Mailvox: Brainstorm reactions

Some emails in response to the recent Brainstorm with Mike Cernovich, author of Gorilla Mindset.

• Was definitely an added value on top of what you two are already producing for those of us with ears to hear!  I'm the Jim that asked about the artist website and it really helped to hear your feedback, in fact I shot my first short video today and put it up on my website and Facebook. nothing great, 80/20, but it was action and felt good to know I'm on the right path. Again, thanks to both of you guys..Men...for showing us what we are capable of. That's leadership.
• I have been visiting your blog over the past few weeks. Your article about Gorilla Mindset talked me into buying the book for my 27 year old son. I greatly enjoyed sitting in on the webinar and feel justified in my decision to purchase the book.
• Nicely done, informative, I like how it was not too visual... Also, nice tap dancing at the beginning.You know I read you the first couple of years because you annoyed all the right people, but I'm really starting to warm to you and your works.Keep it up. 

LL wasn't at the Brainstorm, but he did read SJWs Always Lie in a single sitting and was inspired to write a blog post about the Social Justice Warrior:

If you do not know the Social Justice Warrior in your midst it is because he or she (hereafter she) seems so innocuous that she has not caught your eye; and you have not caught hers because you and she have not yet had a social justice run-in.

Once you do, the SJW will be like a mole digging tunnels under your feet. The stable footing you once thought you had in a company that has employed you with satisfaction for over fifteen years will suddenly give way, and you will find yourself neck deep in a quagmire, seated before a panel of inquiry investigating an alleged infringement of the company’s Code of Conduct by YOU.
          
What the f..!

Advice for the day: Be patient. Be very, very patient. Your turn will come in time.

SJWAL in paperback

In case you happen to be interested, or if you want to help arm a friend or family member against a potential SJW attack, SJW's Always Lie: Taking Down the Thought Police is now available in paperback from Amazon. It's $11.99 for 256 pages of powerful conceptual ammunition. Described as "The Art of War for the Digital Media Generation" by Prof. Nick Flor and "well worth the money" by Hugo-nominated author Mike Williamson, it's something anyone who expects to encounter SJWs on campus, in the office, or online needs to read. Ebooks are one of the greatest inventions since the printing press, but there are some books you want to be able to hold in your hands... if for no other reason than to beat SJWs over the head with it.

A few more comments by reviewers:

• "an instructional classic, a counterweight to Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals."
•  "This book provides good practical advice on how to deal with dishonest and twisted thinkers."
• "This book should be required reading in any freedom based society." 
• "the *content* is more valuable than I can say" 
• "This book is a necessary buy for anyone who finds themselves under attack for their politics." 

UPDATE: In only 10 hours, SJWAL is the #1 New Release in Censorship and Politics

Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,462 in Books

#3 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Politics & Government > Specific Topics > Censorship
#4 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Philosophy > Political
#28 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Politics & Government > Specific Topics > Commentary & Opinion

Interestingly enough, the ebook edition is right behind it at #5.

Sexually twisted freaks

It's not your imagination. There is something SERIOUSLY wrong with SJWs:

When she arrived at the house on Memorial Day in 2011, Anna didn’t know what D.J. planned to do. His brother, Wesley, was working in the garden, so she went straight inside to speak with D.J. and his mother, P. They chatted for a while at the dining table about D.J.’s plans for school and for getting his own apartment. Then there was a lull in the conversation after Wesley came back in, and Anna took hold of D.J.’s hand. ‘‘We have something to tell you,’’ they announced at last. ‘‘We’re in love.’’

‘‘What do you mean, in love?’’ P. asked, the color draining from her face.

To Wesley, she looked pale and weak, like ‘‘Caesar when he found out that Brutus betrayed him.’’ He felt sick to his stomach. What made them so uncomfortable was not that Anna was 41 and D.J. was 30, or that Anna is white and D.J. is black, or even that Anna was married with two children while D.J. had never dated anyone. What made them so upset — what led to all the arguing that followed, and the criminal trial and million-­dollar civil suit — was the fact that Anna can speak and D.J. can’t; that she was a tenured professor of ethics at Rutgers University in Newark and D.J. has been declared by the state to have the mental capacity of a toddler.

My favorite part is when she makes up how she "valiantly resisted" the speechless retard's persistent seduction attempts. So brave. Thank you for this.

This was her mitzvah and her tikkun olam. She was helping to repair the world.

Any time you hear someone tell you they are occupied with "healing the world", you know you're dealing with a psychopath with a twisted mind.

Anti-GamerGate bias in the media

That's not exactly a surprise. What is a little surprising is the way in which so-called journalists at The Guardian couldn't even bother to hide the fact that they were taking sides from the very start:

The Guardian put out a piece of trash journalism, calling for the rest of the media to stop giving positive coverage to our consumer revolt. You see, when the SJWs start getting their asses kicked, like GamerGate has been doing, their go-to response is to change the rules of the game. So, they put out editorials designed to shame the few non-biased colleagues they have into not covering us objectively. I can guarantee you that Ricky Camilleri, of HuffPost Live, has gotten a lot of shit for even doing the segment on us yesterday. That’s how they control the narrative.

Earlier this evening, I was provided with an internal email from the technology editor of The Guardian, Jemima Kiss. She thought she was sending it to her staff, but instead unknowingly sent it to an associate of TheRalphRetort.com. After reading it, you can see that we never had a chance with her, or The Guardian. They’ve had their minds made up for quite sometime (at least as far back as Sept. 23rd).

If I had to guess, I would imagine there are many more emails like that, stretching back even further. She shows a clear disdain for our consumer campaign. I don’t think such a woman could ever be impartial. Outright dismissing our claims as “idiotic?” That’s not how a professional journalist is supposed to behave.

This is a cultural war, people. Show them no mercy and give them no quarter. They're not going to play fair-and-balanced, so they don't deserve even a modicum of restraint from us.

Notice how they actually brought in Leigh Alexander, of all people, to explain to their reporters what #GamerGate was really about. That's like bringing in Charles Manson to talk about Sharon Tate.

Learning to talk

As a general rule, it's a terrible mistake to take your lead on communication from actresses:

“Woman in a Meeting” is a language of its own.

It should not be, but it is. You will think that you have stated the case simply and effectively, and everyone else will wonder why you were so Terrifyingly Angry. Instead, you have to translate. You start with your thought, then you figure out how to say it as though you were offering a groveling apology for an unspecified error. (In fact, as Sloane Crosley pointed out in an essay earlier this year, the time you are most likely to say “I’m sorry” is the time when you feel that you, personally, have just been grievously wronged. Not vice versa.)

To illustrate this difficulty, I have taken the liberty of translating some famous sentences into the phrases a woman would have to use to say them during a meeting not to be perceived as angry, threatening or (gasp!) bitchy.

“Give me liberty, or give me death.”
Woman in a Meeting: “Dave, if I could, I could just — I just really feel like if we had liberty it would be terrific, and the alternative would just be awful, you know? That’s just how it strikes me. I don’t know.”

“I have a dream today!”
Woman in a Meeting: “I’m sorry, I just had this idea — it’s probably crazy, but — look, just as long as we’re throwing things out here — I had sort of an idea or vision about maybe the future?”

“Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”
Woman in a Meeting: “I’m sorry, Mikhail, if I could? Didn’t mean to cut you off there. Can we agree that this wall maybe isn’t quite doing what it should be doing? Just looking at everything everyone’s been saying, it seems like we could consider removing it. Possibly. I don’t know, what does the room feel?”

As with most erroneous conclusions, the fault is in the assumptions. "You will think that you have stated the case simply and effectively" is where the problem is. Where the writer, and the actress before her, are wrong is in believing that their feelings about how they have stated the case are conclusive.

In all communication, the primary responsibility lies with the person talking, not the person being addressed. If people regularly misinterpret you, the fault is almost always your fault, not theirs. If women "speaking their opinion" are often perceived as angry, then, assuming they are not angry, it is obvious they are inadvertently or unconsciously sending out signals that are easily misinterpreted as anger.

The problem, I suspect, is that many women have zero self-confidence. That's why about 50 percent of all individual female products are sold on the basis of claims that they will improve the buyer's confidence. (The other half concern divulging the secret of an envied woman's success in looking prettier than the buyer.) And what most people lacking in self-confidence do when they are trying to state their opinion or speak up for themselves is either a) apologize in advance in the manner demonstrated above or b) overcompensate and come off as angry.

It's absurd to say that women are speaking in this way out of fear of being perceived as Terrifyingly Angry, they are doing so because they are Ridiculously Insecure.

The fact is that if you have to steel yourself and work yourself up to simply stating your opinion, or worse, do so just to cite a straightforward fact, you are almost always going to come off badly. Your behavior and expression will not be consistent with your message. Most of these women who think they are just stating the case simply and effectively would be shocked if they saw a video of themselves doing it and saw their furrowed brows, angry facial expressions, and heard how their voices were raised as if in anger.

Compounding the problem is that the natural solipsism of women combines with that lack of self-confidence so they make it all about themselves. Note how many "I" references there are in the three examples above: nearly four per example. Just to be clear, the normal male response to this rambling "I just feel that I think I should be able to express what I feel is the right thing to do" is "who the fuck cares?"

Women are also more inclined than men to see criticism of an idea they have expressed as personal criticism and react angrily to it. Does someone telling you "that's a stupid idea" make you angry and feel personally attacked? Well, then you probably ARE angry and your speech and facial expressions accurately reflect that.

Now, I've been in more than a few business meetings with women, and certainly some have spoken in a way that I would describe as "Oh Sweet Darwin, get to the fucking point before we evolve into a new species and all of this becomes irrelevant". But plenty of them speak normally, without either anger or apology, and I've noticed that those tend to be the more competent women. No drama, no theatrics, no uptalk, just normal, straightforward communication.

Just talk. It's not that hard. Stop couching and overcompensating and trying to frame, and foreshadow, and pre-convince, and talk. If you think X, say "I think X." That's it. That's all you have to do. You don't have to apologize for it or get upset if someone comes back with "I think X is stupid, I think Y." You think what you think. They think what they think. It's not a sin or a crime to disagree.

Entering the Gorilla Mindset

I'll be talking with Mike Cernovich, the author of Gorilla Mindset, in an hour. It should be a good interview, as I've learned a lot from him about social media and how to leverage the hatred that is directed at one by the other side.

In some ways, he is the anti-Scalzi. He's from a poor background in California too, but he had a father who helped him grow out of the gamma mindset and not only become a man, but an independent man. Like Scalzi, he is very, very good at self-marketing, but unlike Scalzi, he doesn't need to lie, and spin, and misrepresent himself to do it.

One of these days I'll have to explain to him the deeper symbology of the third eye, but tonight will not be that night. If you haven't read the book yet, here is a detailed review of it.

Turnabout is fair play

German daily documents anti-migrant hate speech on Facebook

Germany's top-selling Bild daily Tuesday documented racist vitriol against migrants posted by Facebook users in a double-page newspaper spread, as pressure grows on the social network to eliminate hate speech.

A day after thousands of anti-Muslim PEGIDA protesters and anti-fascist counter-demonstrators rallied in the eastern city of Dresden, Bild published dozens of anti-migrant rants under the headline "The Pillory of Shame".

Facebook "agitators" posted xenophobic and threatening comments, which Bild urged the prosecutor general to investigate.

Tensions have grown as Germany has opened its doors to an unprecedented wave of people fleeing war and misery, with arrivals expected to reach one million this year, an influx that has seen Chancellor Angela Merkel's poll ratings slip.

As Germany has seen increasingly angry street protests, attacks on asylum shelters and a knife attack against a pro-refugee politician last Saturday, lawmakers have warned that inflammatory speech can spur violence.

Turnabout being fair play and all, it seems to me that the German nationalists should keep track of all the anti-nationalist's identities and document all their statements and actions against the German people too.

Just in case they might happen to come in handy one day, you know?

So go ahead, SJWs and anti-nationalists, by all means, post that "I hate my nation, invaders welcome" rant. No doubt it will prove useful to someone one day.

The irrelevance of college

TK observes that a university education is simply not relevant for an increasing number of jobs today:

I just spent some time with one of my oldest friends who did electronic maintenance in the army and afterwards designed PCBs. For the past 12 years he's been driving a cab in San Diego and loving it.

Since since uber, et al., came to town, however, they have destroyed his ability to make a living wage as a cab driver (most uber drivers drive part-time, for drug and beer money (more true than not) and with a zero barrier to entry there are too many cars on the road now. Yay free market - I mean it. I think it's great!). So he decided to get back into PCB design.

He spent the last six months updating his skills 100% online. In just the past month he contacted a recruiting agency and began setting up interviews. The other day while I was visiting him, from just his second interview, he was offered a job for $32/hr! After he passes his first certification in February he will get a significant bump in pay and when he passes his second certification in October his salary should move into the low six figures.

He is 54 and has been out of the field for 12 years and has NO college degree!

Yet he was able to bring himself back up to speed in less than 6 months using just the internet. His employers didn't even care that his only formal training was in the army - 30 years ago!

You can always tell the difference between a job that requires real work and a pseudo-job that doesn't. If they give a damn about university credentials, it's the latter.

Strangling the golden goose

A few brave left-wing minds are looking around the wreckage of the West and wondering why it doesn't look like the shiny sexy secular utopia of It's a Small World they were promised:

THE West is suddenly suffused with self-doubt.

Centuries of superiority and global influence appeared to reach a new summit with the collapse of the Soviet Union, as the countries, values and civilization of the West appeared to have won the dark, difficult battle with Communism.

That victory seemed especially sweet after the turn of China toward capitalism, which many thought presaged a slow evolution to middle-class demands for individual rights and transparent justice — toward a form of democracy. But is the embrace of Western values inevitable? Are Western values, essentially Judeo-Christian ones, truly universal?

The history of the last decade is a bracing antidote to such easy thinking. The rise of authoritarian capitalism has been a blow to assumptions, made popular by Francis Fukuyama, that liberal democracy has proved to be the most reliable and lasting political system.

With the collapse of Communism, “what we may be witnessing,” Mr. Fukuyama wrote hopefully in 1989, “is the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.”

But couple the tightening of Chinese authoritarianism with Russia’s turn toward revanchism and dictatorship, and then add the rise of radical Islam, and the grand victory of Western liberalism can seem hollow, its values under threat even within its own societies.

The recent flood of migrants and Syrian asylum seekers were welcomed in much of Europe, especially Germany and Austria. But it also prompted criticism from a number of less prosperous European countries, a backlash from the far right and new anxieties about the growing influence of Islam, and radical Islamists, in Europe.

Western values only exist for Westerners. They are not universal and merely claiming them to be does not make them so. Physical relocation to the land of magic dirt doesn't convert non-Westerners into Westerners just as moving to the New World didn't transform the Puritans into Indians. It's a simple and straightforward numbers game. It should not be a surprise, either, as ever since the Baby Boom was born, an increasing number of parents have been failing to raise their children as members of the civilized West.

The current invaders aren't coming to America and Western Europe for freedom, democracy, or whatever other fiction the media is attempting to spin, they are coming to grab a share of the societal wealth that has been built up over the centuries. And by permitting them entry, the golden goose of the West is being gradually strangled.

To begin restoring the West, straightforward steps are needed:

• Restore Christianity to its foremost position in Christendom.
• Drive back the Turk.
• Replace representative democracy with direct democracy unhampered by judicial-branch vetoes.
• Hard money.
• End free trade.
• Punish corporations that break the law with jail. "Jail" them by pulling their business license for the period of their sentences. A criminal natural person cannot work, so why is a criminal juridical person permitted to do so?

Good... and the conclusion would be?

Fredrik de Boer takes a few faltering first steps towards understanding the media:

People often think I instinctively hate political journalists and writers. This is not the case. I’m friendly with some, and a few I consider close friends. I dated a political writer and journalist for years. And I know many to be bright, committed, decent people. That’s why I find it so perplexing that the average professional political commentator is so deeply out of touch, and so unaware that they are. The only thing I can figure is that the professional necessity of being constantly plugged into the news cycle, particularly on Twitter, just gives people an extremely skewed vision of what politics means and is for most people.

What else to make of this piece by Jake Flanagin or this piece by Amanda Marcotte, both of which have the same absurd idea: that the biggest problem that Bernie Sanders faces, politically, is the online conduct of his biggest online fans. The biggest problem! A Jewish socialist from Brooklyn in the land of Reagan, and his biggest problem is a few dozen people on Twitter!

Let’s think about some likely Democrat primary voters. Like, say, a white woman who lives in the greater Cincinnati suburbs, who can’t get enough hours at her part-time job organizing records for a oral surgeon, and whose ex-husband can’t pay her child support because his only income is disability payments. Or a black bus driver in Maryland who’s worried about what’s going to happen to his pension in the next union contract negotiations. Or a Hispanic first grade teacher in Florida who doesn’t know if her school’s funding is going to get cut yet again. Or a retiree in Pennsylvania whose economic security is dependent entirely on Social Security and Medicare. Or a Laotian immigrant in the Bay Area who’s struggling to bring her mother into the country.

Now: which of these people, do you think, is going to vote based on the conduct of Bernie Sanders fans on Twitter?

See, that's just it. They're not "bright, committed, decent people". They're narcissistic, solipsistic, maleducated, and of barely above-average intelligence. They're also snobbish, tribal, clueless about any subculture but their own, and possess less self-awareness than the average rock.

Spacebunny and I once had dinner with a pair of legitimately famous journalists. I mean, one name you would recognize and the other is on a first-name basis with Hollywood's A-list. After dinner, she commented that she couldn't believe how shallow their knowledge was. And that's the dirty little secret of the media: they have a surface knowledge of many things and that knowledge barely scratches the surface.

Ask them about anything, from Swaziland to the internal mechanism of the Austrian Business Cycle and they will claim to "have heard of that". In their world, this passes for fluency, if not perfect mastery. There are few things I enjoy more than addressing a journalist who claims to speak another language in that language. It's like waving a cross in front of a vampire.

At least they're empty

Swedes are following the German lead in burning planned refugee hostels:

An old school building in Onsala, south of Gothenburg, caught fire on Saturday evening. It was the third time in a week that prospective asylum accommodation has been badly damaged by a fire.

The fire was attended by 20 firefighters. The building, part of the otherwise demolished Furulidsskolan, was to be prepared to greet asylum seekers in the affluent area of Kungsbacka.

“Half the building has been damaged by fire,” said Mikael Lindgren, lead operator of the emergency services in Greater Gothenburg.

The cause of the fire is unclear but police will cordon off the area and carry out a technical examination when the emergency services have finished making the property secure.

The fire occurred just a day after a school, just south of Ljungby in Småland, was also destroyed by fire. The school building was to be used to accommodate refugees and had recently been decorated.

On Tuesday night a building in Arlöv in Skåne, designed for unaccompanied refugee children, was badly damaged. The centre was due to be open to the children the following day.

Two months ago, two other refugee centres were the targets of arson attacks. There have been a suspected 14 arson attacks on asylum centres since the start of the year.

I expect it won't be long before we start reading about politicians' homes being burned. It's not like they can't go live with the refugees they love more than their own people.

Who raped Miss Liberty?

What state is that?

Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton tells Minnesotans who prefer the real Minnesota to leave the state if they don't like living next door to squalid third-world Africans:

Governor Mark Dayton was one of the speakers at the NAACP Community Conversation, hosted in St. Cloud, Minnesota.

For several years now, St. Cloud has been one of the locations specifically targeted for “refugee resettlement”. The large influx of East African immigrants has caused racial tension between the White St. Cloud residents, and the East African immigrants.

“Look around you. This is Minnesota,” he said. “Minnesota is not like it was 30, 50 years ago. … This is Minnesota and you [Africans] have every right to be here. And anybody who cannot accept your right to be here, and this is Minnesota, should find another state.”

He described alternative views to his own as “unacceptable, un-Minnesotan, illegal and immoral”.

“If you are that intolerant, if you are that much of a racist or a bigot, then find another state.” said Dayton. “Find a state where the minority population is 1 percent or whatever. It’s not that in Minnesota. It’s not going to be again. It’s not going to be that in St. Cloud, or Rochester or Worthington.”

Where are they going to go? What would be the point? When I grew up in Minnesota, it was one of the whitest states in the country: 96.1 percent in 1980. First, aside from California or possibly Texas, there isn't a state that can hold 100 million white Americans, which is about how many people would move to a state that was guaranteed to be Asian, Hispanic, and African-free. Second, even if a state is completely white, what is to prevent it from being invaded just like Minnesota and Germany have been invaded? Third, it is outrageous to state that alien invaders have the same right to be there as native citizens. They simply don't, by any legal or moral standard.

History strongly suggests that Dayton is wrong. I can safely predict that the land presently called "Minnesota" will again feature a strong majority population with a minority population below five percent at some point in the future. After all, it already has twice within the past 165 years. All this imposed "refugee resettlement" means is that a lot of people are going to die and a lot of people are going to be forcibly expelled from the land. Whoever is willing to fight for it will hold it.

Where does Dayton think these homogeneous populations that he hates so much come from in the first place? Except in some extreme circumstances they don't occur due to geography; mass migrations have taken place for millennia. They arise out of invasions, ethnic cleansings, and wars of the sort that are taking place right now everywhere from Myanmar to the Crimea. Of course, speaking as an American Indian from a tribe that bravely and repeatedly, and in the end, unsuccessfully battled the immigrants invading their land, I can also state with some authority that there is no guarantee the majority population that ends up living in that territory mostly unsullied by minorities will be of European descent.

For decades, Americans have assumed that all the terrible things that happened in Bangladesh and the Congo and China could not happen in the USA. And that assumption was true, mostly due to the halt in immigration in the 1920s. Now, thanks to diversity, labor mobility, the 1965 Immigration Reform Act, and the European Union, both the USA and Europe are going to see an insane amount of violence that will probably surpass the Holocaust and the Holodomor over the next three decades.

The lesson of history is very clear. The killing season is coming. And those with the eyes to see are well aware of it.

I am saying that all the ingredients are there for complete breakdown and large-scale deaths given the right initiating incident. I am saying that volatility is baked into the cake – even into the cake of what today looks and feels normal. I am saying that while it may be possible to keep loading box upon box of societal Semtex into the truck, given the right detonator the collapse will be swift, unstoppable and devastating.

And when it comes, as it always does sooner or later, don't think that the explosives or the truck were responsible. The blame lies with those who loaded it.

Cucky churchians

It's not merely cuckservatives who are betraying their nations. And not just Americans. Plenty of liberals and Europeans are more than a little cucky too:

A group of 84 bishops have written to Prime Minister David Cameron urging him to allow more Syrian refugees to settle in Britain, a published letter showed.

The call comes days after 300 senior lawyers, former law lords and retired judges described Cameron’s offer to take 20,000 Syrian refugees over five years as “too low, too slow and too narrow”.

The Church of England bishops called on Cameron to accept 50,000 over five years, in a letter initially sent privately in September but made public following a “disheartening” lack of response from Cameron.

“As the fighting intensifies, as the sheer scale of human misery becomes greater, the government’s response seems increasingly inadequate to meet the scale and severity of the problem,” said Bishop of Durham Paul Butler, speaking on behalf of the bishops.

“It is disheartening that we have not received any substantive reply despite an assurance from the prime minister that one would be received.”

Not that there is any doubt that the Church of England deserves to fade into irrelevance, but it's a pity they can't limit the damage they've done to their own vanishing church.

UPDATE: These idiots aren't just idiots, they're complete hypocrites:

The Bishop of Manchester, the Right Rev David Walker, urged ordinary people to welcome asylum seekers from the war-torn country and said it would be ‘a sad reflection’ on society if they did not. He claimed, however, that it would be wrong for a refugee family to move into his own recently refurbished house because of the language barrier and their ‘alien culture’.

He ought to be sent to Syria as a missionary. Forcibly, if need be.

NFL open thread

This would be it. And if you wanted to discuss the incredible end to the Michigan-Michigan State game, that would be understandable. While I have no doubt Harbaugh will somehow be blamed for not winning the game, I very much doubt the punter was instructed to do anything other than fall on the ball in case of a bad snap.

Football is not the only activity where trying to fix a problem that doesn't need to be fixed is the best way to ensure complete disaster.

Something related to games

I found this exchange on Twitter to be mildly amusing.

Vox Day ‏@voxday
#GamerGate Open Source projects are the current target of SJW entryists. They use Codes of Conduct to take control.

Stonehead ‏@stonehead
@voxday Could you guys please return to your caves, doing something related to games instead of misogyny? Thanks. #GamerGate

Vox Day ‏@voxday
@stonehead In addition to the 7 games I designed this year, the 3 games I am developing, and the game dev course I teach? #GamerGate

Speaking of the game dev course, I've had to take the time to do some infrastructure-building, get a little further down the road with regards to the games we're developing, and arrange to make it possible to let people outside this blog know that a modified version of the game development course I taught at the institute in Zürich is going to be available online. That's why the course did not begin this fall, but will instead begin in January, most likely on January 9th.

In order to make it accessible to everyone from Eastern Europe to the West Coast, the ten online sessions will be on Saturdays, beginning between 12 and 2 PM until 2 to 4 PM EST. Is there a strong preference for a specific start time in that window here? The structure will be about one hour of lecture, followed by 30 minutes of Q&A, followed by 15 minutes of me interviewing an industry expert, and 15 minutes of audience Q&A with the expert.

The price of the course is $199, but VP readers will receive a $49 discount if they sign up before my partners begin offering it to the public. Two people asked if they could contribute for scholarships; to do so, simply buy a course and let me know you want it to go to someone who can't afford it. If you would like to apply for a scholarship, don't do so now, but wait until I announce how many are available. I will be supplying several myself. As I previously mentioned, all Annual Brainstorm members are guaranteed a free seat if they want one; I will be sending out an email concerning this later today.

There are 500 seats for this first course, but due to the Institute students as well as a partnership with a technology incubator in a European city, it is possible they will fill up faster than one might expect. (Although based on some of the numbers the city representative was throwing around, I may need to do a completely separate course just for them, which would have the effect of creating more open seats here.) 40 seats are presently reserved for the institute, as many as 50 may be taken up by the Brainstorm members, but if you are interested in taking the course you can reserve a seat now.

Some comments from the previous course participants:

• Great job, great course – you can expect a lot of practical knowledge and a lifetime experience from inside the industry – course is definitely worth the time and money invested! Last but not Least, Theodor is a great guy, as a person and as a mentor! Appreciated his honesty and way of spreading wisdom! 
• These presentations are really interesting. I learn a lot and the stories and examples, while a bit lengthy, are fun to listen to and show a great deal of first hand experience. It's like getting a look behind the scenes.
• For me the workshop gives a unique insight into areas of the game industry, which have been very elusive to me so far. Some might complain about the slightly scattered structure of the workshops, but I think that all the little anecdotes and narrated experiences are the real benefit of these sessions. They explain quite well what to expect of relevant companies, how the people interconnect and give hints where to dig deeper to solve other pending questions. Additionally I appreciate the opportunity to get a feedback on the concepts from someone from the industry, thus not on a academic scale, but well founded in the real life business.
• Generally speaking, it was good and informative. He talked about different subjects and didn't get stuck on one topic. It was very good that he showed examples and made interactive discussions. It would be better, if he would also show examples of games when he speaks about the history of games and their mechanics.

Amazon goes after the fakes

I've been expecting them to take action to shut down fake reviewers for some time now, but apparently it took being embarrassed in public to make it actually happen. More than a few SJWs should be shaking in their shoes.

AMAZON, the world’s largest online marketplace, is suing more than 1,000 people suspected of selling fake reviews in one of the biggest legal actions to uncover hidden identities on the internet.

The web giant is mounting the unprecedented court action to strip 1,114 alleged fake reviewers of their anonymity and force them to pay damages for the “manipulation and deception” of Amazon customers, according to court documents filed in America on Friday.

It is the first time any company has taken action against its own reviewers on this scale, according to legal experts, and could have far-reaching implications for privacy and the way consumer websites are policed.

The clampdown comes after an undercover Sunday Times investigation, in which a ghostwritten ebook was published on Amazon and fake reviewers were paid to push it to the top of one of the online retailer’s bestseller charts.

I've spoken to two Amazon executives about the problem, and they both agreed that fake reviews are a real problem that strikes at the legitimacy of their entire review system, and therefore, their business. They didn't necessarily agree that anyone who leaves a fake review should have their ability to review permanently removed and have their account suspended for 90 days, but they agreed that some form of negative incentive would be in order.

Amazon is full of SJWs, but they are mostly at the lower levels. The mid-level and higher executives aren't much interested in politics, they are interested in selling. Anything that gets in the way of that is likely to get steamrolled.

Stabbing the backstabbers

Interesting to see that the German nationalists have started with the politicians welcoming the invasion and not the invaders:

A German mayoral candidate has been stabbed in the neck, in an attack that is believed to have been because of her support for refugees.

Henriette Reker, who is running for mayor of the city of Cologne as an independent, and one of her aides were left severely injured in the savage assault.

A 44-year-old man sprang on the pair while they were campaigning in the western German city, police said. Three other people were also injured, although not seriously.

Norbert Wagner, head of the police criminal investigation unit in Cologne, said the attack on Reker was ‘targeted and deliberate’.

‘In his plea, he said that he committed this act out of xenophobic motivation,’ Wagner continued.

‘From our initial investigations, we have ascertained that he probably acted alone. So far, we have no knowledge of other people taking part in this sad act.’

Cologne Police Chief Wolfgang Albers said Ms Reker has been involved in the supporting and helping to house refugees in the city.

‘At the moment she is stable, but not out of the woods yet,’ he added.

Germany, a top destination for migrants, expects to receive up to a million new arrivals this year. But many Germans feel that the country cannot cope with the record numbers of refugees.

I would be utterly astonished if Ms Reker is the last German politician to be attacked. No doubt this will inspire a good deal of tongue-clucking and hand-wringing. And no doubt it will make no difference in anyone's behavior at all.

UPDATE: The politicians are not the only backstabbers in Germany:

A pro-migrant, open borders activist is reported to be “very sad” after being stabbed twice in the back by a gang of “Arabs” as he stood outside a pizzeria in Dresden, east Germany.

Twenty-nine year old ‘Julius G.’ involved himself in political activism while reading his degree in industrial engineering Technical University of Dresden. Now he may have fallen victim to his own politics, as the refugee advocate was attacked while waiting for friends in Dresden’s Neustadt, known as the city’s ‘left wing’, or ‘alternative’ quarter.

Germany’s Bild-Zeitung reports police were called to Pizza 5 on Alaunstraße on Saturday after a group of six to eight men jumped the student in the early hours and stabbed him twice in the back, leaving him in a serious condition. A police spokesman said: “Several police vans searched the surrounding area, unfortunately without success. According to witnesses, the attackers were said to be North Africans”.

Stabbed in the back by his own politics. How very fitting. Perhaps he'll learn, apologize to PEGIDA, and become a spokesman for them. But most likely, he'll double down. Because that's what SJWs do.

SJWs define "good community"

The dubiously named "Geekess" explains the process of social justice convergence in open source projects:

There’s been a lot of discussion in my comment sections (and on LWN) about what makes a good community, along with suggestions of welcoming open source communities to check out. Your hearts are in the right place, but I’ve never found an open source community that doesn’t need improvement. I’m quite happy to give the Xorg community a chance, mostly because I believe they’re starting from the right place for cultural change.

The thing is, reaching the goal of a diverse community is a step-by-step process. There are no shortcuts. Each step has to be complete before the next level of cultural change is effective. It’s also worth noting that each step along the way benefits all community members, not just diverse contributors.

Level 0: basic human decency
In order to attract diverse candidates, you need to be known as a welcoming community, with a clear set of agreed-upon social norms. It’s not good enough to have a code of conduct. Your leaders need to be actively behind it, and it needs to be enforced.

Level 1: on-boarding

The next phase in improving diversity is figuring out how to on-board newcomers. If diverse candidates are only 1-10% of newcomers, but you have a 90% fail rate for people who try to make their first contribution, well, you can’t expect many diverse newcomers to stick around, can you? It’s also essential to explain your unwritten tribal knowledge, so that diverse candidates (who are more likely to be afraid of upsetting the status quo) know what they’re getting into.

Level 2: meaningful contributions

The next step is figuring out what to do with these eager new diverse candidates. If they’ve made it this far through the gauntlet of toxic tech culture, they’re likely to be persistent, smart, and seeking a challenge. If you don’t have meaningful bigger projects for them to contribute to, they’ll move onto the next shiny thing.

And it just gets worse, until the whole thing is run by non-white women, food served at conferences is vegetarian, drinking is banned, and the code of conduct explicitly acknowledges the spectrum of privilege. And while she left out literal self-flagellation, there is no doubt that the metaphorical form will be expected of any white male contributors that remain.

I am beginning to wonder if Microsoft and the other software vendors are behind this open source code-of-conduct campaign, because nothing short of special ops assault teams could destroy their OSS competitors more effectively.

A development failure

This is an interesting look at an AAA development project that hit a single when a home run was needed:

To understand why Homefront had such a troubled development, it's important to look at how THQ was trying to change the way it greenlit games, and the context in which it did so. Its new procedure, which is fairly common in the game industry, was a multi-stage process designed to keep studios at work on new games without committing THQ to seeing them through to publication. THQ would take pitches from all its studios, give feedback, see prototypes and then authorize continued development. After going through this a few times, THQ would make a final decision about moving forward on full development, or pulling the plug on the project.

What was unusual about THQ's greenlight process is that it occurred at a time when every THQ studio executive knew that closures were imminent. With the stakes so high, THQ's new pitch process turned into a never-ending up-sell.

"We [Kaos] were in jeopardy of dying right after Frontlines, and [Schulman] felt that we really needed to sell to THQ," says one producer. "So we put forth just about every bit of effort we had into creating one hell of a package to sell to THQ. So much so that I believe our package was held as a metric for what other studios should do to sell their packages. And Dave Schulman was a really good salesman at telling THQ what we could deliver, and turning back to us to say, ‘Hey, sky's the limit. Just pack more features in. Make it great. Put as many bullet points as you can on the back of the box.'"

I was meeting with some THQ executives about funding one of Chris Taylor's projects at this time and they had sky-high expectations of Homefront. I mean, the words "CoD-killer" were bandied about; they really believed it was going to be a Battlefield-level event. I remember being dubious at the time, and later, when it was released, barely even noticing that it was out. No one I knew ever played it.