps instead about whining about our legitimate activities, they should consider policing their own side before we adopt the same tactics in response.

UPDATE: Reading the comments at File 770 is like experiencing a Zen koan.

"There is a lack of evidence."

The comments on File 770 are an unreliable source. Source: the commenters on File 770.

Week 18

NFC North showdown. I have to say, I like our chances in the rematch. I'd like them better if Joseph were playing, but considering how banged up their offensive line is, I doubt Rodgers will finish this game either.

Social justice convergence at the bookstore

Ladies and gentlemen, it appears we have a new tactic at our disposal:

I’ve talked to a couple of book store owners in Toronto and someone is sending out Jim Hines roundup of the SP/RP affair. As a result, they are stopping making orders for Correia, Wright, Torgersen, Williamson and others of the worst broadcasters who have supported homophobic statements. I would assume the originator is part of Toronto’s gay community (which was oddly intertwined for years when Baka Books and the GLAAD bookstore were next door). It’s only the independents that I’ve heard so far, but if it hits Book City or Indigo, that could be a big repercussion. - Dexfarkin on January 2, 2016 at 7:59 pm

Remember this when they start crying about how morally reprehensible it is that we are daring to nominate books for awards and rate books on Goodreads.

Capital-F Fandom, on the other hand, is actively trying to destroy the careers of some of the most popular authors in science fiction and fantasy. Apparently it's not enough that they publicly rejected anyone and everyone connected with Baen Books at Worldcon last year, they want to make sure that Baen books are not sold in any bookstores either.

If you live in Toronto, please find out which independent bookstores have done this and let me know.

A reaction to federal overreach

A family militia has taken over a federal wildlife building in Oregon.



The Mandate of Heaven has clearly been lost. Many, if not most, Americans no longer support the federal government, for a very wide variety of reasons.

This particular action is unlikely to be a successful challenge to federal authority, but it is even less likely to be the last. And as we saw in the case of the Soviet Union, all it takes is a single successful one before the whole system collapses.

A message from the Hammond family can be read on Oathkeepers. A more detailed account of events can be found here.

Secularism is not constitutional

Justice Scalia calls out those who would suppress Christianity in the USA:

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia said Saturday the idea of religious neutrality is not grounded in the country's constitutional traditions and that God has been good to the U.S. exactly because Americans honor him.

Scalia was speaking at a Catholic high school in the New Orleans suburb of Metairie, Louisiana. Scalia, who was appointed by President Ronald Reagan in 1986 is the court's longest serving justice. He has consistently been one of the court's more conservative members.

He told the audience at Archbishop Rummel High School that there is "no place" in the country's constitutional traditions for the idea that the state must be neutral between religion and its absence.

"To tell you the truth there is no place for that in our constitutional tradition. Where did that come from?" he said. "To be sure, you can't favor one denomination over another but can't favor religion over non-religion?"

He also said there is "nothing wrong" with the idea of presidents and others invoking God in speeches. He said God has been good to America because Americans have honored him.

Scalia said during the Sept. 11 attacks he was in Rome at a conference. The next morning, after a speech by President George W. Bush in which he invoked God and asked for his blessing, Scalia said many of the other judges approached him and said they wished their presidents or prime ministers would do the same.

"God has been very good to us. That we won the revolution was extraordinary. The Battle of Midway was extraordinary. I think one of the reasons God has been good to us is that we have done him honor. Unlike the other countries of the world that do not even invoke his name we do him honor. In presidential addresses, in Thanksgiving proclamations and in many other ways," Scalia said.

"There is nothing wrong with that and do not let anybody tell you that there is anything wrong with that," he added.

Moreover, the idea that Congress shall make no law "respecting an establishment of religion" does not bar the several States, or the executive branch, from doing as it likes with regards to any religion. The fact that various courts have interpreted this as meaning that Christian football players cannot pray before a football game doesn't mean that it actually does mean that, it merely means that Christians should use their weight of numbers to do whatever they please.

The public is under no moral obligation to obey the courts. Law that is invented out of thin air can be justly ignored. Whether it can be safely ignored, of course, is another question.