Tim Berners-Lee re-does the web.

Ever notice how more and more information about you seems to be floating around out there on the web, and out of your reach? The father of the Internet, Tim Berners-Lee, he noticed.

I've always believed the web is for everyone. That's why I and others fight fiercely to protect it. The changes we've managed to bring have created a better and more connected world. But for all the good we've achieved, the web has evolved into an engine of inequity and division; swayed by powerful forces who use it for their own agendas.

Today, I believe we've reached a critical tipping point, and that powerful change for the better is possible - and necessary.

This is why I have, over recent years, been working with a few people at MIT and elsewhere to develop Solid, an open-source project to restore the power and agency of individuals on the web.

Solid changes the current model where users have to hand over personal data to digital giants in exchange for perceived value. As we've all discovered, this hasn't been in our best interests. Solid is how we evolve the web in order to restore balance - by giving every one of us complete control over data, personal or not, in a revolutionary way.

Solid is a platform, built using the existing web. It gives every user a choice about where data is stored, which specific people and groups can access select elements, and which apps you use. It allows you, your family and colleagues, to link and share data with anyone. It allows people to look at the same data with different apps at the same time.

Truthfully I have no idea what this is or how it works, but if it can get Google and Facebook out of my personal stuff, I'll be a big fan.

The Phantom

Weed for all!

According to the Toronto (Red) Star, the Ford government will not be limiting the number of weed sales licenses issued.

The sky's the limit for private pot shops in Ontario, and recreational tokers will be able to fire up wherever it's legal to puff on cigarettes under new legislation being introduced by Doug Ford's Progressive Conservative government.

There will be no ceiling on the number of stores allowed to get provincial licences if their applications make the grade, Attorney General Caroline Mulroney and Finance Minister Vic Fedeli said Wednesday.

The gnashing of teeth and howls of outrage began immediatly.

Liberal MPP Nathalies Des Rosiers (Ottawa-Vanier), a lawyer, said she was surprised and concerned to learn there will be no cap on the number of stores, despite government promises the industry will be "tightly regulated."

"Other provinces have put a cap ... I hope they are ready to have a robust monitoring way of dealing with all these stores," she said.

"If you're opening the market to all these new licences you know it's not going to be a carefully planned approach. The market will dictate."

Note that the howling comes from a LIBERAL MP, clearly disturbed by the idea that "the market will dictate." Liberals don't like it when people decide things for themselves.

I will emphasize here that what Ford is doing is called "a free country." If a company wants to sell a legal product, they can. The Liberals are very, very much against the notion of a free country. What they had in mind was a government monopoly, where they kept all the money and doled out little drips of product now and then, while also keeping a list of who bought what and when.

This means that little weed shops will be popping up all over the place. Its going to be interesting to see what happens when Canadians are allowed a slight increase in freedom.

The Phantom

Silicon Valley Libs

Greetings all. I posted this without cleaning it up, but now I see that Instapundit has picked it up (thanks Sarah!) so now the cleaning.

https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/408063-why-arent-liberals-fun-anymore

This is a piece at The Hill wherein a Conservative reflects that in the 1960s the Liberals were the Cool Kids, whereas now they're like a bunch of old Methodist preachers that don't hold with dancing.

"Similarly, the ugly incident when White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was kicked out of a restaurant weeks ago wasn't an aberration. Liberals are so filled with a sense of moral superiority and rage that they literally don't want to sit in the same dining room with us.
Last week, I gave a talk at the Computer History Museum in Silicon Valley to some 250 technology executives and the venture capitalists who fund them. I asked at the start of my speech how many of them have a positive opinion of Trump. Now, mind you, if any group has been transformed into gazillionaires because of Trump policies, it was this crowd. Out of the 250 attendees, about three people dared to raise their hands. I knew that liberalism is transcendent in the Bay Area, but I didn't realize groupthink was this lopsided.
After the speech, about 20 to 30 of the attendees came up and said they enjoyed my talk. Several whispered that they really like what Trump is doing. Huh? Why didn't they raise their hands? The answers: "I have clients here and I will lose them if they know I support Trump;" "I will be ostracized if my friends know my real feelings;" "I didn't want to get into an argument with people;" and so on."

https://dailycaller.com/2018/09/24/ted-cruz-protested-dc-restaurant/

This one is a link to a bunch of assholes yelling Ted Cruz and his wife out of a restaurant in DC this week, similar situation to Sarah Huckabee Sanders. I watched it, it was a grotesque display. Reminds me of the reason rich people had "footmen" in the old days. To keep the beggars and cut-purses off.

https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2018/09/24/google-chrome-begins-syncing-all-browser-data-to-your-identity-without-asking/

This Google Chrome thing is a bit more serious than assholes hassling a politician at dinner. This one is the direction the Silicon Valley crowd wants to take us all.

Google users are concerned about their browsing privacy after a recent update at Google secretly logs Chrome browser users into their online Google accounts, syncing data without asking, a move one expert says has “enormous implications for user privacy and trust.”
As detailed by cryptographer and professor Matthew Green on his blog on Sunday, Google made the change several weeks ago.

“Due to Chrome’s new user-unfriendly forced login policy — I won’t be using it going forward,” declared professor Green. “A few weeks ago Google shipped an update to Chrome that fundamentally changes the sign-in experience. From now on, every time you log into a Google property (for example, Gmail), Chrome will automatically sign the browser into your Google account for you. It’ll do this without asking, or even explicitly notifying you.”

 Which is why I use Mozilla, even on my phone. It doesn't do that. Yet.

But, as we know from what happened to Brendan Eich, former CEO of Mozilla, the little shits who work at Mozilla would -like- to do that. Because they are the type of people who think this following quote from the linked Slate article (sorry!) is reasonable:

Thirty-seven companies in the database are linked to more than 1,300 employees who gave nearly $1 million in combined contributions to the campaign for Prop 8. Twenty-five tech companies are linked to 435 employees who gave more than $300,000. Many of these employees gave $1,000 apiece, if not more. Some, like Eich, are probably senior executives.

Why do these bigots still have jobs? Let’s go get them.

Because it isn't enough to do "good works" you see. You have to "speak truth to power" and "call them out!" whenever anyone transgresses against whatever the narrative is this week. Like this. (Hi Bonnie!) 

And really, its not enough to publicly harass and humiliate these people who transgress. You have to financially ruin them, drive them out of the workplace, and make them suffer in penury forever more.

Which is why Stephen Moore waaaay back at the beginning saw three hands in a room full of people when he asked who liked Trump. They're all very well aware that the Witch Hunters are all out there looking for another Brendan Eich to burn.

When you let the Witch Hunters run things, you get stuff like the 2018 WorldCon in San Jose CA this year, which featured the specatcle of having its entire program cancelled and done over two weeks before the con, because one (1) asshole complained, Antifa on site armed and dangerous because there were [gasp!] Conservatives present protesting against child molestation and pedophilia (no really, Antifa was there to beat up the anti-Pedo demonstrators) and Jon del Arroz kicked out of the con because he voted for Trump.

At this point the bleating of WorldCon SMOFs is falling on deaf ears. Everybody knows
Jon del Arroz got booted because he's Conservative, everybody knows he was kicked out of BayCon for being a Trump voter. Now he's suing WorldCon and therefore burning up their money, a noble goal if you ask me. They deserve what they're handing out. Ruination.

Ruination will surely come to pass, I must add here. It doesn't matter how hard you call people out, it doesn't matter how many men are falsely accused of crimes, there are going to be a lot of people going through the motions with their shields up and their cloaking systems engaged. Submarine warfare.

Contrary to what Liberals would like you to think, everybody in Silicon Valley is not a Liberal. Probably half of them just mouth the platitudes, fully a third of them are nerds like James Damore and go by the science. You can't make a Liberal out of a nerd. Their brains don't work that way. 

The Phantom

Windows even less secure than we thought.

This is getting nauseating.

"In my testing, population of WaitList.dat commences after you begin using handwriting gestures," [Digital Forensics and Incident Response expert Barnaby Skeggs] told ZDNet in an interview. "This 'flicks the switch' (registry key) to turn the text harvester functionality (which generates WaitList.dat) on." "Once it is on, text from every document and email which is indexed by the Windows Search Indexer service is stored in WaitList.dat. Not just the files interacted via the touchscreen writing feature," Skeggs says.

 Meaning, every text file on your PC, AND passwords etc. If you wrote it into a text file, its there in WaitList.dat.

From the linked article,

According to Skeggs, the default location of this file is at:
C:\Users\%User%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\InputPersonalization\TextHarvester\WaitList.dat
Not all users may be storing passwords in emails or text-based files on their PCs, but those who do are advised to delete the file or disable "Personalised Handwriting Recognition" feature in their operating system's settings panel.

Be it noted, according to the researchers, this is a FEATURE of Windows. Not a bug. It is supposed to work like that.

$1 processor that runs Linux.

Spotted this today at HackADay blog, its is a $1 processor that is capable of running Linux with a few support chips.

Over on the EEVblog, someone noticed an interesting chip that's been apparently flying under our radar for a while. This is an ARM processor capable of running Linux. It's hand-solderable in a TQFP package, has a built-in Mali GPU, support for a touch panel, and has support for 512MB of DDR3. If you do it right, this will get you into the territory of a BeagleBone or a Raspberry Pi Zero, on a board that's whatever form factor you can imagine. Here's the best part: you can get this part for $1 USD in large-ish quantities. A cursory glance at the usual online retailers tells me you can get this part in quantity one for under $3. This is interesting, to say the least.

The chip in question, the Allwinner A13, is a 1GHz ARM Cortex-A8 processor. While it's not much, it is a chip that can run Linux in a hand-solderable package. There is no HDMI support, you'll need to add some more chips (that are probably in a BGA package), but, hey, it's only a dollar.

If you'd like to prototype with this chip, the best options right now are a few boards from Olimex, and a System on Module from the same company. That SoM is an interesting bit of kit, allowing anyone to connect a power supply, load an SD card, and get this chip doing something.

 

The author goes on to point out that the support software and documentation for this thing is a mess, BUT it only costs a dollar. This is cheap enough to justify using to run Christmas lights. Cheap enough to build lots of little boxes to do all kinds of things, run them on batteries and just leave them lying around.

The thing here isn't the capability or amazingness of the chip, because its a piece of crap compared to what's out there right now. The thing that is powerful is the price. Once the price of a thing comes down past a certain break-point, it makes possible all kinds of applications that are not feasible at a higher cost.

'Twitter is run by SJWs!' said Jack Dorsey.

In a rare moment of candor, Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter, admits that the place is run by SJWs and his Conservative employees don't feel safe.

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey — like his counterparts at Facebook and YouTube — has consistently said that his service isn't biased.

But the people who build Twitter are biased, Dorsey admitted in an interview last month, saying out loud what everyone already knew: Twitter, like most tech companies in Silicon Valley, has a lot more left-leaning employees than right-leaners.

Twitter is so liberal, in fact, that conservative employees "don't feel safe to express their opinions" within the company, Dorsey told NYU journalism professor Jay Rosen in a new interview published today on Recode Media.

"We have a lot of conservative-leaning folks in the company as well, and to be honest, they don't feel safe to express their opinions at the company," Dorsey said. "They do feel silenced by just the general swirl of what they perceive to be the broader percentage of leanings within the company, and I don't think that's fair or right."

Now, I'm going to have to translate one euphemism here. When he says Conservatives "don't feel safe to express their opinions," he's not talking about a Safe Space where people go to rage on about Trump. He's talking about an environment where people are terrified somebody will discover they voted for Trump. They are watching other people be drummed out for the sin of "not a team player" because their hobby is shooting, or hunting, or even fishing. (Fish have feelings too, you murderer!!!) Or somebody found a pic on-line of them at a Pro-Life rally, or somebody saw them walking into a church on Sunday morning. Or that they secretly listen to Rush Limbaugh on their phone.

"Do you believe in the Virgin Mary, Private Joker?" is a Silicon Valley interview question these days. You are supposed to jump up and say SIR! NO SIR!!! while standing at attention.

What would posses Jack Dorsey to say such a thing?

Dorsey also explained why he brought up Twitter's left-leaning employee bias to begin with.

"I think it's more and more important to at least clarify what our own bias leans towards, and just express it," he added. "I'd rather know what someone biases to rather than try to interpret through their actions."

I'm going to translate that one too. It means there's a ton of SJWs at all levels of the company, steadily working to purge all traces of Conservatism from the organization, and he can't do anything about it. Otherwise he'd keep pretending everything is super hunky-dory peace love and smoking weed, man.

Now, avid readers may recall this post about Bonnie McDaniel, wherein we learned that The Phantom, by virtue of being willing to let people talk, was in fact stifling free speech. (I know, right?) She said something interesting:

"As the saying goes, "The standard you walk past is the standard you accept.""

Meaning that if somebody says something Wrongspeak, such as "We're going fishing this weekend," it is not enough to walk past muttering "what an asshole!" to yourself and then stab them in the back later. No, the standard is that you must confront them and tell them off right then. You must scream "Fish have feelings too, you murderer!" at them, right there in the hallway, and hit them with a pamphlet from PETA. Otherwise, everyone else will know that you are a fish murdering Fascist too.

So really, Dorsey isn't saying that he's resolute about stamping out political bias at Twitter Inc. He's not declaring support for free speech, and telling all the Conservatives its safe to come out now. He's admitting there's a Reign of Terror and saying the guillotine is open for business.

Intelligent individuals will begin polishing their resumes now. Good idea to have a parachute ready for when the company rolls hard left and dives for the ground in flames.

The Phantom

Update: Google founders on video calling Trump voters "fascists."

Upperdate: Welcome Instapundit flying monkeys!Thanks for the linkage Sarah!

Women in the infantry? Genius!

This is actually a sad story. One of those spectacular clusterfucks we've come to expect from the military.

Remedios Cruz joined the Marine Corps in 2013 as a supply clerk. One year later, she completed infantry training, and in 2017, made history when she became one of three females to join 1st Battalion, 8th Marines at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. Now, Cruz is awaiting separation from the Marine Corps after pleading guilty to maintaining a romantic relationship with a subordinate. Cruz, 26, eventually married the person, who was a lower-ranking Marine in her unit, according The New York Times.

When you take 19 year olds and put them through the wringer, like they do in the Marines, the normal ones form bonds. That's how its supposed to be. These are not warrior monks, sworn to celibacy and poverty for life, for the the greater glory of the Almighty. These are soldiers. They become brothers. Sometimes more strongly than with their own family. (Mileage varies on this of course, but that's the idea they're trying to get to.)

When you put women in there, they still form bonds. But these are boy/girl bonds, and that means family. Despite any order or policy, despite surveillance and even jail, they are going to pair up. Because that is what healthy, normal males and females do under pressure. You don't have to look far to see them doing it, the local high school is an object lesson.

Ms. Cruz was set up to fail by an insane ideology that ignores history, tradition and science to pretend men and women are the same. To pretend you can treat them like identical cogs in a big military machine, and it will all roll along the same as an all-male force.

But they're not, and you can't.

I feel I should add that the Marine Corps has probably lost a fine soldier here, and that legally pursuing her for getting married is as much bullshit as sticking her in the infantry in the first place. Absolutely typical of the peace-time military, and the reason I'm not in it. Capricious application of odious regulations, for the furtherance of some incompetent officer's career. REMF Politics. [spit]

The Phantom

Why SJWs fail at brain.

Well, the sorry, soggy saga of the flopping camel turd blog continues. [Still not linking, y'all can look it up.]

Today's special contestant is Bonnie McDaniel. She's got lots of posts at the camel flop blog, she's got her Special SJW Official Faerie Wings and everything. She's been calling me everything but the kitchen sink for a while now.

But this was Tewww Good! to pass over. The complete comment was...

I see Bonnie is melting down and accusing me of an attempt to stifle free speech now, as well as saying I’m advocating genocide. Classy, Bonnie.

Well, you know, Phantom, I visited Hoyt’s place and saw that thread, in which you were participating, where BobtheRegisteredFool (and someone else, can’t remember the name now) were bleating about it being A-Okay to wipe out the Japanese and Indigenous people.

Did you step up and say, “Hey dude, that’s not cool?”

Did Sarah Hoyt step up and say, “Hey dude, I’m not hosting that shit on my blog. If you want to say that, take it elsewhere?”

The answer to both questions is no. In fact, Hoyt said she found FoolBob…”still interesting.”

As the saying goes, “The standard you walk past is the standard you accept.” So if you don’t object when somebody says terrible things like this…well, that means you’re consenting to it, now doesn’t it?

And if you think it’s “classy” to call you out each time you pull this crap…well, hey, yeah!! I’m class all the way.

In Bonnie's universe, we are all Nazis because we did not instantly gang up on BobtheRegisteredFool (henceforth BtRF) and eject him from our midst, lit on fire.

Also there's some alternate universe reality bending going on here. Bonnie says "Did you step up and say, “Hey dude, that’s not cool?” and helpfully answers "no" for me. As if I was totally down with the Nuke Japan Moar plan.

Which is not true. Rather than scream-and-leap like some demented ratcat, I explained my thoughts on why "Kill them all, let God sort them out" is a bad idea. Historically it never ends well. Not once. BtRF was unmoved, oh well, I'll try again another day.

But, according to Bonnie, I have sinned mightily! Quoth she: "So if you don’t object when somebody says terrible things like this…well, that means you’re consenting to it, now doesn’t it?" Yes, by engaging BtRF in a civil discussion where I strongly disagree with him, including historical references etc, I am consenting to his belief/argument/statement.

So basically, I'm the hate-filled hater of free speech because I didn't DEMAND that BtRF be de-platformed. On somebody else's blog. Because brain.

Shown actual size.

Because I engaged in a discussion, with some guy who has views I disagree with, I am both advocating genocide and also stifling free speech.

That's where we are with the SJWs now, my friends. The One True Way is de-platforming followed by punching punching the Nazi. Anything less and you are a Nazi too.

So much for collegiality and civil discourse, eh?

Currently in the Province of Ontario where I live, the provincial government is threatening to de-fund public universities if they don't knock this shit off. There's Real Life consequences to booing a guy off a stage and then beating his ass, which are you go to jail and live there for quite some time.

But, given Bonnie and taking her to the logical conclusion of her views, what can we expect? Un-civil discourse, obviously. Lots of punching people in the face, lots of doing unto others before they do unto you. Whoever has the most thugs wins.

What does that look like historically? Well, we've seen that shit before in the 20th Century. Civil war, followed by warlordism, followed by foreign invasion, famine, pestilence, and death. Otherwise known as China from about 1900 to 1950. Over a hundred million dead of one thing or another, mostly famine, ALL of it 100% avoidable. In fact they're doing it right now in Syria and Venezuela, with Mexico not far behind. Seems fun, right?

But wait, there's more! Two of the Four Horsemen got upgrades! With modern weapons like plagues, nukes and nerve gas, they can probably beat the Chinese record. Predict 200+ million dead in North America. Two of three. More in the cities, they starve faster and diseases spread in hours.

Doesn't that sound like a party? Two out of three dead right across Western civilization, sign me the hell up for that, Bonnie baby!

Oh noes, Global Warmening!!!

South Africa, as the sun blazes down on the savanna...

September 11th.

A reply to cacophonous fornication.

It seems that the floppy camel turd blog has decided it is not enough to slander Dave Freer and Sarah Hoyt, he's inviting comment on said slander.

I will not be linking to the floppy camel turd, because I might get some on me. But, for the record, this is my comment, which he has no-doubt blocked.

Since you asked so nicely:

"On that, don’t you think there’s something a bit weird about that defence given that it is literally an admission?"

An admission of what?

That the Europeans have a long, long history of pointless wars and random genocides? They do.

That the Romani (and the Travelers, and lots of other wankers) commonly abuse and steal from welfare systems across Europe? They do! (Go on, tell me they don't floppy. I've got a whole bag of popcorn here for that show.)

That the European welfare states will be looking for scapegoats as soon as the checks bounce?

Dear floppy, Greece is already doing that. Everybody is to blame but them. A whole war was fought the last time Germany did it, you might recall the Great Unpleasantness of 1939. Migrants are already being force-marched through Hungary, there's pics of it on my blog. Sweden just took a hard Right turn at the voting booth on Sunday. Britain voted itself out of Europe.

Who are the very first people that are going to be targeted by frantic bureaucrats when everything goes wrong? People who everybody knows are crooked and steal from Welfare, followed shortly by those of mere bad reputation, and proceeding to people who wear funny clothes in public and/or are the wrong colour. Oh, and the Jews. Can't forget them. Nothing is going to save those guys except Israel, poor bastards.

Because when you've decided that it is morally acceptable to purge undesirables, (as WorldCon did, I remind y'all Puppy kickers, love rubbing that in!) forced deportation vs. just killing them all is the next discussion. And it will be the Left which makes that decision, the same as they always, always do, when they inevitably run out of money. The difference between a National Socialist and a Communist is the uniform.

All of the above is why I like personal freedom, smaller governments and tax cuts. Because bureaucrats are cowardly murdering assholes waiting for their chance to shine. Don't matter what flag they do their murdering under, even lily white Canada has done its share. We are better off with fewer of them.

So, floppy, now I want you to show me where Sarah Hoyt said deporting/murdering all the Romani was a great idea, and Europe should get on with doing that. Popcorn's ready, take your best shot.

The Phantom

Update!

In the comments, floppy has of course been playing fuckaround with my remarks. That's why I post things here, for the record. Fuckers want to slander me, its nice to have what was said someplace public for all to see.

The only published comment of mine was: "Hope you feel proud, taunting a woman like that when she’s ill. You’ve really surpassed yourself this time. Try taunting -me-, floppy. See how somebody healthy deals with your shite."

This response is classic SJW Puppy-Kicker. Perfection.

JJ

9 hours

thephantom182: Hope you feel proud, taunting a woman like that when she’s ill.

If Hoyt is genuinely ill, then she should be taking care of herself instead of posting wildly irrational, unhinged rants on the internet.

If she is ill, where are the people who care about her? Why aren’t they looking after her and helping her to take care of herself, instead of letting her engage in deeply emotionally-unhealthy activities? Does she actually have any friends, or just hangers-on who sadistically enjoy goading her on and watching her implode on the internet?

With “friends” like that, she doesn’t need enemies. 🙄

In Bizzaro Universe, its perfectly acceptable to slander a woman online. Its perfectly acceptable to slander the woman every couple of weeks for four or five years. When she's already announced that she's sick and under medication, she's still fair game.

The bad guy is the one who mentions to her that she's being slandered. Got that? That's SJW logic.

Hey JJ. Never change, dewd. We LOVE you, man!

Upperdate: the flopper responds. My comment:

"Your upset about me disagreeing with people and things you like. Now think about that for a moment. Do you actually value my opinion that much?"

One does not "value" slander. And you are not denying you've slandered me, Sarah, Dave and Chris Chupik with untruths. Which is actually a step up for you, floppy. Normally you'd have some legalistic walk-back, where you'd claim you didn't say what you said.

So why bother? Because the internet is increasingly being used for marking targets, floppy, and that's what you're doing here. So and so author is a racist, or a Nazi, or a creeper, or Pro-Life, so and so commenter has a "deep searing hatred of free speech," and currently this carries with it Real World consequences. Which are getting worse. As you well know.

This week, people are getting security details assigned to them by their local PD over tweets. That is thanks to target-marking by little slandering shits on the interwebz, Twitter shirt-storms, and etc. Imagine what's waiting for next week.

That's why.

You got anything? Put it up. Call me out, big boy. You got nothing? Well, now everybody knows you've got nothing, and you're just trying to gin up another witch burning.

I'll add that it is very tedious cutting and pasting things for the record. I think I'm done here unless the camel flop has something truly noteworthy. Which does seem unlikely, I must say.

Media turns on Amazon!

I suppose it was only a matter of time. The US media is the mouthpiece of the DemocRat Party, and the Party has moved on from Hillary. She's yesterday's bagel, baby.

The new sweetness? Bernie! Who's Bernie targeting lately? Amazon!

A patent Amazon has received would pair humans and machines. In this case, the humans would be in a cage.
Illustrations that accompany the patent, which was granted by the U.S. Patent and Trademark office in 2016, show a cage-like enclosure around a small work space sitting atop the kind of robotic trolleys that now drive racks of shelves around Amazon warehouses.
The patent was called "an extraordinary illustration of worker alienation, a stark moment in the relationship between humans and machines" by researchers who highlighted it in a study published Friday.

The caged human forced to live in an environment ruled by soulless robots! METROPOLIS!!! FRANKENSTEIN!!! TERMINATOR!!!!

Or, we could use our tiny little brains, and wonder how do you keep a maintenance guy from being killed by the robots in the warehouse without shutting them all off? Because he has to go in there and pick up a box that fell off a moving robot, and it would be nice if he didn't DIE in there. And shutting them all off will cost $300,000 dollars every time you do it.

You put the guy in a safety cage mounted on a robot platform, give him a robot arm to pick up the box, and carry on.

F- you, US media. We can see you hiding behind that curtain.

The Phantom

Everything wrong with SF/F in one post.

Saw this gem today. "Everything wrong with science fiction is John W. Campbell's fault."

Campbell was basically a racist garbage-person.

Campbell supported slavery. And segregation. And believed black people were inherently intellectually and culturally inferior to whites. You know that whole, "But how could you possibly expect readers to empathize with a black protagonist?" thing? Something Campbell quite famously told Samuel R. Delany, in quite possibly its first documented incarnation. That whole "I don't care if they're white, black, or polka-dotted" thing white people say when they're trying to pretend they're not being racist? Campbell, while making apologetics for slavery no less, which was something he got up to a lot.

It goes on and on like that. Campbell was a RAAAACIST!!! Heinlein was a RAAAACIST!!! Asimov, Hubbard, Clarke, all RAAAACISTS!!! Sure, baby. Sure they were.

Why write this? What's the point? Well, about that:

Which is why I can't help be reminded of the whole World Fantasy Award H.P. Lovecraft bust… thing that went on a few years ago. And, well… I'm not saying that maybe it's time for a similar conversation about the Campbell, but…
Maybe it's time for a conversation, y'know?

Yeah, because HP Lovecraft was a RAAAACIST!!! So there was a rush by SJWs to get his face taken off the World Fantasy Award statue.

Having got that done, this bitch now wants the John W. Campbell Award re-named.

I guarantee you some other bitch has his/her/its sights set on Hugo Gernsback, who committed the twin unforgivable sins of being Jewish and a Capitalist.

What's revealing here is the -speed- with which these denouncements are coming. One after the other, the men and women who built the Science Fiction I grew up with from the 1960s onward are being declared heretics and their names stricken from polite society. The pace is frantic. They've only just finished burning Robert Silverberg at the stake, now John W. Campbell is getting tied on there.

It isn't sufficient that a commentator like Alis Franklin doesn't like JWC, or she doesn't like his work, and she therefore talks about the man or the work and points out the flaws. That's not enough. No, she demands the very memory of the man must be erased, chiseled off of monuments and even removed from an award given for science fiction books.

Everything wrong with Science Fiction as we know it today is personified by Mrs. Alis Franklin. Oh yeah, the edgy purple-haired SJW is actually a cis/het/white/married Normie. With fat arms. Shock, surprise.

At this rate of acceleration, in three more years there won't be a WorldCon and there won't be a Hugo award. They'll have burned it all down to the ground themselves.

The Phantom

Connect the Mexican dots.

Dear DemocRats, Liberals and NeverTrumpers. Here are two news stories for y'all to consider.

Mexican cops discover mass graves with 166 bodies.

Then this one:

Arizona rancher documents armed men in camouflage crossing the border onto his land in huge numbers.

I want you to consider those two stories for a moment, and then tell me again how Trump is a Nazi and he's insane, and building a wall along the US border is the same as the Holocaust.

Go ahead. I'll wait for y'all to sound out the big words.

Because I'll tell you this: If that was the Canadian border, and drug cartel assholes were coming into Canada like that, there would be a wall across the border you could see from space.

The Phantom

Respekt teh Whamyns!

New law in California is heading to the governor's desk for signature. Its a Beauty!

On Aug. 30, California lawmakers voted to force publicly traded companies based in California to have at least one woman on their boards by 2019 and depending on the size of the company, one to three women by 2021.California Senate Bill 826, sponsored by California State Senator Hannah-Beth Jackson (D), now heads to the desk of Gov. Jerry Brown. If it becomes law, this will be the first example of a state-mandated gender quota of its kind in the U.S.

Leaving aside the issue that this is certainly unconstitutional in both California and the USA federally, I found this bit here from the author to be noteworthy:

But forcing companies to accept a token woman could have unintended consequences. For one thing, women who are newly added to all-male boards may wonder if they are being asked to join because the state forced the company to do so. The larger policy problem, however, is that government overreach like this tends to have no limiting principle. Once the government decides it has the right to intercede in this arena, it is difficult to know where and when the government interference will end. What, for instance, is to prevent the government from requiring that each year, private employers hire employees from any number of classifications based on age, race, sexual orientation, or gender identity? Diversity is a vitally important goal, but one that the government should not mandate.

The author is clearly a liberal, self-identifies as a feminist, the article is hosted on an NBC affiliated page... and she's still sitting there saying "holy fuck!" to herself. Because holy fuck, this is a bad idea.

Hate to break it to ya girlie, that decision got made a loooooong time ago. Spoiler, we lost. Big Government means that the government "intercedes" (by which I mean meddles) in things that are not only none of its business, but in things which damage private enterprise. Because they are programmed to always "progress" and never stand still, they always take a little bit more. Another spoonful. Every day.

That's how you eat an elephant. One spoonful at a time. Pretty soon the elephant is gone, and they're looking around for another one to eat. The government raises taxes just a little, they regulate just one more thing, pretty soon you have no money and no freedom.

Now, this wouldn't be so bad, if they could deliver on their promises. In this case, if their new law actually delivered female equality in business, where the ladies get an even break with the men. But as even this airheaded Liberal journalist can see, it doesn't do that. All it really does is allow a government department to dictate the makeup of corporate boards. That's a bad idea for a lot of reasons, all by itself.

But it gets worse, because government progresses. They can dictate how many women are on the board of directors at Apple, pretty soon they will be dictating who those women are. And who the men are. And what Apple will be doing with its money, what little is left after the corporate taxes are paid.

The problem with Big Government is that if its big enough to give you everything you want, its big enough to take everything you've got. And it will.

The Phantom

Belgium bans the Bible. Or wants to, anyway.

Not content to let Saudi Arabia win the title of Most Oppressive Assholes, Belgium steps up to the plate!

An onscreen Bible reading which demanded women be submissive to their husbands has sparked calls to end religious broadcasting on public television in Belgium.

The New Testament reading, from Ephesians 5.22 - 33,  was broadcast on radio and Flemish TV station VRT from a Catholic mass in the town of Grimbergen.

A lay reader said, "Women, be submissive to your husband as the husband to the Lord. For the man is the head of the woman as Christ is the head of the church."

Sven Gatz, the media minister for the Dutch-speaking Belgian region of Flanders who represents the Flemish liberal party, tweeted: "No outdated, woman-unfriendly statements … please. What if, for example, an imam would have said this?"

He told newspaper Het Nieuwsblad: "The fact that they come from an old book is not an argument for letting them go to our people. This is not of this time, and that it is broadcast on the VRT for the whole of Flanders is already completely crazy."

Mr Gatz has been unsuccessfully calling for the end of Songs of Praise-style programmes at the taxpayer's expense since last year, but he now hopes the controversy will reignite the debate and insists different solutions could be found for religious people who are unable to attend mass.

"I want to examine all the technical possibilities to give these people their weekly celebration. But this cannot be an argument to keep these broadcasts, at the expense of the taxpayer," he said.

Well, if an imam would have said that, Mr. Sven Gatz, the media minister for Flanders, would not be talking shit about the Koran on Twitter and threatening to pull funding from the TV show. That type of thing is reserved for Christians, who to date have not habitually shown up to riot over slights like this.

Christians will no-doubt revisit that strategy fairly soon, if the likes of Mr. Gatz keep pushing the way they have been.

The Phantom

Saudi Arabia bans satire.

Well, looks like the Liberals came up smelling like a rose on this one.  Accidentally getting cut off by the Saudis was the best thing they could have done.

Saudi Arabia will punish online satire that "disrupts public order" with up to five years in prison, the public prosecutor said Tuesday, as the kingdom cracks down on dissent.

"Producing and distributing content that ridicules, mocks, provokes and disrupts public order, religious values and public morals through social media ... will be considered a cybercrime punishable by a maximum of five years in prison and a fine of three million riyals ($800,000)," the public prosecution tweeted late Monday.

So really, the Saudis are not the guys we Canadians should be selling guns and armored cars to. They're assholes.

But lest we be too harsh on the Arab Kingdom, consider that a ban on "public satire" is exactly what's being pursued here in Canada by the Liberal Party. If they get what they want, it will be -illegal- to publicly espouse Conservative views regarding taxation, religion, reproduction generally, and a lot of other things.

If Liberals are willing to make it a federal offense to miss-gender someone cosplaying as a tulip by refusing to use their requested pronoun, they will be happy to make it illegal to have a lawn sign that says "Windmills Kill Birds!" The truth, as they say, will be no defense.

The Phantom

Sarah Hoyt and Kevin J. Anderson win the Dragon Award!

https://www.amazon.com/Uncharted-Arcane-America-Book-1-ebook/dp/B07CG7LZJT/ref=sr_1_1?accordingtohoyt-20

This year's Dragon Award winners, Sarah Hoyt and Kevin J. Anderson for "Uncharted, Lewis and Clark in Arcane America."

Congratulations to Sarah and Kevin! Woo hoo!

The Phantom