Feb 262024
 

Slightly over 4 years ago I yammered a bit about a game company called “Evil Hat” that was putting out a Lovecraftian game while not only hating Lovecraft but also *intentionally* not understanding the idea:

 

“I want your business”

Making a *huge* point about bashing the creator of the IP you’re squatting on, while misinterpreting the importance of some of the most basic elements, points out that you’re just wearing the fandom as a skinsuit, a way to squeeze some of that filthy lucre from the nerds. Something we’ve seen far too often from the likes of those running Star Trek, Star Wars, Dr. Who into the ground.

Anyway, the producers of that Cthulhu game are back with another IP-cash-grab, this time in the “Tomb raider” franchise. I’ve never played any of the games; this franchise is not my thing. But for those of you who care about it… let me know if they got it right.

Someone did some digging around and found out some stuff about some of the people behind the game…

Tumblr art, self-insert deviant weirdos. Sounds about right.

 Posted by at 6:29 pm
Jan 162024
 

Oh, joy:

Iran Attacks Israel’s ‘Headquarters of Spies’ in Iraq, as Some Missiles Land Near U.S. Consulate

Iran launched ballistic missiles at Erbil, Iraq, supposedly targeting a Mossad facility (which probably didn’t actually exist), with missiles landing near the US Consulate. Pretty sure Iraq would consider this an act of war. At least four civilians are reported dead, though no Americans, and no damage to the consulate.

Had the missiles actually struck the consulate, that would doubtless have been sufficient cause for the US Navy and/or Air Force to pay the Iranians a visit.

2024 is off to a rollicking start. With an election in November, we can expect domestic terrorism to spike, with the usual assortments of riots and arson and insurrections that are given a pass. And with everyone recognizing how addlepated Biden is, and with worldwide chaos running rampant already, international incidents are doubtless also going to increase.

 Posted by at 12:19 am
Jan 052024
 

United Nations moves to stop Alabama from carrying out America’s first nitrogen gas execution

“U.N. experts argue there has been no evidence to suggest that nitrogen gas would not “result in a painful and humiliating death.””

 

Oh FFS.  Nitrogen asphyxiation has been dangerous in industry specifically *because* it’s painless. If you find yourself in a volume filled with carbon dioxide – a small room, a tank of some kind, whatever – you are *instantly* going to know it. Your lungs will object, you’ll cough, you’ll hold your breath… and you’ll try to get the hell out of there. If you find yourself in a volume filled with *poison* gas, you’ll try to evacuate even faster. But nitrogen? You feel nothing. Your lungs are used to nitrogen… about 80% of every breath you take is nitrogen. You’ll continue to breathe it in, and continue to expel oxygen with each breath, rapidly getting rid of the oxygen in your blood as you continue to respire normally, until you rather quickly slip into a peaceful unconsciousness, and soon *die.*

 

All evidence points to nitrogen being a peaceful and painless way to go. And consequently one of the less humiliating, unless you find not thrashing about and screaming in pain and terror humiliating. I imagine the actual goal is to simply stop executions, rather than having any legitimate objection to nitrogen. Because if this is carried out and shown to be what history has shown it should be – effective and painless – other governments might adopt it. Given that unlike lethal injection it quires little skill – just strapping on a mask, rather than finding veins and jamming needles into them – and uses cheap and easily available nitrogen gas rather than difficult to obtain chemicals, nitrogen executions should be relatively inexpensive. One argument might be that this will incentivize bad governments to execute more; but bad governments have little trouble with just shooting people they don’t like. The counterpoint is that taxpayers shouldn’t be overly burdened if clearly easier alternatives are available.

 Posted by at 3:32 am
Dec 232023
 

Tech Billionaires Need to Stop Trying to Make the Science Fiction They Grew Up on Real

Today’s Silicon Valley billionaires grew up reading classic American science fiction. Now they’re trying to make it come true, embodying a dangerous political outlook

This was written by Charles Stross, a sci-fi author whose work I tend to like. I kinda understand why he has reached the conclusion that he has… a *lot* of his work is heavily Lovecraftian, with the universe laden with horrible, horrible things. If you believe that the universe truly is filled with cosmic horrors just waiting at the edges for some fool to go poking at them, then of course you’re want to prevent people from pushing forward. You will, instead, live by this quote from Lovecraft himself (from “The Call of Cthulhu”):

“The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.”

But the thing is… those horrible things are out there anyway. You can’t hide from them. They’ll come and getcha. If we are to avoid colonizing space because “imperialism” is wrong, then we’ll be simply stepped on by the next imperialist species over. If you are afraid of the consequences of AI – and there are valid concerns – taking that tech away from Our Guys and leaving it in the hands of the likes of the Chinese Communists *guarantees* that some form of AI is going to come along and take a giant dump on us. If you want to stop “eugenics” because there’s been some bad history and because it could maybe lead to bad things, you’re stranding us in the reality we’re now facing of ongoing dysgenics which is *already* screwing society.

 

In particular the argument against space colonization is just vacuous and insane. The benefits are damn near infinite. The risk are comparatively minimal. If over the next millennium we lose a million habitats to a hard learning curve, taking with them a trillion lives… it will be a small price to pay to bring life to a trillion worldlets just within this single solar system.

 

Yeah, sci-fi provides warnings of potential bad futures. But it also provides innumerable examples of futures we *want* to bring about. Focusing solely on the dystopias of sci-fi is black-pilled doomerism at its worst. For every “1984” or “Brave New World” or “Star Trek Discovery” that show horrible worlds filled with horrible people living in horrible societies, there are “2001” and “Star Trek” and “Star Trek the Next Generation” and “Stargate SG-1” and “The Orville”  and even “The Expanse.” The thing is… “bad” always sells better than “good,” because “bad” tends to have more interesting drama. Imagine any sort of plotline. What’ll be more interesting, or at least easier to write interesting: the story without some sort of villain or disaster, or the one where there aren’t such antagonists? A movie about, say, an architect designing and building his dream building, whatever it might happen to be, will almost certainly have competitors trying to sabotage it, or bureaucrats grinding it down, or local activists trying to stop it, or earthquakes, storms, floods, fires, asteroid impacts or alien invasions trying to trash it. So the fact that sci-fi – like *every* literary genre – includes Very Bad Things from time to time is no reason to avoid trying to see the best of sci-fi brought to life, anymore than heartbreak and rivals in romance stories are reasons to avoid trying to find love.

 Posted by at 6:06 pm
Dec 112023
 

Long story short: I’ve been a *casual* watcher of “Dr. Who” for 40+ years. From watching it from time to time on PBS back in the 80s – the Tom Baker era, mostly – to catching the revived version in more recent years, I would generally find it amusing if somewhat baffling. The fact that not only was it stories set over multiple episodes, meaning you’re in the dark if you’ve missed any, but that it was terribly *British* meant that it just didn’t quite hit for me. But still, I liked it well enough, and I respect the IP and the fandom.

But not everyone respects the IP or the fandom. This includes the makers of the show these days.

One thing I could always expect from any iteration of The Doctor would be that he was some flavor of “British Man.” Generally some variant of the Brit known as the “boffin,” a weird eccentric science type. But then came the “insufferably smug British woman” variant of the Doctor. And next up… gay sub-Saharan African Doctor, which seems to be meant specifically to annoy the long-time fans. So, yeah, I haven’t felt the urge to watch Dr. Who in a good long while. Recent events have not changed that. In fact, recent efforts by the makers of the show to gaslight fans of the show make me actively uninterested.

The latest nonsense has been the race swapping of historical figure Isaac Newton. For a British show to *intentionally* replace an important English historical figure with an Indian actor seems at best odd, at worst part of a wider ongoing and undeniable effort to replace the English within their own history. But the people behind this have themselves a new strategy to defend their decisions from those who don’t like it:

‘Doctor Who’ Casting Director Responds To Criticism Of Race-Swapped Isaac Newton: “It’s Sad That We’re In A Time Where People Villainise Minorities”

Behold: pointing out that Newton was English, or Cleopatra was Greek, or Hannibal was Phoenician, has gone from merely being a racist position to now “villainizing minorities.” If you say that so-and-so wasn’t black or Indian or whatever, you are now equating blacks or Indians or whatever with criminals. It is dishonest, it is unhinged, it doesn’t make sense, but it’s what they’ve got.

That’s their argument against those who point out the folly and malignity of race swapping historical figures. What’s their argument *for* doing this? The Dr. Who casting director says:

“It then becomes even more important to give people a voice and for people to be represented, especially for young people growing up who might be trans or from any minority. If they can see themselves on screen, then that can be a huge lifeline for some people. That can make them feel part of the world, which indeed they are.” … “Growing up as a gay man, I’m as aware as anybody else of how this stuff makes you feel when you see it. “

Uh-huh. So he likes to see his little subset “represented.” But he somehow doesn’t understand – or pretends not to – how a large *majority* of people do not like to watch their “representation” getting not just erased, but culturally appropriated and colonized by outsiders who didn’t earn it, don’t deserve it and don’t fit in it.

 Posted by at 6:27 pm
Nov 212023
 

Bruce Springsteen’s 1984 song “Born in the USA” is famous not only for having been incredibly popular, bit for being “misunderstood.” Springsteen’s intent, as is pretty clear by a straight reading of the lyrics, is to tell the tale not just of a Viet Nam vet (the US was barely a decade out from that expensive but successful war and incredibly unsuccessful peace), but of a nation in disrepair. But it was grabbed onto by the political right – such as President Ronald Reagan – as a a rah-rah USA USA USA song to rally around. Then as now, leftists explain this as Republicans & conservatives being “media illiterate” or simply dumb. But is that really the case? Consider my own experience.

When it came out I was a dumbass early teenager with no particular political leanings. Yet I also saw the song as pro-USA, and I loved the hell out of it. And, yes, I listened to and understood the lyrics, and saw the darkness therein. But I – and I suspect a whole lot of other people – simply interpreted them differently from the intention of Springsteen. Yes, the lyrics reference the dire economic situation faced by *many* people at the time, coming out of the OPEC oil embargoes and Carters economic flailings and the collapse of the Apollo program and all the rest. But here’s the thing: two people can look at the same thing and see very different results… same screen, different movies.

Everybody in the US in the early 80’s knew that things sucked. You could hardly experience Carter and inflation and stagflation and Iran and the Soviets and the collapse of the iron, auto, farming and a bunch of other industries and not notice it. But there are two ways to deal with “things suck:” despair and determination. And thus we had two different approaches to understanding the song:

Leftists: “Things suck in the USA, therefore the USA sucks.”

Rightists: “Things suck in the USA right now. But we’ll fix it.”

In 1984, things sucked. But they didn’t suck quite as bad as they had a few years before, and things were clearly improving. Those in the middle and on the right saw this, and interpreted “Born in the USA” in that light.

And we got this for the 1984 Presidential campaign:

Essentially, “Born in the USA” was a negative ad against the US that got turned into a positive ad for the US. And that irritated the hell out of a lot of lefties who wanted to wallow in despair… and wanted everyone else to do the same.  Turning it into a nationalistic anthem was a giant middle finger to the nattering nabobs of negativity.

Positivity and optimism can do wonders in an election, and in society. “I Like Ike,” JFK’s “Camelot,” “Morning in America,” “Make America Great Again,” etc. Turning a negative into a positive is a sign you’re on the right road.

 Posted by at 11:44 pm
Nov 122023
 

Due to a law rushed through last year, if Illinoisans don’t register their perfectly legal and common firearm (referred to inaccurately as “assault weapons”) by January 1 2024 they could get in trouble. But there’s a little wrinkle… the “Firearm Owners Protection Act” of 1986. The FOPA has a lot of problems, but it also has a fun little provision:

No such rule or regulation prescribed after the date of the enactment of the Firearms Owners’ Protection Act may require that records required to be maintained under this chapter or any portion of the contents of such records, be recorded at or transferred to a facility owned, managed, or controlled by the United States or any State or any political subdivision thereof, nor that any system of registration of firearms, firearms owners, or firearms transactions or dispositions be established. Nothing in this section expands or restricts the Secretary’s [1] authority to inquire into the disposition of any firearm in the course of a criminal investigation.

Huh. No system of registration is to be established by the US, any state or political subdivision. A gun registry is *illegal* under Federal law.

So, tell me where I’m wrong: if you know a firearm registry is illegal, you knowingly violate the law if you register your gun. So if its a choice between obeying the Illinois state law or the US Federal law… isn’t it legally safer to not violate US law? Doesn’t registering your firearm make you an accessory to breaking a Federal law?

 

A good question to ask is why would a government pass a law they know to be not only illegal under federal law but downright unConstitutional. Well, it’s always worth considering that the people who do these sort of things tend to have an amazing mix of arrogance and stupidity, leading to monumental incompetence. But it’s also worth considering that the idea may well be to set up the system of laws so that not only is virtually everyone in violation of *something,* they all know it. This will necessarily have the effect of reducing respect for rule of law. It seems counter-intuitive that the government would want to bake a lack of respect for the rule of law into the population…  but it makes sense once you realize that a lot of government types are in it for *power.* A population that no longer expects or even wants to obey the law will just naturally expect all manner of corruption from their “leaders.”

 Posted by at 2:47 pm
Nov 062023
 

I’ve long counseled American Jews to get armed and trained, because their “friends” on the political left will sooner or later throw them to the wolves. That day seems to be right about here, if not in fact yesterday.

Anyway, this happened today:

Several young kids escape injury after woman targets what she thought was an ‘Israel school’

One “Ruba Almaghtheh” rammed her car into the Indianapolis school, which had a single adult and four little kids in it. She damaged her car and scored herself attention and felony charges, but didn’t seem to actually injure anyone. Why’d she do it? Because it was the “Israelite School of Universal and Practical Knowledge,” and some people are kinda psycho in their hatred of Jews.

But here’s the kicker: the”Israelite School of Universal and Practical Knowledge” isn’t Jewish… it’s “Black Hebrew Israelites.” These are black supremacists who have culturally appropriated some texts, names, clothes and ideas, but are about as Jewish as the average Fed glowie advocating online for violent rebellion is actually a Trump supporter. In one of those fantastic “make it make sense” moments, they are an offshoot of the “Israelite Church of God in Jesus Christ.” They are so whackadoodle that even the Southern Poverty Law Center, which hates to even suggest that there can be such a thing as anti-white racism, has labeled them a hate group.

So… Palestine-supporters vs black supremacists? I want this show to go on for seven seasons and at least three movies.

And in other news, Palestine supporters are now outright murdering Israel supporters on American streets.

 

And in other news…

How Israel shot down a ballistic missile in space for the first time

Arrow missile-defence system took out rocket fired from Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen outside of Earth’s atmosphere

Enemy missiles have been shot down before. Missiles in space have been shot down before. But this is the first time an enemy missile has been shot down in space.

 Posted by at 11:32 pm
Nov 032023
 

So they’re coming for the night sky, too:

The Magellanic Clouds must be renamed, astronomers say

Anything and everything to erase any mention of the people who built the world. The wokies want to rename the Magellanic Clouds because by modern standards Magellan was not a great guy. But you don’t see them wanting to rename anything named by the Sumerians or Babylonians or the Arabs, do you.

 Posted by at 3:04 pm
Oct 292023
 

Old-school antisemitism: not just for western leftists.

 

For the brain dead who think “this is an over-there problem, nothing to do with us,” the chumps who set off the Boston Marathon bombs back in 2013 were from, in part, Dagestan, and were of the same mindset as this jet-swarming mob.

 

 Posted by at 2:27 pm