Can you spell "tortious"?

As in "tortious interference"? It looks like the Legal Legion of Evil has at least one additional party to investigate.

What am I butt hurt about, exactly? I got Vox Day's IGG campaign cancelled, and now is worried its going to blow back on him. You're welcome.
- Jason Yungbluth, Twitter, 6:44 PM, 12 Oct 2018

1. The existence of a contractual relationship or beneficial business relationship between two parties.
2. Knowledge of that relationship by a third party.
3. Intent of the third party to induce a party to the relationship to breach the relationship.
4. Lack of any privilege on the part of the third party to induce such a breach.
5. The contractual relationship is breached.
6. Damage to the party against whom the breach occurs.

Darkstream: Indiegogo retro-cancels AH:Q

Watch the Darkstream.

Disney de-SJWs

First James Gunn, now Chuck Wendig.

Chuck Wendig@ChuckWendig
So, here’s a thing that has happened – I just got fired from Marvel. Taken off issues 4 and 5 of SHADOW OF VADER, and taken off an as-yet-unannounced SW book.

Chuck Wendig@ChuckWendig
Today I got the call. I’m fired. Because of the negativity and vulgarity that my tweets bring. Seriously, that’s what Mark, the editor said. It was too much politics, too much vulgarity, too much negativity on my part.

 It's a little soon to call it a trend, especially since Kathleen Kennedy had her contract extended, but it is a pair of very small steps forward for the Evil Empire.

No worries, Chuck. I'm sure DC will find something for you to ruin.

Imagine that

Thank you for contacting Indiegogo's Customer Happiness team! This is an automated note to confirm we've received your message and will review it shortly. As we are currently experiencing a high number of requests, it may take us longer than usual to respond, however, a member of our team will be in touch as soon as possible.

A high number of requests. That seems unusual. I wonder why that might be?

On a not-necessarily-unrelated note, will the VFM who emailed me the detailed information on Indiegogo's current financial status send it again, please? I don't currently have access to the machine on which I've got the email and there are some people who would like to review it. At first glance, it does not appear Indiegogo is presently in any shape to play the extend-and-bleed game that GT Interactive tried unsuccessfully with us for two years before finally submitting to our requirements.

Responses to IGG's retro-cancellation

Just a few of the reactions to IndieGoGo's self-destructive decision to retroactively cancel AH:Q and refusal to make payments it was obligated to make:

Chuck Dixon, the creator of Bane, and an all around comic book legend saw his Alt-Hero: Q crowdfunding campaign shutdown by IndieGoGo on Thursday without any kind of explanation.

We reached out to Dixon to get his thoughts on the matter and one thing is clear. He’s determined. Dixon already has the entire first issue scripted and a good chunk of the second issue. The series is expected to be six issues long with each issue being 24 pages. The entire story will eventually get collected into a graphic novel.

Dixon told us, “I’ll do my work on this project if I have to write it for free.”

He believes the campaign was shut down due to “politics.” And he doesn’t think this will be the last time independent creators who have differing politics will be targeted. We asked him if he believes further moves will be made against creators because of their politics. Dixon responded, “Absolutely. The left will weaponize anything to shut down free speech.”

Dixon did tell us that he will keep using IndieGoGo for other projects he is working on.

“Well, I’m used to being blacklisted. And I suppose IGG can do more. But we received funds on my other projects so they will continue on.”

However, he did note that IndieGoGo denied the funds for Alt-Hero: Q. But once again he showed his determination to get this project completed.

“Qanon will have to be completed by other means as the funds we raised have been denied us. But it WILL be completed. This is a speed bump.”

From one typical backer:

I'll quadruple the amount I pledged for AltHero Q to 300. The 300 I gave you last time has done more than all the money I've given to charity.  

From another:

I will triple my backing from $40 to $120.

And a third:

Having Alt-Hero-Q on IndieGogo had a knock-on effect, I subscribed to several other campaigns. All of which I'm canceling. 

If you're canceling support for any other campaigns on IndieGoGo, be sure to tell them why. As I mentioned previously, we expect to get version 2.0 of the AH:Q campaign up in about two weeks. As always, we're focused on doing it right rather than doing it fast, so rest assured that work has been proceeding on the first issue regardless of when we relaunch the campaign and how we do it. As The Legend has already declared, those involved will do it for nothing if necessary.

UPDATE: We're looking into various legal options and assessing our optimal strategy. To maximize those options, if you're a backer, please email Indiegogo at support@indiegogo.com and opt out of their arbitration process by sending an email from your registered email address on Indiegogo let them know that you are opting out of the arbitration and class action waiver provisions by contacting them with the subject line, "ARBITRATION AND CLASS ACTION WAIVER OPT-OUT".

Ignore their self-declared 30-day time limit on it. That's probably not applicable in this particular situation given the fact that their action took place retroactively several weeks after the campaign ended.

UPDATE: CC'd from a backer:

ARBITRATION AND CLASS ACTION WAVER OPT-OUT
This is to notify Indiegogo that I am opting out of your arbitration and class action waiver process, in light of your retroactive cancellation of the Alt-Hero:Q fundraiser.  As a backer of that campaign, I intend to support whatever legal action the project chooses to pursue.

"Unusual activity"

Believe it or not, that's Indiegogo's lame excuse for failing to deliver as promised on a contract. We've also figured out what tactics they are hiding behind; they put the information in the account instead of emailing you, then delete your access to the account so you have nothing with which to hold them accountable. Too bad for them that I'm in the habit of taking detailed notes and screenshots when I don't trust people, so we can already prove exactly what they did and where to confirm it.

 Needless to say, it looks like we'll be moving forward on this one. We already have several alternatives, so if you're a backer, please just be patient and hold your fire. It will probably be a week or two before we open up the campaign version 2.0.

Unless you're VFM, in which case you know what information we want.

DC to Disney: Hold my beer

Disney: We simply can't have pedophile partiers who make sick jokes about molesting children directing our movies. You're fired!

DC: Hey, James Gunn is available now? You're hired!

Bounding Into Comics has the details:

Warner Bros. confirmed to Gamespot that Gunn will write the next installment of the Suicide Squad. They told Gamespot, “It is confirmed that James Gunn is writing the next installment of the Suicide Squad franchise.”

Bleeding Cool goes full SJW

This retraction and apology is more than a little amusing, in light of Mark Siefert's well-intentioned attempt to understand the other side and play peacemaker. But as I had originally warned him, SJWs cannot understand anything and one cannot reason with them. Delenda est.

An Apology Concerning Vox Day: We Made a Mistake
Posted by Kaitlyn Booth October 11, 2018

We at Bleeding Cool wish to issue an apology.

Bleeding Cool does not support bigotry of any kind, nor will we become a bullhorn for the bigots of the world to go off.

Today one of our writers made an error in judgement resulting in giving exposure to viewpoints that we abhor. We will do better, going forward, and that is a promise. The author admits that this was an extreme error of judgement that never should have been made and that other members of the Bleeding Cool writing staff were unaware of the contents of this article.

In a first step towards that end we are announcing, effective immediately, I am stepping into the role of Editor-in-Chief and will be implementing new review policies across the Bleeding Cool teams. Yesterday an extensive interview was run with publisher, author, and political figure Vox Day.

The intention of the interview was to investigate Day’s political and ideological views, and his operations as a publisher. But these intentions do not matter. The intent of the article and interview were poorly executed, and poorly communicated.

While the intentions of the author might have been one thing, the reality of the situation is another. Bleeding Cool would like to issue a sincere apology to everyone for the article in question.

We do not, in any way, agree with the ideology of Vox Day. We do not support divisiveness in the fan community, or in our culture at large. We do not support those that try to bring down others. We support diversity in all aspects of pop culture. We support everyone fighting the good fight against bigotry and only wish we could play a part in making not only the internet but the world a safer place for all individuals. We cannot apologize enough for the people we have offended. We cannot apologize enough for the breach of trust this has had with our readers and people within the community. We hope you’ll be willing to give us a chance to win back that trust in some capacity.

We will do better.

Read the original article here. Meanwhile, John Trent of Bounding Into Comics is celebrating his new monopoly on all the independent comics news.

Indiegogo cancels AH:Q

Your transaction has been refunded
Your transaction to ALT-HERO:Q on Indiegogo has been refunded!
Indiegogo’s Trust and Safety Team determined this campaign didn’t comply with our Terms of Use. You’ll no longer receive any perks associated with this transaction. Please visit our help center for further information on how Indiegogo protects users.

Needless to say, we're looking into this. We've got everyone's email addresses and so forth, so if we have to set up our own crowdfunding platform, we will do so. However, in light of the fact that Indiegogo has done this retroactively, we are already looking into the legal aspects of their actions. I am not yet aware of any reason, in fact, I do not even know if the scheduled payment for the campaign was delivered on schedule or not two weeks ago. I assume not, but I won't be able to confirm that until tomorrow.

I've already talked to The Perfect Aryan Male, the architect of our lawsuit against GT Interactive. Suffice it to say that the band is back together!

If you're Legal Legion of Doom and licensed in California, get in touch and join the team.

UPDATE: This lawsuit should prove educational. At first glance, it looks very similar. It's very interesting that it was filed in Massachusetts.

Business, SJW-style

I wish Marvel Studios would hire Megan Ellison to run it:

According to The Wrap, Annapurna Pictures has run into financial difficulties as of late, culminating in the "jettisoning of two upcoming films with marquee talent" and the exit of its film division head.... Coming in December, Annapurna will be releasing the Christian Bale star vehicle "VICE," another leftist propaganda film in which Bale plays former Vice President Dick Cheney opposite Sam Rockwell playing President Bush. The film is reported to have cost a "bloated $60 million to produce" when it should have cost only half that. Factor in marketing cost and the film hasn't got a prayer.

"There is a financial issue going on," a source told The Wrap. "Her dad has put a lot of money into the company and I don’t think he wants to support her behavior and what’s been going on. There are restraints — the money is not flowing."

Annapurna also recently dropped its slated film about Fox News founder Roger Ailes just three weeks away from starting production. It had been approved for a whopping $35 million budget.

A source close to Megan Ellison says she has been making political passion projects with zero regard for financial cost or box office potential.

"She makes bad decisions," the source said. "She wanted to chase all these expensive movies that weren’t going to make money, and she said, ‘I don’t care whether they make money.’ That’s not how you run a company."

It is if you're an SJW. From a Financial Times article in 2014:

She is Megan Ellison and, depending on who you talk to, she is either the saviour of an industry that has succumbed to brain-numbing comic-book movies and superhero sequels or a wealthy heiress who splashes the cash on films that don’t necessarily make financial sense.

It would appear we have the answer to that question.

Darkstream: Jordan Peterson stars as Wormtongue

From the transcript of the Darkstream:

It's really amazing to see how someone like Jordan Peterson simply doesn't understand that people pay attention to what you say, and that people pay attention to what you said yesterday. People pay attention to what you wrote! He seems to think that as long as you fold, spindle, and mutilate the ideas that are coming out of your mouth, as long as you pretend to be thinking very seriously, really debating with yourself and thinking very hard like you've never ever thought about the subject before, then you can say whatever you want. Because, you know, you don't think you're right, it's just a thought experiment, it's just an idea, just, you know, contemplating various options and throwing ideas out there. It's total bullshit! It is from the start, it is all the way through, it is at the finish.

Let me make it clear for you: Jordan Peterson is a used car salesman, except the used car he is selling is himself. Okay? He's not your dad, he's not your uncle, he is somebody who is making a lot of money off of you and people like you because you're dumb enough to fall for this guy! Look, I'm a writer, I am an editor, and I knew before I finished the first chapter of 12 Rules of Life that Jordan Peterson was an intellectual charlatan. Now, I will admit that I wasn't aware that he was a complete lunatic until I read Maps of Meaning. I didn't realize that there was something genuinely wrong with him until I read Maps of Meaning and I didn't realize how totally full of bullshit he is until I watched some of his videos.

Look, when you see him pull this move, "no, I've never thought about this before, I'm really just working my way through the same thing that I've been asked about 50 times before, but I want you to think that I'm really trying to puzzle my way through this and I don't want you to hold me accountable for anything that I say," I mean, you should be embarrassed! You should be irritated with yourself for listening to this guy at all!

AI is sexist

Amazon ditches its HR-replacement AI for violating several of its assumptions:

Amazon.com Inc’s machine-learning specialists uncovered a big problem: their new recruiting engine did not like women.

The team had been building computer programs since 2014 to review job applicants’ resumes with the aim of mechanizing the search for top talent, five people familiar with the effort told Reuters.

Automation has been key to Amazon’s e-commerce dominance, be it inside warehouses or driving pricing decisions. The company’s experimental hiring tool used artificial intelligence to give job candidates scores ranging from one to five stars - much like shoppers rate products on Amazon, some of the people said.

“Everyone wanted this holy grail,” one of the people said. “They literally wanted it to be an engine where I’m going to give you 100 resumes, it will spit out the top five, and we’ll hire those.”

But by 2015, the company realized its new system was not rating candidates for software developer jobs and other technical posts in a gender-neutral way.

The problem of the machine not spitting out results preferred by those using it is hardly new. And while the article claims that "gender bias was not the only issue" and that "problems with the data that underpinned the models’ judgments meant that unqualified candidates were often recommended for all manner of jobs" is almost certainly true, the problem is that Amazon did not give its AI a fair shake.

Amazon simply assumed that the undesired preference for male employees and "unqualified candidates" was a bug rather than the feature that it may have been. If the AI actually worked, then it would have undermined not only the concept of sexual equality, but credentialism as well. But instead of actually allowing the experiment to proceed and seeing if those unqualified male candidates recommended by the AI were successful employees, they chose to kill it on the basis of its violation of their preconceived ideas.

It's too bad that they didn't allow the experiment to play out, because the complete destruction of corporate credentialism is desperately needed in today's increasingly competitive global marketplace. Then again, given how Amazon already dominates the online retail space, it's probably just as well for their competitors that they turned away from the possible advantage the AI-HR system might have given them.

Interview with Bleeding Cool

Over the last few weeks, I was interviewed extensively by Mark Siefert and Rich Johnston of Bleeding Cool, the comics media site. It is quite literally the longest, most thorough interview I have ever read, much less participated in on either side. Bleeding Cool posted the entire interview almost entirely verbatim, including the follow-up questions and answers. It is precisely 767 percent more honest and fair than the NPR hit piece was, and demonstrates rather clearly how the Internet media puts the mainstream media to journalistic shame.

This doesn't mean either Siefert or Johnston agree with me at all about anything. They very clearly don't, for the most part. But they recognize that Arkhaven and Dark Legion have successfully established themselves in the comics space and that it makes no sense to simply pretend that we don't exist. Beyond that, they observably understand that the customary SJW response is not only ineffectual, but serves to add considerable fuel to the fire that motivates us and our supporters.

In some ways it's a debate as well as an interview; while I could offer a few objections to some of his corrections to my answers, there is little point in going down those rabbit holes. For example, I don't view Marvel's denial of its director of content and character development Sana Amanat's connection to the Clinton Foundation to be conclusive or convincing given the direct relationships between the foundation, her cousin, and her two brothers. But given the in-depth investigation they clearly did into my family and heritage - which was very interesting as I previously knew nothing about my historically significant Irish ancestor - they doubtless have the ability to dig considerably deeper into that situation if they wish to do so.

But it is a fair, detailed, and extremely informative interview, which I suspect a number of people on both sides of the ideological spectrum will enjoy reading. I expect a fair number of SJWs will be outraged by the fact that Bleeding Cool acknowledged my existence at all, and when they did, failed to devote the entire interview to angrily denouncing NAZICOMICSHATE, but then, birds will fly and fish will swim too.

We no longer live in a world where we can mutually pretend that our comics don’t contain politics so we don’t have to argue about it. Politics covers everything like a rash you want to scratch even though you know that’ll make it worse. Comics are no longer a brotherhood beyond politics, and fandom is no longer sacred ground.

Vox Day has played a role in creating that world, in my opinion (which he disputes to a substantial degree in the interview below, for the record), and has also published books that I dislike, and things that are intentionally antagonistic. On the book and comics publishing front, that doesn’t bother me, at all. Have at it. It is a legitimate function of art to be disagreeable, to inspire dislike and even anger.

Because comics can in fact be dangerous, very many publishers in our history have faced struggles for distribution and placement on newstands or in stores. Day has stated that he’s had some inexplicable issues with selling his comics on Amazon. If that’s true, it’s wrong. Any distributor or retailer can refuse to carry a comic for any reason (a concept that I am personally very familiar with), and that’s perfectly fine too. But if there’s any third party or rogue employee interfering with Castalia House books or comics from being sold at Amazon when those comics are salable according to standard policies, not only are you in the wrong, but you’re also helping Vox Day, not hurting him. You’re giving him and his followers something to fight.

You won’t convince anyone that Vox Day’s politics and opinions are wrong by restricting his followers’ ability to buy his comics. Quite to the contrary. Attempting to win by restricting the publication of information (note that this is a different thing than controlling the flow of information that you yourself consume) does not put one in particularly enviable company. That’s not how to win any modern conflict, let alone a conflict based on information… which is all of them now.

I’d much rather be reading the There Will Be War series than discussing Vox Day’s politics. Or writing that post about Luis Senarens that I mentioned earlier. But politics are the core of who Vox Day is and what he talks about — for the moment — so let’s go....

Bleeding Cool: I want to start off with something that’s come up in connection to Comicsgate and events that have spun out of your disagreements with Ethan Van Sciver. Comicsgaters often say they want politics out of comics. At its core, the idea that people want comics to be escapist entertainment certainly isn’t objectionable. But you recently noted:

“Second, comics have always had political and ideological elements to them; the core problem with what the SJWs are doing in comics is less about how they are inserting their lunatic politics into the comics and more about the way in which they are ideologically policing who is permitted to produce and publish comics at Marvel, DC, Image, IDW, and other comics publishers.”

Is it possible to create superhero comics without political elements? Is “with great power comes great responsibility” a political statement?

Vox Day: Yes, it is possible to create superhero comics without political elements, but one will end up with a limited range of stories that are intrinsically unrealistic. After all, there is no way that the governments and militaries of the world would simply ignore the increased power that superheroes could offer them. “With great power comes great responsibility” is not a political statement, it is a moral statement. And it is not possible to create superhero comics without moral elements.

Read the whole novella-sized article, entitled Vox Day: Altered States of America, there.

Also, speaking of Arkhaven Comics and Chuck Dixon, I'm happy to report that CHUCK DIXON'S AVALON #2: RULEBREAKER, is now available in a gold logo edition from Arkhaven Direct, this time complete with dialogue. We're working on getting replacement issues out to those who received what we shall euphemistically describe as "silent collector's editions".


UPDATE: The initial response on Twitter is, of course, entirely surprising to absolutely no one.

Smack Talk Showdown@SmackTalkShwdwn
This is disgusting. Why give this hate monger a platform?

Jordan Peterson is a feckless coward

First he offers a ridiculous, long-winded justification for his "Kavanaugh should step down" tweet:

I asked myself a question, after reading these posts: “Is there an alternative to confirming or not confirming Kavanaugh?” When a choice appears starkly binary, a third path appears impossible, by definition — but might possibly still be worth seeking. I tried to place myself in Kavanaugh’s position, while generating a potential answer (and think that I can do so with some justification, having been publicly identified as reprehensible by many people—prominent journalists, activists, and academics among them).

I thought, “He can’t withdraw, prior to the nomination, because his reputation has been savaged so badly that withdrawal would not only mean loss of the Supreme Court nomination, but demolition of his entire career and future life.” So the only way for Kavanaugh was forward, through the FBI investigation, on to the nomination hearing, and the hope that he would be… what? Cleared? Not cleared, because it is too late for that, even given the favorable or at least not damning FBI report. A large percentage of the American public does not believe that he is an appropriate choice for the highest bench position in the land (51%, according to NY Mag: https://nym.ag/2RwLUGt, citing a CNN poll). I’m not claiming, necessarily, that CNN’s poll is reliable. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that there is very widespread opposition to his candidacy, much of it generated not by people’s belief in his innocence or lack therefore but by their objection to the manner in which both parties handled the nomination process.

It’s not a good thing when there is general discomfort with the manner in which something as important as the naming of a new Chief Justice is undertaken. It doesn’t bode well for the stability and peace of the state (and perhaps–perhaps–there is nothing more important to preserve than that).

So I thought, “What might I do in such a position?” Withdrawing, prior to a full investigation, did not constitute an acceptable option. But it’s not clear that accepting the position, given the scale of opposition to my candidacy (“my,” in my simulation of his situation). So what if the FBI cleared me, I received the nomination, but then decided that it might be best for medium- to long-term peace and the good of the country if someone who shared my views but who had not been contaminated, rightly or wrongly, by the horrors of the nomination process in question be put forward as a candidate in my stead? Objections to that might include:

• Perhaps the Democrat opposition would mount a similar campaign against my putative successor. But that would provide virtually unassailable evidence for the purely manipulative and political motivation of the accusers, forcing them to duplicate their strategy a second time. That would help reveal the machinations for what they were, in a manner that would be virtually undeniable.
• Perhaps time is of the essence, and there would be no way to place another candidate of conservative leaning on the bench before the November elections. As they say, however: “act in haste, repent in leisure.” It might be acceptable to wait a month and test the democratic waters: if the Republicans do well in November, then their moves to nominate the candidate of their choice have been fully and evidently vetted by the electorate. That’s not a bad medium-to-long-term strategy.
• Perhaps it is necessary, as an act of patriotism, to sacrifice personal ambition for the broader welfare of the country.
• Perhaps that would also enable “me” (Kavanaugh) to regain the moral upper hand, in some permanent manner: with my name cleared, enabled in at least some manner to go on with my life, I could clear the way for the next, hopefully less contentious candidate.

So those were my ideas.

Then he threatens to hold his breath until he turns blue quit Twitter because he can't take the well-merited heat.

 I was laboring yet again under the naïve misapprehension (and should have known better at this stage in the media war) that I could offer an idea—not a certainty—for consideration on that platform. I should have known better not least because I had already discussed the dangers of Twitter, for example, with my son, who insisted over many months that if I engage in contentious issues online that I should do so with a longer blog post, and link to that with Twitter. I should have known better because Twitter appears primarily to be a forum where errors are magnified and outrage and vitriol almost certain to emerge whenever uncertainty about motive manifests itself.

I honestly don’t know what to do with Twitter. It’s a very dangerous platform, and may well be doing more harm than good. But I have something approaching a million followers. Do I owe them a certain allegiance? Should I just abandon my account, or should I try to use it properly, whatever that means? I think it would be safer for me to leave Twitter and it would almost certainly better for my mental health and ease of mind and conscience.

Jordan Peterson has NO intention of quitting Twitter. He's a fame whore and he's just desperately trying to get his disappointed followers to buy into the "clarification" narrative.

UPDATE: I didn't notice this on the first read-through. Jordan Peterson is also an ignoramus.

It’s not a good thing when there is general discomfort with the manner in which something as important as the naming of a new Chief Justice is undertaken. It doesn’t bode well for the stability and peace of the state (and perhaps–perhaps–there is nothing more important to preserve than that).

The charlatan who has been contemplating this matter so very deeply apparently didn't spare one single thought for the fact that Justice Kavanaugh was not named Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. The naming of a Chief Justice is indeed a significant government event, but it doesn't have anything to do with the recent Kavanaugh confirmation.

The consequences of #METOO

Some of them are downright beneficial to society:

The Society for Human Resource Management published a report Thursday that documented the result of the movement that called on society to believe allegations of sexual harassment without question.

According to the study, nearly a third of executives report that they have “changed their behaviors to a moderate, great or very great extent to avoid behavior that could be perceived as sexual harassment.”

The CEO of the SHRM, Johnny C. Taylor Jr., explained that “some of the more concerning pieces of data that came out of the research are around the concern that there may be a backlash of sorts.”

“There were men who specifically said I will not hire a woman going forward,” he explained.

“Those who said they would hire a woman said they would not travel with one, and they, more importantly they would not engage in activities after business hours,” Taylor added.

Ironically, a genuine misogynistic woman-hater is considerably safer in the current environment than the most passionate confirmed male feminist. I don't hate women, but I have never trusted them or believed in their doe-eyed innocence, which is probably why I've never had any problem in this regard even though feminists have hated me since 2001.

My habits are pretty straightforward. Don't touch women and never initiate contact with them. Don't talk to women outside the friends and family circle except to exchange the customary civilities or to do business with them. Don't express attraction to women. Don't betray any emotion or vulnerabilities to women. Don't permit yourself to be put into situations where you are alone with women. Don't allow your mind to be distracted by a pretty face or a shapely figure. When in doubt, walk away.

There are a few exceptions, of course, but they are women who have proved, over time, that they are individuals who can be trusted, and not merely in the context of male-female relations either.

At the end of the day, I just like Spacebunny a lot better than the rest of them, so it's less a series of intentional behavioral guidelines than a lack of interest on my part.

Now we know the quo

Look what they made her do. The payoff was delivered as part of the quid pro quo that inspired Taylor Swift's uncharacteristic political outburst.

Swift, 28, doubles down on her anti-Trump message and urges her fans to vote Democrat as she becomes most decorated female of ALL time at American Music Awards. Taylor was nominated for four awards on the night: Tour of the Year, Favorite Rock/Pop Female, Favorite Rock/Pop Album, and Artist of the Year, winning all four. Her four wins made her most decorated female in AMA history.

Also, she gets to stay in the closet for a little while longer. Which is nice. It's interesting to observe that the award-winning Tour of the Year didn't even manage to sell out on a regular basis.

That moment you realize they're crazy

There is a story about Terence McKenna, upon being introduced at a conference by an academic who kept going on about the epic drug-taker's amazing metaphors concerning other-dimensional elves, standing up and angrily shouting, "It's not a metaphor! The elves are real!" At which point everyone in the audience suddenly realized that the famous techno-philosopher was not brilliant, he was not insightful, and his thinking was neither revolutionary nor creative, he was just crazy.

Owen Benjamin - by the way, you guys were right, the man is extremely funny - appears to have had a similar epiphany about the intellectual frauds known as Jordan Peterson and the rest of the New York Times-christened "Intellectual Dark Web". From the transcript:

Brett Weinstein comes out swinging. I was saying WeinSTINE, they were saying it was WeinSTINE. They're such fucking little weasels. When Brett was on Rogan, they said it was WeinSTINE instead of STEEN, but that was blatantly because of Harvey. Now they're all saying WeinSTEEN. Bunch of fucking weasels. The Intellectual Douche Weasels. IDW. Intellectual Douche Weasels.

For those of you who are like, "oh, you're turning on your own, Big Bear," no, I'm not. I'm using criticism and social shame to try to alter someone's behavior. I am not taking anyone's rights or calling for anything.

Brett Weinstein says "Quite a good discussion of some IDW-" That's Intellectual Douche Weasel. The Intellectual Dark Web, what a bunch of fags. All right, "reactions to the Kavanaugh confirmation and push-back. Warning, contains nuance. You may be triggered. If you are, avoid social media for 24 hours. Comfort and herb tea are available free of charge at a local safe space."

These people. I can't believe I was once rooting for them. That's all right. See, that's a mistake I expect you to get past with me. I made a mistake, I said you can trust a guy like Brett Weinstein to give pushback from a liberal stance and that's how you can come up with the best- no! These people are undercutting the American republic and they can go fuck themselves. Don't listen to a word out of their mouths.

I'm asking you to do that out of consent, by the way. I'm not forcing anyone or condemning or "taking down". That's so stupid. This is Charlie's reaction, by the way, when I told him what Jordan Peterson has been up to. He hasn't been taking it very well. You know, he looked up to him almost like a father figure and now he doesn't even want to clean his room! He's just throwing his toys everywhere... he's spiralling.

By the way, you're the one who cleans your room. It has nothing to do with Jordan Peterson. Everybody just needs a better Dad. That's what it comes down to. The Baby Boomers sucked at being parents and so now no one knows what money is or how the government works.

What's interesting to me about the Official Opposition's sudden reaction to Jordan Peterson's massive faux pas is the way they are desperately trying to reinforce his false "thought experiment" narrative.  What a great nuanced discussion! It's just a thought experiment that demonstrates how nuanced and thoughtful ol' Uncle Jordan is! He didn't actually mean what he said. LOL! Don't you know he just works out what he thinks in public? He's been thinking about this issue for a long time, a long time, but he's just working out what he thinks about it now in response to your reaction to his tweet, which you must understand was just a nuanced thought experiment that struck him amidst his contemplation on how best to clean someone else's room.

No, it's an extremely significant demonstration of how little character and integrity these weasels possess, as they join forces in order to cover up for Jordan Peterson's mask slipping in public and revealing the real anti-American left-wing globalist face underneath. In fact, the main thing I took from all of this was the confirmation that Scott Adams is not on our side, after he rushed to accept the Crazy Christ's "clarification".

Think about this. Did Milo ever get this kind of protective public insulation for his public missteps? Did they ever extend the same benefit of the doubt to Kavanaugh or anything that President Trump has ever said? The Incestuous Douche Weasels know, they immediately recognized, that Peterson exposed himself badly on Supreme Court Justice Kavanaugh, and anyone who falls for this frantic ex post facto itachi kabuki is a self-deluded fool.

It is simply ghastly to observe how many Peterson cultists continue to delude themselves about the man, even after they saw him unmask himself. They have the situation precisely backwards. Peterson didn't take one bad position after establishing many good ones, to the contrary, he very publicly took one good position early on that is very much against the flow of his entire personal and professional perspective.

No party for neocons

This fake Republican fake conservative is a perfect example of the anti-American US citizen for whom there is no longer any place in modern American politics:

Trump’s claim that he is going to “Make America Great Again” — after it has been betrayed by disloyal elites — is simply an echo, as it were, of Phyllis Schlafly’s conspiratorial rants.

The history of the modern Republican Party is the story of moderates being driven out and conservatives taking over — and then of those conservatives in turn being ousted by those even further to the right. A telling moment came in 1996, when the Republican presidential nominee, Bob Dole, visited an aged Barry Goldwater. Once upon a time, Dole and Goldwater had defined the Republican right, but by 1996, Dole joked, “Barry and I — we’ve sort of become the liberals.” “We’re the new liberals of the Republican Party,” Goldwater agreed. “Can you imagine that?”

The ascendance of extreme views, abetted in recent years by Fox News, Newt Gingrich, Sarah Palin and the tea party movement, increasingly made the House Republican caucus ungovernable. The far-right Freedom Caucus drove House Speaker John A. Boehner into retirement in 2015. His successor, Paul D. Ryan, lasted only three years. Ryan’s retirement signals the final repudiation of an optimistic, inclusive brand of Reaganesque conservatism focused on enhancing economic opportunity at home and promoting democracy and free trade abroad. The Republican Party will now be defined by Trump’s dark, divisive vision, with his depiction of Democrats as America-hating, criminal-coddling traitors, his vilification of the press as the “enemy of the people,” and his ugly invective against Mexicans and Muslims. The extremism that many Republicans of goodwill had been trying to push to the fringe of their party is now its governing ideology.

That’s why I can no longer be a Republican, and in fact wish ill fortune on my former party. I am now convinced that the Republican Party must suffer repeated and devastating defeats beginning in November. It must pay a heavy price for its embrace of white nationalism and know-nothingism. Only if the GOP as it is currently constituted is burned to the ground will there be any chance to build a reasonable center-right party out of the ashes. But that will require undoing the work of decades, not just of the past two years.

In fact, an active embrace of white identity politics and so-called "know-nothingism" can solidify Republican political power and possibly even save America. But Max Boot knows that, because he wants to defeat the Republicans and destroy America. That's why there is no longer any place for him in either the pro-America Republican Party or the anti-Israel Democratic Party. And that is why he and all the other NeverTrump neocons have to go back.

Max Boot@MaxBoot
I too will crawl over broken glass. To vote for Democrats who will act as a check on Trump’s unrestrained and unprecedented abuse of power.

Alavida Nimrata

Not that the UN matters, but it will be good to have Nimrata Randhawa out of both federal and state government.

President Trump has accepted Nikki Haley's resignation as UN Ambassador, according to two sources briefed on their conversation. The timing of her departure is still unclear. She spoke out strongly in favor of Christine Blasey Ford after the university professor levied an accusation of sexual assault against Judge Brett Kavanaugh.

Ideally, the God-Emperor won't even bother to replace her. It will be interesting to learn if this is just part of the ebb-and-flow of politics or an element of a larger shakeup taking place.

Darkstream: the dirt is not magic

From the transcript of the Darkstream:

If you move 100 million Chinese settlers into Africa, what is the resulting society is going to be? It's going to be Chinese. If you move one hundred million Hispanics and Africans and Asians into the United States, what is it going to be? Well, the only thing that we can be certain of is that it's not going to be what it was before.

The dirt is the same, the physical geography is the same, but English colonists coming to the geography of North America did not become Indians. Their culture did not change, they did not suddenly start living in wigwams and dividing up into small tribes. You know, every single day we see this, and yet we see most of our government policies, we see most of the media narrative affirming something that we know to be false. Now, I'm encouraged by the fact that we're starting to see the term Magic Dirt appear in many places that you wouldn't expect to see it.

How to Lose an Argument

By Ben Shapiro. Code Pink's National Director shows how easy it is to rattle Ben Shapiro and completely shut him down. The rampant hypocrisy in his contradictory approach towards his nation-state and towards the USA leaves him with an easy weakness that anyone can easily exploit. It's also clear that both the Left and the Right have increasingly had it with all the Israel First activists in the US media. There is a very hard line between supporting Israel and supporting Israel at the expense of America, and Ben Shapiro is one of many in the US media who is observably on the wrong side of it.

It's also a good example of how rhetoric trumps dialectic. "Apartheid Israel" is a rhetorical kill shot. Sure, one can make a reasonable dialectical argument that Israel is not an apartheid state according to the technical definition of the series of laws that were collectively known as the historical South African policy of apartheid from 1948 to 1994. But the very effectiveness of the kill shot indicates that whether the charge is technically true or not, the rhetoric tends to point towards the truth of the situation, especially since Israel has the legal equivalent of South Africa's Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act of 1949, which was the first apartheid law, as well as a milder religious version of the Population Registration Act of 1950.

For example, the Code Pink woman could have easily pointed out that Israel observably practices religious apartheid, as the Supreme Court of Israel has ruled that even Jews or the descendants of Jews that actively practice any religion other than Judaism are not entitled to immigrate to Israel. The point is that it is relatively easy to expose even the smoothest, most-practiced wormtongues with sufficient mastery of rhetoric and dialectic combined with an awareness of their customary deceits and inconsistencies.

Regulate Big Social

It's clear that they cannot be trusted to behave themselves:

Google exposed the private data of hundreds of thousands of users of the Google+ social network and then opted not to disclose the issue this past spring, in part because of fears that doing so would draw regulatory scrutiny and cause reputational damage, according to people briefed on the incident and documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

As part of its response to the incident, the Alphabet Inc. GOOGL -1.02% unit on Monday announced a sweeping set of data privacy measures that include permanently shutting down all consumer functionality of Google+. The move effectively puts the final nail in the coffin of a product that was launched in 2011 to challenge Facebook Inc. FB -0.05% and is widely seen as one of Google’s biggest failures.

A software glitch in the social site gave outside developers potential access to private Google+ profile data between 2015 and March 2018, when internal investigators discovered and fixed the issue, according to the documents and people briefed on the incident. A memo reviewed by the Journal prepared by Google’s legal and policy staff and shared with senior executives warned that disclosing the incident would likely trigger “immediate regulatory interest” and invite comparisons to Facebook’s leak of user information to data firm Cambridge Analytica.

And for all the libertarians this offends, remember, a corporation is a government entity. Trading elected government rule for unelected corporate rule is not an improvement.

Mailvox: rethinking Jordan Peterson

Sometimes it just takes people a little while to catch up.

Longtime reader, and the first time I had ever considered dropping off my visits to the blog were when you began going after Jordan Peterson. IIRC, you began with his denial of Jewish IQ numbers and denunciation of any discussion of it being Evil Alt-Right, and it made sense to push back against him for that. However, it began to seem like another Scalzi was emerging and I couldn't accept him being put into that basket. I have derived plenty of value from his basic messages of taking care of oneself, and as a Canadian, his opposition to Bill C-16 was badly needed and with our insane speech regulations and Rights Commissions/Tribunals, he was brave to do it.

Then the meat and salt diet, extracts from Maps of Meaning and other stuff just couldn't be justified. Now with the Kavanaugh tweet he has completed his self-immolation even for those like myself who are likely too generous and held his positive messages in such regard as to outweigh the insanity. Also, pairing up for his tour to "debate" with Sam Harris, one of those contemptible creatures in existence, was a massive signal and I came back to reading the blog daily when I saw it. Reflecting now, if I have the idea right about genetic fallacy, I am still happy for the bits I got out of him that I have benefited from, but he is on the whole indefensible at this point. I am writing so you know there are plenty like myself who couldn't go along with you at first (same with other topics I suppose), and now have caught up and appreciate you going out on a limb to speak the truth.

You must get a lot of hate in the daily inbox, so I hope this one thank you serves some purpose to let you know your work is appreciated.

It's always encouraging to see people breaking free of the hold that Jordanetics has on their minds. As for retaining the beneficial bits, well, if a cult leader didn't have something genuine to offer people, no one would follow him. One can find aspects and elements of the truth even in the biggest, most shameless charlatans.

The fact that Jordan Peterson is a crazy intellectual con man pushing an evil globalist philosophy doesn't mean that every thing he has ever said is wrong. I won't pretend to understand why some people need to be told to take care of themselves, or why anyone would ever consider it to be a profound truth in the non-Darwinian sense, but if they do, so be it.

But they should keep in mind that you don't go to your dentist for heart surgery or automotive repairs just because his advice about brushing your teeth every day worked out so well for you.

Darkstream: Why no one believed Blasey

From the transcript of the Darkstream:

One thing that I haven't seen much discussion of despite all the jibber and jabber and rambling on about the various implications of the Kavanagh confirmation, and whether he was going to be confirmed or not, is the fact that nobody - and I mean nobody - believed Christine Blasey Ford. And so the interesting question is, why not? You know, people talk about these things, and the giveaway during the discussion of the allegations and so forth, the term that that people always used, was, "well she's credible." She's credible. Now, think about it. When someone asks you if somebody else is telling the truth, and you say, "well, they're credible," what does that actually mean? All it means is that I don't believe them but they're not observably crazy, you know, their accusations are at least modestly plausible.

It was possible for Kavanagh to have misbehaved in the way that Blasey Ford was saying. It was not plausible to believe that he was involved as part of a regular gang rape machine that was taking place. So the thing is that when all these people were saying "she's credible," for example,  even Trump initially said that Blasey Ford was credible, yeah, we all knew he didn't believe a word she was saying. Most of the people who were on her side, most of the people who voted against Kavanagh because she gave them an excuse to do so,  did not believe her either. Whenever you see people saying, "yeah, well, I believe victims" and that sort of thing, that means they don't believe this particular alleged victim. You didn't have people there saying "look what's wrong with you people, she's obviously telling the truth," because she obviously wasn't She was obviously lying,  but why was her lying so obvious? Why was it so readily apparent to so many people right away?

Duly noted

BobbyDazzler@RobertLinder1
I listened to the whole debate Ethan clearly and deliberately said he did not like voxday, that he viewed voxday as anti-comicsgate.

I didn't listen to the 2VS-Deathray debate; it would be hard to imagine anything that would be of less interest to me given that I have little-to-no respect for either participant or the moderator. But assuming the tweet is accurate, this sort of statement is precisely why I labeled him 2VS. Had Ethan simply made that dislike clear from the start, instead of talking to me about working together and so forth, I would have cheerfully ignored him in exactly the same way I have ignored every other illustrator or colorist who makes a habit of spouting off on the Internet. Remember, by his own admission, Ethan was always the one watching me and Arkhaven, not the other way around. He's not a genuine leader, he's the sort of dishonest political animal who watches where the crowd is going, then jumps in front of it and declares himself to be leading the parade.

As the people at DC discovered, as a number of people in the comics industry have discovered, Ethan Van Sciver is shamelessly two-faced and self-interested. His fans in the ComicsGate movement will eventually discover this too, much to their future chagrin. Now, even many of my critics, even many of my self-professed enemies will concede that I do not lie in public. What is 2VS's reputation for honesty and personal integrity? And what do you really think are the chances that, on this one occasion, I chose to sacrifice my reputation for ruthless honesty... and for what did I sacrifice it?

But here is the more important question: what is ComicsGate, that I should be against it?

Equality vs history

Ed Driscoll laments the future fate of him and every other racial equalitarian on Instapundit:

IT’S COME TO THIS: Astronaut Scott Kelly apologizes after quoting, praising Winston Churchill.

Kelly, a retired American astronaut with multiple space flights under his belt, apologized Sunday after quoting Winston Churchill and calling the 20th century British prime minister “one of the greatest leaders of modern times.”

“Did not mean to offend by quoting Churchill. My apologies. I will go and educate myself further on his atrocities, racist views which I do not support. My point was we need to come together as one nation. We are all Americans. That should transcend partisan politics,” Kelly wrote on Twitter in the evening.

The attempt of cucks and conservatives to split the difference between the consequences of the Left that they fear and the truths of the Right that they reject is utterly doomed to failure. The Left neither cares about nor shares their virtuous, much-signaled color-blindness, all the Left wants is for them to submit to its ever-shifting Narrative.

As for the Right, we have nothing but contempt for their cowardly and fearful denial of history, science, the Bible, and truth. Let me be clear: you cannot claim to believe in equality of any kind and still consider yourself to be a) of the Right or b) truthful.

We all know you don't really believe in equality because we can see your actions and hear your words. None of your rationalizations and justifications and confabulations are fooling anyone, least of all yourself, and subjecting us to them is insulting our intelligence.

Equality is a lie, and submitting to the lie will not only lead you to deny America, nationalism, and Winston Churchill, it will eventually force you to publicly deny Jesus Christ himself.

Just shut up and come out already

Taylor Swift nukes her fan base:

Taylor Swift can't stay silent about politics any longer. The 28-year-old superstar took to Instagram on Sunday night to weigh in on Tennessee’s closely contested U.S. Senate race, endorsing Democratic former Gov. Phil Bredesen as she offered a harsh rebuke of U.S. Rep. Marsha Blackburn, the Republican nominee.

In her Instagram post, Swift said she has been "reluctant to publicly voice my political opinions, but due to several events in my life and in the world in the past two years, I feel very differently about that now."

"I always have and always will cast my vote based on which candidate will protect and fight for the human rights I believe we all deserve in this country," she wrote. "I believe in the fight for LGBTQ rights, and that any form of discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender is WRONG. I believe that the systemic racism we still see in this country towards people of color is terrifying, sickening and prevalent."

Wait, a gay celebrity hates Republicans and parrots the SJW narrative? Surely this shocking news will convince all of her fans to change their views rather than simply reduce their support for her.

And isn't it remarkable how Tennessee values are British values are German values are Texas values are California values are LGBTQP values these days?

Magic dirt, magic schools

Want to bet the vast majority of people using the term have no idea where it originated?

In a push to improve diversity at District 15 middle schools in Brooklyn, Mayor de Blasio last week approved a plan to remove admission standards at all of them.

In liberal Park Slope and the surrounding areas, the news was received with mixed reactions. Those against the plan were quoted anonymously in various news outlets, lest they somehow appear to oppose diversity. They had seen what happened to Upper West Side parents who were named and shamed in articles when they opposed proposals for their schools.

One Park Slope dad told me he sees the move as a “prelude to breaking up the specialized high schools.” He added that the plan would “put the academically struggling kids in schools where ‘magic dirt’ makes kids smarter.”

Keep this sort of thing in mind whenever people try to tell you that what you're doing doesn't matter. It's the ideas that matter, whether or not The Atlantic, The New Yorker, and NPR ever deign to accord you the fame of a Malcolm Gladwell or a Francis Fukuyama.

Like the core pro-immigration argument, the core pro-integration argument is cargo cultism that is so obviously wrong it can be accurately dismissed with just two words: Magic Dirt.

No safe harbor

I have my doubts about this guy as a lawyer, but this particular observation is astute and potentially very significant.

WAIT JUST A DANG MINUTE...WHAT? Did Apple just say it is a curator of content and therefore NOT protected by Safe Harbor in copyright and CDA 230?

What he's referring to is this interview with Apple CEO Tim Cook with Vice News Tonight:

In an interview with Vice News Tonight on HBO Apple CEO Tim Cook publicly explained some of the reasoning behind removing Alex Jones and InfoWars from the company's podcast app and App Store. According to Cook, the move wasn't politically motivated, or coordinated with any other tech companies, as he denied ever discussing the subject with them.

Instead, he said: "What users want from us and what we've always provided them is a curated platform. We think that what the user wants is someone that does review these apps, someone that does review the podcasts, someone that on like Apple news, where a human is selecting the top stories. And that's what we do."

What this means is that Apple has publicly established that it is legally liable for all the content on its platform.

A production error

No, Chuck Dixon has not begun experimenting in action comics sans dialogue. Unfortunately, we had a breakdown in our production process and sent out the first 193 print editions of Chuck Dixon's Avalon #2: Rulebreaker without the dialogue layer. We have already revised the comic as well as our process and all subsequent editions will be correct.

We are working on a plan to get replacement issues out to those who received an incorrect edition and will run the plan by those customers once we are able to confirm it with our distribution partner. We apologize for the inconvenience and delay. The digital edition was not affected.

Nationalism rises

Thanks to the astute leadership of Matteo Salvini, La Lega is now the dominant political party in Italy:

Italy’s League under Matteo Salvini is now the most popular political party in the nation, with a voter affiliation of 33.8 percent, a nationwide electoral poll revealed Saturday.

The monthly survey conducted by the IPSOS research group, which inquired about citizens’ voting intentions, showed the Five Star Movement (M5S) — the League’s partner in the current coalition government — falling by 1.5 percentage points over the last month to 28.5 percent. This figure represents a three percentage-point drop for M5S from mid-July and a widening gap between the two governing partners.

Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia party has meanwhile fallen to 7.8 percent, down slightly less than one point compared to the last published figure, while the center-left Democratic Party (PD) stands at 17 percent.

The PD registered a slight uptick compared to recent months, thanks to recent rallies, increased media visibility, and the perception of greater cohesion among the leadership of the party.

Observers suggest that the solid performance of the League is due in large part to the constant media presence of party chief Matteo Salvini, Italy’s interior minister and deputy prime minister. Salvini has persistently sought to rein in Italy’s illegal immigration problem and has stood up against globalist leaders such as France’s Emmanuel Macron.

Forza Italia support is all going to go to La Lega once Berlusconi is no longer in the picture, which means that La Lega is pushing near 40 percent in a parliamentary system, which is huge. Factor in the alliance with Cinque Stelle and that means the nationalists of left and right now represent about 70 percent of the Italian population.

I expect a push for Italexit after the next round of national elections. Italy does not need the European Union and will be much better off with a return to the Lira.