Leftist defends fascist police state arrest.

floppy cameldork has been running his mouth again, and saying my name. As he continues to block my responses to his provocations, I will continue to post them here. No links, unless he stops playing puerile games with the blocking of comments. Camel spewings in italics:

"As I wasn’t present I’m not going to magically make a judgement as to whether Robinson’s behaviour was or was not a breach of the peace."
There's video. Try not to be a prat.

"The police certainly thought so and you usually defend police decisions or do you only defend police decisions when they are killing people?"

Examples?

"More amazingly, indeed gobsmackingly amazing is that YOU are apparently totally cool with this same fraudster trying to disrupt court proceedings in a way that could have led to a mistrial and the release of the defendants."

If some guy standing on the sidewalk with a phone can "disrupt court proceedings in a way that could have led to a mistrial and the release of the defendants" then the British justice system has larger issues that need to be addressed. But it is fun watching you defend this.

Here's the thing floppy. Everybody knows Tommy Robinson is a fame seeking, self-promoting dick. I think he's a dick. I wouldn't vote for him. But he's the one bucking the system today, and the system just crushed him. That would be the same system that actively moved to protect the "Muslim grooming gang" at trial in the first place, don't forget.

The issue that you are pretending does not exist is that if the State can arrest and jail Tommy Robinson for quietly holding up his phone on the sidewalk in front of the court house, they can arrest and jail -me-. Or you. You've got a blog. What is to stop some chair polisher deciding they don't like you and chucking you in jail? All it would take to change your politically protected status is an election.

The other issue is the gag order. Controversial political figure gets arrested and jailed in six hours? That's a pretty big deal. Publication ban on top of that? That's how police states do things.

An extremely dangerous precedent to set. But here you are, perfectly okay with it and using the occasion to bash your political enemies, because you don't like the guy they arrested. I'm certain that you would be screaming with rage if the same thing was done to someone you do like. Which means either you don't understand the principles at play here, or you're fundamentally dishonest. Or both.

I'm embracing the power of "and".

The Phantom

Fascists passe, SJWs now punching butchers.

As part of the Government celebration of all that is fascist and totalitarian, we now are treated to Vegan Brownshirts.

Attacks on small businesses by vegan activists are on the rise, according to the Countryside Alliance.

Death threats, stoked by social media and encouraged by international groups of activists, have caused butchers and farmers to "live in fear."

Marlow Butchers, in, Ashford, Kent, was targeted earlier this month by activists who daubed red paint on the doors and windows of the shop.

Since then, the business has been subjected to online abuse.

Wayne Marlow, who runs the business with his father and brother, told Kent Online: "On the internet it has been very threatening.

"It has got ridiculous - activists from as far away as Australia are getting involved.

"The internet is the worst thing as not only are they threatening to physically destroy our business, but they are also tying to ruin our reputation online, too, by leaving negative reviews and comments.

"They want to close us down and people are threatening to smash the windows or petrol bomb the store.

Well well, nasssty on-line behavior. And what are the big online companies doing to shut these cretins down?

Mr Bonner also said that social media companies to not take the threats seriously enough: "None of the social media platforms view the abuse of those involved in meat production as they would other minorities. This is understandable but there has to be an equality of response when people like this butcher or others are being targeted.

"It's both personally threatening and people feel unsafe, they are not putting themselves forward on a controversial issue, they are just carrying on the business that their family has for generations.

"There's a really nasty and cowardly tactic, using things like TripAdvisor and other online platforms to do fake reviews and it can have a direct effect on their livelihood."

Right. You will be shadowbanned by Twitter and ghosted on other platforms for Conservative views. But for death threats against a meat shop, nothing.

 

At the same time that the British government basically disappeared Tommy Robinson and placed a gag order in the media to conceal it.

The Phantom

Dear SJWs, this is why we don't like you.

This showed up in my Wordpress summary today: A post at the odious flopatron cameldung blog, to which I will not link, had this in the comments...

posted by Kathodus:
@Phantom – Despite Antonelli’s admission that he was wrong about the one piece of damning evidence he thought he had in his mangled doxxing attempt against Camestros and Meadows, members of the MGC are still upholding the “Fieldsy” libel . As we’ve seen, Freer would rather double down than admit his error, and the rest of the MGC admins, presumably to avoid conflicts within their ranks, have mostly dropped the issue. It’s also apparent that most MGC regulars do not read the “opposition’s” posts or comments, unlike you (and Camestros, and me, and several other regulars here). Because of the MGC admins’ failure to admit their mistake, and the MGC readers’ disinterest in opposing viewpoints, many of them appear to have no idea that they are upholding a debunked doxxing. It’s also possible that they are just doing it because they revel in dishonesty, but giving them the benefit of the doubt… shouldn’t you be correcting the MGC folk who continue to spread Freer’s lie? You present yourself as a defender of truth. Sometimes confronting your own allies when they are dishonest is the most difficult task. Show us your character.

I love the nerve of this guy. "Show us your character."

Just wondering, Kathodus, where were you when floppy was claiming Sarah Hoyt's blog advocated genocide? And where were you defending Larry Correia, or John Ringo, or Brad Torgersen from the egregious lies being said about them? If I remember rightly, you and floppy habitually call me a liar no matter what I say and no matter what link I post as support.

Where's your character, big boy? Inquiring minds want to know.

And speaking of Britain having fallen to the Fascists...

[Redacted] Arrested for [Redacted] Outside [Redacted]: Leeds Crown Court Issues Media Ban

Shortly after the issuance of the press ban on the case, several media outlets, including Breitbart London, the Mirror, the Daily Record, Birmingham Mail, and the Russian state broadcaster Russia Today, complied with the restriction and removed articles concerning [redacted]'s case.

Several other media outlets have kept their coverage of the arrest and the subsequent court details up, despite potentially falling foul of the court-issued ban which is to be lifted following the conclusion of a separate case.

The media ban, along with [redacted]'s arrest has sparked a wave of controversy on social media with many criticising the arrest and the court proceedings that followed it.

Supporters of [redacted] have called for a mass protest in front of number 10 Downing street with the hashtag [redacted].

Best piece of reporting on the whole thing. A glorious troll.

For you poor English bastards whose government is doing this shit to you, Tommy Robinson is reported to be in Hull Prison, Kingston upon Hull. So far Google hasn't taken it out of Google Maps, so the reach of Her Majesty's Gubmint does not appear to stretch all the way to California yet.

The Phantom

Knife control! Britain is doomed.

British judge's solution to the epidemic of stabbings in his country: round off the end of every knife in the country.

A judge has proposed a nationwide programme to file down the points of kitchen knives as a solution to the country's soaring knife crime epidemic.
Last week in his valedictory address, retiring Luton Crown Court Judge Nic Madge spoke of his concern that carrying a knife had become routine in some circles and called on the Government to ban the sale of large pointed kitchen knives.

See, you thought I was kidding, didn't you? But no, some intolerable asshole really said that. You don't need a sharp knife, Mrs. English Woman. We'll just take that potential murder weapon away from you. You can hack open your turkey dinner with a nice safe rubber spatula.

Because it is so much easier to incarcerate people for political reasons when they can't fight back.

The Phantom

Update: I was reminded today of this previous missive. Chopsticks are deadly weapons too. The problem with making comments about chopsticks and pencils is that they are not jokes anymore. Now they are predictions. The only question is how long, not if, the authorities get around to banning your yellow HB with the little eraser on the end.

Spotify stops removing artists for "hate."

Last week or so, I noted that Spotify was following the SJW Way and removing certain artists from all their suggested playlists over "hate." That's in scare quotes because the Spotify definition was fairly SJW Sketchy.

Well, nobody liked that.

While Spotify's move was applauded in some circles, the policy also fueled censorship concerns. "Whoa. Are they censoring the music? That's dangerous," Top Dawg Entertainment president Punch tweeted. A representative for Kendrick Lamar, a TDE rapper, reportedly called Spotify CEO Daniel Ek to "express their frustration" over the policy, Bloomberg reports. Spotify's industry liaison Troy Carter also reportedly threatened to leave the streaming service if the policy wasn't revised.

The point was to ding R. Kelley, so how did that go?

 As the Associated Press reported, after Kelly was taken off of streaming services' playlists (but not the services themselves), the singer actually saw an uptick in his streaming numbers in the week following the removal.

That's right, you slap "V" for Violent Content  on a video game and it flies off the shelves. Duh.

So, due to the double helping of fail, Spotify will be reinstating authors being ghosted for "hateful conduct." Except R. Kelley, because screw that guy, apparently. Maybe he stole some Spotify nerd's girlfriend.

The Phantom

American newspapers all owned by hedge funds.

For those wondering why American newspapers suck so horribly, this article is illuminating.

Several hedge funds have become newspaper barons in recent years. Alden Global now owns about 60 daily newspapers through a subsidiary, Digital First Media. New Media Investment Group, which is managed and controlled by private-equity firm Fortress, owns almost 150 newspapers in smaller towns like Columbus, Ohio, and Providence, Rhode Island, through a unit, GateHouse Media. And hedge fund Chatham is one of the largest shareholders and bondholders in McClatchy Co., publisher of the Charlotte Observer and Miami Herald.

Whenever you see a bunch of "independent" companies all doing the same thing, there's a reason. Usually money.

The Phantom

What have I been saying? Modern music SUCKS!

I've been saying for years that modern music and modern radio is CRAP. I cut the TV and radio cord somewhere around 2010 and I've never looked back.

But-why- is it crap? Evidence today from a data experiment is thus:

After analyzing the attributes of more than half a million songs released over a period of 30 years, a computer algorithm was able to sort the successful songs from also-rans with an accuracy of up to 86%.

A team of mathematicians from UC Irvine described how — and why — it accomplished this feat in a study published in Wednesday's edition of the journal Royal Society Open Science.

The article gives an outline of their methodology, but this is the part here that caught my eye:

"Successful songs are happier, brighter, more party-like, more danceable and less sad than most songs," the team wrote.

That may sound like an obvious recipe for pop-music success. But it actually went against the dominant musical trends.

Over the decades, songs exhibited "a clear downward trend in 'happiness' and 'brightness,' as well as a slight upward trend in 'sadness,'" the study authors reported. "The public seems to prefer happier songs, even though more and more unhappy songs are being released each year."

That observation matched up with previous studies of song lyrics that found they contained fewer "positive emotions" and made more references to loneliness and social isolation as the years went by.

"It is interesting that, in this particular instance, acoustic characteristics of songs indicate similar patterns to those uncovered in lyrics," the researchers wrote.

Almost as if the music business were ignoring financial success and giving us the music they thought we deserved. Kind of like the book business, and the movie business, and the TV business, right?

And that is why I do not have TV or radio, and why I no longer frequent the bookstore.

The Unplugged Phantom

Spotify starts removing artists for "hate".

This is not at all alarming: J'accuse...!

Beginning today (May 10), Spotify users will no longer be able to find R. Kelly's music on any of the streaming service's editorial or algorithmic playlists. Under the terms of a new public hate content and hateful conduct policy Spotify is putting into effect, the company will no longer promote the R&B singer's music in any way, removing his songs from flagship playlists like RapCaviar, Discover Weekly or New Music Friday, for example, as well as its other genre- or mood-based playlists.
"We are removing R. Kelly's music from all Spotify owned and operated playlists and algorithmic recommendations such as Discover Weekly," Spotify told Billboard in a statement. "His music will still be available on the service, but Spotify will not actively promote it. We don't censor content because of an artist's or creator's behavior, but we want our editorial decisions -- what we choose to program -- to reflect our values. When an artist or creator does something that is especially harmful or hateful, it may affect the ways we work with or support that artist or creator."

So, what heinous crime did R. Kelly commit? Well, that's interesting.

Over the past several years, Kelly has been accused by multiple women of sexual violence, coercion and running a "sex cult," including two additional women who came forward to Buzzfeed this week. Though he has never been convicted of a crime, he has come under increasing scrutiny over the past several weeks, particularly with the launch of the #MuteRKelly movement at the end of April. Kelly has vociferously defended himself, saying those accusing him are an "attempt to distort my character and to destroy my legacy." And while RCA Records has thus far not dropped Kelly from his recording contract, Spotify has distanced itself from promoting his music.

He's a dirt bag. He allegedly beats women, does weird and wrong things to them, and etc. He's allegedly worse than Bill Cosby, who only drugged and raped women. And his music is shit, I might add.

The difference between R. Kelly and Bill Cosby is a CONVICTION. Cosby is busted. He has had his due process, and he is guilty. What there is against R. Kelly is at this point -nothing-. It is a series of allegations, which have in several prominent #MeToo cases been proven spurious.

The case of Jian Ghomeshi shows something else. Jian Ghomeshi is a woman beater and sexual pervert too. But in his case, it was proven in court that the women asked for it. They asked for it repeatedly, and in writing. They actually requested that Jian Ghomeshi slap them around and etc, and made dates for it. So in R. Kelly's case, given the current popularity of S&M/bondage/general perversity, maybe they asked for it.

But the really damaging thing going on here is Spotify. They are introducing an extra-judicial punishment against a man who has not even been charged with anything. They're calling it "hate content" but if you look at almost any rap artist or song you'll find all kinds of hate in there. They hate the cops, women, crackers, the gubmint, Jews, each other, they pretty much hate everything. Loudly. It's hateful. Therefore, Spotify is just another bunch of Silicon Valley pencil necks, lying through their teeth to make a buck.

One more reason to not use Spotify. Buy the music you want, keep it on your own hardware, tell Big Streaming to cram it. It is safer that way.

The Streaming Phantom

Wrinkle In Time loses ~$100 million bucks.

Incoming.

When you take a popular book or comic, and you jack everything in it around to your "new vision!" for the movie, including changing the race of characters, deleting existing characters and adding new ones, all to make a purely political statement, it will bomb. Like a B-52.

"A Wrinkle in Time" hit US theaters on March 9 after heavy marketing promotion by Disney and abundant media appearances by cast members like Oprah Winfrey and Reese Witherspoon, and director Ava DuVernay.

The movie bombed. It made $33 million in its opening weekend, compared to $202 million by "Black Panther" and $258 million for "Avengers: Infinity War." It has grossed just $126.8 million globally to date, according to Box Office Mojo and confirmed by Disney.

Disney did not disclose in its earnings report exactly how much it lost on "A Wrinkle in Time," but we can arrive at a ballpark figure using the film's reported budget. The New York Times reported that the movie had a combined production and marketing budget of around $150 million, while Deadline pegged the budget much higher, at $250 million. Studios typically make back around half of the box office gross, which means Disney lost between $86 million and $186 million on "A Wrinkle in Time." (Yahoo Finance has reached out to Disney for comment on the film's losses.)

Disney's 2012 movie "John Carter" famously flopped so brutally that Disney had to take a $200 million writedown on it. (The film had a $350 million budget and grossed just $284 million at the box office.) Disney did not disclose a writedown on "A Wrinkle in Time," but the film was the clear and only big loser in Disney's smash-hit box office performance in the second quarter.

We know that Disney, of all the companies in Hollywood, knows exactly how all this works, and they have mastered getting it right. Infinity War, $258 million, bigger opening than Titanic. Black Panther, huge hit. Huge. John Carter, huge, massive flop, was only six years ago. All those guys still remember that, it is very fresh in their minds.

The same thing that killed John Carter killed Wrinkle In Time. Therefore, it is not an accident. It's a propaganda film. You can tell by the casting alone. A $100 million dollar gift to the DemocRat Party of the USA from the numerous SJWs that "work" at Disney.

I'll be catching it on Netflix, if at all.

The Phantom

English majors and actors to be replaced by robots.

We all know that the actual career path of people majoring in English and Drama (and History, the various "Studies" and etc.) usually involves waiting tables and slinging java at Starbucks. Eventually they either get Real Jobs or they get married, but barista is where a very large number of young scholars end up for a while.

This will no longer be the case.

The robot revolution is here, at least for your morning caffeine fix. Cafe X Technologies is a new, $25,000 automated barista designed by the award-winning team behind Dr. Dre's Beats headphones and speakers: the Ammunition Group. The Jetsons-style coffeemaker can sling 120 cups of joe per hour at specs that satisfy finicky roasters (and project partners) like Intelligentsia, Ritual and Equator.

This is a small-volume, fancy machine that is designed to be a showpiece bit of performance art in the lobby of a fancy hotel or big office building. Even at that, it is only $25k. It replaces a human, and you're going to see a lot of machines like this Real Soon. Because $15 minimum wage, that's why.

She's praying this thing doesn't take her crappy job from her.

The joke of course is the the revolution already happened, and we didn't notice. The machine that makes your Starbucks or McDonald's cappuccino is a fully-automated unit that costs more than $25k. Your "barista" is a minimum-wage schlub who pushes a button and moves the cup from one place to another. They don't know how to make a cappuccino, or a latte, or any of it. The machine does everything.

This is why your Starbucks Italian-style coffee drink tastes boring and crappy. Because it isn't made on a proper cappuccino maker, and the kid running it knows -nothing-. Which is why I don't go to Starbucks if I can help it. I go to Second Cup, or any ACTUAL ITALIAN CAFE that has a manual cappuccino maker, and a manual grinder, and a barista that knows an Americano from a latte. Then I get a good coffee, and it is usually cheaper than the Starbucks trash. And the workers are usually nicer than Starbucks too, without the forced, brittle, fake cheerfulness.

The Phantom Coffee Snob

New York Attorney General resigns because #MeToo.

Another giant falls!

Eric Schneiderman, New York's attorney general, has long been a liberal Democratic champion of women's rights, and recently he has become an outspoken figure in the #MeToo movement against sexual harassment. As New York State's highest-ranking law-enforcement officer, Schneiderman, who is sixty-three, has used his authority to take legal action against the disgraced film mogul Harvey Weinstein, and to demand greater compensation for the victims of Weinstein's alleged sexual crimes.

[snippage]

Now Schneiderman is facing a reckoning of his own. As his prominence as a voice against sexual misconduct has risen, so, too, has the distress of four women with whom he has had romantic relationships or encounters. They accuse Schneiderman of having subjected them to nonconsensual physical violence. All have been reluctant to speak out, fearing reprisal. But two of the women, Michelle Manning Barish and Tanya Selvaratnam, have talked to The New Yorker on the record, because they feel that doing so could protect other women.

There you go, another top-level Dem with a taste for S&M and beating women, and he's been pretending to be a big fan of #MeToo this whole time. Massive moral and political corruption in that most socialist of cities, NYC. Wow, didn't see that coming, right?

Leaving aside anything else out there, either legal or moral, this incident illustrates the danger of mainstreaming S&M as an acceptable practice between "consenting adults." People can continue to pretend it's all just sex, and role-playing is good clear fun, and all the rest of that happy horse shit we've been told these last 10 or 15 years. But it's horse shit.

No, beating and whipping random women at sex clubs is not okay. No, tying up your squeeze-du-jour and making the bitch cry uncle is not okay. It is double-plus not okay if she begs for more. Those people are suffering from major mental illness, the kind that is a short step from suicide. Wanting to beat them is another serious mental illness.

Everyone instinctively knows this, but it has become increasingly "edgy" to promote this type of abuse in books and movies.

It's not edgy, you twerps. It's fucked up. Stop doing it. Stop talking about it.

The Phantom

Update: This is what I'm talking about. Metropolitan Art Gallery gala. Lots of creepy "art" involving bondage. Ew.

Hollywood B-list virtue signaling, with armed guards of course.

I'm sure the irony here is utterly lost on all of them. Showing up to an anti-gun, anti-NRA protest with armed, private security.

In video captured by Ben Howe, NRA member Will Haraway asked Milano's security if he was armed and the man clearly wasn't amused by the question.

"I'm going to ask you to leave," the guard said repeatedly, physically backing Haraway up by getting in his face.

"How far do I have to go?" Haraway asked.

"I'm going to need you on the sidewalk," the agent responded.

Yeah, pleb. Get on the sidewalk where you belong. The video is really quite disturbing, pure physical intimidation in its least refined form. Completely illegal of course, the security guard has zero legal power to require anyone to do anything. He's an armed civilian.

I guess Alissa Milano needs another part.

The Phantom

Time crystals!

This is extremely cool.

Ordinary crystals such as salt or quartz are examples of three-dimensional, ordered spatial crystals. Their atoms are arranged in a repeating system, something scientists have known for a century. Time crystals, first identified in 2016, are different. Their atoms spin periodically, first in one direction and then in another, as a pulsating force is used to flip them. That's the "ticking." In addition, the ticking in a time crystal is locked at a particular frequency, even when the pulse flips are imperfect.

It ticks! So cool!

The Phantom

Apparently white people are not allowed to do yoga anymore.

This is so friggin' half-caf latte I can't even.

I had never been to a yoga class where I hadn't lost awareness of my surroundings, but under the pagoda in Tallala, my attention would just hop from one colored Lululemon sports bra to the next.
I felt surrounded by mirrors, like I was watching the classes from outside myself, poised and ready to Instagram the next shape I made and acutely aware of my complicity in Mary-Kate's spectacle of appropriation.

 

Because, y'know, Mary-Kate is a white chick. White chicks can't yoga like brown chicks, everybody knows that. Make mine a soy latte.

I knew that when a cultural practice is co-opted by the masses it wasn't just about class, that there was also the loss of meaning and transfer of power when tradition becomes mainstream, but here I was, taking notes down on my phone about my fellow yogi's favorite brand of carob chocolate.
I knew I was complicit in a festival of self-absorption and cultural appropriation but there was a small part of me that had sipped the kombucha and thought transcendence might strike me. I was secretly waiting for some sort of insight. In the mornings, we were encouraged to write out our thoughts in a stream of consciousness and I hoped for even a single line of profundity but the closest I got was earnest descriptions of how beautiful the beaches were.

 

You want an insight? You are a vapid, catty bitch. Start with that.

The Phantom

Update, welcome you vast unruly horde from Instapundit!