Caitlin yes! Rachel no!

One might argue that if we simply MUST take transgender Caitlin Jenner seriously, then by that logic we should take trans-racial Rachel Dolezal seriously as well. If gender can be fluid, then race can be fluid as well. To my mind, while gender has a biological, physical basis, race really is a cultural construct.

One brave (or foolish) soul did just that. The results were utterly predictable.

The editors of an influential feminist philosophy journal have denounced an academic research paper that argues racial identity can be just as fluid as gender, castigating its Canadian author for causing "harm" and ignoring "violence upon actual persons."
Curiously, these editors run the journal that published the paper in the first place.
The "profound" and grovelling apology from associate editors of the journal Hypatia stops short of formal retraction. But it indicates the editors are appalled that Hypatia peer-reviewed, edited, and published the article, titled In Defense of Transracialism.
In it, Rebecca Tuvel, a Toronto-born, McGill educated assistant professor of philosophy at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee, makes an argument by comparing two cultural phenomena: the ridicule and scorn directed at Rachel Dolezal for assuming a black racial identity despite being born white, and the praise and admiration directed at Caitlyn Jenner for assuming a female gender identity despite being born male.

It has been well established that Conservative White Males are the cause of all that is mean and nassssty in the world, so clearly my opinion must be discarded on skin colour and plumbing alone.

What's fun is watching the SJWs have a melt down and eat their own. I reproduce the whole thing here, in case these girlie mental cases ever take it down.

Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy

May 1 at 8:28am ·

To our friends and colleagues in feminist philosophy,
We, the members of Hypatia's Board of Associate Editors, extend our profound apology to our friends and colleagues in feminist philosophy, especially transfeminists, queer feminists, and feminists of color, for the harms that the publication of the article on transracialism has caused. The sources of those harms are multiple, and include: descriptions of trans lives that perpetuate harmful assumptions and (not coincidentally) ignore important scholarship by trans philosophers; the practice of deadnaming, in which a trans person's name is accompanied by a reference to the name they were assigned at birth; the use of methodologies which take up important social and political phenomena in dehistoricized and decontextualized ways, thus neglecting to address and take seriously the ways in which those phenomena marginalize and commit acts of violence upon actual persons; and an insufficient engagement with the field of critical race theory. Perhaps most fundamentally, to compare ethically the lived experience of trans people (from a distinctly external perspective) primarily to a single example of a white person claiming to have adopted a black identity creates an equivalency that fails to recognize the history of racial appropriation, while also associating trans people with racial appropriation. We recognize and mourn that these harms will disproportionately fall upon those members of our community who continue to experience marginalization and discrimination due to racism and cisnormativity.
It is our position that the harms that have ensued from the publication of this article could and should have been prevented by a more effective review process. We are deeply troubled by this and are taking this opportunity to seriously reconsider our review policies and practices. While nothing can change the fact that the article was published, we are dedicated to doing what we can to make things right. Clearly, the article should not have been published, and we believe that the fault for this lies in the review process. In addition to the harms listed above imposed upon trans people and people of color, publishing the article risked exposing its author to heated critique that was both predictable and justifiable. A better review process would have both anticipated the criticisms that quickly followed the publication, and required that revisions be made to improve the argument in light of those criticisms.
We would also like to explain our review process. Manuscripts sent to Hypatia are sent out for peer review to two anonymous reviewers. The reviewers do not see the names of the author of the manuscript, and the identity of peer reviewers is not known to authors. The journal has had a long-standing policy of minimizing desk rejections due to its commitment to providing constructive feedback to feminist scholars. Revised manuscripts are also sent to the same readers for review. In the case where two peer readers disagree, a third anonymous reader may be found. Members of the Associate Editorial Board might be asked to provide another opinion and are expected to serve as readers on two articles each year. Some have wanted us to reveal the identities of the peer reviewers for this article. We cannot do this. We are a scholarly journal committed to an anonymous peer review process. We want readers to feel free to offer their honest feedback on manuscripts submitted to Hypatia. Anonymous peer review is important for the scholarly reputation of Hypatia; mistakes in particular instances should not compromise the commitment to anonymous peer review in scholarship.
In addition, to reconsidering our review policies, we are drafting a policy on name changes that will govern review of all work considered for publication in the journal from this point forward. We wish to express solidarity with our trans colleagues in our condemnation of deadnaming. It is unacceptable that this happened, and we are working to ensure that it never happens again. We also wish to express solidarity with our colleagues of color (understanding that gender and race are entangled categories) in our condemnation of scholarship about racial identity that fails to reflect substantive understanding of and engagement with critical philosophy of race. We are working to develop additional advisory guidelines to ensure that feminist theorists from groups underrepresented in our profession, including trans people and people of color, are integrated in the various editorial stages. This does not mean that we want to place future responsibility solely on transfeminists and feminists of color. We are committed to improving our review process and practice in order to make the best decision about publication and to prevent similar mistakes in the future.
Hypatia is a journal committed to pluralist feminist inquiry and has been an important site for the publication of scholarship long-considered marginal in philosophy. Too many of us are still characterized as "not real" philosophers by non- and anti-feminist colleagues. As a feminist journal, Hypatia is committed to providing mentorship to all who submit articles by encouraging substantive feedback on essays submitted for consideration. Clearly there was a mistake along the line in the review process, and we are doing our best to figure out a way forward.
Several further types of responses have been suggested to us, including issuing a retraction and setting up a blog or website for further conversation about how to move forward and improve our process. We continue to consider those responses and all of their potential ramifications thoughtfully. We welcome more feedback and suggestions, as we intend to learn from this mistake and do our best to be accountable and worthy of the trust of all feminist scholars.
Finally, we want to recognize that following the publication of the article, there was a Facebook post from the Hypatia account that also caused harm, primarily by characterizing the outrage that met the article's publication as mere "dialogue" that the article was "sparking." We want to state clearly that we regret that the post was made.
We sincerely thank all who have expressed criticism of the article's publication and who have called on us to reply. Working through conflicts, owning mistakes, and finding a way forward is part of the crucial, difficult work that feminism does. As members of Hypatia's editorial board we are taking this opportunity to make Hypatia more deeply committed to the highest quality of feminist scholarship, pluralism, and respect. The words expressed here cannot change the harm caused by the fact of the article's publication, but we hope they convey the depth and sincerity of our commitment to make necessary changes to move forward and do better.
Sincerely,
A Majority of the Hypatia's Board of Associated Editors

The irony is delicious, and the list of crimethinks is hillarious.

• "perpetuate harmful assumptions"
• "the practice of deadnaming," [gasp!]
• "dehistoricized and decontextualized ways"
• "commit acts of violence upon actual persons" [by writing a paper, to be clear]
• "insufficient engagement with the field of critical race theory"
• "associating trans people with racial appropriation" [oh noes!!!]

So, to sum up. You can appropriate an entire gender, but you must NEVER question the social construct that is race, and you must super-duper never cosplay as a black person. That is the biggest no-no ever! Oh, and writing something is an actual act of actual violence on actual persons.

Okay then.

The Phantom

P.S. Internet censors and Perpetually Outraged Persons please note, I'm not making fun of Caitlin Jenner or Rachel Dolezal. I am a conservative, and I believe it is a free country. They are free to do whatever the hell they want, as far as I'm concerned. They can culturally appropriate and gender-bend all frigging day long, as far as I am concerned.

I am making fun of "A Majority of the Hypatia's Board of Associated Editors" because y'all are a pack of hateful idiots.

P.P.S. I saw this first at SDA, as usual. Kate always gets there first.

Whose brain got eaten?

A guy with a three million dollar book deal has decided he needs to piss on everybody else in the business.

Our writer looks around at who is new, who is hot, who is making it in the field and who isn't, adds up the anecdotal evidence that doesn't involve the impossible factors of himself or just plain bad luck. And then he thinks to himself:

You know, maybe it really is the Jews keeping me down.

Or the blacks. Or the gays. Or the liberals! Or the Millennials! The lousy SJWs and the feminists! Or all of them! All at once! For starters!

And that's when our writer looks up from the path, and in front of him stands the Brain Eater.

Who pulls out a spoon, cracks open our writer's skull, and starts feasting, while our writer goes onto the Internet and talks angrily and at length about who it is that is keeping him from what he deserves.

Projection, thy name is Scalzi.

The Projectable Phantom

Hoyt-senpai noticed me!

This is super cool!

I'm squeeing now.

The Squeeing Phantom

Trans-species is the new gender thingy.

Somebody explain to me how this is not a mental disorder.

'I consider myself trans-species, in the same way transgender people feel, I need to become how I feel inside, I don't expect people to understand but I ask they respect it.

'The fantasy genre makes me happy and because I didn't have many friends when I was younger I submerged myself into it.'

'I started with cosplay but it wasn't enough, I wanted to change to become my own perception of beauty.'

At the age of 14, he was determined to undergo surgery to look more like an elf and six years later he went under the knife for the first time.

He recalled: 'It was the start that led me to decide this was the direction I wanted my life to go in, the recovery was painful and slow but I was happy with how I looked.

'I didn't care for how much it hurt, because it allowed me to get one step closer to my dream of what I want to become.'

Some day, this guy is going to wake up, look in a mirror and wonder what the hell he was thinking. That's going to be a really bad day for him.

The other thing is, when your whole life is spent thinking about how you look, you have no room for anyone or anything else. That's a pretty crappy life.

The Phantom

51% of murders done in 2% of counties.

This is something that has been a long time coming. I've been saying for a million yerars that when you look at a crime map, you find that ALL the crime is done in a very small area.

In 2014, the most recent year that a county level breakdown is available, 54% of counties (with 11% of the population) have no murders.  69% of counties have no more than one murder, and about 20% of the population. These counties account for only 4% of all murders in the country.
The worst 1% of counties have 19% of the population and 37% of the murders. The worst 5% of counties contain 47% of the population and account for 68% of murders. As shown in figure 2, over half of murders occurred in only 2% of counties.
Murders actually used to be even more concentrated.  From 1977 to 2000, on average 73 percent of counties in any give year had zero murders. Possibly, this change is a result of the opioid epidemic's spread to more rural areas. But that question is beyond the scope of this study.  Lott's book "More Guns, Less Crime" showed how dramatically counties within states vary dramatically with respect to murder and other violent crime rates.

Guess where those places are. Go on, take a stab at it.

Yep. The Clinton Archipelago.

The Phantom

How dare you paint that!!!

Artists had better watch out. SJWs are going to have the power to tell them what they may and may not paint.

Visions Gallery had planned to showcase the work of Amanda PL, 29, a local non-Indigenous artist who says she was inspired by the Woodlands style made famous in the '60s by the Anishinabe artist Norval Morrisseau, who focussed on nature, animals, Indigenous spirituality and medicine.
But within hours of the gallery's email announcement promoting the exhibit, there was a backlash, with people alleging that PL had appropriated Indigenous culture and art.
Chippewa artist Jay Soule was among those leading the charge. He argues PL blatantly copied Morrisseau with virtually no regard for the storytelling behind his work.
"What she's doing is essentially cultural genocide, because she's taking his stories and retelling them, which bastardizes it down the road. Other people will see her work and they'll lose the connection between the real stories that are attached to it," said Soule.

Its a funny kind of genocide that leaves guys like Jay Soule around to complain about it, as Kathy Shaidle is fond of saying. This would make a good comedy show, except that the gallery cancelled the show.

White people are not allowed to paint like this.

On the bright side, the artist did not make some kind of fulsome apology to these assholes. I view that as progress.

The Phantom

Humor at Yale? Yes!

I noticed the other day that the SJW brigade at Yale was having a "hunger strike" out in front of some building there for some (presumably idiotic) reason that only an SJW would understand.

Yale University graduate students are holding a tag-team hunger strike to demand a union contract, with plans to send in fresh strikers to replace members who become too hungry.

Eight members of Local 33—UNITE HERE, a newly formed union representing graduate student-teachers, started the hunger strike Tuesday after preparing their stomachs for several days beforehand by only eating vegetables, fruits, and eventually, just liquids.

Now, the words "hunger strike" are in quotes because this is a tag-team hunger strike. When you get hungry you can tap out, and somebody else will step in to not-eat while you go get a burger.

But none of the four student-teachers the Independent interviewed said they were willing to risk hospitalization. If not eating endangers a student's health, that individual will sub out and another union member will assume their place in renouncing meals — a moveable fast, if you will.

That in and of itself is funny. But the Yale Republicans club found comedy GOLD among the humorless snowflakes:

I don't know what's more shocking to me. That Yale has Republicans or that someone at Yale has a sense of humor.

Who knew?

The guy who tweeted this out was hard-pressed to find the funny.

But I find it all manner of hilarious.

They set up a real barbecue fundraiser in front of the fake hunger strike.

You're welcome!  ~:D

The Laughing Phantom

Yes, the media IS all the same.

You are not imagining it, the media really is a solid, unified, monolithic lump.

But journalistic groupthink is a symptom, not a cause. And when it comes to the cause, there's another, blunter way to think about the question than screaming "bias" and "conspiracy," or counting D's and R's. That's to ask a simple question about the map. Where do journalists work, and how much has that changed in recent years? To determine this, my colleague Tucker Doherty excavated labor statistics and cross-referenced them against voting patterns and Census data to figure out just what the American media landscape looks like, and how much it has changed.

The results read like a revelation. The national media really does work in a bubble, something that wasn't true as recently as 2008. And the bubble is growing more extreme. Concentrated heavily along the coasts, the bubble is both geographic and political. If you're a working journalist, odds aren't just that you work in a pro-Clinton county—odds are that you reside in one of the nation's most pro-Clinton counties. And you've got company: If you're a typical reader of Politico, chances are you're a citizen of bubbleville, too.

Publishing of books particularly is centered in New York City and Chicago. Mostly NY. So if you want to get your book published, you have to write to a New Yorker sensibility. That means Liberal, irreverent and snarky, pretty much. Lots of conservative sacred cows getting gored, a little creative religion bashing, and of course the pieties of Social Justice must be observed.

Which is exactly what all the Science Fiction and Fantasy books on the shelf at the bookstore look like. That's why we had Sad Puppies 1-4, because a whole huge section of the population has nothing fun to read. We don't share the tastes of the TOR editorial board, or the Random Penguin, and so forth.

There is one place I disagree with the article:

Resist—if you can—the conservative reflex to absorb this data and conclude that the media deliberately twists the news in favor of Democrats. Instead, take it the way a social scientist would take it: The people who report, edit, produce and publish news can't help being affected—deeply affected—by the environment around them.

This is known by the social sciences as Ethnocentrism, and it does account for a lot of the cluelessness of modern reporting. The stuff where they're tone-deaf, or they don't bother telling you things, or they deliberately conceal certain details because they think its rude to mention. That's all down to them not noticing the cultural water they're swimming in.

But we have all seen the NY Times lie, deny and "squirrel!!!" too many times in the last few years to discount corruption as part of the picture. Hillary got the debate questions ahead of time, the Obama administration had a say in stories being published at the NY Times, Google execs visited the White House every day, Facebook caught red-handed cooking their news feed... that kind of evidence can't be ignored.

So yes it is a bubble, AND they're deliberately propagandizing the nation on top of that.

Canada of course is a small town in comparison. We barely have a publishing industry to begin with, and ALL of it is in Toronto for English and Montreal for French. You write to the Canadian Urbanite taste here, or you don't get picked up.

The Phantom

SJW fantasy oppression vs. real oppression

Every once in a while, a couple of things crop up on Drudge that have to be put next to each other.

College Puts White People in Separate Room For 'Privilege Workshop'

vs.

Facing death for being gay, men flee Russia's Chechnya

There you go.

The Phantom

Robots replace entire warehouse staff.

This is a rather stupid article about a pretty amazing robot implementation in China.

THIS army of tiny orange robots which can sort up to 200,000 packages every DAY in a Chinese warehouse are providing an alarming glimpse of what the future could hold in factories around the world.

These miniature machines, each just 7.5 inches, follow a set route and transport parcels from the assembly line to the departure gates where they are then dispatched.

In the STO Express building in Liny, Shandong Province, the 300 robots can get through 20,000 parcels every hour.

The self-charging workers have saved the company, which has 300,000 employees, a staggering 70 per cent of manpower.

I can hear the boys at CUPE headquarters melting down from here.

The Phantom

Expect police overreactions to increase.

From the "running with scissors" file, CBC discovers that comic book conventions have cosplayers in costumes.

Fan Expo got underway at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre Thursday, and with it came an array of excited, costumed fans.
One of those fans apparently startled some GO transit passengers this morning: Toronto police got a call at about 10 a.m. with reports of a person with a gun. It turned out to be part of someone's outfit.
"As with any type of call like this we treat it as a real threat, and then we work our way back down to ensure that there's no threat," Const. Victor Kwong told CBC News.

This time, the gun call didn't end badly. But, then there was this other call:

Call the cops, Martha! Its a ALIEN!

It was almost game over in Grande Prairie this week for a cosplay enthusiast.
Dressed as a character from Fallout, a popular post-apocalyptic video game series, the man walked down a street wearing a gas mask, helmet, armour and bullet belt.
RCMP Cpl. Shawn Graham told CBC News that police received calls just before 5 p.m. Tuesday from citizens concerned the man was wearing what looked like a bomb on his back.
At least eight officers responded with their long guns drawn. Photos show them crouched behind vehicles and bushes.

Emphasis mine. Now, what we have here is a full rollout with rifles on a guy wearing an obvious costume, down the street from the comic convention. Why? Standard Operating Procedure.

SOP response to kid in costume. GUN HIM!!!

"We have to believe everything is real until proven otherwise," said Graham. "In the end you've got a good feeling after going, 'OK, there wasn't a bomb, there was no intent to do anything criminal, it's just someone with their costume."
Graham thinks it should serve as a warning to others who enjoy cosplay that police will assume fake weapons are real.
"There's a time and a place for it," he said, pointing out that costumes are OK at conventions and similar events.
"Wandering around downtown [is] maybe not the place to do it."

That's right nerds. You'd best not show up on the street, 'less you wanna feel the heat. They arrested this guy, took his stuff, and took him away. Why? Standard Operating Procedure. Two seconds of looking told them everything was legit. They busted this kid for wearing a costume.

Cops stealing obvious costume before transporting dangerous nerd.

I'm surprised they didn't beat the shit out of him and drag him around a bit, like United Airlines.

My single question: how long before they shoot somebody for cosplay in public?

The Phantom

FN-FAL variants from Imbel.

These are extremely cool. 7.62x51 carbines on a modified FAL platform. Sweet!

The Phantom

university = wedding? Yes!

This is one of the greatest pieces of wisdom I have seen lately.

Why is it so hard for millennials NOT to go to college?

With college tuition being literally unaffordable, stories after stories about the plight of un/underemployed college graduates, horror stories of the same with crippling student loans, and it no longer being a secret that college is a bubble, why is it so hard for 18 year olds to say, "screw this, I'm going home?"

Its a big question, given that even an engineering degree doesn't necessarily get you a job these days. Why are people still forking over the price of a detached suburban house for a -worthless- degree?

So what possible consumer good exists, that people can't afford, will go into debt for, that doesn't offer anything of tangible financial value afterwards, and has this societal push, borderline obssession to buy it regardless?

Then it hit me.

Weddings.

Weddings are the identical twin sibling of college. 

The reason why can be summarized in one simple phrase:

"It's my day."

However, whereas "my day" is the exclusive preserve of women on their wedding day, there is a similar sense of entitlement to having "my day" FOR BOTH SEXES when it comes to college.  And the reason why is that college is NOT sold to young kids today as the education it was supposed to be, but the "college experience" it is has successfully and falsely been propagated and inflated to what it is now (an industry that is more than TEN TIMES THE SIZE OF THE WEDDING INDUSTRY).

That makes perfect sense. Here's the killer part:

To have this birthright, to have this entitlement, nobody cares about logic, reason, evidence, finances, or math.  College, just like "her day," is worth any price because up to this point in these kids' lives, we as a society have given them nothing else to live for.  We get divorced, we mock nuclear families, we value things over friends, we cripple the economy, we load up on debt, we hate our own country, we criminalize success - precisely, what do these kids have to look forward to after they graduate from college?  As far as they're concerned life is over at 22 and then they lead the lives you do, which, sadly, for the most part is pretty pathetic in their eyes.  Worse, you've made their childhoods so painful with the craptastic public prisons schools, any childlike idealism or hope has been squash and the only light at the end of that tunnel is college.  The price of tuition could go up another 300%, it won't matter, they'll still pay it because these kids have nothing else to live for.

 That, my friends, is wisdom. Read the whole thing.

The Phantom

More robots: stupid, or annoying?

The Guardian, for a wonder, asks the question: do we really want big Roombas cluttering up the sidewalks?

Sharing a sidewalk with one of DoorDash's delivery robots is a bit like getting stuck behind someone playing Pokémon Go on his smartphone. The robot moves a little bit slower than you want to; every few meters it pauses, jerking to the left or right, perhaps turning around, then turning again before continuing on its way.

These are the sidewalks of the future, technology evangelists promise. Autonomous delivery robots, once the exclusive purview of 1980s sci-fi movies, are coming to a city near you, with promises of reduced labor costs, increased efficiency and the reduction of cars.

If you've ever seen one of these things in action, they are dumber than shit. No human could tolerate being stuck behind one. You'd kick it out of the way after thirty seconds, for sure.

So far we hear nothing but cheerful happy-sappy propaganda from the techies who just LOVE these things. They're salivating over the billions of dollars they're going to make.

But here's the thing. One dumber-than-shit robot is a novelty at best, an ignore-able obstruction at worst. The town pizzeria gets a couple for in-town delivery, no big deal.

Hundreds of the damn things, from UPS to the pizza guy to the government delivering welfare checks to some other dumb service/scam we haven't thought of yet, you are not going to be able to ignore that.

They have to cross the street, right? They take longer than a crippled old drunk with a walker to do it. They have to wait for traffic lights. But if there's only a stop sign, then what? You're going to see ten of them waiting at a stop sign when its busy. They're going to get stuck. They're going to get lost. They're going to get rolled upside down and broken open by kids. They're going to wander into your driveway and be attacked by the dog. They're going to end up in the middle of an intersection blowing their tiny annoying horn and blinking their distress light because they had a nervous breakdown. They'll run out of battery. They'll end up busted on your front lawn, and the cops will give -you- a ticket.

The problem, as usual, is greed. The robots suck, but they are super cheap, and they are almost good enough. So, look for your delivery job to go to a Coleman cooler on wheels in the next five years.

The Cooler Phantom

Marvel comics explained.

Marvel head boy of sales was complaining his sales were down. He blamed his customers. Nerd racism, y'know.

Some other idiot chimed in. Yes, the crap comics that weren't selling got a Hugo nomination. Shocking, right?

Then we find some schmuck in Indonesia has included secret antisemitism in X-Men.

But now I think I have the answer. The Marvel comics dilemma is what happens when you let no-talent hipster douchebags play in your sandbox. The link is to an iO9 round-up of what's been happening to Captain America since they made him a Nazi.

If you're reading Marvel comics right now, then you're probably aware that while Steve Rogers has taken up the Captain America mantle once more, something is... very off. Like, "he's secretly a fascist agent of Hydra planning to get space aliens to invade the world" off. Confused? We're here to get you caught up on "Stevil" Rogers.

If, like me, you gave up on Marvel in the 1990's before Northstar was gay, I will save you some trouble with Captain America 2017: It is a confused mess of Leftist propaganda, and the art is crap. Don't spend your money, and don't bother with the i09 link.

So, if the Big Wheels at the House of Mouse want to know what to do about tanking Marvel Comic sales, it is the following:

Your VP of sales thinks his customers are a bunch of racist nerds. You should fix that.

Offshoring your artwork to third world countries will not make you any friends in the US art world, and it has more liabilities than you thought.

Contrary to your VP of Sales (did you fire that guy yet?) what your customers don't want is Captain America Agent of Hydra. Whoever green-lighted that tomfoolery is an assassin trying to poison your company.

You're welcome.

The Comic Phantom

Found out why Marvel has been sucking.

Marvel managers have been listening to these morons here.

On Tuesday morning, the finalists for the 2017 Hugo Awards (the Oscars of sci-fi and fantasy writing) were announced by the World Science Fiction. Unsurprisingly, collected volumes of Marvel's critically acclaimed Black Panther and Ms. Marvel series were both nominated for Best Graphic Story.

These nominations come just days after Marvel's Vice President of Sales, David Gabriel, went out of his way to blame Marvel's lagging sales on comics—like Black Panther and Ms. Marvel—starring people of color and women. Suffice it to say that the optics of this whole thing don't reflect well on the publisher, but the Hugo nominations send a telling message to Marvel about just how the public actually feels about its "diverse books."

I'll repeat that last bit because it is just too sweet: "...the Hugo nominations send a telling message to Marvel about just how the public actually feels about its "diverse books."

That is actually true. It does send a telling message. And the message is "Ghostbusters got a Hugo nomination too."

The Hugo's new role in SF/F is the Kiss of Death. When you have completely jumped the shark, abandoned your morals, your values, your common sense and your audience, when your sales are tanking hard because you have been producing nothing but Lefty propaganda, you will be nominated for a Hugo.

These days a Hugo nomination is not an achievement. It is a warning.

Note to Marvel board of directors: fire everyone, start over.

The Phantom

Hugo Award Nominations are up.

I did not pay money to Worldcon this year, having been scorned and smeared two years running as some form of Nazi off-scouring by the stinking SJW Horde. You don't hand out a wooden Assterisk to commemorate my participation and expect me to buy another membership.

Therefore I will again use the Hugos as a warning label not a recommendation.

The reason why can be summed in this example:
 Nominated for best SF movie , Ghostbusters.

'Nuff said.

The Phantom

Another kitchen robot.

Pretty soon, the entire kitchen will be automated. Sally the salad robot, coming soon to a burger joint near you.

Sally occupies about the same amount of space as a dorm room refrigerator, and uses 21 different ingredients—including romaine, kale, seared chicken breast, Parmesan, California walnuts, cherry tomatoes, and Kalamata olives—to craft more than a thousand types of salad in about 60 seconds, while the customer watches the process. The machine weighs in at 350 pounds, making it more appropriate for industrial settings than for home kitchens at the moment. "Sally will be going on a diet," said its creator, Deepak Sekar, 35, founder of Chowbotics Inc., looking into his and Sally's future.
The benefits of Sally are manifold, according to Sekar. "Sally is the next generation of salad restaurant," he claims, comparing it to chains such as Chopt and Fresh & Co. For one thing, a robot can make salad faster than a human can. Also, you will know precisely how many calories your salad is delivering; there won't be the problem of consuming one piled high with garnishes that turn out to be more fattening than a burger. And it's more hygienic to have a machine prepare your salad than to have multiple people working on a line—or worse still, a serve-yourself salad bar.

Sally does require a human set of hands to prep the ingredients that go into its canisters, which are then installed in the robot. (Sekar called the process of chopping ingredients in the machine "too complicated right now," although it's something he promises for the future; he offered an analogy: "It's like paper getting stuck in a printer; it shuts down the process.")

A McDonalds will have one kid in the back keeping all the machines fed, and a cop in the front making sure people don't wreck the place.

Except there won't be a sit-down place, just an armored slot in a concrete wall. The slot spits out eco-friendly hemp based dishes full of robot prepared McGruel(TM). Because no one has a fucking job, so no one can afford a salad.

The Phantom

No wonder comic books suck.

With management like this, no wonder Marvel Comics suck.

Marvel's vice president of sales has blamed declining comic-book sales on the studio's efforts to increase diversity and female characters, saying that readers "were turning their noses up" at diversity and "didn't want female characters out there".

Over recent years, Marvel has made efforts to include more diverse and more female characters, introducing new iterations of fan favourites including a female Thor; Riri Williams, a black teenager who took over the Iron Man storyline as Ironheart; Miles Morales, a biracial Spider-Man and Kamala Khan, a Muslim teenage girl who is the current Ms Marvel.

But speaking at the Marvel retailer summit about the studio's falling comic sales since October, David Gabriel told ICv2 that retailers had told him that fans were sticking to old favourites. "What we heard was that people didn't want any more diversity," he said. "They didn't want female characters out there. That's what we heard, whether we believe that or not."

He added: "I don't know that that's really true, but that's what we saw in sales … Any character that was diverse, any character that was new, our female characters, anything that was not a core Marvel character, people were turning their nose up."

This is a guy who makes decisions on what gets the green light at Marvel Comics. Sales are down because our customers are racist/bigot/homophobe nerds who should all be ashamed of themselves!

I hate to tell you buddy, you lost me back in 1993 before Northstar was gay.

Let's consider where Marvel has been lately:

Thor is a chick.

Peter Parker is dead, Spiderman is some other kid now.

Captain America was dead, then he was some black dude fighting -against- America, and now he's alive again, but he's a Nazi.

Wolverine is a broken old man dying of something, Professor X is an incontinent demented geezer who killed all the X-Men by accident, America is Hell and Canada is The Promised Land. (Seriously, have any of you hipsters ever even BEEN to Canada? Or out of Manhattan?)

Johnny Storm is a black kid with a white sister, and Mr. Fantastic is a cowardly dickhead. Sadly, the Johnny Storm thing was not dumbest thing about that movie.

Tony Stark is either dead or in detox, Iron Man is a black chick with big hair.

Various minor superheros who were straight are now gay as their single most defining characteristic.

That's not "diversity." That is imaginational bankruptcy. (Imaginational is totally a word.)

I do not want to pay three or four dollars for a ten-page comic that is mostly full page panels of blood spatter and advertising. I want to read Peter Parker, the Amazing Spiderman vs Villain Guy. I do NOT want to read "Peter Parker transitioning to female," or "Peter Parker dies horribly and some random scrub takes over for him. Then dies horribly."

I am not going to collect twenty different universes, most of which only exist so that big name characters can be gay, or chicks, or gay chicks, or some other fucked-up combination.

Stan Lee and those old geezers in wheelchairs started with a simple concept. What if Spiderman was a real kid, who really lived in NYC? What would happen? Then they ran with it. That's what made Marvel awesome, and I suggest if you want your sales to climb back up out of the toilet, you get back to it ASAP.

So, if you want to have a gay black girl with big hair in a wheelchair be an armored crime fighter, I might be up for that.  As long as the thing isn't one long boring sermon about how much America sucks.

Making her Iron Man? Nope. Not going to read it. Tony Stark is Iron Man, Peter Parker is Spider Man, Thor is the SON of Odin, Johnny Storm is a smart alec blond kid, and Colossus is a straight Russian dude with a Boris Badenov accent you can spread on toast. How fucked is it that the best X-Man movie so far is fricking Deadpool?

The Phantom

Hollywood writers threaten strike!

There's a new reality coming to slap Hollywood upside its head.

"It's getting more and more difficult to make a living as a writer," said John Bowman, a TV writer-producer, and former head of the WGA negotiating committee.

Naturally, being a pack of socialist idiots, the heavily Left leaning Writers Union proposes to strike. The last time they did that was 2007.

The article is blaming the Internet and Netflix, but similar things are happening in the newspaper, book and magazine publishing. Being a Left-leaning writer of Left-leaning propaganda in print form is a shrinking business model. Newspapers are going under all the time,

There's no reason to think that movies and TV shows are any different. If nobody is watching your crap, you are not going to get paid.

The Phantom