You know, I think there are right now any number of people holding their breath and waiting for things to go back to “normal.”

Their ranks include everyone from traditional publishers, to journalists, to … well, to most people who are not actively involved in “how things change.”

Heck, even some of us who are have to fight trained-in assumptions and ideas from our previous life.  Because you know, I can sniff the air and read the atmosphere in my field. I know how things used to go, and sometimes it’s really hard not to panic at some of the signals and events, before taking a deep breath and going “but it’s not like that with indie.”

In the past from which our bodies and — still — most of our minds come, understanding the cyclical nature of things and reading the signs was vital. If you were a hunter who understood the seasonal or otherwise nature of the game movement, and could read the signs of whether this was a large herd or just a limping, elderly buck, you left more descendants.  The same if you could figure out that the bush would flower again and bring berries, and went to look for them when the weather showed certain signs.  Your kids were better fed and arguably smarter, and therefore you had more descendants.

The other thing that we’re good at internalizing is a narrative.  The reason that Marxism is so spectacularly successful is that it’s a “just so” story which — granted if you know bloody nothing about either real Marxism or how the world works — seems to explain everything around you.  It reduces people to easily understandable classes and the myriad struggles of the human heart to “class struggle.”  The stupid old turn of the TWENTIETH century theory never fit very well, even back then, and it’s increasingly tattered, but if you squint and are willing to ignore all signs of things being upended, you can kid yourself it explains “everything.”

People love things that explain “everything.”  It’s at least part of the attraction of dictatorial regimes. You don’t have to think about details, they’re decided for you.

It’s also why we have things like the Iliad.  And probably precursor epics long since lost to history.  If you believed that your people was destined for glory, you’d put more oomph into cultivating your little plot of land and raising your passel of lads, which in turn led to more people who believed it and carried it abroad.

Heck, the West is suffering from the twin collapse of the blind faith in Christianity (and a unified Christianity at that) and the collapse in its innate superiority that superseded it. Were many of the beliefs that propelled the age of European empires crazy, counter-factual and objectively racist (or truly in point of fact White Supremacist, a much abused phrase these days.)?  Sure.  Heck, my people, being able to tan, was ipso facto inferior.  If you don’t believe me read early twentieth century North European writers and their side swipes at “Portagee”.  No matter how smart you were, if you could tan, you were held inferior to the most buck-toothed staring-eyed Englishman.

But it was a narrative. And any narrative is better than none.  Even the subjugated or despised people joined the project for a chance to be “close to.”

Am I hankering for a return to that time?  Are you insane? Did I immigrate to a Northern European countries? Are my kids anything close to blond?  Pfui.

I hanker as always for a world where the individual is revered as an individual and MERITOCRACY rules the day.

Everything else is just a choice of how many people are you creating a hell for.  Current Western Civilization is still the best thing that happened to humanity. It still by and large creates the most wealth and the best living conditions for most of the people in the world.  But it’s lost confidence. Or rather, confidence has been beat our of its children in elementary school.

A lot of this is the relative of the 60s “going back to the land” insanity coupled with a strong suspicion that native peoples of non-western origin are somehow magical (that good old noble savage.)  The end result is something completely insane like Occasional Cortex’s idea that magical native Americans will direct people in healing the Earth.  Because they’re magical and stuff, don’t you know.

Anyway, this kind of nonsense gets fed to kids in school about how precious every other culture/genetics/etc is and how bad and reviled the West is.  And then we’re surprised they don’t get married, don’t have kids, don’t really want to have jobs or do much of anything.

You see, it turns out Mea culpa mea maxima culpa, much less when that culpa is innate, unavoidable and nonredeemable is a lousy way to propel a civilization.

The good news though is that self-hatred is also not stable. And that the narrative is selecting out the easily manipulated:they just don’t do anything and check out of civilization.

The other good news is that while the browbeaters and setters of the death narrative were working at it, the world moved on, and the still fertile, splendidly inventive Western civilization pulled another egg out of its hat: computers, communications and soon almost entirely personal manufacturing.

Yesterday some idiot on FB was ranting about how Sad Puppies had wanted to keep all minorities from writing science fiction.  Leave alone the fact none of us were publishers.  Unbeknownst to a lot of people — some of whom ask me for help of that kind, as though I had any power — writers have near-no power over what their publisher accepts.  Or to put it differently, sure, mega bestsellers — say Larry Correia — have the power to have their publisher LOOK at your work (for those further down the line don’t even count on that. It’s iffy.)  And if the work is okay, even though it might not stand out from the pile, they’ll give you a shot.  Note that usually these friends-of-success writers last exactly ONE book.  but it keeps the author happy, so what the heck.

On the other hand it takes far more than hyper-mega-bestseller to blacklist another author.  I’ll be honest with you, I don’t know if J.K. Rowling would do it.

I know of a bestseller who took offense at my first series and demanded I have no publicity or support and be fired after it.  Was that the reason?  Meh. There was 9/11 which probably greatly exceeded Miss Bitch’s influence.  But even if it were, there were other houses, as I’ve proven over the last 18 years.

And now? Now there’s indie.  So, were we trying to prevent people from writing SF/F?  HOW? Unless we have magical powers, that would be a goal for insane people, and none of us is that crazy.  Heck, we weren’t even trying to prevent them from getting awards. We were just trying to have some people, other people, occasionally, sometimes, also get awards, so the hyper-academic focus of the awards changed more to “what fans like.”

It doesn’t matter now, obviously (yes, they are dead to me, and not just to me) but it matters from how people react to things they don’t expect and don’t know how to explain. They fit them, with shoehorns if needed, into a narrative that has nothing to do with them.  Because most of the establishment in SF suffers from the twin narratives of Marxism and centralized everything, they literally couldn’t conceptualize our rebellion except in Gramscian terms of pyramids of victimhood.  If we had a problem with stories it couldn’t be with poorly researched, poorly written dreck like “if you were a dinosaur my love” getting acclaim in a tiny, claustrophobic, incestuous, log-rolling group.  No, it must somehow be a matter of racial/class/cultural/gender and orientation classes.  Which is why all of us magically became white Mormon males, and they hold onto it buckle and tongue despite the patent inanity.

Because a narrative that fits very badly is better than no narrative at all.

And right now the narrative is breaking up all over. I still don’t understand why Europe doesn’t have blogs, but even there something is happening. Perhaps merely through the exposure to the glorious immigrants from noble savage cultures, which are telling the very abused children of the Europeans that they’ve been lied to, and their parents have been lied to, and their grandparents–  But something is happening.  And the establishment is reacting as though it were a passing thing.

If you haven’t heard much of the yellow vests in France, rest assured they’ve not gone away.  In fact, they’re still there, still fighting. It’s just that the media is convinced if they put their hands over their ears and sing “lalalalalala” it will go away, in time, because in the past such things (such things as they explain them, not as they are in fact) always did.

They are perhaps thinking of the outbreaks of the sixties and seventies which vanished without a trace. But those were the revolts of youth fueled in no small part with Soviet money.  Now… let’s say they can talk about Black Bloc all they want to, but a large number of people on the streets have white hair. And they’ve had just about enough of propaganda.

In the US? Well, sure, we have blogs and alternate channels of information. We tend to think they’re magically important, and the left does too, hence the sudden desire to deplatform us.


I’d say the most important thing in the last twenty years and the seeds of what is going on now underground, at people level, was the Tea Party.  It was reviled, slandered, and destroyed as an image. But that’s the whole point, of course. Because enough people took part in it to know it was no such thing.  Then reading the coverage, they walked away in disgust.

Meanwhile the media, very happy with the hit job, decided to astroturf Occupy Wall Street, and again, to read their fulsome accounts of the glorious heroes of the revolution, and then walk by the gathering of the mentally ill and old hippies on oxygen which showed up even in small towns (Colorado Springs, seriously) made a few more people go “that’s just not right.”

Without those there would have been no 2016 election.  Without those we’d still trust the media.

Now, there’s still some Gell-Mann amnesia, sure.  People who wouldn’t trust the media about anything else, default to believing them about things they know nothing about.  Which means they still have some power.

The problem is that they have no clue that power is no longer absolute and it’s not coming back.

Sure, blogs have something to do with this, because someone in your circle will have heard the truth and you’ll go “oh, that makes a ton more sense.”

I shudder to think what Obama would have been without the blogs to uncover his vapid inanity.  FDR is only the beginning.  And he MIGHT have got away with Fast and Furious, as retarded a scheme as ever breathed.

Which brings us to how people are acting now.  The media, really, truly, honestly doesn’t get it. This would be the time to become ultra-extra-careful, to report only what you fact-verify to oblivion and not to be paws of idiot politicians.  But they seem unable to help themselves.  Because they’re sure the old pattern will return.

So we get things as the Sol Pais incident.  What in heavens name possessed my state to close schools in a large city because a young, out of state woman, had bought a SHOTGUN?  It doesn’t really matter if she had made scary statements. What does that matter? have they ever met an 18 yo?  I went and looked at her “scary blog” and you know what, I was once a teenager and I raised teens. There was nothing scary there.  In bad taste, sure.  But people go through miles and miles of twerpitude before they become adults.

As for her “infatuation” with Columbine this amounted  to a drawing of a boy on a skateboard, labelled Dyl that they decided was one of the Columbine killers, because OF COURSE what you immediately think of when you think Columbine killers is skateboards, right?  Oh, and she liked Marilyn Manson.


They back pedaled to all her threatening statements being verbal, before they stopped reporting on this.

Which brings me to: this happened when our Jar-jar-brain governor just signed a red flag law, allowing the state to raid my home for guns if they don’t like something I say.  Like, giving anyone the right to swat you for “sounding unhinged.” Great idea.  Seriously, did he have his brain ablated at birth?

This case, whatever was really going on with the kid — a psychotic episode is not out of the question, but I’ll note she sounded QUITE sane in the gun forum, and also that what she actually DID accorded with her thinking she was coming to CO to meet up with people and go hunt. She did not go near ANY schools and mount Evans is hunting territory. Yeah, that we know she didn’t get a hunting license, but 18 yo’s have some weird things they forget. Older son was older than that when I realized he had clue zero how to write a check, for instance — was seized upon and blown all out of proportion to lend strength to this VERY BAD LAW.

Would it have worked in the past?  Probably.  Which is why they’re still trying it.

But gaslighting is really hard when daylight is coming in through the windows.

They’ll continue trying. Change is really hard to deal with.  Only five or six years ago, talking to an editor who is smarter than the average bear, I was told all the indies would come crawling and begging to be published, when they found out “how much work it is and how much it costs.”  By then I was re-releasing my older books, and it cost me an average of maybe $200 (less if I do more work myself.) And the work is not significant.  And there are people making six figures. More than I ever heard of in trad.

So change is hard to conceptualize.  And the establishment keeps waiting for things to return to “normal”.

They don’t realize that in paleolithic terms, the icebergs have melted, the herds are moving in different ways, and there’s no reason for us to stay here, trapped with them.

My prediction is a lot more eruptions like the Yellow Jackets.  And the sudden and stunning reverse of 2016 which has them in shock, still.  And, and and…

Sure, they’ll get some in.  And it depends then on whether it’s something essential. For instance, when the Hugos got calvinballed, we just went “whatever dude. Keep the wrapper. It’s not the real thing.”

Our elections getting calvinballed? That’s going to end in tears.  The FBI joining the raindeer games? That’s probably going to end in tears and blood.

But they’ll get some successes along the way.  They just won’t prevail. Because they can’t.

The real world has changed and doesn’t match the model in their heads at all.

No matter how many times they press the right lever, the machine fails to dispense the tasty pellet.

Which leads to more howling of fury more claims of “unfair.”

But more people are waking up too. (As opposed to woke which is like one of those nightmares where you just scream and scream and nothing changes.)

Ladies and gentlemen: refuse to focus on the crazy and roll up your sleeves.  We have a civilization to rebuild.

197 responses to “Movement

  1. Paul (Drak Bibliophile) Howard

    Some of the garbage that I’m hearing from Liberals concerning the Mueller Report makes me wonder “Is There Intelligent Life there”. 😦

    • BobtheRegisterredFool

      They perhaps honestly see it as parallel to “Lock Her Up”.

      The fact of the matter is, Obama could have made the email thing legal, and she had the pull to make it happen. They didn’t spend that political capital.

      Trump hasn’t actually spent the political capital to make it happen, perhaps partly because of the affair of Mueller, Steele, et al.

    • I’m still wondering if I should waste brain cells trying to sort out “passive collusion.” Not jumping up and down and screaming “wolf” when someone with a Russian last name contacted someone about something? *shrug*

      • Paul (Drak Bibliophile) Howard

        Not going to try.

        It’s hard enough for me to accept that Liberals/Lefties are also created in God’s Image thus fellow human-beings. 😦

      • Especially that hot mike moment asking the Russians to ease off until after the election…oh wait that was Obama. And the approval of the sale of all of that uranium to Russia…oh wait that was Hillary and the Obama administration, again; what about pulling missile defenses from Eastern Europe, no that was Obama again. In fact there was a ton of collusion with Russia-by Obama and Hillary, and the whole “Russia, Russia, Russia” narrative being pushed by Democrats in their ongoing coup attempt is a matter of simple projection. Democrats cannot imagine Trump didn’t conspire with Russia because that is exactly what Democrats would have done.

        • “exactly what Democrats would have done.”

          Would have done????

          Embrace and replace with “DID! Continue to do.”


            Note that the Dems rabidly deny that any such thing happened. I’m not saying that I agree with them. But if you bring it up in front of a group of Dems, they’ll probably accuse you of paranoid conspiracy mongering. That’s how they’re dealing with that particular mess.

            There’s one particular tid-bit about the missile defense thing that’s very much worth noting, but isn’t something that most people would be aware of. The missile defense systems were slated for deployment in Poland. Obama made the announcement that the deployment wouldn’t be taking place while he was in Poland. The specific date of the announcement was September 17.

            September 17, 1939, is the day that the Soviet Union invaded Poland the first time during World War 2 (i.e. the invasion that everyone forgets about because it took place about two weeks after Germany invaded, and almost two years before Germany kicked the Soviets out of Poland). That date was largely lost on Americans. But I bet the Poles and Russians spotted it real quick.

            • I love that the Lefty response to things they don’t like boils down to screaming and denial of reality.

              At the same time it makes me wonder how in the everliving hell they got so much power, and why the Republicans are so flamingly incompetent in taking advantage of it.

              • BobtheRegisterredFool


                Let’s call the first cause Reconstruction. Radicial Republicans had the opportunity to reshape the nation in order to permanently enshrine themselves in power, looked at where the path of single party statehood led, and turned away. (Or you could talk about the Mugwump backstab, or the fact that Union voters were up for punishing the South, not creating a Republican monarchy.)

                The Democrats saw that period of vulnerability, and became dedicated to preventing it from happening again. I talk about the white supremacist terror often, but as important was their use of Reconstruction/tyrant Lincoln/monster Sherman narratives to get a solid backing among southern whites. You saw Confederate veterans robbing banks trying to restart the war, but not so much Union ones*. The Southern Democrats put a lot of continuing effort into playing a very solid game in the Federal House of Representatives.

                Skipping over things like Posse Comitatus, the Yankee but Southern sympathetic Wilson was a great victory for the Southern Democrats, and his officials started off the twenties and thirties spree of white supremacist terrorism.

                By this time, the Republicans had thoroughly shifted from Radical Republican thinking to what I call Moderate Republicanism. This takes the wisdom of mercy after the civil war, and enshrines as a cult of not treating the Democrats as if they are an existential threat. The Republicans, twice I think, ran the former Democrat Wendell Willkie against FDR and lost. That is I think a very characteristic act. The Republicans had been taking the Black vote for granted, not taken their concerns seriously, and lost a lot of support.

                On the Republican side, Moderate Republicanism combined with the Cold War’s Ragnarokian fatalism to create the modern Establishment Republican, who collaborates with the Democrat in secret while pretending to oppose them.

                On the Democrat side, white supremacist terrorism was starting to lose its effectiveness, and was harder to sell to Southerners, who were also losing some of the fervor of their grudge from Reconstruction. The Progressives and FDR had already built support within the Democrats for leftism, and the Soviets had planted their state cult in the US. So, it was a simple matter of transitioning to different excuses for the same emotions and behavior.

                Current situation? Clintons were very effective at building on the past strengths of the Democratic Party, and on hollowing it out, ridding it of any serious opposition to them.

                *One explanation is that the Union veterans were satisfied by the resolution of the war, the other is that they were committing their crimes as Reconstruction officials.

                • In regards to the Southern White Supremacism, LBJ realized that he could get the black vote while still keeping them down- and expand the size of government (and opportunities for graft) via his Great Society welfare programs. Plus, he could also keep the more Liberal elements of the party comfortable by ditching segregation. The old line black middle class integrationist fell out of favor for the newer, hipper far Left radicals.

            • When you say “Americans,” allow me to point out that Obama was almost certainly on the list of people the significance was lost on.
              Seriously, for all that Trump doesn’t know much about anything beyond business, Obama was remarkably ignorant about anything but domestic politics (note that I do not say policy.)

              • I wouldn’t expect any given US president to be aware of that date (except maybe Reagan). The 1939 Soviet invasion of Poland is, to us, an obscure bit of history easily forgotten, and swiftly swallowed up in the midst of the events that followed.

                But the thing is, presidents shouldn’t have to remember these obscure bits of trivia. That’s what they have staff for. One of Obama’s staff should have researched Polish history and pointed to that date and spoken up saying, “Oh, by the way, this happened on this particular date.”

                So there are three possibities –

                1.) No one from Obama’s staff realized the significance of the date, and thus no one attempted to alert Obama to it.
                2.) Someone did realize the significance of the date and attempted to flag it, but someone located between the flagger and Obama didn’t pass it along up the chain.
                3.) Obama was tipped off, but chose to ignore the information.

                Possibilities 1 and 2 should be fireable offenses. The first represents an inexcusable inability to perform basic research. It’s not that hard these days to pull up a list of important dates. The US Embassy in Poland would probably have happily provided the information, if it had been asked. The second point suggests that someone was actively blocking the information from reaching the president. Again, that should be a fireable offense.

                As for the third possibility, well… I don’t think I have anything further to add to that.

  2. A return to a seeming stasis does not mean a return to a previous seeming stasis.

    Anyone who doesn’t comprehend that is welcome to have a nice chat with the Kaiser.

    I am reminded that I’ve seen various claims that every N years or generations, the World changes and that a few of those predicted the change to be due right about now (more or less)… the problem is nobody knows for sure what the real changes are or will be, nor truly what is on the other side of them.

    “We’ll be returning to normal, after we’ve figured out just what normal really is.. this time.” Or something like that.

  3. Most people consider what they grew up with ‘normal’. Never mind that those conditions didn’t exist six months before their birth, or hold on past the week before they turned eighteen; they grew up with it, therefore it is normal. I do it to me, too. I look at somebody running their rachet-jaw on a cellphone, and I cringe for in instant…until I remember that cellphones are no longer just for the insanely wealthy, and long distance no longer costs multiple dollars a minute.

    People buy houses on barrier islands because that island’s existence if ‘normal’, and then they get all hot under the collar when the ocean proceeds to erode the island, just as oceans have been doing to barrier islands for longer than mammals have been on this planet.

    Not sure what the hell can be done about it. I’m the child of two history teachers, I read history and science fiction for pleasure, and I STILL do it.

    • As a friend told me recently “The change to indie is hardest on us old pros.” BUT we can at least TRY.

      • I may have mentioned this before, but some time back there was an interview with a Rolling Stone (not Jagger) in which he was asked what his reaction was to the music streaming phenomenon and its effect on the revenues of big Rock acts. He said it made him feel exceptionally lucky to have had his career during the brief time in history when being in a successful band could make one a mega-millionaire.

        Smart fellow.

        • Nah. Indies are making way more money than trad.

        • In the early(?) aughts, Lyle Lovett stated that his net revenues from his (traditionally published) CDs was zero. I gather that at least for country acts, the money is in concerts, either on the road or at fixed venues. (Haven’t been there, but Branson, Missouri has a fair number of dedicated concert halls, and Rascal Flatts set up a permanent(?) gig somewhere in Las Vegas.)

          I assume it’s a bit better for some big-name entertainers, like Alan Jackson or Jimmy Buffett.

          • it’s different for writers, at least for now.

            • I’m thinking “concert==money maker” is a fair analog to “indie==money maker”. OTOH, the music industry seems to have a great ability to screw over the really big names. I’m guessing that the handful of really big name authors might have more leverage. Maybe.

              • No. Pfui. The people making big money from indie that I know aren’t “Big names.” Most you never heard of. The indie market is just MUCH larger.

                • I’m being less than clear. I was thinking of the Few Really Big names who manage to avoid getting screwed over (too much) by the trad publishers. What, maybe 5 or ten of them?

                  I’ve seen what you’ve said about indie before. It’s a wonderful approach. Not for me; I got about a page into a post-nuclear story before I walled the idea. My muse prefers things, often just plain and hopefully practical.

          • Nope, its not just country. Metal bands have said the same, as has NiN,

          • One of the really huge mega-selling bands mentioned the same thing, during the big push to blame everthing on piracy, mid to late ’00s.

            Pointed out that basically he got jack all from the CD sales anyways.

            • And all the musicians/bands can thank Led Zeppelin that they get the share of concert revenues they do, because before Zep, that would all go to the record companies and everyone but the bands as well. Zep said “no, they are paying to see us, it’s our money.”, and lead the way for others to demand and get the same thing.

          • Anonymous Coward

            That has been the norm for popular music for several decades (at least as far back as the early 80s). Music publishing contracts were/are pretty unfair and are ripe for ‘Hollywood accounting’ in which the band ends up being charged for publishing, legal fees, marketing/promotion, stamps, and anything else the music company can dream up. The net for the band can easily be around zero. When touring, a band can get the lion’s share of the box office & merchandise, and the promotion is often paid for by local media. Old bands don’t just tour to feed their egos, they often HAVE to in order to pay the bills. Streaming music has reduced the revenue stream for everybody, so touring is more important than ever. Permanent gigs in Las Vegas or Branson allows the big-name bands to have some kind of stable home life while maximizing their income.

        • Neil Finn (Crowded House, Split ENZ, Fleetwood Mac) said something the like. The first Ch hit, “Don’t Dream It’s Over), made him a very rich man. He said he was very fortunate to have lived and worked in the golden age of copyright. And the that opportunity didn’t seem as available to younger artists. I see that a lot from the socialistic inclined. The end of privately held intellectual property. Dream on baby bolsheviks.

    • I adapted to people walking around talking into a little box they hold in their hand. I don’t think I’ll ever adapt to those walking around talking into thin air. (Initially shied away from one woman in the grocery store last night, until I’d listened to her for a while.)

      • Ah, the eternal question:

        Is she hands-froo, or off her meds?

      • Paul (Drak Bibliophile) Howard

        LOL 😆

        I had a similar reaction while walking toward somebody in my apartment building.

        It was obvious that he was talking to somebody but didn’t see a cell/smart phone.

        Coming closer, I realized that he had a “head set” that allowed him to use a “smart phone” hands-free. 😀

        • I like how this trope is / has made it into paranormal fiction. Where the character sees and talks to ghosts. Initially they fear being considered “off meds” soon to be carted off for observation. Then they see someone with no ghost around but appearing to do the same who points to ear for implied hidden mike connected to phone. After that when in conversations with the departed, they pull the same thing and bingo, solution found. Either that they keep a defunct old flip phone and just pull it out when talking to ghosts. Either works.

          Occasionally a character will pull this not realizing that cell coverage is suspect to non-existent and get “caught”. Sometimes can explain or excuse their way out. Sometimes not.

        • The first time I ran into it (2005, before I even owned a cell phone), I was in a checkout lane and first thought I had a nutter talking to her imaginary girlfriend behind me. Took a while to realize it was half a phone conversation, then I saw the bluetooth earpiece. Whew!

        • I remember one blogger talking about seeing a couple at a booth in a restaurant. They were in conversation, but something seemed a bit off to the blogger. It took him a little while to figure it out, but he eventually realized that while the two people in the booth were talking, they weren’t talking to each other. Both were apparently having separate phone conversations.

          • Ouch. That had to be jarring. Even moreso than the strange conversation that went on for 30+ minutes on the air some years ago. Older guy and kid talking about riding their bikes. And everyone except the conversing parties realized Older Guy was speaking of motorcycle and Kid (well, relatively) was speaking of bicycle. And I can only wonder how many wagers were placed about when or which would realize.

      • Oh, but it makes it much easier to dictate in public 😉

        • Erm. Just about all of the authors that I love to read, unless I recognized you, it would be “pack up the family and head for the hills” time…

          • Depends on what we’re dictating, right? Hint, talk of spaceship battles in a public park gets you some DAMN odd looks.

            • Asimov has a Black Widows Club story about an overheard conversation that had them debating whether or not someone was plotting to Take Over the World or just kill some poor schmuck.
              Can’t tell you the ending (and can’t remember the title), but it runs along the lines of this convo.

            • Talking about the equipment list for your Call of Cthulhu party will get you even odder ones 30 years ago; today? You will be the subject of a multi-jurisdictional pig-pile, as Lawdog would put it.

        • Jerryp said he tried using a tape recorder once while about his daily walks. He said his transcriptionist (Bjo?) said he sounded like an obscene phone caller…

          • So it doubles as a fitness meter? “When the transcriptionist can understand your dictation, you’re getting enough exercise.”

  4. At least one of the leading puppy-kickers seems to have been as rabid an ex-Mormon as I have seen anywhere, which is were I figured some of the antipathy to the likes of Larry Correia and Brad Torgersen, and ALL their associates came from. It would also explain how our esteemed hostess became an unwitting convert with a race and sex change. Yes, religious bigotry is alive and well in the publishing industry. For all their celebration of the outre, somehow diversity seems exclude those who adhere to Christianity and Judaism, or for that matter the old-fashioned American civic religious consensus.

    • There are few people that more rabidly against a group than people that used to be a part of it.

      • Hell, ex-catholic is practically a religion of its own.

        • there are three kinds of Catholic.
          Good Catholics, Ex-Catholics, and those who just don’t care anymore.

        • I believe with the Catholic Church, but I have zero faith in any of their clergy higher than the local parish priest, and even him I have to know well before I vet him.

          • I have, since being a small child, that I believe in GOD. The people who claim to speak for him, those I do not trust.

          • Absolutely!!!!!!!!!!!!!

          • My Aunt was about as devout a Catholic as you could find, and spent a time going to a Baptist church (the pastor was a neighbor she knew for many many years) when she did not approve of the priest at the home town church nor those in the other two Catholic churches nearby. The new one in our hometown parish, who administered her funeral, was much more to her liking and she considered him a friend.

        • rightasusual2003gmailcom

          PRACTICALLY? Is.
          There are more “used to be Catholics” than Catholics. And, they are SURE that they totally understand the rules, regulations, and dogma BETTER than those who actually go to church. Because, ya’ know, a middle-school understanding of the faith, not updated since the last 30-40 years, is FAR superior to those that still study it.

  5. Re the “superiority” ideas places long ago and far away, it really boils down to “my peeps are better than all those other peeps: There is a documented British saying that “The ‘wogs’ begin at Calais”, and if you ask any French person they will confirm that the French are really the only civilized people.

    The same applies pretty much everywhere else, except for U.S. college campuses, where lots of folks are certain that other cultures are superior – but that they and their friends are personally superior for having recognized this.

    • One of my favorite books is Eric Frank Russell’s THE RABBLE ROUSERS. It was only published once; in a paperback imprint (Regency Books) that, interestingly, was being run by Harlan Ellison as his price for also editing the publisher’s main line of paperback semi-porns.

      It’s nonfiction; a series of accounts of mob behavior, and hysterically funny. If I won The Lottery (a remote chance; I don’t play) getting it back in print would be one of my goals.

      I thought of it because one chapter is about the Dreyfus Affair, and tells that at one point in the business Queen Victoria wrote her grandson Kaiser Willhelm to ask if Dreyfus was guilty of spying for the Germans. Dear Willie replied that so far as he could determine, no, Dreyfus was innocent. Russell then writes, “Whereupon she doubtless concluded, as did many of her countrymen that wogs begin at Calais.”

      The book also deals with such sterling examples of human rationality as the Sacco and Venzetti case, the Florida land boom, and Valentino’s funeral.

    • If you take the time to examine the words that various languages use for “foreigner”, you come to realize that pretty much all of them mean “barbarian”.

  6. Update 2: (1255 CST) Pais has been found dead of what’s reported to be a self-inflicted gun shot wound. Jefferson County Public School District has said it will resume classes tomorrow with an “increased security presence.”
    — FBI Denver (@FBIDenver) April 17, 2019

    Dangerous, perhaps, but not to the spineless narrativists still hiding under their beds.

    • And the fact that this has given fodder to some poor, sick soul who wants to become famous or hurt people or both is, of course, irrelevant. The under sheriff who did the active-shooter training at Day Job said if he had his way, the coverage of all these things would be, “There was a mass shooting. The perp is dead. Bob, what are the prospects for [insert local/regional sports team/player here] this season?”

    • And seeing that, I had to wonder if she’d have shot herself without the hatchet-job.

      • BobtheRegisterredFool

        FBI is pushing shot herself. FBI was also apparently, from the tweet, pushing danger to others.

      • Birthday Girl

        We have a distant cousin the family who died after a chat with the FBI. Their official report is that it was self-inflicted. With a long gun. Yes, possible. Or maybe it was the pistol shots they fired as he fled … ?? The Watchers have an awful lot of power to conceal.

        • Roger Wheeler, CEO of Telex, who was killed on the order of Whitey Bulger, was my wife’s uncle. The FBI covered up their involvement with Bulger and Uncle Roger’s murder for nearly a decade. Believe me, I have less faith in our FBI than I have in the Catholic Church’s hierarchy. Realistically? The FBI isn’t any better than your local mob protection racket. Maybe less, since the mob usually has standards.

          • Difference between the Mob and the FBI is private enterprise. The Mob has to -deliver- protection if they want to stay alive, the FBI only has to pretend.

          • The FBI agent who was involved that cover-up and actually left 4 known to be innocent people rot in jail in order to protect Bulger and his informants was none other than Robert Mueller; the same Robert Mueller who was special prosecutor sicked on Trump. Mueller has no business in any position of law enforcement whatsoever.

            I strongly suspect that Whitey Bulger’s mysterious prions transfer and subsequent death was to silence him because he is one of the few people with lots of dirt on Mueller and have can destroyed the narrative Democrats were building when they all thought Mueller would lead them to the promised land of Trump, and Pence’s removal and the installation of Hillary as President, somehow.

            • Zero argument from me on Bulger’s assassination. Anyone honest, and with a brain, knows government agents set that entire scenario up for him to be killed. And there hasn’t been a single peep from news agencies to have his murder be investigated. This really was a massive conspiracy; and I suspect if I start prying around it, that I’d meet with a mysterious end also. It’s real people.

              • But not what most people think of as a conspiracy. The fact that it exists is obvious, and so are the participants. It’s simply that no one dares to say anything about it, because of the obvious fact that the participants can have anyone using the legal system neutralized, whether through false charges, life disruption, or just outright removal.

                And that’s just another form of the marxist forcing you to tell lies: you know that there’s a crime, and you are too cowardly to stop it. Why should they fear you will ever use those paperweights in your gun safe?

  7. There is a reason the phrase “useful idiots” is a perfect fit for Marxism; Marxism is able to spread notwithstanding how demonstrably bogus it is because the minority of dedicated Marxists who have run of the institutions can count on it being spread by a plethora of useful idiots.

  8. And the latest news from France. Seems like the yellow vests have just shot themselves in the foot.

    • Feather Blade


      I hadn’t considered that angle for the cause of the Notre Dame fire… but now that they mention it…

    • I’d like to see other sources for that story. I trust Fox to an extent, but I want to see what some other non-official media outlets are saying. Fox is probably correct, but the protests are not anti-wealth per se, based on what I’ve been reading.

    • They’re a headless movement. There will be *ssholes

      • May even be false flags.

        • There was a video of someone walking by the parapets at Notre Dame, allegedly at the time of the fire, thus possibly an arsonist. The first commenters thought it was a muslim (with head cloth) and a long vest, while for a few hours, more establishment news sources claimed it was a Yellow Vest.

          OTOH, the entire video got memory-holed.

          With respect to the weekend demonstrations/riots, I’ve assumed that the local lefties/anarchists would want to join in along with everybody else, ranging from mid-lower class people through undercover LEO and/or spooks.

        • Isn’t it scary when we think alike?

          • Sometimes. Not this one, alas, any more than it would be scary if we both though a sunset was red.

            Now, that that’s no longer scary, that’s scary.

        • Patrick Chester

          Hopefully the Yellow Vests (or someone among them) think of that. I remember the Tea Party protest I attended in Houston in ’09. One of the protesters had a sign with two sides to it. One with a standard Tea Party Slogan, the other with a “PLANT” and an arrow so it could be pointed at any people who seemed to be a false flag.

  9. Something useful to point out to hoplophobes on the Red Flag “laws”:

    Forget the gun part. Yes there is plenty to object to on the gun issue, but even without touching guns this is still worse than terrible.

    1. Most of these laws keep the person sending in the tip anonymous. You aren’t even allowed to know who your accuser is, let alone the right to face them in court.

    2. No due process. First there is a secret court that decides if they think you are guilty (with one side of the story), then you find out when the police show up at your door. Then a couple weeks later (assuming you survived the police visit) you are generously allowed to defend yourself.

    3. Guilty until proven innocent. That hearing a couple weeks afterwards is where you finally get to make your first attempt to prove that you aren’t crazy. This being after the police showed up out of the blue and took your stuff. And of course if you don’t prove to a hostile court that you aren’t guilty (of no actual crime!), then you have to wait a year.

    Just put the accused on the f—ing rack and extract the f—ing confession of their witchcraft. It will be more honest, and less trouble for everyone.

    Also the parts where no judge will ever reject one of these orders lest the person actually is crazy and the judge gets his name dragged through the mud.

    Or that it WILL be abused by your crazy ex / relative who hates you.

    Or that it is a fantastic way of making sure the person you want to rob / beat up / rape / etc is disarmed.

    Or that there were already mechanisms on the books to deal with crazy people, that weren’t abominations of justice.

    Or that it doesn’t even matter if the target has guns: call in the tip and say that they are hiding the guns. God help whoever that happens to.

    Or that you may as well tear up the 1st right here and now, because anyone who gets offended by anyrhing will then make up a story and call it in.

    I know our alleged justice system is bad enough that Contempt is the only reasonable position to have on the matter. But the way to fix it is not to say “Meh, I’m getting bored using the 4th as toilet paper. Lets dig into the deep history of anglo-saxon law and crap on that too.”.

    Or if we are doing that then let’s get busy. We can each make up our enemies list and see how best to get them killed or their lives ruined.

    • BobtheRegisterredFool

      You are a software engineer.

      There are three interesting categories of people. First is racial minorities, homosexuals and so forth, folks who supporters of red flag laws might be expect to offer at least pro forma objections when laws are used in a way that might be considered abusive towards.

      Second is a subset of drug abusers and other petty criminals. Folks that police might be restrained from going after, but at the same time might have an interest an excuse for hassling.

      Third is the intersection of high suicide demographics and high suicide locations. Say, San Francisco homosexuals, transsexuals, drug addicts and mentally ill.

      Anonymous tips to hotlines can potentially be automated.

      Category the first could potentially be automated for grassroots opposition in the case of a hair trigger, very active police force.

      Category the second is maybe shits and giggles.

      Category the third is for a police force that is not being active stupid. Some of those tips, not acted on because probably fake, will be for people who latter commit suicide. Then sue the police for not acting on the information.

      Yeah, I’ve never been asked to teach a class in computer science ethics, why do you ask?

    • For a lot of the same reasons civil forfeiture laws are an utter abomination. I have no problem with forfeiture after a criminal conviction where the defendant has had due process, but civil forfeiture, where the government takes your property, even if you are never charged with a crime, and you have to prove your innocence to get it back, is so fundamentally contrary to the Constitution and the liberties it is meant to protect that it makes me nauseous.

      • Thing to keep an eye on, both the activists and the actually-funded-by-drug-gangs activists like to rake in even impounding expensive evidence in their ‘asset forfeiture’ stories, or cases where the property was bought by the guy why was properly charged and the chain is solid.(that is, they repete the debunked claims, without enough information to tell they are misleading)

        • Any law that allows seizure of any property BEFORE trial and conviction is an abomination that dates back to the witchcraft era. Trial, conviction, forfeiture….. no exceptions.

          • You just declared collecting and holding evidence for a trial to be abomination.

            • Au contraire. Evidence for trial is seized pursuant to a warrant, must be relevant to the crime, and most importantly MUST BE RETURNED INTACT if you are found not guilty. You do not have to file as an intervenor (which a judge can deny; after all, those forfeitures affect his budget too) in a “case” filed against your property as the defendant.

              Basic black-letter law.

              • I’ve seen how CA cops handle personally owned firearms.

              • Repeating myself:

                • Foxfier, either you’re in favor of theft wearing a badge, or you require due process. I just outlined why the original process outlined by the Founders provided due process. You’re more concerned with some sort of edge case that would be utterly prevented by following what I’ve outlined. OK.

                  • I warned people, twice now, about people lying in order to help thieves adn criminals to gain profit, in the name of protecting it.

                    EXPLICITLY pointing to it being those cases where due process was followed, and they are beyond a reasonable doubt guilty.

                    Either you think that’s wrong, or you are totally OK with it so long as you get to vent your spleen about thieves with badges. In which case, why not go see if Reason is hiring? They LOVE lying to people and hiding known information to encourage people to reach the “right” conclusions, and to hell with the facts.

    • And 4. Do they REALLY want seriously PO-ed people working on effective alternatives? In an age of rapidly distributed and potentially anonymous information?

  10. Rejoice, folks! Too many people here seem downbeat. For the first time since the 1994 election, we have a real hope to Make Things Better. The Propaganda Press, whose lies have permeated the world for all of my lifetime, is losing its grip. The coup attempt against Trump has failed – and if he has the nerve, he has the just cause to move against the conspirators with fire and sword in a crusade.

    I’m old enough to remember an event almost forgotten…the liberation of Grenada. A minor victory in the Cold War, or so it seems today. But it was the pivot point of the Cold War. Because it was the first time that the forces of Civilization had taken ground. For 35 years, once the Communists had taken one square inch of soil, it was their slave-land forever. We’d been playing defense, breaking even at best and losing at worst. No longer. Now we were on offense.

    This feels like that. And I pray to see the equivalent of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the shattering of the Leftist yoke.

    So cheer up. We have the privilege of standing here, in the forefront of the battle.

    • Canada -will- be turning majority Conservative in October. There is nothing that can prevent it, following the Alberta election last week wherein the Liberal Party took zero (0) seats and the NDPee were reduced to ~23% from a majority. I can’t be bothered to look up the exact number, but it was a beauty.

      This, I remind y’all Americans who never hear a damn thing about Canada, is in the midst of the most solidly, rabidly Liberal media blitz I have ever seen in my life. Rob Ford the Conservative premier of Ontario is SATAN!!! and Jason Kenney, newly elected Conservative premier of Alberta is DOUBLE SATAN!!!, all day every goddamn day.

      Of particular note for poll-watchers, the media polls had the NDPee winning an easy victory right up to the day of the election. So active lying is now the media “new-normal” in Canada.

      • The 2016 polls were incredibly wrong in the US. Part (most?) of it is the left-wing bias of the polling companies. (Rasmussen seems to be fair, but that’s about it.)

        OTOH there was a sense of self-preservation. We refused to answer any polling calls, but we knew people who’d answer polls and lie. Why should anyone tell a pollster that they’re voting for Orange-Man-Bad? (I live in Oregon, and a Trump bumper sticker west of the Cascades was an open invitation to vandalism. Not the case over here, but still.) I wouldn’t want anybody who knows my phone number (thus possibly having my address) knowing my political affiliation. Not yet, anyway.

        • I lied. Like a rug. Repeatedly.

        • All early polls are just trying to influence opinion and make it, not truth. the only time they get close to reality is about a week before the election, when they have to start swinging from their desired outcome to what they’ve polled… otherwise they blow their credibility (and the number of people willing to pay them next time for info.)

        • One (1) polling company got the 2016 election exactly right, and they did it by following regular statistical sampling and adjusting for bias the usual ways.

          All the other polling companies got it exactly wrong, by deliberately over-sampling DemocRats. They weren’t even subtle about it.

          Same story in Alberta this winter. Polling companies skewed their samples to get the results they wanted to get. Because that’s what they’re being paid to do by the media that hires them.

          • We’re getting so many spam/scam calls that unless we have a reason to answer, we’ll let the phone go to the machine. We’re usually getting 3-5 spam calls a day on our landline, no message. Somebody likes to use the same exchange and varies the last two digits to thwart call blocking. Supposedly an Eugene exchange.

            • Don’t have a land line. Cell phones were safe for awhile. Not anymore. Canceling does not put them through to voice mail. They spoof area code and prefix varying the latter 4 numbers. If I don’t recognize the number I don’t answer, or I’ll answer and not say anything until caller identifies, if they don’t, I hang up; identified suspected spam calls get blocked (phone depending on current “upgrade” does that.) If it is someone who needs to get us, they will call back immediately, because they got “cut off.”

              • We have a hogback between us and the only cell tower (the joys of rural life), so cell signal at home varies from poor to nonexistent. Terrestrial broadband isn’t available, so we’ve got Hobson’s Choice. (I don’t know too much about the 5G stuff, beyond Chinese manufacture and some absurdly high frequencies. If viable and otherwise acceptable, LEO satellite broadband might be an option.)

                CenturyLink offers a block service, but it’s only 25 total numbers. I’ve got one guy pushing that already, along with the spammers claiming to be “NRA”. (Our answering machine tries to pronounce it as one syllable. I wonder if that’s a minor demon with the Old Ones.)

        • Yes. Oregon too. 1) Don’t say a thing on any calls until the caller says something. 2) Immediately hang up on polls.

          I AM on the west side of Oregon, southern Willamette Valley, Eugene …

          Vehicles have been torched for having conservative bumper stickers, let alone ones supporting President Trump; or even being a larger SUV (years ago, but still …)

          As a rule we don’t put anything on our vehicles’ paint, stickers or magnets; not even parking stickers …

          Even today, as mentioned before, even tho Oregon went for HRH Hillary, my response on whether I voted for President Trump or not is always “I didn’t vote for her.” Knew my vote meant nothing in Oregon. Haven’t had my vote go the same way as the State in … um … forever (if ever, but you know, old, so might be miss remembering if Oregon has ever been reasonable since I qualified for my first Presidential vote.)

          On another note. There is a petition going around to have Oregon electoral votes automatically follow the national popular vote regardless of how Oregon voting goes. (Not that it matters because Portland/Salem/Eugene/Ashland will follow LA/Seattle/NY/etc., and tilt the Oregon vote anyway.)

          My response was “That’s idiotic. Do you WANT to be ruled by New York and California?”

          OTOH I can hear the squeal (should they be stupid enough to get it on the ballet and passed) when the national popular vote goes to President Trump and Oregon doesn’t. /evil-grin

          • We’re in the same position.

            • Yes. Had heard there were a lot of other states pulling the same thing.

              Funny thing. They were commenting that states like Montana, Wyoming, Utah, Alaska, and a few others wouldn’t “fall in line” … Gee, really? Wonder why?

              The petition hasn’t hit the news, let alone the ballet, yet.

              The ONLY change to our state electoral college votes I’d consider would be one that changes it to an electoral college for state based on County population to give the less populated areas more influence. Higher populace counties would still have more sway, because more electoral votes, but like nationally, smaller populations could band together to have some sway.

              • They did it not by ballot, but by law, in the state senate. By one. Not AMUSED.

                • Does Colorado have a referendum to enable overturn what the state Senate does? Oregon does.

                  Still not happy about the 0.5% new vehicle privilege tax on vehicle sellers, which “can” be passed on to the consumer (read “can” as “will”). Proceeds are for rebates for those who purchase zero emission vehicles and not road improvement … and according to the courts they can do that; go figure.

                  • It has a referendum, but it doesn’t overturn it. The Senate can still reaffirm it.

                    • Oregon Referendums can overturn or repeal. But wording has to be perfect. Problem with Oregon Referendums is can only be one item on it. So if a concept needs two parts it is really, really, tricky. One of the problems with the Sales Tax.

                      Must be two referendums to add Sales Tax and remove Income Tax. Everyone is terrified Sales Tax will pass and remove Income Tax will fail, leaving us with both. The state is afraid the Sales Tax will fail and the remove Income Tax will pass 🙂

          • When I’ve gone to Medford, I’m happy to be driving the Subaru. K-Falls might be the only place in southern Oregon where you can find a Forester with a Trump sticker, but we don’t advertise.

            I’m wondering if the national-popular vote will a) get a court challenge and b) get tossed as a civil rights violation. Disenfranchising a bunch of the state might just be enough for a challenge to fly. One can hope for that, along with SMOD’s kid brothers hitting Salem and Portland.

            • it will if a few blue states find themselves voting for Trump in 2020…

            • It is state by state. That is one thing about the national electoral college state votes – The state determines how to set them and distribute them. Don’t know if that is just law or by national constitutional amendment, suspect the latter. Also don’t know if state determination is by state constitution or law, suspect that varies state by state. It may be a national movement, but they can not force states, where they’d have to be brain dead to participate (and the ones I listed, aren’t), to actually participate, the idiots aren’t changing a thing.

              Yes, when a blue state that has put this in, and electoral votes is against the popular vote, you will hear the screams, and lawsuits flinging, from here throughout the solar system. Me? I’ll be reaching for the popcorn 🙂 … Just like the days after President Trump was elected.

              I didn’t think he’d win. Knew Oregon electoral votes weren’t going for him, no matter how I voted (I did not vote for HRHS). That night when the results were in and called by Fox, my response was “Oh, my god.” repeated a number of times.

              • Paul (Drak Bibliophile) Howard

                Constitutionally, the States control how their electoral college votes are selected and this has been since the Constitution was approved. (The only major change was concerning the VP. At first, the VP was the runner-up.)

                I can’t see how this nonsense could be challenged on the basis of the US Constitution but if Trump wins the popular, there will be a lot of Blue States dumping this nonsense. 😈

                • First, they are forbidden to enter into an inter-state compact.




                  Yes. No state legislator, on pain of being lynched by their constituents, where Elector representation is one of those whose influence is greater than state population would indicate (cough – Montana, Wyoming, Alaska, etc.)

                  Summary of what is happening in Oregon:

        • Not this again.
          Look. The polls were right about how the popular vote was going to go–the average margin of error was one or two percentage points.
          The reason why they got the election wrong was that no one bothered to poll in Wisconsin, Michigan, or Pennsylvania, because the pollsters just assumed they would go Democrat.

  11. Waiting for things to get back to normal….. or taking steps to get back to normal…. either requires you to define normal.

    Which makes it easy to have a fun time with warmists. One multi-part question: What’s the ideal temperature of the Earth and when was it ever at that temperature? There’s never been a normal….

    Also simple fact- we can’t measure the Earth’s temperature with any degree of accuracy anyway. Can’t even measure a 20 X 20 mile area. I say that because of my nightly drive home where I glance at the outside air thermometer in my car from time to time. Total temperature difference measured during a commute is normally between 3 and 7 degrees. And I have seen it vary by 20+ as a front came through while commuting.

    • I go from 4100′ elevation in the city to 4750 at the hill near town, then back down to split the difference at home. Major changes in temperature. If you stand on one of the hills on the north side of our valley, you can see the snow line in winter.

      We know that in winter, we’re about 10 degrees cooler than the city. Varies in the summer; their lake effect moderates everything.

  12. I recall riding my motorcycle and noticing the temperature variations along my route. I recall it was supposed to need a 10 degree change to be noticed.

    • A few years ago, I house sat for a family friend who lives in an older part of town with very large lots (several acres) on the edge of town. I had rehearsal one evening in downtown. It was about 90 degrees F. when I emerged from said rehearsal. When I got out of my car four miles away at the house, it was 75. Urban heat island FTW. (The high temp that day had been 97 F.)

  13. Christopher M. Chupik

    Aw, man, you just had to mention Sad Puppies . . . 😀

    Things were so quiet, too.

    • It’s been all over, Christopher. They want us to come and play and make them feel relevant….

      • Merely the gas rumbles in a decaying dinosaur carcass. Just don’t get close to it and poke it or you might get rotten carrion blown all over you. Eeeeewwwww!!!

      • May have something to do with their Hugo slate being nakedly partisan and openly misandrist this year. Two nominations are stories that celebrate abusing and in one case killing men. Desperately seeking someone to blame for that, I expect.

        Now that the Sad Puppies has been over and done since 2016, and even Vox Day couldn’t find any more candy in the WorldCon pinata, they have to find a way to Frankenstein some life into the corpse, make it get up and pull their little red wagon. I expect Hugo-nominated flopping cameltron is experiencing a pretty harsh drop in traffic, and we know 327 Hugos China Mike has been existing on ‘bots.

        • It’s going to be two people giving each other awards for books that never really got published shortly.
          That is, if it’s not two people trying to No Award each other for not being sufficiently woke.

          • I always thought it would end up with two fat old weirdos having an annual Business Meeting at a sleazy Denny’s in Anaheim, each one trying to vote the other out.

  14. It feels like the generation of the ’60s and their acolytes are so scared that they will be rendered absolutely irrelevant in the great scheme of history, that they are willing to tear things down and destroy them rather than have them around for anyone else to enjoy.

    I’ve been seeing the spoilers for “Endgame” and what they’re planning to do afterwards and I would like to congratulate Marvel and Disney for making sure I don’t spend a single damn dime on any of these movies.

    With one exception, I haven’t been buying any books from any of the “big” publishers. Baen Books might be the only exception.

    I can’t think of the last time I listened to the radio in my car, or listened to a “popular” station. Nothing appeals to me.

    I don’t like being called racist just because I don’t like an author that happens to be back. He can’t write his way out of a paper bag-does making him black change that fact?
    I don’t like being called sexist because I think the third and fourth wave Feminists have gone so far beyond the pale that they are making patriarchy and a return to classic sexual and gender roles look good in comparison.
    I don’t like being called greedy that I want to see the argument about health care reform stop being about if we’ll keep the current system or go to a single-payer system (it’s like the Post Office! But with doctors!). What can we do to make it easier and more efficient for quality and quantity of care levels to increase?
    I don’t like being called a GamerGate apologist because I wonder why Kotaku didn’t toss at least a quarter of their staff out on their ear and blackballed them from any journalism job because they lied. And not even competently lied.

    Most of all…I want out of this sewer that these people have created all around us. I want to see the world try and be better, to build the ships that will take us to the stars, to make things better than they were before.


      How the hell does that make you a GamerGate apologist, when it’s the kind of stuff we GamerGate supporters have been wondering? (I came in through NotYourShield.)

      • Because GamerGate is full of those EEEVILL vile white supremacist/4Chan/game nerds that aren’t real gamers! (Sarcasm tag attached.)

        • Saw this today:

          • That this did not surprise me in the least really surprised me.

            I’ve met enough of these people in the Bay Area, and they tend to be exactly what they’re described as here.

    • There was this exchange at work one night:

      “Racist? Can’t be, he’s WHITE.”
      “Looks darker.”
      “He’s just that full of s***!”


      Currently “get off my lawn” is becoming a radical battle cry. Those of us who simply want to sit around and write fun books about aliens and stuff are freaky-fringe dangerous White Supremacist lunatics trying to destroy All That Is Holy.

      I’m cool with it. All I have to do is sit and type, and the whole Left goes batshit? Awesome! ~:)

    • I don’t like being called a GamerGate apologist

      Why not? The enemy handing you a badge of honor is more valuable than anything an ally can give.

      • I don’t like my enemy defining who I am and defining what my goals are.

        The enemy uses shorthand and memes, because if they can convince you to believe the memes, anything that contradicts the memes is noise.

        I’m not an apologist.

        I believe in GamerGate. I believe in the cause it stands for. That our opponents are so quick to try and make it something else tells me that they know they have nothing to defend against it.

  15. yeah now that i think about it, they thought that Hillary! was going to get elected and thigns would go back to the nice normal clinton years of the 1990s.

  16. Sarah said: “You know, I think there are right now any number of people holding their breath and waiting for things to go back to “normal.” Their ranks include everyone from traditional publishers, to journalists, to … well, to most people who are not actively involved in “how things change.”

    There are a couple of interesting things regarding this. First, and most subtle, people are leaving New York City.

    The reasons given are:
    A) transit is completely trashed in NYC, you can’t get where you’re going.
    B) crazy people are dropping trou and taking a dump on the sidewalk on Central Park West. That’s the $40 million dollar three bedroom condo Central Park West. Nobody cleans up the garbage or plows the snow. Basic services are not provided. The schools are wildly unsafe for children, etc.
    C) is interesting. the guy says “There was a time, not that long ago, when being a player in many American industries — finance, publishing, media, fashion — required having a residence or an office or both in New York. It was de rigueur. That is not the case any more. You can be a fashion giant in South Florida or a technology titan in Texas or a banking big in Charleston, SC.”

    Nobody NEEDS to live in NYC anymore. Its possible not to. That’s directly pointing to Sarah’s contention regarding Indy, nobody NEEDS an agent and a publisher now to make money as an author.

    The other thing is Billy Ilish. This is a teenage girl. In 2016 she released a song “Ocean Eyes” on SoundCloud that she and her brother recorded in her bedroom on a crappy microphone with an old piano, a cheapy synthesizer (like $300 kinda cheap) and Ableton software on a laptop. No studio, no agent, no mixing board, no reel-to-reel 35mm tape recording system, no nothing. Girl sings, big brother plays keyboards, they mix it themselves and put it on a website with a zillion other songs. It got 15 million downloads.

    Lawn seats for her June Ontario Place show in Toronto are $300 each. She’s all over Youtube, Spotify and Sirius XM. Completely bypassed the whole legacy music industry. I am unsure if you can even buy a physical recording on CD or vinyl.

    And that is why I’m not so worried about Big Brother coming in and locking all this stuff down as I used to be. With the proliferation of computing and communication power in ever-more-diffuse forms, coupled with the erosion of the old-style city-centric employment structure (not to mention the active destruction of those cities by the Insane Left) I do believe we are entering a time that reverses the old totalitarian inevitability. Instead of slowly decreasing freedom, we will be seeing slowly -increasing- freedom.

    That’s why the Left is losing their collective shit. They already know that they can’t lock this down. It already can’t be done. They can pass all the laws and regulations they want, they can control awards and media and fucking knitting clubs, but still some random girl can not only get her songs published, but can become a huge hit. I’m sure its driving them all crazy.

    • Yeah, the current NYC mayor has managed to completely undo most of the cleaning up of the city that Giuliani managed to do… congratulations?

      Also, Nashville is *trying* to put a cap on indie music production by taxing and effectively attempting to outlaw so-called bedroom studios. And by Nashville, i mean the city of….

      • …attempting to outlaw so-called bedroom studios…

        Good luck to them with that. A kid with a laptop can perform, edit and publish music from the parking lot of Starbucks today.

      • “We *have* the technology…”

        There have already been some fairly-successful movies that were filmed in bits and pieces at various locations, processed through CGI, and assembled in someone’s living room. It has been quite a while since Samuli Torssonnen’s “Star Wreck: In the Pirkinning” came out.

        “Hollywood” used to control the distribution system – the theater contracts. But lots of stuff goes direct-to-video now, on Amazon or Netflix. And as editing and mixing costs have dropped, new mainstream competition has popped up to gnaw at Hollywood’s ankles.

        When someone looks at a page, thinks “that looks interesting”, and clicks “buy”, they almost never care where the movie was made, as long as it’s not poorly dubbed from some other language…

  17. Much like the cake… Normal is a lie.