Making the omega

It's interesting to see how social scientists are stumbling, slowly, toward recognizing the socio-sexual hierarchy:

There is also a dark side to the social world of middle school, as anyone who has been through it will remember. Sixth graders who do not have friends are at risk of anxiety, depression, and low self-esteem. About 12 percent of the 6,000 sixth graders in Juvonen’s study were not named as a friend by anyone else. They had no one to sit with at lunch and no one to stick up for them when bullied. Of that group, boys outnumbered girls nearly two to one, and African American and Latino students were more likely to be friendless than white kids.

Inspired by the University of Chicago social psychologists John Cacioppo and Louise Hawkley’s work on perceived social isolation and the sense of threat that comes with it, Juvonen and her student Leah Lessard investigated whether perceptions of social threat could explain the mental-health difficulties that beset friendless middle schoolers. Their hypothesis was that not having friends in sixth grade triggered a greater sense of threat in seventh grade, which led to increased internalizing difficulties, such as depression and anxiety, by eighth grade. Their research confirmed that theory: It wasn’t friendlessness alone that created problems, it was the resulting sense of threat.

Then there is bullying, which Juvonen has studied extensively. “Friendships take place in this larger context where there’s a status hierarchy,” she told me. “Kids know very well which kinds of kids are friends with one another and where they stand in that overall status hierarchy.” Most of the time, bullying is a very strategic effort to gain and maintain status, she said.

Omegas are those who retreat from the hierarchy or are rejected by it. Gammas are those who manage to stay inside the hierarchy by strategic alliances with "friends" who are not actually friends. That is the primary dividing line between the two.

Mailvox: a note from Ireland

An Irish reader writes about the current status of Ireland:

A note as to whats happening in Ireland, the western fringe of Europe. In 2016, the Irish wing of Pegida was routed from the streets of Dublin by Antifa, which was a black pill for the nationalists at that time. Things have grown, massively since then, possibly exponentially. There is a General Election for our Parliament here on the 8th of February 2020, and there are just shy of 40 nationalists from the three nationalist parties running for seats. This is obviously a tremendous rate of growth and is a clear sign of the shift away from globalism.

The Irish still tend to love the EU, and view Brexit with disdain, but on the other hand we have a character of nationalism and have an immunity to white guilt.

We have deep connection to the swamp, the Clintons, Haiti, the (((Global Finance System))), and have had the best of the worst try to De-Christianise, abort,and replace us. Yet it seems that this trend has peaked, and is slowly rolling back.  Small countries like ours can be converged quickly, but we can fix ourselves quicker too. This little island is a microcosm of the wider struggle and if we can do it, so can anyone.  All we need is faith and a steady supply of white pills.

I have to admit, I have never understood how the Irish could fight so hard and so long for their independence from the British, only to immediately turn around and hand over their sovereignty to the European Union. It was one of the most ridiculous, most inexplicable things I've seen in my lifetime. Here is hoping that the Irish will soon learn from their disastrous mistake and will follow the lead of the British in exiting the EU and reestablishing their sovereignty.

Airlines finally cancelling China flights

Corona-chan shuts down China travel:

The Trump administration on Friday declared the coronavirus a public health emergency, effectively banning foreign nationals who have been to China in the past two weeks from entering the United States

American Airlines cancelled all of its US flights to China, and said it was not to resume scheduled service until March 27. Delta Airlines said it will stop all US flights to China by next Wednesday, and keep the ban going till at least April 30. United will cancel all flights to China, except one from San Francisco to Hong Kong, starting Thursday, and will keep the ban until March 28.

It's mordantly amusing to see foreigners in China complaining that they can't return to potentially infect their homelands. What part of "quarantine" is hard for them to understand? Anyhow, they wanted to experience China and now they're experiencing it.

It would be wiser, of course, to shut down all passenger air travel, in the unlikely event that the virus's curve hasn't already been broken. Fortunately, it appears that non-Asians are considerably less susceptible to Corona-chan's effects.

Happy Brexit!

Congratulations to the British people, who are once again sovereign and free of their would-be masters on the continent.

Country music is dead

I can't say I ever paid any attention to it, but based on recent observations, it's hard to argue with Loretta Lynn's opinion:

Loretta Lynn voiced her displeasure with current country music during a recent podcast, and she didn’t hold back. The 87-year-old country music pioneer told Martina McBride that she thinks country music is “dead.”

“I think it’s a shame,” she said on the ‘Vocal Point with Martina McBride’ podcast, according to WhiskeyRiff.com. “I think it’s a shame to let a type of music die. I don’t care what any kind of music it is. Rock, country, whatever. I think it’s a shame to let it die.”

Inclusivity kills every form of entertainment. The case for the prosecution is conclusive.

That would be SO different!

Well, I don't know about you, but I know I'm incredibly excited about the totally new and revolutionary idea of sex-swapping Willie Wonka. Then again, Willie Wonka as a woman would almost certainly be an improvement from the obvious pedophile he was in the last two films:

Willy Wonka could reportedly return to screens as a woman in a new prequel film.

Bosses at Warner Bros. are allegedly considering taking on a female actress to play the role of the iconic chocolatier, after two previous adaptations starred Johnny Depp and Gene Wilder.

It's also been reported that after Warner Bros. acquired the rights to the character from the Dahl estate in 2016, they are in the process of putting together a production team for the film.

I'm most curious about what they will call her. Vaggie Vonka? Baba Yanka?

The reason for the clampdown

It's been a bit of a mystery why the media and the Deep State have been so desperate to keep Eric Ciaramella's name out of the press and the impeachment hearings. Greg Rubini suggested a possible explanation in a twitter thread.

ERIC CIARAM3LLA is involved in much darker things than you can imagine. Joe Biden, John Brennan, & Barack Obama are also in it and Victoria Nuland. The Ukraine Holocaust

In Feb 2014 there was a Coup d'Etat in Ukraine. a violent Coup. There was a massacre in the main square of the capital, Kiev. 100 people were killed.

There were SNIPERS at windows of tall buildings surrounding the square. Strategically placed. The snipers from the buildings shot both at protestors, both at police officers. it was a HORRIFIC massacre

100 people were killed BY THE SNIPERS. both Ukranian citizens, both police officers. that was The Ukraine Holocaust.

The SNIPERS were professional mercenaries. They were hired and paid to do that job. Their assigned job was to KILL about 100 people. They had been given precise instructions. Hired and paid BY WHOM?

Why 100 people had to be brutally killed? Because the CIA Director John Brennan and Victoria Nuland (State Dept.) wanted 100 people killed. That would trigger a Coup d'Etat in Ukraine. Which in fact happened.

And WHO organized those SNIPERS in Ukraine, to make this massacre? WHO hired them? WHO paid them? ERIC CIARAM3LLA. E.C. in this photo with Victoria Nuland.

Eric Ciaramella was assigned that task by the CIA Director John Brennan. Brennan was the CIA Director at that tme, in 2014. And Eric Ciaramella was, and is, a CIA Operative. He was Brennan's CIA point man in Ukraine, in 2014.

Obviously, there is no way to know if this is true or not, but the facts about the massacre in Kiev are generally correct and the Ukrainian government was falsely blamed for the shootings before it was toppled in the "color revolution" coup in which the Obama State Department invested $5 billion. And the involvement of corrupt U.S. officials, both before and after the coup, is one of the things that the Deep State is now so desperate to hide from the American public.

Given the likelihood that Russian intelligence has a complete record of everything that happened and everyone involved, and that they have provided that information to the Trump administration, it should not surprise us to see signs of the Deep State thrashing around and lashing out as the noose continues to close in around it.

Chuck Dixon's Avalon #5

The hunter has become the hunted. As the mysterious vigilante continues to stalk her prey, the crack international superhero team is on her trail and is determined to bring her down before she can accomplish her deadly mission.

But is there another way to find her? What is the connection between the vigilante and the unknown coma patient she was once observed visiting in the hospital? The Avalon police, too, are patiently trying to track her down before she adds to her body count.

Chuck Dixon is the most prolific comic book writer in history. Set in the world of Alt★Hero, CHUCK DIXON'S AVALON is the legend's newest creation.

Now available in print at Castalia Direct and at Amazon. The digital version will be going out to the backers as soon as it is ready. Chuck Dixon's Avalon #6 will be ready soon, at which point we will begin producing the omnibus editions for the original Alt★Hero backers.

A corrupt justice

John Roberts is breaking Senate protocol by refusing to read a senator's question for fear that it will identify the whistleblower behind the impeachment debacle:

Sen. Rand Paul's (R-Ky.) attempt to ask about the whistleblower whose report helped spark the impeachment inquiry is running into a roadblock in the form of Chief Justice John Roberts.

A source confirmed that Roberts has indicated he would not read a question from Paul regarding the whistleblower at the center of the House impeachment inquiry.

The question from Paul is expected to name the individual. Because Roberts is responsible for reading the questions that would put him in the position of publicly outing the person on the Senate floor.

Paul indicated to reporters after a closed-door Republican dinner that he was not backing down from trying to ask his question.

The sad thing is that Roberts appears to be such a Boy Scout that no one would probably even care about whatever it is they have on him that they are using for control. Then again, appearances can be deceiving, and perhaps he is a full-blown Promethean infantivore.

My first Nobel Prize

I would have thought it would be in Economics, perhaps even Literature, but it appears my first Nobel Prize will be in Physiology or Medicine. You see, everyone is understandably concerned about Corona-chan, but then it occurred to me, as we all know, race is just a social construct:

To further understand the special population of ACE2-expressing AT2, we performed gene ontology enrichment analysis to study which biological processes are involved with this cell population by comparing them with the AT2 cells not expressing ACE2. Surprisingly, we found that multiple viral process-related GO are significantly over-presented, including “positive regulation of viral process” (P value=0.001), “viral life cycle” (P value=0.005), “virion assembly” (P value=0.03) and “positive regulation of viral genome replication” (P value=0.04). These highly expressed viral process-related genes in ACE2-expressing AT2 include: SLC1A5, CXADR, CAV2, NUP98, CTBP2, GSN,HSPA1B,STOM, RAB1B, HACD3, ITGB6, IST1,NUCKS1,TRIM27, APOE, SMARCB1,UBP1,CHMP1A,NUP160,HSPA8,DAG1,STAU1,ICAM1,CHMP5,D EK, VPS37B, EGFR, CCNK, PPIA, IFITM3, PPIB, TMPRSS2, UBC, LAMP1 and CHMP3. Therefore, it seems that the 2019-nCov has cleverly evolved to hijack this population of AT2 cells for its reproduction and transmission.

We further compared the characteristics of the donors and their ACE2 expressing patterns. No association was detected between the ACE2-expressing cell number and the age or smoking status of donors. Of note, the 2 male donors have a higher ACE2-expressing cell ratio than all other 6 female donors (1.66% vs. 0.41% of all cells, P value=0.07, Mann Whitney Test). In addition, the distribution of ACE2 is also more widespread in male donors than females: at least 5 different types of cells in male lung express this receptor, while only 2~4 types of cells in female lung express the receptor. This result is highly consistent with the epidemic investigation showing that most of the confirmed 2019-nCov infected patients were men (30 vs. 11, by Jan 2, 2020).

We also noticed that the only Asian donor (male) has a much higher ACE2-expressing cell ratio than white and African American donors (2.50% vs. 0.47% of all cells). This might explain the observation that the new Coronavirus pandemic and previous SARS-Cov pandemic are concentrated in the Asian area.

Therefore, to significantly improve the resistance of the population to Corona-chan and end the risk of a global pandemic, all that is necessary is for the Asian men in the areas at risk of infection to begin identifying as African-American women.

I shall await my Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with serene confidence.

Is Boeing going down?

Boeing just posted its first significant loss in a long time:

Boeing reported its first annual loss in more than two decades as costs from the 737 Max crashes rise sharply. Boeing said it lost $636 million in 2019, marking the company’s first annual loss since 1997 and in stark contrast to the profit it posted in $10.46 billion in 2018 — before a second crash grounded its best-selling planes worldwide.

The dismal results come as Boeing is struggling through the crisis stemming from two crashes of its 737 Max that killed all 346 people aboard the flights. The manufacturer this month suspended production of the planes, which regulators grounded in March after the second of the two fatal flights.

Boeing reported a loss of $2.33 per share for the fourth quarter of last year. Revenue in the last three months of the year dropped 37% to $17.91 billion compared with $28.34 billion in the year-earlier period.

The debacle’s costs to Boeing are rising to more than $18 billion, the company said, roughly double what it outlined in the previous quarter. That amount includes an additional $2.6 billion pretax charge to compensate airlines and other 737 Max customers because of the grounding. Boeing had taken a $5.6 billion pretax charge in the second quarter to compensate its customers.

The company recently reported its worst annual sales figures in decades and it handed the crown to the world’s biggest aircraft manufacturer to its rival Airbus.

For some reason, this article reminded me of when Enron reported a surprise loss of similar proportions back in 2001.

In October 2001, Enron reported a loss of $618 million— its first quarterly loss in four years. 

Due to the massive debt these megacorporations carry, it doesn't take much to take them down once things start to go south. Enron filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy only two months later. I'm not saying Boieng is in anywhere nearly as bad shape as Enron was, but the synchronicity may be worth noting.

Is the coronavirus weaponized?

Anonymous Conservative is, as is his wont, deeply suspicious of the coronavirus, but he is not alone in this:

Harvard epidemiologist says he is not saying the Corona virus was bioengineered as a bioweapon, but a new study analyzing the full genome says it does have a center segment in its genome encoding a special protein to get it into human cells, and that center section does not appear to have indices of having gotten there through normal natural random mechanisms:

BOTTOMLINE: 1) Seafood market not the source. 2) This RNA #coronavirus mutates really fast. 3) has unusual middle segment never seen before in any coronavirus. 4) Not from recent mixing. 5) That mystery middle segment encodes protein responsible for entry into host cells.

The thing that concerns me is that I knew the impeachment was the result of desperation on the part of the hunted. If we consider the possibility that a) the coronavirus is a bioweapon and b) the release of the coronavirus was intentional, that would tend to indicate considerably more desperation on the part of the same people.

Another failed "peace plan"

I don't know why U.S. presidents waste their time on this nonsense:

US President Donald Trump unveiled his “Deal of the Century” peace plan on Tuesday in the White House, giving Israel full control of the settlements and Jerusalem as its undivided capital. The plan also established a Palestinian state.

The plan, Trump said, has the support of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his main political rival, Blue and White head Benny Gantz.

"If [the Palestinians] are genuinely prepared to make peace with the Jewish state," Netanyahu said in his remarks at the unveiling ceremony, "Israel will be prepared to negotiate peace right away." Trump said that the United States will recognize Israeli sovereignty over any land that “my vision provides to be part of the State of Israel" and will require the Palestinians to recognize Israel as the Jewish state and to agree to solve the refugee problem outside of Israel.

The prime minister is expected to vote on Sunday at the Cabinet meeting to immediately apply sovereignty to the territories in Judea and Samaria.

In other words, the Israelis are confirming the long-held beliefs of the Palestinians concerning the settlements, and they doing so with the blessing of the United States. How is this substantially different than the scores of Indian treaties that lasted until the settlers decided that they wanted more Indian land?

And who seriously regards this as a peace plan? Of course the Palestinians won't accept it.

Israel has a right to exist. Its right of conquest is no less, and no more, illegitimate than any other nation's right to land it has won through military victory. But it does not have a right to exist in peace; that has to be won separately, through convincing neighboring parties that peace is in their interest. And while I could certainly be wrong, I don't see how this "Deal of the Century" is likely to be of much interest to any non-Israeli parties.

The rotten fruit of National Review

Crazy Days and Nights retro-outs William F. Buckley:

This deceased writer/publisher of a well known magazine that still runs was also known for having a television show. His manner and speaking style were mocked on sketch comedy shows many times.

He preferred sexual relations with men rather than with women but like a lot of men of his generation he could not acknowledge this and so married and had children. In addition, the audience he cultivated would not have accepted this.

He spent a lot of time with homosexual prostitutes from a specific procurer.  He would often tell his favorites that he would refer to them on his TV show by assigning them an obscure word, Latin or old English, and then use the word on his show that week.

The "intellectual force behind the modern conservative movement" was always a complete fraud. It may interest you to know that while I was signed by Universal Press Syndicate with the idea that I was the young right-wing writer most capable of filling in for his supposedly formidable shoes, I never thought that either his columns or his novels were very good.

In fact, I found both of them to be borderline unreadable, the columns in particular being masterpieces in sounding educated and intellectual without ever saying much of anything at all. So, it shouldn't be a surprise that modern conservatism went nowhere and accomplished nothing, as it is the rotten fruit of an inverted tree.

Amazon feeding data to Facebook

The Electronic Frontier Foundation reports that Amazon's Ring automatically sends private user data to Facebook:

Amazon’s Ring smart doorbell surveillance product has been caught sending user data to Facebook and other companies without making Ring users aware their data was being shared. That’s according to an investigation from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). What’s even more alarming is Ring users are having their data sent to Facebook even if they themselves don’t have Facebook accounts.

The EFF examined Ring’s latest Android app and found that it had four unlisted trackers sending Ring user data back to four websites including branch.io, mixpanel.com, appsflyer.com, and facebook.com. This is despite Ring’s privacy policy, which purports to list all the trackers being used in its software. That privacy policy was last updated over a year and a half ago and doesn’t list three of the four new trackers discovered.

So what data is Ring sending to Facebook and other companies? The EFF says the information includes “the names, private IP addresses, mobile network carriers, persistent identifiers, and sensor data on the devices of paying customers.”

This really isn't that hard. Don't use smart home technology. It's all spy-on-you-in-your-home technology.

Denying public charges

This tightening of immigration restrictions is a good first step.

The Trump administration will be allowed to tighten immigration restrictions with a policy that could see immigrants denied a green card if they are likely to receive public benefits, the US Supreme Court has ruled.

The 5-4 decision on Monday overrode the block on the policy imposed by a federal judge in New York and upheld by an appeals panel. The controversial new rule, which opponents have slammed as a “wealth test” meant to keep out immigrants from poor countries, can now take effect.

Last August, the Trump administration expanded the so-called “public charge” rule, which required immigration officials to turn away individuals likely to become primarily dependent on direct government cash assistance or institutionalization, to include a wider range of government benefits. A New York district court ruling blocked its implementation in October, which was upheld in the Second Circuit Court of Appeals earlier this month.

Immigrants deemed likely to receive Medicaid (government health insurance), Supplemental Security Income, housing, or food assistance over a total of 12 months within any three-year period may be denied permanent residency under the new version of the rule. Immigration officials would examine applicants’ age, education, and ability to speak English, among other attributes, to determine their fitness.

The second step, of course, will be repatriating all resident immigrants who receive any government assistance. And for those who want to appeal to the poem on the Statue of Liberty as a counterargument, the obvious answer is to send all such indigent immigrants to the poet's nation, which was not the United States of America.

Let each nation live up to its own standards.

The circle of diversity

This is why you should never let people to join or enter in the first place. Just ask any American Indian. Or, for that matter, any white resident of Detroit. Or soon, any white Democrat.

The foreigners who reside among you will rise above you higher and higher, but you will sink lower and lower.
- Deuteronomy 28:43

Bernie brings it

I knew that the Democrats were going to throw a sacrificial lamb at the feet of the god-emperor, but I assumed it would be a woman of color, not an elderly socialist jew.

One week before the Iowa caucuses, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is growing in strength and increasingly looks like the favorite to win the Democratic nomination.

Polling in Iowa is still tight and shows a four-candidate race between Sanders, former Vice President Joe Biden, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and former South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg, making it clear the first-in-the-nation caucus battle remains anyone’s game.

Yet it is also clear that Sanders has a strong chance of coming out on top in Iowa, as well as in New Hampshire, which will vote just a week later. Such a result would make him the clear front-runner, and would likely unnerve parts of the Democratic Party uneasy about the progressive independent being their standard-bearer in the fall.

No wonder the Democrats are getting increasingly desperate. If Sanders is their candidate, President Trump might win both the Black and Hispanic votes.

Portrait of a Bravo

Peter King interviews recently retired Tennessee Titans defensive coordinator Dean Pees:

Pees, 70, retired last week after finishing his 47th year of coaching at the high school, college and NFL level. It’s one of the most interesting careers in coaching history. Not only because he got to coach under two legends, Nick Saban and Bill Belichick, but he also got to coach under two coaches he coached as players—John Harbaugh (Miami of Ohio, then the Ravens) and Mike Vrabel (the Patriots, then the Titans). Thirteen jobs in 47 years, and . . .

“I’ve never applied for a job. I never got fired from a job. I never really sought another job. I never said, ‘I’m going to climb the ladder.’ I just did the job I had at the time, did the best I could. And I was lucky: I loved every job I had.”

Starting in Bloomingdale, Ohio (pop: 754), at little Elmwood High School.

“I played in a winter basketball league in [northwest] Ohio after college, when I met the principal at Elmwood High School. I was running a men’s clothing store in Bowling Green, Ohio. They had some openings on the football staff at Elmwood and he asked me if I wanted to coach. I said sure. I was hired to coach the secondary and be the track coach. But at our first meeting, the head coach made me the defensive coordinator. I did that two years, then became the head coach for four. Then I went to Findlay College as defensive coordinator and head track coach in 1979. After my first year, I went to Miami of Ohio to learn about their defense—which was the same defense we ran—from their coordinator, Tim Rose. In 1983, he got the head job there and hired me to be his defensive coordinator. Stayed there four years, and then Elliott Uzelac, the coach at Navy, called and hired me to coach the secondary. He got my name from Lloyd Carr, who I’d done some clinics with.

“After the ’89 season, Nick Saban called me. He was the secondary coach with the Oilers then, but he’d just been hired as the Toledo coach. He asked me to fly down to Houston, just to talk. He got my name from [longtime Navy assistant] Steve Belichick. So I flew down, and he offered me the defensive coordinator job at Toledo. Loved working with Nick—so good to me and my family. He left to coach with Bill [Belichick] and the Browns after one year, but Gary Pinkell was hired by Toledo and he kept the staff. I stayed three more years. After signing day [in 1994], Gary said to me one day, ‘[Notre Dame coach] Lou Holtz is on the phone. He’s gonna offer you a job.’ I picked up the phone, and Lou offered me the linebacker job. Then he said, ‘I hate to ask you this, but can you be here this afternoon?’ I said sure, I’ll call my wife on the way. So I was at Notre Dame one year. Then Nick takes the Michigan State job, and he hires me as his defensive coordinator. I was there from ‘95 to ’97. Kent State fires their coach after the ’97 season, and their AD flies up to meet me. We have breakfast, and I guess you could call that an interview, but it basically was a conversation—he just wanted to get to know me. He offered me the job over the phone.

“I’m at Kent six years. One day I had a question about defense for Bill Belichick, and I called him. He called me back and said, ‘I’m losing a linebacker coach. Ever thought about leaving college?’ We met at the scouting combine. He offered me the linebacker job. Great experience, with [Tedy] Bruschi, [Willie] McGinest, [Mike] Vrabel. In 2006, he made me the coordinator. Just a great experience, to see how the very best do it. But after four years as the coordinator, I needed a break. I made a smooth exit from New England. Then John Harbaugh offered me the linebacker job in Baltimore, which is what I needed at the time. How great that was, coaching Ray Lewis. Then John named me the coordinator in 2012. After ’16, I’m thinking of retiring. John said, ‘How about one more year?’ But after the ’17 season, that was it. I retired.

“So we [Pees and wife Melody] went up to our lake house in Michigan. It’s a Thursday night in January. We went out to dinner with our financial adviser, and we’re figuring out the NFL pension and how we’re going to live. Melody was planning this river cruise in Europe. The next morning, the phone rang. I said, ‘Hi Mike,’ and she knew. Mike Vrabel. He’d just gotten the Tennessee head-coaching job. He needed someone with experience to run the defense. He wanted me to be the coordinator.”

Pees’ only son, Matt Pees, was a high school coach in Denver. Dean Pees might have taken the Titans job anyway, but he asked Vrabel if he could bring Matt as defensive quality control coach. Vrabel checked, called the next day to say Matt was welcome on the staff, and the deal got done. Father and son coached together in 2018 and 2019.

“Of course losing at Kansas City was disappointing. But winning at New England and winning at Baltimore in the playoffs, against two coaches I have so much respect for, was an incredible way to go out. That goal-line stand in the second quarter at New England is a career highlight. But this time, I’m done coaching. Forty-seven years is enough. Not saying I’d never do some other job in football, but not coaching.

“It’s been a great career. Very, very blessed. My wife’s been fantastic. My kids have been fantastic—their whole lives, they just take off one jersey and put on another. I’m looking at my grandson right now—he’s 8, and he’s wearing a Titans cap.

“People ask me, ‘What’s your favorite place you coached?’ All of ‘em. They ask, ‘Who’s your favorite player?’ All of ‘em.

“In this football business, who can say they never got fired? Who can say they loved every job they had? For 47 years!”

That is the very quintessence of Bravo. Competent, hard-working, loyal, and valued by every Alpha he encountered. Limited ambition combined with incredible success. This is why it is so valuable for a man to know and understand his place in the hierarchy. Hierarchical fit is one of the key components of long-term success.

The Post polices the narrative

It's fascinating to see the way the mainstream media ruthlessly polices the narrative du jour:

A Washington Post journalist has been suspended by the newspaper after she tweeted a link on Sunday to a years-old story about the Kobe Bryant rape case just hours after the basketball legend and his daughter were killed in a helicopter crash.

Felicia Sonmez, who covers national politics for the Post, took to Twitter shortly after the world learned of Bryant’s death along with eight others aboard his private helicopter which crashed outside of Los Angeles.

She posted a link to an April 2016 story from the news site The Daily Beast which carried the headline: ‘Kobe Bryant’s Disturbing Rape Case: The DNA Evidence, the Accuser’s Story, and the Half-Confession.’

Tracy Grant, managing editor of The Washington Post, told DailyMail.com on Sunday: 'National political reporter Felicia Sonmez was placed on administrative leave while The Post reviews whether tweets about the death of Kobe Bryant violated The Post newsroom’s social media policy.

"The tweets displayed poor judgment that undermined the work of her colleagues."

That quote is an interesting confession. What, exactly, is "the work of her colleagues" that is "undermined" by a simple link to a four-year-old news article? In context, that "work" would appear to be whitewashing Kobe Bryant's sordid historical behavior in order to establish a narrative that portrays him as a much-loved black celebrity whose untimely death will be mourned by Americans of all colors.

RIP Kobe Bryant

After a weekend that began with Lebron James surpassing him on the all-time scoring chart, Kobe Bryant died in a helicopter crash at the age of 41:

Kobe Bryant died in a helicoper crash in Calabasas Sunday morning ... TMZ Sports has confirmed. Kobe was traveling with at least 3 other people in his private helicopter when it went down. A fire broke out. Emergency personnel responded, but nobody on board survived. 5 people are confirmed dead. 

Why does anyone who isn't in the military ever fly on those things?

The Secret King of ComicsGate

It would appear the armistice for which he sued is over. Ethan van Sciver has revealed himself to be a two-faced, shameless, and unrepentant liar. Again. In January 2019, five days after I posted about his two-facedness and historical revisionism, he emailed me out of the blue

An excerpt: Suing for peace.  This is stupid.  SJWs ALWAYS DOUBLE DOWN is too important for me to be in a fight with you.

I accepted, because for all his flaws and idiosyncracies, 2VS is not the enemy. Even now, he's not the enemy. He's not a friend, he's not an ally, but he's not actually trying to deplatform or disemploy anyone. So, he's not an enemy, he's just another anklebiter looking to catch a wave from someone else's motorboat. So be it. It is what it is.

One of his goals which was to fight the culture war in comics on his own terms he was going to answer the social justice way comics with books like what was that book that he had with Daisy Duke... oh he was gonna fight it on on that level and here we come we here we come we swoop in and go know the way to fight SJWs is to simply succeed it's not to fight with them on their own terms it's to actually do good business and make money by being apolitical.

Now you know Vox Day took a real shot, Vox Day took a shot at taking over comicsgate. He took a shot because he tried to start an imprint called comicsgate and he invited people to come his way. I said everybody if your comics say come to me I'll publish you. That was Vox Day trying to take control. Now we reacted to that a certain way didn't wait if you remember back to 2018, comicsgate panicked and I invested eight thousand dollars of my own money in a lawyer to cease and desist and to claim ownership over the word comicsgate because I monetized it in my comic see livestreams.

Now that sent Vox Day away but he's been pouting this entire time. I will reveal to you the Vox Day calls me constantly. I haven't taken a phone call from him in months, probably a year but he still calls me and leaves messages on my machine. He's watching comics gate very very closely and he's using John del Arroz, who has a passing interest in comics.

Allow me to set the record straight:

1. I have not been pouting about anything, least of all ComicsGate. I don't care in the slightest about ComicsGate and I never did. I was dragged into that pointless, idiotic conflict by Will Caligan, and I no longer have anything to do with either ComicsGate or Caligan beyond continuing to publish Gun Ghoul.
2. I have no interest in working with or talking to Ethan van Sciver.
3. I did not drop the ComicsGate imprint as a result of 2VS's trademark filing, I dropped it because I did not wish to be associated with the inept and incompetent individuals who identified themselves with it.
4. I called Ethan van Sciver several times after the resolution of the Indiegogo situation. I thought, as someone with a vested interest in it, he might like to know that it was satisfactorily resolved. As I was incorrect and he did not return my calls, I stopped calling him several months ago.
5. I do not follow ComicsGate at all. I have no idea what is going on in that little cesspool of the comics industry. John Del Arroz and I do talk about our mutual projects, but I never talk to him about 2VS or ComicsGate.

I don't know why 2VS felt the need to start talking about me again; perhaps he is upset by the total irrelevance of Cyberfrog when Arkhaven is moving forward steadily on all fronts. Or perhaps the fact that ComicsGate collectively raised one-third the funds it did in 2019 that it did in 2018 has him rattled and looking for me to reprise my villain du jour role.

The problem is that other than setting the record straight, I simply don't care what he does or says. And now that he has confirmed what we originally believed him to be, there is no need to pay any attention to the Secret King of ComicsGate.

Whose authority would that be?

The Kurgan addresses John Salza's The Errors of Sedevacantism and Ecclesiastical Law in detail:

As a result of Vox Day mentioning my earlier blog post challenge to nominal Catholics concerning the fact that we have only had antipopes since 1958, one of the commenters there brought up some supposed studied theologians who claim to have fully refuted the position they call Sedevacantism (but I call SedePrivationism for precision, since words matter). My post on the antipopes and the legal reasoning why is here and it is rooted in the fact that we, as obedient catholics, must believe the fake Popes are fake, and have been at the very least since 1963, for certain, because that is what the Code of Canon Law of 1917 necessarily states, which being put together by the Magisterium of the Church, we, as Catholics could never and should never had ignored when Vatican 2 raised its evil and apostate head from the darkness. Nor can we ignore it now. Remember that the only current and valid code of canon law is the one of 1917, since the one of 1983 was put together by the same impostors, non-clerics and non-catholics that usurped the Chair of Peter in the first place, and it was also specifically designed to try and invalidate the truth of the code of 1917 and obfuscate its clarity and precision.

Not having read or known anything about the two individuals mentioned by the commenter at VP calling himself MisesMat, who later emailed me and assured me both these gentlemen would be happy to debate me, in writing, I did a quick search for one the names that he mentioned and found Salza’s document online, which I reproduce below with my commentary. His words are in black and mine in red.

Not being Roman Catholic, I only scanned both documents in passing. So, I won't pass any judgement on either man's case, except to say that I am extremely dubious of anyone who, in light of the observable misrule of the present Fake Pope, could possibly reach the following conclusion.

Restoring the Church will be furthered by recognizing the authority of the current Pope.

Extremely dubious is, of course, a significant understatement.

Romulans are the new Muslims

It's not really possible to ruin Star Trek, in my opinion, but according to the Dark Herald, to the extent it is possible to ruin it, Bad Robot appears to have successfully done so with Picard:

The blitheringly incompetent Bad Robot productions is producing Picard, so it takes place in the Kelvin timeline, because everyone wanted more of that! Kurtzman is running it so you know it was born as a festering boil covered abomination. And he has admitted that Picard is NOT a canonical sequel to Star Trek: The Next Generation.

You heard that right. The much ballyhooed Picard is more J. J. Abrams fanfic!

And it’s been written by Avrika Goldman who wrote A Beautiful Mind (Wait! Stop! Don’t get your hopes up) as well as Batman and Robin, Batman Forever, plus the Lost in Space movie. When Goldman is only in it for a paycheck he is the living embodiment of phoning it in.

And phone it in he did!

Starting off a Star Trek series with a anti-Nationalist political rant was a bad enough start, but following that with an action scene let all of the Star Trek fans know upfront that this one is on the fast track to ST:D-ville.

I'm not even going to pretend to care since I am congenitally indifferent to all things Star Trek, but I post this here as a public service.

Atheism is genetic

Or is, at the very least, a developmental disorder linked to genetic causes:

The largest genetic sequencing study of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) ever conducted has found 102 genes associated with autism, a major step towards an eventual cure, which may involve genetic manipulation. Most of these 102 genes were expressed in the brain, and affect synapses or regulate other genes. This means they have important roles in switching other genes on and off.

Furthermore, 49 of these genes are also linked to other developmental disorders, underlining the fact that the neurobiology of many such conditions are likely to overlap.

I first postulated my hypothesis concerning a link between the autism spectrum and atheism back in  2007 in response to a post by PZ Myers at Pharyngula in which he and other atheists were bragging about their relatively high Asperger's Quotient scores. I wrote: "Obviously, more comprehensive and scientific tests would be advised before any definite conclusion can be reached, but these initial observations do appear to indicate a possibility that atheism could be nothing more than a minor mental disorder."

Since then, at least two scientific studies that were directly inspired by my hypothesis have found that there is a statistical correlation between atheism and the autism spectrum.

This new study indicates - it does not yet prove, but it indicates - that scientists will eventually be able to find a link between those 102 genes and atheism, which suggests that it is atheism, not religion, that will one day be cured by science. One should note that this genetic link also explains why atheism has never propagated very successfully from one generation to the next, as atheists tend to be very unfit in the evolutionary sense of natural and sexual selection.

So, don't be bothered by your shower-averse, science-loving, fedora-sporting acquaintance who insists on quoting Richard Dawkins at everyone apropos of nothing. Just assure him that he does well to trust in science, as one day science will cure his genetic developmental disorder.