Category Archives: News

Hiatus

It has been ages since I last posted. Over that time, we have had a pandemic, a lockdown, Ahmad Arberry/Brionna Taylor/George Floyd, protests/riots/looting/burning/murders, the rise of BLM (Burning, Looting, Murdering), and a whole lot of political stuff. Wars and rumors of wars, indeed.

On the personal front, I have been busy making YouTube videos and just started a podcast.

On the Gaming front, I am still playing Vega Conflict, but I recently came across a new game that just started up, called Eve Echoes, which went live a few days ago. It is effectively a port of the PC game Eve Online. It makes Vega look amateur. More on that later.

No Good Deed…

Here’s a story from the Land Down Under.

Kenan Basic, a 36-year-old carpenter, stopped to help a nineteen-year-old woman by the name of Caitlyn Gray, whose car had broken down. He repaired her car, they hugged each other, and she went on her way.

She then went to the police and swore out a complaint accusing him of stalking her, asking her for sex, and groping her.

Mr Basic was then arrested and and charged with indecent assault, and jailed. He was denied bail. He was in jail for a week. He lost his job, and his wife filed for divorce.

Who is this paragon of pulchritude that Mr Basic risked his very liberty to proposition and grope? What does she look like?

When the police could not find any surveillance video or any other corroborating evidence to support her story, they became skeptical. Finally, she admitted that she had made the whole story up.

He was vindicated and released. She was found guilty of “knowingly making a false statement.

She has been jailed for nine months, five of which are mandatory before parole… but unlike him, she was immediately granted bail.

Apparently the presumption of innocence only applies if you are female.

He plans to sue. And he should.

Remember Them

Seventy-five years ago this morning, thousands of soldiers stormed the beaches of Normandy.

The story of the liberation of Europe began there. Too many other stories ended there.

It is easy to trivialize the event.

It is equally easy to consign it to the ash-heap of history.

This is probably the last major D-Day anniversary in which Veterans of that day will be present.

Most of them are in their nineties, few will survive another decade.

Remember them

 

Anatomy of a Train Wreck

*Warning* Along with a fountain of tears, this video contains copious foul language.

Let’s break this cryfest down, shall we?

  • 0:25 “I am nothing without my following“. Math tip: Nothing plus one hundred thousand followers on Social Media equals… nothing.
  • 0:43 “You are ruining my life because I make all of my money online” Plain English translation: “I found a nice little earner flashing my bits on Social Media for cash and prizes. But now the party is over, I had no plan and no backup. And it’s your fault
  • 0:55 “The 90%ers, the people that work 9 to 5, that is not me. I am in LA to not be like that” = I’m better than you.
  • 1:00 “I have worked soooo hard…” …shaking my bits on social media for cash and prizes.
  • 1:15 “People come after me for no reason and it hurts“. They all had a reason, you just don’t know what that reason is. Perhaps the Internet is not the place for you.
  • 1:20 “This is my life” = I have no life.
  • 2:15 “Nobody loves me. I only have three friends in the world who have not backstabbed me…yet.
  • 2:35 “I have no skills, and $20,000 in debt from college…” So what did you learn at college? Why was it not useful?
  • 3:05: “I used to work at McDonald’s before I did YouTube, Instagram, before I had 100,000 followers, before I had everything in my life, I was a loser…” So people who work at McDonald’s are losers, and people who place their value in the number of followers on Social Media have everything. Riiiight…
  • 3:09 “I have no job qualifications. I could never work a normal job. I am worthless. I bring nothing to the table. I am not work material. I will never be work material. So stop reporting me…” BOOM. There it is.

 


Dear Jessy,

I have no beef with you. I don’t even have an Instagram account. I am not laughing at you, but I am not about to give you sympathy either.

By your own admission, you have no value outside of flashing your bits on Social Media for fun and profit, and good luck to you if you can make a living doing that. But deep down, you must know that the youth and beauty that brings in clicks, eyeballs, and dollars only lasts for so long. The party will not last forever. It never does. And when it does, you will have about fifty years to think about it. So start making yourself useful.

The fact that you have no skills outside of Instagram is telling. But you don’t have a hater problem, and you don’t have an Instagram problem. You have a *you* problem.


Epilogue: she finally got her channel back

What about all the other folks who got banned?

Truth and Consequences

Henry Cavill is an actor who recently got himself into a spot of bother with a horde of yammering harpies. In an interview with GQ, he said the following:

“Stuff has to change, absolutely,” he adds, addressing men’s behavior. “It’s important to also retain the good things, which were a quality of the past, and get rid of the bad things.

“There’s something wonderful about a man chasing a woman. There’s a traditional approach to that, which is nice. I think a woman should be wooed and chased, but maybe I’m old-fashioned for thinking that.

“It’s very difficult to do that if there are certain rules in place. Because then it’s like: ‘Well, I don’t want to go up and talk to her, because I’m going to be called a rapist or something’. So you’re like, ‘Forget it, I’m going to call an ex-girlfriend instead, and then just go back to a relationship, which never really worked’. But it’s way safer than casting myself into the fires of hell, because I’m someone in the public eye, and if I go and flirt with someone, then who knows what’s going to happen?
“Now? Now you really can’t pursue someone further than, ‘No’. It’s like, ‘OK, cool’. But then there’s the, ‘Oh why’d you give up?’ And it’s like, ‘Well, because I didn’t want to go to jail?’”

Unsurprisingly, the girlies went nuts. Here are a couple of their offerings

It’s not about rape, sweetheart, and you know it. And it is not about men trying to “position themselves as “victims”” either. This is an example of a female trying to move the goalposts by changing the subject.

You wish. His exact words were “wooed and chased”, which clearly shows romantic, rather then terroristic, intentions. Oh, and I’ve seen your picture; you have little to worry about.

Everything he said was 100% true. The irony is that a man talking to a magazine that is ostensibly aimed at other men (GQ, if you didn’t know it, stands for Gentleman’s Quarterly) can cause such ire among a bunch of women. This is not about rape or sexual harassment, it is about perceptions, accusations, trial-by-media and witch-hunts. We now live in an age where a man’s life can be ruined over one accusation without any proof; Google “Brian Banks” if you don’t believe me.

For men in the twenty-first century, the ground is shifting under their feet. First it was rape; a serious crime that is committed by about 5% of men, but for which the other 95% are somehow guilty by association and are therefore responsible for policing and fixing.

Then it was Sexual Assault, which, while also a crime, is often far less serious; touching a woman inappropriately — and the term is often loosely defined — is most often solved by confronting, either with words or a good old-fashioned slap, and requires jail time only in the most extreme cases.

Having made men aware that inappropriate touching is bad, they them moved on to the next target; Sexual Harassment. Once upon a time, powerful men hired pretty young secretaries to look pretty, fondle, and occasionally sleep with. If truth be told, many of today’s powerful men probably miss those days, but they are gone. And I suspect that at least a few pretty young girls are probably upset that the powerful big-shots in the corner offices are forever beyond their reach, thanks to the advent of the Pence Rule, an entirely rational reaction to the specter of Sexual Harassment.

Almost all employers are now bending over backwards to make sure that we are aware of (i.e., they can’t be sued over) sexual harassment. Which will kill any chances of a young woman finding a husband in the workplace, cos all of the high-value guys are either Gay, already taken, or understandably gun-shy.

Cavill’s biggest mistake, in my opinion, was apologizing. To be fair, his apology was actually for the confusion that his remarks may have caused, but to the horde of yammering Social Justice Harpies yapping at his heels, it was a victory and another male scalp to add to their collection. My take on this is to never apologize for being right, Misunderstandings should be cleared up, but not from a position of submission. If I had a say in the matter, I would have advised Mr. Cavill to call a press conference and say the following:

“There are some in the media who would chide me for my use of words. They would say that the word “chase” makes some women feel uncomfortable. However, it should be obvious to anyone with an ounce of sense that the word was used correctly in context. Most men understand that #MeToo is in danger of morphing from a genuine grievance, to something that looks a lot like trial-by-media and punishment without due process. If you are one of those who is that easily offended by a misunderstanding, you just made my point for me. Thank you.”

Ladies, changing society to make you feel more comfortable is all well and good, but don’t think for a minute that such change comes without consequences. And one of those consequences is that in the age of #MeToo, the only men who can effortlessly approach women are men who have nothing to lose.

Good luck to you

Spot the Racist

Loses job, series cancelled

*crickets*

If one is racism, how is the other one not?

Missing the point

I just stumbled across this story.



They are no longer accepting comments, so I thought that I would add one here.

“Working class men are becoming poorer because they have lost the habit of living with a partner, economists said yesterday”

Nowhere in the article does it address one simple and obvious fact: Women don’t want poor men. That’s not a bug, it’s a feature; nothing wrong with that at all; when a woman bets her future on a man, she wants one who can provide for her and the children that they will make together.

Stop blaming men for women’s rational choices

Strike! And be damned.

This just in from the Trump-got-elected-and-I-can’t-stop-crying department.

I recently ran across the announcement for a “women’s strike”, scheduled for March 8th. I must confess that I found this highly amusing for several reasons.

  • The strike was organized by the same folks who organized the women’s marches.
  • As best I understand, the women’s marches were originally supposed to be a global celebration of Queen Hillary’s Coronation Inauguration. Once the unthinkable happened and – shock horror –Donald Trump won, the organizers were unable to get their money back, so like sore losers, they organized the women’s march.
  • If those marches had any effect, I have yet to notice it. The joke that Trump got more fat women walking in a week than Michell Obama could do in eight years is just delicious schadenfreude.
  • A large number of white women voted for Trump? Why? Because is a man. In a world where masculinity is denigrated and maligned by feminism, the culture and the media, a strong, confident, powerful man who works hard, goes after what he wants, and has wooed and wedded some of the most beautiful women in the world is a rare and desirable man.
  • Non-college-educated folks turned out to vote for Trump. Some people (i.e., the Media) trumpet this as “only rednecks who live in flyover states would be so stupid as to vote for Trump” (also known as the “you-must-be-stupid” theory). Perhaps this is true, but it is also true that America’s colleges have become hotbeds of Socialists thinking and, in some cases, indoctrination. It would be interesting to slice this by age; how did college-educated people over 40 vote?

This got me to thinking: what would happen if all of the women simply failed to show up for work?

The first thought that came to mind was a quote from Deep Thought: “And whom would that inconvenience?” What are the commonest career choices for women?

According to the Department of Labor, the commonest choices are secretarial, teaching and nursing.

  • Of those three, the lack of nurses would hurt the most. no doubt about it, people would die… until the hospitals were able to replace them with junior doctors, orderlies and other volunteers.
  • The lack of teachers would not hurt all that much. After all, mommy would be home, and the kids would no doubt be disconsolate to not have to go to school.
  • I’m not sure about the loss of secretaries and clerical assistants. A significant number of those are in Government, and a significant number of those are paper-pushing functionaries. I suspect that in the short run, nobody would notice their absence. In the long term, their employers will either discover new efficiencies that get the job done, or discover that they can get along just fine without you. And fewer Government Employees means lower taxes – double-win!

I then followed that train of thought to its logical conclusion: “what would happen if the men went on strike?

  • No police/military/National Guard: No law enforcement or military? Every man for himself? The thugs would have a field day. If you want to know that they would look like, look no further than the Louisiana Superdome in the Aftermath of Hurricane Katrina: “Inside the Superdome, things were descending further into hell. The air smelled toxic. People had broken up into factions by race, separating into small groups throughout the building… A few of these groups wandered the concourse, stealing food and attacking anyone who stood up to them….A man had been caught sexually assaulting a young girl. Reports of other rapes were widespread.”  Without law enforcement, women lacking the protection of a man would be at risk.
  • No fire services: If your house burns down, tough.
  • No engineers: Remember those pencil-necked Geeks you made fun of in school? They are now the guys who keep our society running. And the overwhelming majority of the engineers who keep our water, power, communication and sanitation systems operational are male. How long would it be before the power went out? How would all of those smart-phone-addicted women survive when their iPhones ran out of power?
  • No plumbers/heating/Air-conditioning/electricians/mechanics: Good luck when your stuff breaks down.
  • No roofers/builders.construction workers: Nothing gets built either.
  • No truck drivers: Think about this: no food deliveries to our major cities. Stores would run out of food in about three days (the normal gap between deliveries), and then the food riots will start.

Basically, without men, nothing gets built, fixed, designed, manufactured, shipped, transported or defended. And they get no recognition for this.

So go ahead with your “women’s strike” Personally, I doubt that you will get anywhere near the turnout that you expect – the women’s protesters are looking even more deranged than the Tea Party at it’s worst moments. I doubt that anyone besides the media will even notice. Life will go on without you. And some of you will likely get fired. But will that be enough for you to realized that you might be wrong? I doubt it.

I will end with the words of Churchill:

“Do your worst, and we will do our best“.

Rough Justice

A few weeks ago, a local woman tweeted this:heather-lowr-assassin-tweetI saw the tweet when it came went viral, but I didn’t think anything about it at the time. As far as I was concerned, it was just another mean tweet from a disaffected liberal who “can’t stop crying” now that Donald Trump is president.

It did not come as a surprise when the Secret Service investigated; that is their job, and they have to take all threats seriously, no matter how specious they appear to be.

That part is fair and reasonable. She said something that looked like a threat against the president. I believed it to be a joke at the time, and still do, though one in exceptionally poor taste. As an aside, if Hillary had been elected, and someone had tweeted the same thing about her, I would expect the Secret Service to treat it just as seriously.

This is not about politics

The rest of the story was not so pleasant. Predictably, all of her business associates dropped her like the proverbial hot potato. Her revenue stream has quickly dried up. And now that her name is out there, she is well-nigh unemployable. The moment she applies for a job, someone will google her name and her resume will go straight into the circular file.

There are some out there who would say that she got her just desserts. I’m not sure that I agree.

We live in an age when a man’s reputation can be trashed, and he can be jailed on the basis of a single fake rape accusation. Or he can be fired and rendered unemployable for committing the unpardonable sin of telling a female work colleague that he finds her attractive (incidentally, I have always maintained that all of the anti-harassment rules could be rendered moot with one simple “no-fraternization-at-work” policy, but that is not what most of the ladies want; what they really want they want is to be approached by Christian Gray, but the mail-boy is required to avert his gaze, because she “deserves” the billionaire; but I digress…). None of that has ever been fair. But we live in an age of political correctness, an era where someone can be fired for having the “wrong” opinion; the same political correctness that our new president has railed against time and time again.

For this woman to be rendered unemployed and unemployable based on one stupid tweet is Just. Plain. Wrong.

  • It would be wrong if it happened to a man.
  • It would be wrong if if it happened to a Conservative.
  • It would be wrong if if it happened to a White Supremacist.
  • And it would be wrong if if it happened to you or me.

Twitter has jumped the shark

Or: Oh, how the mighty have fallen

I have been a big fan of twitter for many years. I have sent nearly 1400 tweets since I joined the site more than seven years ago. Unlike FakesBook, Twitter had transparency and was completely public.

Was

For the last few years, however, something has become increasingly rotten in the State of Denmark. I have started to see more and more “censorship”, for lack of a better word. It all came to a head a few months ago when Twitter banned Milo Yiannopoulos, apparently for mean things that his followers said (??).

When Donald Trump won the election, I thought that things would improve at “Big Bird”. I was mistaken. Recently I read a story titled “Twitter Initiates Mass Purge Of Prominent Alt-Right Accounts Following Trump Victory

The real problem is that Twitter’s grievance/abuse standards are applied arbitrarily and unilaterally, which reeks of Political Correctness and Editorializing. Nothing says it better than the following graphic – sorry about the bad language, kids; grown-ups say bad words sometimes.

twitter-bias2

Image from Twitter. Oh, the Irony…

There is still time to right the ship, so to speak, and to return to the days of *real* tolerance and free speech (including the bits that you don’t like), but given that the leadership and management hasn’t changed, that is not likely.

The writing is on the wall, if you pardon the pun; Twitter’s stock price is not doing well. It occurs to me that once the good folks at “Big Bird” see the tweet containing this story I may well be next for the chopping block. That’s OK. In fact, I would be honored, and it would just prove my point. I have I have already started an account with a competing service called GAB.AI. See you there.

Twitter, wise up, or go out of business. Your Choice