My Official Comment on WorldCon 2018’s Social Justice Cannibal Feeding Frenzy

People keep asking me what I think about the recent WorldCon 2018 freak out and the usual suspects currently beclowning themselves in an effort to see who is the most offended, and who can virtue signal the hardest about how they’re offended too… but after exposing the Hugos as a politically biased circle jerk, I retired from Hugoing years ago.  I proved my point. All my people moved on with life. We’d rather go someplace actually fun.

However when you’ve got a culture addicted to outrage, if the people they’re usually outraged about aren’t around anymore, they’ve still got to get outraged at somebody.  They chased away everybody with the wrong politics, got the all-progressive paradise they’ve always wanted, and then promptly started yelling at each other for being insufficiently woke.

I’m curious to see if any of my left wing author friends will actually stand up and say enough with this nonsense, you’re killing our con, grow up.  But I’m betting not, because they’re scared of the angry mobs they helped create. Wimps.

So the entirety of my official statement on this latest WorldCon clusterfuck is:

Ha! 

Told you so. 

Couldn’t have happened to a nicer bunch. Y’all deserve each other.  

Back from GenCon
Last Chance to Nominate for the Dragon Awards

299 thoughts on “My Official Comment on WorldCon 2018’s Social Justice Cannibal Feeding Frenzy”

  1. My Schadenboner is approaching the Kuiper Belt by now. I only wish I had the local franchise for hot buttered popcorn and ice cold beer. . . .

    1. I open the bottle of WhistlePig rye at most only once a month. Today, for this, I poured myself a double, oh yes.

    2. My dear Keith, the way that this has all been going, we could do more than just buttered popcorn, and go straight for the billion variations of delicious gourmet popcorn, and a full on drinks bar, with a variation of choices for one’s beverages.

  2. The year of the Assterisk Awards, they were proud of what a great job of gatekeeping WorldCon did. Now, they’re complaining about gatekeepers.

  3. Gatekeeping is GREAT…until you find yourself on the other side of Said gate…. Sucks to be them. It’s not like they were warned or anything…Oh Wait.

    1. Indeed. I think the concom is having their Robespierre/Trotsky/Ernst Röhm moment as we speak.

      They’re protesting that they do so love Big Brother as hard as anyone else, but the twitmob’s lust for the blood of heretics/JOOOS/witches/kulaks does not seem to be waning.

      Meanwhile, Scalzi is “giving up his slots” (plural)… He only had one slot. NBD, it was probably sour anyway.

      The concom appeared to be trying to salvage something by putting people on panels that prospective attendees might have at least heard of, but nope. Gotta give those slots to any obscure poseur nominated for the Annual Gernsback Participation Trophy. And no, the circlejerk that nominates people for the trophy is not “the same people” who might be attending the con.

      Now they’ve got to develop an all-new programming track. For a Worldcon. With three weeks left to go. With no “names” as a draw.

      Perhaps someone will be able to pick up “Worldcon” and the other WSFS trademarks cheaply at the bankruptcy sale.

      1. Social Justice Guillotines, anyone?

        As to the Worldcon brand, let it die. Or buy it and bury it, preferably with a stake through the heart, it’s guts full of garlic, the head(s) chopped off and holy wafers put in every orifice, and buried on opposite sides of a fast moving, constantly flowing body of water.

        Once tainted, never pure again.

  4. I admit I wasn’t paying attention. Is there a good writeup somewhere of what “the recent WorldCon 2018 freak out” entails?

    1. I’m not sure. I’ve only been catching bits of it on Facebook. The whole thing is hilarious. 😀

        1. I read through the linke, well started too and then ended up quickly scanning it. Sounds a bit like a storm in a teacup.

          Thanks for the link though.

          But one bit, aboutthe dress code for the Hugos: “George R. R. Martin famously tends to show up in a trademark peaked cap and suspenders.” The joys of being an Englishman . . . and the horrors of a visual imagination.

          1. Ashley:

            American “suspenders” = British “braces”.
            British “suspenders” = American “garter belt”, which I refuse to believe that anyone wants to see GRRM wearing.

          2. TL;DR: annoyed at myself that I was afraid to share my real name here + it’s not just the Hugos.

            No worries. It was originally shared by a writer I like called Jason Sanford on Twitter, so props to him for the original RT. While I might not always agree with his take on things, that doesn’t stop me from enjoying his work.

            Also, em*, this is probably strange, but I feel somewhat embarrassed for writing my name as “Anonymous” as if I were embarrassed to be here to comment under my real name, or afraid of the “left-wing mob” going after me. I’m not afraid, but the thought did cross my mind — and I was in a hurry.

            I do agree that this scandal seems blown out of proportion. And, like, Larry (whose books I will surely be reading as soon as I’m done with my Iain Banks binge), I just can not take the Hugos seriously. But the same can be said for a number of other awards, it would seem.

            Has anyone read the short story Welcome to Your Authentic Indian Experience(TM) (Apex Magazine)?

            Well, once I saw how many awards it got nominated for (almost every single one in the field) I was thinking — oh, this *must* be a story about identity politics, which is why everyone loved it so much (of course, the title was a giveaway, but still) — and was procrastinating reading it because I was so afraid I would be disappointed.

            To say that again, I was putting off reading a story that got nominated for the Hugo and Sturgeon awards, is a Locus “recommended story,” and *won* the Nebula (!). And instead of excitement to read it all I felt was dread, afraid that it would be a letdown.

            I did eventually read it; it’s a decently written story, but I wasn’t exactly thrilled. Can it be that my bias against identity politics prevented me from truly appreciating it? On some level, perhaps. But I know that it wasn’t what I’d have liked from an award-winning science fiction story. I want my SF to be ORIGINAL (and the mechanic behind the story is essentially a VR experience), but, more importantly, I want it to have ideas that are, for the lack of a better word, dangerous.

            I do want my worldview challenged. I do want something that goes against the mold. But instead, all I got was something that all the “leading voices in science fiction” would have surely approved of. How is that dangeorus?

            Anyway, sorry for the rant. I’m not on the right politically, or the left. I just want good stories that make me think, regardless of who wrote them.

            And I’m sure they’re out there … but I doubt they’ll be winning any major awards any time soon.

            If you’ve read my rant, thank you for time & have a nice day.

            *Interjection, not a pronoun.

          3. Max,
            I’ve used a pseudonymn for years because way back in the old days that’s what all upstanding people did on the internet. It seemed really weird to me after having my reputation and identity established as a consistent person (Synova) to find that people were suddenly all down on the practice of pseudonymnous communication.

            There are as many legitimate reasons for using pseudonymns as their ever was. It doesn’t take saying something “bad” before a person might not want their “social” sphere to intersect their “professional” one, for example. In the world before social media (or even usenet) a person had to put some effort into mixing “work” and “home” but now it takes effort to avoid mixing them. And maybe, just MAYBE, the world would be a better place if we were allowed to operate in various “company” the way one used to be able to “code switch” from polite company to family gathering to relaxing with buddies.

            As for stories being awesome or not, there’s always the matter of taste differing. But your description of dread and aversion to something labeled an “award winner” sounds incredibly familiar.

          4. Indeed, a bit of a smirk about the differences in a (theoretically) common language, followed by a “Pass the brain-bleach” moment at the thought of what it might actually look like . .

        2. I left a comment there, but it probably won’t last long.

          “An entire rant about identity politics, (and, admittedly, bad planning) and not one word about good stories.

          Huh, looks like the Sad Puppies were correct all along.

          You people built this house, now you have to live with it. Best of luck with that…..”

      1. (try this under my own name)
        I read the article CLFA linked to and nearly set a record for fastest face-palm at 10 seconds. The proceeded to see how many times I could execute a full face-palm before finishing the article. I stopped counting at 6. Of course that was about the time I nearly fell out of my chair laughing.

        *It’s all the old school, white, conservative’s fault.* Too rich. What conservatives are left at WC?

          1. Basically some male freak was affronted that Worldcon corrected his chosen pronoun(tm) Instead of being ya know normal and getting this resolved behind the scene, he decides to go full Voldemort demolishing Howarths because HOLOCAUST! HOLODMAR! OPRESSION! SPERGING AT SOMETHING!
            The apology and the refusal to accept just grew like a nuclear reactor going critical.
            Meanwhile, as the world yawns(tm) Worldcon is going supernova and we should see the blast of light soon.

            xavier

        1. There are some, but they keep their heads down and mostly keep their politics private. I know because my husband is one of them (he’s out about his politics), and we know several others that are not out about their politics. But they have emailed him privately and thanked him for some of his mailing list posts.

      1. The Daily Dot also managed to bring up Sad Puppies right off the bat, as if this clusterfuck has anything to do with “conservative backlash”.

        1. Like there’s any conservatives left at WorldCon to generate a “backlash.” Nope. This is all on them. The crabs got their wish and have the bucket all to themselves…and they’re doing pretty much what you’d expect crabs to do when they’re sharing a bucket.

        2. Reliable sources tell me that our old pal Cacophonous Fornication is tsk-tsking you over at Vile 770. They need to change the subject because it’s easier than dealing with their own mess.

          1. That doofus reads everything I write on the internet looking for wrongthink to report. He’s not my only creepy weirdo stalker, but he’s one of the more pretentious ones.

          2. And sure enough, he shows up. Because he’s a loser with nothing better to do.

          3. Hilarious to see you answer to “cacophonous fornication”, floppy.

            How do y’all like being the Designated Bad Guys for a change? WorldCon is now run by racist/bigot/transphobes! Fun, right?

        3. It basically does though. Because they purged the wrongfunners and changed the rules to ensure we’d stay away. Then they had to prove their wokeness by nominating ever more ‘diverse’ authors but to manage that they had to reach for more and more obscure authors. Now they have a bunch of nominees who no one knows and those people want the respect of being on panels with the big names. No, sorry, not with but instead of, the big names.

          So, in a way, they’re right that this kerfuffle is because of the sad puppies. However, where they’re wrong is it is not the fault of the puppies but rather their reaction to the puppies.

          Essentially this is a gun shot wound to the foot caused by the bad limp caused by multiple gun shot wounds to the same foot over the years.

          All self inflicted. But they need someone to blame hence the sad puppies. You’re the gun guy, Larry, you should’ve told them not to shoot their own foot. I mean, sure, you did tell them. Repeatedly and forcefully. But couldn’t you have been a liberal so there might have been a chance they’d have listened to you?

          See, so it is all your fault. You wrong fun maker, you.

          1. Garbage like this is how American youth got stuck reading “Moby Dick.” Make the ‘obscure and unpopular’ be famous and 50 years from now the teachers will have these idiots as examples of ‘seminal works of Sci Fi in the 2010’s.’

            Please. No. Stop pushing these progressive unknowns upon us. It’s for the Children. Think of the Children.

          2. >Garbage like this is how American youth got stuck reading “Moby Dick.”

            Point of order: I like Moby-Dick. A lot.

            However, expecting a typical high schooler to read it makes zero friggin’ sense.

            While there are undoubtedly people who can get value from Moby-Dick before the age of, say, 30 or 35, they’re thin on the ground.

          3. “Make the ‘obscure and unpopular’ be famous and 50 years from now the teachers will have these idiots as examples of ‘seminal works of Sci Fi in the 2010’s.’ ”

            Probably not. While I have no doubt that “Cruel and Unusual English Literature” will continue to inflict the same unreadable “classics” on children (because study materials are available so teachers can pretend to have read them), the books pushed by the Tor clique will soon fade away.

            The purpose of the ‘obscure and unpopular’ books is to be able to signal to the world that you are super hip and with it. No one, not even the Torlings or Vilers actually really reads those books for fun- some don’t even really read them.
            And once the hipness fades, the books (and the author) are quietly discarded for the new hipness.

        4. Other than laughing at their self-inflicted immolation, we Sad Puppies have long since placed the banner in a flag-holding stand and moved on. I love how we’re STILL getting blamed for their actions, even when we’ve had absolutely nothing to do with this Worldcon.

          This one is all on them. And I saw the complaint about the pronouns. I saw that and thought “I would NOT be surprised if spellcheck did an autocorrect on that one…”

          1. Regarding the sad story of how “Moby Dick” got foisted upon an unsuspecting public in the 1920’s, check out the Wiki story.

            I would have rather read some Hawthorne than some Melville.

            It’s like which author was selected for Sci-Fi in our literature classes. No Heinlein, nor any of the great masters of the 20th Century (before 1980.) Just weird stuff by 2nd tier authors.

    2. https://mobile.twitter.com/robkroese/status/1021771221363507202

      There’s reason to think Foz Meadows is the spouse of a troll that has been boring over at Mad Genius Club.

      (Before the usual folks start denying the possibility, I am aware that the first person to go public with the allegation has recanted. I remember when Dave first addressed that troll as Fieldsy. My memory is that the troll was better behaved after that. I believe my memory of that evidence, and the other evidence Dave presented. It seems plausible that the first source to go public was intimidated into recanting.)

      1. If you mean me then no, I’m not and the only of Dave Freer’s reasons (bless him) that was vaguely valid was that I live on the same continent. The other reasons offered by Dave required me to live in Queensland currently (I don’t) and also to have been living & commenting at MGC from Aberdeen in Scotland, a city I’ve never visited (& I haven’t visited Scotland in general, this century).

        I don’t know why Lou A spread that story in the first place or why specifically he recanted (other than maybe he finally did check his sources and spotted problems with them).

        Anyhoo, don’t let me interrupt you all. Carry on as normal 🙂

        1. Despite the IP addresses from your e-mails and website comments that put you in both places, ScrambleBrains?

          1. They don’t, scramble brains. I know because I’ve never been to Aberdeen and have never posted anything online from Scotland EVER under any identity. I’ve posted comments here, I’ve posted comments at Brad T’s blog, posted at MGC, never done so from Aberdeen or Scotland in general.

          2. I thought you posted all your comments while latched onto Glyer’s greasy taint.

        2. Oh, Camelstraw Feppledouche is back… I’ve never given a shit who you are in real life. All I need to know is that you’re a moron on the internet. Now fuck off.

          1. Happy to let you stew in your resentment Larry, only popped by to challenge that silly nonsense about ‘fieldsy’. I’d assumed most of you had quietly worked out how silly it was around the same time Lou A did but apparently some people are still sticking with it despite that.

          2. Like I said already, I truly don’t give a shit what your real name is. You’ll always just be Some Moron to me. Now really, when I said “fuck off” that wasn’t an invitation to continue the discussion, you clueless dolt. You can do your creepy weirdo stalker shtick quietly.

          3. Larry, you know that Floppy Cameldork will think that’s an invitation…

            (Funny how he comments to ‘challenge’ that ‘nonsense’. If it was nonsense, it wouldn’t be important to him.)

            And seriously, what IS it about Vile770? They attract creepy weirdo stalkers like flies to a honeypot. Oh wait, it’s all they do. Check out how they’ve suddenly decided this neutral, late to the whole thing person who is (understandably) tilting his head at the whole thing is ‘someone to call out.’

            https://poweredbyrobots.com/2018/07/24/an-outsiders-point-of-view-why-did-worldcon-76-implode/

            It’s almost as if they decided to get google alerts on Worldcon, Worldcon 2018.

          4. @James

            You gave a very neutral, third party observation that I think was very fair. Thus I felt it worthy of passing along. You don’t deserve whatever crap the Vilers give you.

          5. Thanks, Shadowdancer. Except for their initial comments, they’ve pretty much left me out of it. Then again, as you say, I’m late to the game. After far as I can tell, the meltdown and its consequences is far from over.

          6. I am an neutral party here, I just like to research the stripper names of people. I found a couple that might have some meaning for you…this Mike Glyer you speak of through I found through sheer happenstance I am sure that his stripper name is in fact Greasy Taint, he does have other possibilities that might be meaningful to you, the most prominent name after Greasy Taint happens to be Chinese Robo Whore, Maybe this means something to you or not, the one you are responding to here has a couple names you might find have meaning to you, the most prominent name is interestingly enough is Glyer Sycophant, the next one is long and oddly specific but it is “Of course I am not a college professor you should know that my writing betrays the fact that I am not qualified to teach pre-school children the ABC’s let alone technical adults”. interesting that …….. but onward, your name is interesting and I hope it has significance to you is Mountain God, I always wonder if the names I find have any bearing on the person, on a personal note thank you for standing up to the crybullys and for being a beacon for others who sometimes think they are alone in Wrongthink and Wrongfun.

          7. sorry for the bad punctuation the editor function doesn’t work when your connection is cut.

        3. Oh, good lord! Cameltoe Fappington is like Voldemort. It appears as soon as you mention its name. How obsessive you must be to constantly monitor Larry’s site for any mention of your pretentious, gassy pseudonym!

    3. The short version.

      1) In the bio, they labeled a “gender nonconforming” author as “he” rather than the preferred pronoun.
      2) In the panels, some of the nominees weren’t given spots on panels and it was deemed to be because of their non-white status.

      I think there was also a statement by a con organizer that “We don’t pay attention to what you read, our fun is in running the con” that might have been in there as well.

    4. So much to cover….

      The most recent is within hours of publishing their panels they withdrew them because of complaints. Not enough LGBT panels, not enough feminists panels, not enough POC panels, the Hugo nominees weren’t on panels, several name authors withdrew from panels to make space for unknowns, etc…

  5. I just find it hilarious that they are (a) still blaming the Sad Puppies movement for this, and (b) still unable to admit that Sad Puppies was about ending discrimination, not increasing it.

    I’m also seeing it compared to people from minority groups not winning enough Oscars, but they are too dense to realize that by comparing the Hugos to the most rigged award ceremony in the entertainment industry they are not really helping their case.

    1. The funny thing is, the Hugos are actually *very* similar to the Oscars. They are both awards given by private(ish) clubs. The main difference is the requirement for joining the club. For the Hugos, you just have to buy a membership in the current year’s convention; the Oscars have a much higher bar – winning an Oscar is an automatic invite, otherwise you have to be sponsored by a current member.

      1. Wait, that’s how you earn Oscar voting privileges? I thought you just had to be a working professional in the American film industry, but that’s even worse than I thought. Though I guess the Hugos’ method is to say anyone can join and then terrorize anyone who tries to join but is personally disliked by the main clique. So in that case both are pretty bad.

      2. Those requirements (the Oscar club’s membership requirements) are so ridiculous that I had to double-check. Not that I had any reason to doubt you, but even so. And what I found at http://www.oscars.org/about/join-academy says that it’s even MORE ridiculous than you said it was: 1) you have to be sponsored by TWO current members, not just one, and 2) each member may only sponsor one person PER YEAR. (It says “per cycle”, but their “cycle” is one year). And sponsorship doesn’t guarantee an invitation: after being sponsored, you then have to be cleared by the executive committee of your branch (a “branch” is a category, like actors/directors/writers/producers, all of which have their own membership-vetting committees) and then final approval has to come from the Board of Governors.

        A more perfect system for blacklisting people who engage in BadThink, and ensuring absolute social conformity in public (plus quiet backstabbing in private), would be hard to imagine. It fits in perfectly with the train wreck that is Hollywood’s sense of morality.

    2. Something tells me they’ll be seeing Puppies under their beds for many years to come.

      Look at the way that “Nazi” is still one of their go-to insults, even though there haven’t been any real Nazis for, like, 70 years.

      Basically, their “thought leaders” stopped getting pravda updates after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and they’ve been running on fumes ever since.

      1. Yep. Their love for screaming Nazi, especially at people who have fought against things like dictatorships, Apartheid, and done actual things about real problems in the world… really is just the screaming of the cowardly and petulant that don’t have the spinal fortitude to do anything more than scream, and do Internet lynch mobs and rumormonger.

    3. “… but they are too dense to realize that by comparing the Hugos to the most rigged award ceremony in the entertainment industry …”

      That would be the Grammy’s

      1. I pay even less attention to the music industry than I do to the film industry, so the number of times the Grammys have spontaneously appeared in my thoughts is approximately never.

  6. Leftist revolutions inevitably turn on themselves. Leftists require an outsider to be the cause of all their ills and if they don’t have a legitimate group of outsiders, they will manufacture them from within their former allies.

    All this has happened before and all this will happen again.

    1. When our plans don’t result in utopia, it can’t possibly be because utopia is impossible! Quick, find the dissident!

      1. Dissident, saboteur, or on rare occasion just incompetent buffoon.

        Never even a first thought, let alone a second one, about how if a “perfect” or “scientific” system keeps failing (see Socialism) no matter who tries to implement the system, it may be that the system isn’t as “scientific” or “perfect” as initially believed.

        1. The problem with socialism, or any utopian ideology, is the assumption that given the right circumstances, every human being will behave in a predictable manner. Just remove whatever is the “problem element” and all your problems go away. Never mind the fact that human beings are an incredibly diverse species (and incredibly imperfect) and will never be able to create a system that perfectly accounts for all those myriad differences. You can only approximate it, as was done with the creation of the American constitutional republic. But I have a feeling most of these extremists have never read the constitution.

  7. Mr. Correia

    I know this will sound weird, but have you read Theodore Kaczynskis essay, “Industrial Society and Its Future”?

    I know he was not a good guy, and I furthermore do not agree with his methods or actions in any way. But I did read his “manifesto”, as I was intrigued by his story, and the fact that his IQ was over 150, and yet went down that path, which maybe shows that logic over empathy is not always good, as Spock and Jim also taught us. For further pop-refs, the difference in IQ between him and the average person, was greater that between the average person and Forrest Gump.

    His first chapters cover the detrimental effect of modern leftism, chapter 2 is aptly named “The pshycology of modern leftism” and the third is named “Feelings of inferiority”. Which, should give you and idea where this is headed. I do believe that you would thoroughly enjoy reading this, albeit, it was hard not to judge his words or thoughts in light of his actions.

    1. You’re making a category error. JUST BECAUSE he had a high IQ (mine is higher. And I’m the mental midget of my family. Guess what? The one who worries us the most for making asinine decisions has an ESTIMATED IQ of 184 (after 165 it’s fuzzy. It just means he maxed all their tests.)) it doesn’t mean he was using anything resembling logic. His entire manifesto was warmed up Marxist twaddle and bad history, not to mention atrocious psychology. It was all feels over logic.
      So. Be ware. The most common occupation of Mensans is janitor. The most common politics to the left of Lenin.
      Just because one is smart, doesn’t mean one USES it for anything but justifying his feels. (Yeah, I make concordance between one and his because I used to teach English. Deal.)

      1. Being good at the sorts of things IQ tests measure does not mean someone is good at all things, even all analytical or academic things. Makes me think of someone I know who uses high IQ as a justification for being rude to people because “it’s not my fault they’re not smart enough to understand me”. A high-IQ person might be truly brilliant, or they might just be brilliant at making shit up. (Besides, I’m not sure I’d be able to knowingly read anything Ted Kaczynski wrote without actually vomiting.)

        1. People read all sorts of things out of curiosity. And it’s entirely possible for someone to be right about some things and desperately horribly wrong about others. (It took me a while to remember who Ted Kaczynski was.)

          For the IQ thing… someone once compared it to living life with a monster truck 4X4…. you still get stuck in the mud, just like the little Ford Fiesta, but by the time you get stuck you’re in really really deep sh*t.

          1. All true. I have in fact read some other things by and about people who did similar horrible crimes, and I think there is some value in understanding evil in order to avoid it, but my primary problem with reading Kaczynski is that he’s smart enough to dress up his insanity in a way that it gets in your head. I’d rather read *about* what he thought than actually read his manifesto. Plus, his rantings about the American political establishment were directly related to his justification for blowing it up, which I think makes it difficult to separate the two even if he was right about a few of his criticisms. So in conclusion, my argument is that you can read it if you want, but that I don’t think it’s worth trudging through the crazy in order to find a few decent points. Better to spend that time reading intelligent, rational political analyses written by non-murderers.

          2. Kaczynski was a lonely guy who went to a faraway school while still 16, got picked by one of the all-time creepy psych professors for a study in breaking people, never got any help from the university afterwards… And so on. Kaczynski was not a nice guy, and it is no excuse; but he did have a good look at the nastiness of the left. By being a victim. (Bombing everyone is not the answer, though.)

        2. I’ve been told “You aren’t smart enough to understand me”, and my answer has always been, “Oh, I understand you perfectly. You’re a typical elitist dolt, one each. Where I fail is the ability to tolerate you. Go. Away.”

      2. Sarah it makes one wonder if tests for IQ are all that accurate? I’ve seen a lot of stupid behavior and writing from so called high IQ people.
        Jim

        1. Or that “IQ” just doesn’t mean much in everyday life.
          (BTW, measuring of everything – like intelligence – is a product of proto-progressivism. That you can measure everything about people and put them in boxes based on those measurements, and manipulate them and interchange the ones in a box like cogs, and…..)

        2. One cannot intelligibly distill whAt requires a multi variant analysis down to a digit and have it represent anything meaningful.

        3. IQ tests are usually a reasonably good predictor (and there’s a reason I said “usually”, with emphasis) of academic performance for the people with IQs within two to three standard deviations from the mean. (And two standard deviations means 95% of the population, by definition). It’s when you get out into the extremes that its value lessens. A friend of mine (and I want to clarify that I’m NOT talking about myself here, unlike most uses of the “a friend of mine” formula) who’s in the 99.9999th percentile (the one-in-a-million level) once wrote an essay in which he compared having extremely high intelligence to owning an SR-71 Blackbird instead of a car. Sure, for the tasks it’s designed to do it’s GREAT. But for ordinary uses like dropping the kids off at school it’s horribly inefficient compared to, say, a sports car (which would be the guy with an IQ of 145, three standard deviations above the mean, in the 99.7th percentile). You can’t get gas for your Blackbird at ordinary gas stations, it’s got a terrible turn radius at intersections, and let’s not get started on how hard it is to find parking for the thing. And before I wander too far off the point, the IQ test gets really fuzzy and inaccurate at those stratospheric levels. Another guy I know took an IQ test in fourth grade; his score was something like 160, but they weren’t sure about that score because he basically maxed out the test: he answered all the questions, and was apparently disappointed that there weren’t any more questions because he was having so much fun taking that test. So he could have an IQ of 165, or 170, or even 180 and his test results would have been the same.

          So IQ tests are reasonably good at predicting academic performance (but not much else, which is a whole ‘nother subject, BTW) for the majority of the population that aren’t in the thin end of the Bell curve. (And then there’s the study from Norway, with a HUGE sample size, that concluded that more years of schooling can raise your IQ test results. So there’s a kind of feedback loop going on there, where high IQ means you’ll do well in school, and doing well in school can raise your IQ. Which is not surprising: if schooling trains you to do well in school, which it does, then you’d expect that result.) However, for the people at the thin end of the Bell curve, the standard IQ tests can’t differentiate between the varying levels of extremely high intelligence. And regarding your “stupid behavior from high IQ people” line: yep. IQ only measures one type of intelligence. Questions that require “common sense” or wisdom (a totally different type of intelligence) aren’t present on the test. So you can have someone with high IQ and low wisdom, high IQ and high wisdom, low IQ and low wisdom, or low IQ and high wisdom; IQ and wisdom are pretty much orthogonal to each other and have almost no correlation.

          1. And then there are people like me. In grade school I tested around 140 (+/-) on a standard IQ test. However, I did not do overly well in school. High enough that regular classes were not challenging (I could cost and still get a B average) but not high enough to keep up with the Advanced classes. Years later, when I played with a test book I found, I still got 140 (+/-) on the main test, but on all of the subject specific tests I scored in the median (100 +/- ) with variances for subjects where I was stronger or weaker. So I have been left to wonder where that 140 came from (especially given that I am often one of the last people to grasp something).

          2. “Intelligence is knowing that a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom, on the other hand, is deciding not to include tomato in your fruit salad.”

            (That’s taken from a longer quote enjoyed by those who have played D&D and other fantasy-based RPG’s – “Str – the ability to CRUSH a tomato; Dex – the ability to DODGE a tomato thrown at you; Con – the ability not to THROW UP after having eaten a rotten tomato, Int – the ability to KNOW that a tomato is a fruit; Wis – the ability to NOT include tomato in your fruit salad; and Cha – the ability to SELL a tomato-based fruit salad. Of course, there is always that one player that claims a tomato-based fruit salad is nothing more than salsa – he ultimately plays the party’s BARD”)

          3. I would also make the claim that IQ predicts the ability to learn the material in school, but not necessarily the ability to earn good grades. That takes additional skills such as time management, school-related social skills, the ability to focus on your work for extended periods of time, etc.

          4. My experience is that high IQ just means that one processes information faster…. but that doesn’t necessarily mean that one doesn’t come to the wrong conclusion…. just that one got to it faster than average.

            Although it also means that the mistakes tend to be learned from faster, so over time perhaps fewer get made, and perhaps more bad ideas can be discarded before they’re tried, at least.

          5. There are also lots of people who test high who just for some reason or another don’t do well in school. Raw score is just that, a score. It does not, by itself, mean much, just that the taker of the test performed well on that test, and it may, or most likely does, indicate that there’s something there.

            Some people also have built in ‘test-savviness’ that allows them to achieve higher on standard tests than they maybe ‘should.’ Testing with a sampling of IQ tests, across a broad spectrum of styles, will give a much truer reading.

          1. The more successful people I know are high-ish IQ (120+). Most of the really successful people I know are in the 120-140 range with significant complimentary talents/skills, not at the higher levels.

            One of the least successful people I’ve ever known is IQ 150+…. his IQ mostly is used to come up with quick explanations about how nothing is ever his fault.

        4. IQ measures different before and after breakfast, it varies by season, or if you have a cold. I’m not kidding, they’ve done those studies and the results show IQ doesn’t really measure very well.

          Plus, it doesn’t measure -intelligence-. It measures a person’s ability to take an IQ test. As seen above, lots of high IQ people are idiots.

        5. As a former Mensa member I can answer this one. (1) There are only a few tests that even purport to distinguish IQs near or above 132 (the supposed Mensa qualification level). And since schools aren’t even supposed to use IQ for placement any more, there is effectively no market for new tests.

          (2) The notion of IQ came from a theory that said everyone’s mind develops in the same way, only at different speeds; thus IQ was mental age divided by chronological age. This theory came out in the 19-teens and was discredited within 6 months after it was published. The only reason the term is still used even by laymen is that no one has come up with any other way to quantify intelligence.

          (3) For what it’s worth, Mensa uses a list of 20 or 30 tests and will accept a score in the top 2% on any of them for admission (though there are only a couple they will administer themselves). These tests don’t really correlate very strongly with one another, so I estimate that 15-20% of the population can get into Mensa if they really want to be there.

      3. Sarah, the problem with IQ is that it only indicates the potential for learning. I do understand that as IQ goes up, that person’s world view tends to be a bit different from the average person. Otherwise, it’s all GIGO factor. If you have an IQ of 160 (Einstein level) it doesn’t mean you’re going to be a rocket scientist. If you get fed progressive/socialist trash as a kid, you’re very liable to take it as gospel truth and run with it….and be an ignorant twit. Especially since mine is up there a bit too, IQ does not impress me at all these days….

        1. Chris.
          Agree. Though if you analyze the tests, it is mostly solving problems, mathematical or otherwise. I therefore deduct that it is a crude indicator of logic and/or reasoning more than anything. So an intelligent person has as you say the potential for learning with more ease, even if they did not choose the academic path in life.

          1. The IQ tests – I’ve taken all of them bar the most recent ones – tend to test for things that are easily tabulated. Speed, short term memory, and math, mostly.

            Which is fine if that’s your definition of intelligence, but not so great for avoiding becoming a Darwin Award exemplar.

      4. The point was the pretty accurate description of the 90s leftists, which translates to modern day sjws. I found it a hilarious read. He had valid points, and some were not. It is also presented as food for thought, not a truth.

        That was it. I do disagree on the use of the word Marxism in many posts here, as it is a pretty diverse school of philosophy.

        I will leave arguing my alleged IQ on the internet though.

        1. Depends on how you measure and classify philosophies.

          In Zoology, earlier taxonomy was based on how similar the animals were physically. Molecular biology is a newer but now well established practice of taxonomy that involves classifying animals by how and when mutations may have changed their proteins.

          There’s a similar technique in classifying politics by use of language. You can look at a lot of statements, and tell who was influenced by what thinkers because of using language coined by those thinkers.

          There were socialists before Marx, but Marx was pretty much a Martin Luther who created a fundamentally different socialist religion, that functioned in very different ways from prior iterations of socialism. There are essentially no longer any forms of socialism that are not Marxist.

          One indicator is the arc of history nonsense. A historian who is competent in modern science would tell you that a) cherrypicking points and fitting a line to them is not valid b) Even if you did have a line through valid data, it is invalid beyond the bounds of the data. We only have historical data for the past, extrapolating to the future is beyond the data. ‘Mathematical’ forecasts decades into the future are mostly garbage. Current usage is mostly derivative from Marx.

          Marx is very broadly influential. There are very few ideologies that haven’t been contaminated.

          The German Worker’s Party, the Italian Fascist Party, and the Communist Parties are all subsets of Marxism. They inherit the diseases of Marxism, and in the case of the Communists, managed to create and sustain a more virulently evil religion. Very many Marxists these days are also communists.

          The ‘diversity’ in Marxism is an artifact of three factors. 1. Being a contaminating and syncratic religion, it has corrupted the practice of a number of other religions and philosophical practices. 2. There yet remain some Marxists who are not communists. 3. Lots of people hang around the early stages of Marxist socialism and do not work themselves around to the logical end. The third is caused by human diversity. The second may yet change. The first does not really count as the diversity of Marxism.

          1. Bob

            Good answer, and I thank you for some intelligent arguments which is so very rare on thee internet these days 🙂
            I’d like to answer your points in order of appearance per paragraph.

            – The usage of language. I’d rather argue that it would be more accurately stated as the usage of terms. Using the language, or even terms to appropriate the underlying agenda/philosophy, might be influenced by too many factors. Language is fluid, our understanding is fluid (based on background etc) and it changes over time. As we have seen with the over zealous “SJWs” some words are in time deemed inappropriate etc. So I’d take great care in judging ones intended meaning by language itself. Unless of course the person states: “As Marx said..” :o)

            – Socialism as a religion. Yes and no, many people take their philosophies to a whole different level, can’t argue that. Stating that all socialist ideology today is Marxist in it’s nature is doubtful. As you said, Marx created his ideology on prior iterations, with some adjustments. So, I do not know if I can say that: “If a socialist political movements has one commonality with Marx’s theories, it must be Marxist”. My fundamental bother with the usage of the word Marxism is that the political socialism and the philosophical viewpoint may not neccesarily be the same thing today, although it might have been that way with communism before, or at least more closely related.

            If we look at the scandinavian countries, which one might call pretty “socialist”, I would not go as far as calling them Marxist as in my mind, those are not always the same thing. So I guess we arrive at your first point, the use of language, and us two might be looking at this matter from different perspectives. 🙂

            If I’d dare to analyze your choice of words/language (See my first paragraph, its a slippery slope): “Contaminated/contaminating”, “Corrupted”, “virulently evil religion”, “Communists” (which has pretty strong connotations in the US english dating back to the 50’s at least).
            This would lead me to the belief that you are not arguing from a neutral standpoint, one might even say from a hostile standpoint towards this subject matter, based on the use of strong connotations to death, disease and strict religion.

            To clarify, I do not classify myself as left or right, socialist or capitalist and don’t fully agree with any politics or religion. Many things have good points. I do believe that we could go further in our social evolution as species if we’d just chill and talk about things, putting our emotions aside for a bit. (At least let them guide us, not rule us).

            I do thank you for that reply though, you do have interesting points that I have to look into further!

          2. From an American perspective, there are virtually no socialists that are not Marxists. American culture is heavily driven by individualism, due to being an assimilation of a number of very different cultures. Very different cultures have incompatible practices for shared property. Individual property rights are the only workable compromise, when you do not have a single donor culture that can force the others to convert to its values of shared property. America has, or had, very little in the way of collective property rights in its culture. In America, all the values promoting collective property rights come from religious convictions.

            Historically, there were religious vaguely Christian groups that attempted to practice socialism. If there are any left in the United States, they are never the people you meet who are socialists, or who advocate socialist values. The pre-Marx socialists were heavily voluntary. They did not use government force to make people participate in their experiments. The use of government force to force participation in collective ownership or government ownership experiments is a feature of post Marx socialism, the socialism with his influence. It is as strongly associated with Marx’s influence as umbilical cords are with placental mammals*.

            Not all Protestants are of the Lutheran denomination, but pretty much every Protestant was influenced by him, so his influence can be fairly said to define the movement.

            I should probably mention my definition of religion. Magic is rituals based on magical thinking that are practiced by individuals. Making and burying a curse tablet, for example. Religion is rituals based on magical thinking that are practiced by groups. Baptism as a ritual for the wholly mystical concept of salvation. Ancient Greek style sacrifice for good fortune. Infant sacrifice to keep the river from overflowing. Or the use of government coercion in order to change human nature, in order to realize behaviors that have never been documented in human history, for which there is no evidence of in prehistory.

            Marx is very widely influential. Freud, Darwin, Newton, and Einstein were very influential, and you still see their ideas repeated everywhere by laymen, even though Freud was hot garbage, and is these days widely rejected by practicing psychologists. Marx is so influential, that you would have to explicitly chase every idea to its roots, and sort to be rid of the influence.

            Your mention of ‘social evolution as a species’ is one such mistaken idea that could be so classified. The magical thinking is in assuming that two phenomena with distinct mechanisms can be considered the same thing. You can have genetic evolution as a species, if the populations mix enough that over the long run that changes in allele frequency are fairly evenly distributed. Social qualities are heavily behavior imprinted during childhood. A future generation is not certain to imprint everything that a previous generation learned. Regression is very possible, you can’t be certain you will even break even further in advance than a generation. See feral children, the ones who manage to survive without any outside human intervention. Continual advancement presumes that there are infinite working combinations of behaviors, and that change can’t easily accidentally drop a society down to a less functional state. (There is reason to think this is false. ) It should be clear why ‘social evolution as a species’ is probably false, even without getting to the fact that the human species never has been and probably never will be a single grouping of social behaviors.

            I am not contrasting communisms to a strict religion. I am comparing them to other evil religions.

            Strict religions and evil religions are not the same sets. There is some overlap, but there are strict religions that are not evil, and evil religions that are not strict.

            The state cult of the Aztec Triple Alliance was an evil religion. One reason why is the matter of killing people to keep the sun shining. There are people that deny that the Alliance practiced human sacrifice, and who deny that they waged war upon their neighbors specifically for sacrificial captives. There are likewise people who deny the fairly well documented Holocaust. Or the Holodomor.

            Communism is an evil religion. One reason why is that their New Jerusalem depends on them forcing every voice to chant the Party Truth of the moment. This never happens, people just aren’t chanting enough, and they are then driven to hunt out and murder scapegoats to correct things. Hundreds of millions of victims is enough justification to call it evil.

            *Okay, modern ideas of government also date to the same period. Luther had precedent in the Church, like Wycliffe and Huss.

          3. Bob, thank you again for your answer, I couldn’t find a reply button below your second answer, hope this finds it’s right place. English is my third language, so I do apologize in advance for grammatical fallacies.

            Your first sentence underlines the difficulties of language, by saying “from an american perspective”. This is a matter that cannot be argued I guess, as we’d both approach it as an abstract generalization with different images in each of our heads. Since my last comment, I delved into the Marxist theories, and found that most Marxists cannot agree on the finer points of Marxism, so that would be moot point to argue as well. But yes, I agree that different populaces have different views on the meaning due to background, age, society and education etc. It also seems that our ideas on the effectiveness of collective property are similar, that it generally ends badly.

            Regarding the issue of influence versus “labeling” a school of thought, I find it hard to justify. You could say that advocating for free, government run healthcare might be construed as a “socialist idea”. So, how would you label a community, run on capitalist ideology, which offers free health care? Can it be said that, if a person is asked if they would like to live in a community with free healthcare, that they are socialists based on that single point of reference? This is probably a path to a larger debate, the boxing and labeling for the human mind to simplify and approach a problem. Which is a fascinating discussion in itself, but I digress.

            Thank you for clarifying your definition of religion, we had slighlty different ones in mind before and I can better see what you mean in your prior answer.

            About the influence of Marx. My question is, was he merely stating some observations made of current society and can one attribute all the written words by him and Engel (If I remember correctly) to being Marxist? One cannot say that D follows C, unless knowing that A and B came before and making an educated guess from those prior parameters. It could be that the alleged influence of a single man might have been stirring before him, as you pointed out with Luther.

            Social evolution. I had priorly written “evolution as species”, but prior experience from MHI International FB group has left me scarred, and uttering the terrible word “evolution” might throw this enjoyable discussion off the rails, and was therefore amended. To clarify my meaning, social evolution as species was meant as a metaphor, I meant it as the human progress from cave dwellers, to hunter gatherers, to farmers etc. As you accurately point out, you can probably never pin down the finer points of human behaviour to a single grouping, as “normal” behaviour is based on any given society, the acceptable social norms which are different at any given point in time. The point about regression of society is also valid, the mere thought of impending shortage of food for example leads a “civilized” society to a more “primitive” one. I did once read an article where the usage of the term “primitive” was deemed politically incorrect…

            Communism as an evil religion. Again we arrive at language. I’ve gone over a few definitions, and the most apt is the one from Merriam-Webster, for our purposes.

            1
            a : a system in which goods are owned in common and are available to all as needed
            b : a theory advocating elimination of private property

            2 capitalized
            a : a doctrine based on revolutionary Marxian socialism and Marxism-Leninism that was the official ideology of the U.S.S.R.
            b : a totalitarian system of government in which a single authoritarian party controls state-owned means of production
            c : a final stage of society in Marxist theory in which the state has withered away and economic goods are distributed equitably
            d : communist systems collectively

            In my mind, the idea, or the philosophy of communism is 1a. I agree that 2b is evil in its nature (or in it’s applications).

            But there is ideology, and there is application of said ideology. Religion, is an excellent example, and I probably do not have to clarify that meaning further.

            As food for thought, imagine a small rural community, where farmer John lost all his cattle, would the term communism not apply if the community would take care of him for the winter, or would it be capitalist to say that John just should have minded his fences better?

            Communism will never work, never in large communities, and never in our current stage of social evolution (or our current stage of biological evolution I dare say, as we are grudgingly still controlled by our basest needs, if one wants to admit it or not). You might label this as magical thinking, but I am not deluded enough to think that this proposed advancement might come to be. As an exercise, if the human race would achieve a state where one was satisfied with his basic needs, and only strive for the betterment of oneself and the betterment of the human race, you might have an aptly labeled communist community. The Star Trek universe would for example be communist in its nature.
            As stated in your last paragraph, your understanding of communism is most likely the 2b of the Meriam-Webster definition. It is most understandable as the communist term was used for misc. propaganda and has deep roots in the US history, being portrayed as evil. Just watching old movies, or seeing old commercials/newspapers displays the widespread usage of the term.

            The “evil” part is a highly subjective matter, we both agree that any actions taken by governments or ruling factions leading to the deaths of civilians is evil. So, that leads me to possible drawbacks of strict capitalism. If there is a capitalist society where people are denied access to healthcare, and to medications due to lack of money or other ways to pay, which leads to their deaths one could say that that kind of government is also evil. Or even a government that demands of young people to wage wars, for vague reasons, leading to their deaths is also evil.

            Maybe we need to step back from labeling. I have seen to many arguments, where participants judge each others words based on the flag they sail under.

            Maybe one way is not better than the other and other options exist, maybe there are no good options and we have to settle for the lesser of two evils. Who knows…

            *Im guessing a background in biology and non-religious based on your writings.

          4. This is in reply to Bob’s comment on July 25, 2018 at 4:07 AM; I think it will end up in the right place but I say this just to make sure.

            Regarding your line, “Baptism as a ritual for the wholly mystical concept of salvation”: I have a vague impression that you are an atheist, probably from seeing things you’ve written at Sarah Hoyt’s blog. But I’m a Christian, and for the record, I entirely agree with this sentence. Baptism is a symbol of something invisible, and salvation is not something that can be seen or touched. You don’t suddenly get a halo or some other visible sign when you’ve been saved: it’s something that happens entirely in the spiritual realm. (Though an outside observer CAN often observe changes in behavior from someone who’s gone through the process of salvation — but that just demonstrates how sincere belief in something can make someone change their behavior, which is not a point that most people would dispute). Or take communion/Eucharist, which involves eating a morsel of bread and drinking a sip of wine that symbolize* the body and blood of Jesus and His sacrifice on our behalf. C.S. Lewis, in one of his letters, wrote that Christianity “… requires me, an Oxford-educated man, to engage in ritual cannibalism.” (Paraphrase from memory, not direct quote, except that I know the words “ritual cannibalism” are precisely what he wrote because that phrase was so vivid a description of the communion ritual that it stuck HARD in my memory). And I’ll note that he was writing this approvingly, not sarcastically or as a condemnation. (The other half of his point was that Christianity also requires an uneducated tribesman living in the Amazon to engage with deep philosophical concepts, like a God who is three-in-one; with this contrast Lewis was making a broader philosophical point which is not really relevant to this discussion).

            In other words, one can believe that something is deeply true and still recognize it, and name it, as ritual. The word “ritual” does not have to carry a negative context. (I don’t think you intended an inherently negative connotation, Bob, but I know some people might see the word “ritual” as implying a negative connotation, which is why I said this.)

            * And there’s disagreement among different branches of Christianty about how deep the symbolism goes, but that’s a boring “inside baseball” dispute to non-Christians, so I won’t go into it here.

          5. This is in reply to Johann Aevarsson’s comment at July 25, 2018 at 5:59 am

            “So, that leads me to possible drawbacks of strict capitalism. If there is a capitalist society where people are denied access to healthcare, and to medications due to lack of money or other ways to pay, which leads to their deaths one could say that that kind of government is also evil.”

            The fundamental problem of economics is the question of scarcity (and, quite contradictory to a lot of utopian sci-fi authors, scarcity will always exist; even with the most advanced Star Trek replicators, you can’t have unlimited land, time, creativity, or happiness).

            You can’t have a society which can’t deny people healthcare, just because there isn’t an infinite amount of ‘healthcare’ (in all the forms it takes, from medication to the time and effort of doctors and nurses). Healthcare has to be rationed. Any system that promises people can always have all the healthcare they want (which requires unlimited resources) is lying, and therefore evil.

            Rationing on the basis of voluntary trade (cost / money) is the only way that we can both fairly allocate resources and encourage people to produce more resources to better fit people’s needs. Both ‘you can’t afford it? sorry’ and voluntary charity are integral parts of that system. Forcing people to give something to get something is the only way to prevent people from taking everything. Saying it is evil because it is not perfect, when no system can be perfect, is missing the forest for the trees.

            Further, implementing 1A communism (“a system in which goods are owned in common and are available to all as needed”) necessarily leads to the flaws of 2B Communism. I want a piece of land to grow food, you want to build a factory to produce medicine. We obviously can’t both use the land (and it would be equally applicable to everything else, from goods like machine tools to time from the construction workers). Who decides? We can’t have everyone vote on every decision, so we elect a government to do it for us. Ok, now because we built your medicine factory because we promised everyone healthcare, we don’t have enough food. Well, we promised everyone all the food they need, so obviously someone has more food than they need (and it’s not the people running the government). Let’s look for people with too much food and take it from them. Oh, look, we’re LARPing 1930’s Ukraine, with millions of dead people.

          6. In Reply to Civilis comment on july 25th, 2018 AT 12:55 PM.

            Thank you for your answer. 🙂

            I did mentions it was a possible drawback, what I write or think I dare not assume is the truth, for
            the problems we adress are massive and complicated.

            The question of scarcity. In a closed evolutionary biome, with continuing expansion of population, there will be scarcity yes. Within a closed biome with controlled population, scarcity of resources is not neccesarily an ultimate conclusion, or at least in nature it will be temporary unless said biome will become uninhabitable for all life. Which might be the road we are heading currently.

            Regarding denial of healthcare. There are currently plenty af countries that give access to affordable healthcare to everyone. The medication example was given for the possible drawbacks of capitalism, is the overpricing of drugs. We have seen plenty of examples where pharmacutical companies overprice their product (more than rationally justifiable), making them reach a less percentage of the people. I am a doctor, so I am not pulling this a wild conspiracy theory, I’d recommend looking at the latest example of “Tamiflu” marketing, and the
            story of the Cochrane review. One can just also see how the different kinds of drugs, made by the same company, is sold at highly different values in different countries. A state of healthcare should also not mean a possible financial ruin of families if someone gets sick. Greed is I guess a part of the human condition, we have seen in all forms of government, be it leftish or rightish, the effects of greed and how the influence of the market effects our ruling governments. We have seen this plenty of times, that the people we trust are not always worthy of our trust
            in governing without bias, and making decisions in favor of the few instead of the many. Again, this is not neccessarily pointed towards capitalism, you see this in both socialist and communist governments.

            “Forcing people to give something to get something is the only way to prevent people from taking everything.” is a interesting statement, which underlines the things I said before. We have a tendency to take and gain more than we truly need. The conflict of want versus need. What do we truly need? Shelter, warmth, food and water, that’s about it. One of other possible (again, possible, not truth) drawbacks of capitalism, is that when you have large financial organizations, even the well off citizen cannot compete against them financially in buying resources, such as lands.
            We’ve seen this in many countries, where there is a general shortage of affordable housing for young people, while thousands of real estates are owned by large companies which rent out those apartments. As soon as a new apartment is built, the companies overbid the individiual, as the seller will always want more than one truly needs. As I said before, no system is ever perfect, but why get stuck in the thought that one system is better that the other, while a combination of one or more systems might be a more sensible option for the greater good.

            “Further, implementing 1A communism (“a system in which goods are owned in common and are available to all as needed”) necessarily leads to the flaws of 2B Communism”
            I agree, I clearly stated in my last response that communism never works in our current world, so I do not disagree with your last paragraph. I do think you misunderstood the premise for using the term “evil”. The rationale was, that Bob had priorly made examples of evil governing, which seemed to make the point that if a governing factor is leading to untimely deaths in the population, it was therefore called evil. The capitalist example was to show that based on that definition, it might also be called evil using the same definition. (leading us to the question, are then not all forms of goverment evil?? 😉 )

            The irony is, that communist countries are not really communist. If you take an outside look, at any so-called communist country, you will see that you cannot apply the 1A definition to that current state. I’d like to reiterate on my prior statement, there is theory, and then there is the application of said theory 🙂

            Thank you again for your reply.

          7. I apologize in advance, you touched a very raw nerve in a place I can actually reply.

            “The irony is, that communist countries are not really communist. If you take an outside look, at any so-called communist country, you will see that you cannot apply the 1A definition to that current state. I’d like to reiterate on my prior statement, there is theory, and then there is the application of said theory”

            Looking at history, during the Russian revolution, the Soviets (some of them, at least) really, really wanted to get to 1A. The problem is that in order to get from a condition where people own things to a state where the community as a whole owns everything, you need leadership and combatants, because the people that currently own stuff that they worked for don’t like to see it taken by the community. And, of course, it doesn’t work because people are fallible, and you can’t possibly make good on your promise of free stuff. And then you find that the power-hungry people became the leadership and the violent people became their loyal combatants, and then those power hungry people don’t want to give up power, and they need to find a scapegoat. And the same thing happens virtually every time (sometimes, like Venezuela, the people in charge are barely even pretending to want 1A, but they still go through the motions). You can’t get to true communism from anywhere as long as humans are human, so why even try? It’s like someone trying to sell you a perpetual motion machine; you know they’re lying or deluded. If you want to imagine that communism will eventually work in some post-singularity future, go ahead, but stop messing up things today while you begin your very very long wait.

            There are plenty of countries that claim to give affordable healthcare to everyone. Every system, though, rations the care available. Yes, US healthcare is expensive, but you can still walk into a hospital and expect to be treated regardless of your ability to pay, and on an apples-to-apples comparison, American healthcare produce one of the best outcomes in the world. Countries that manipulate the books so that someone else pays for the healthcare end up looking cheaper, but that’s because the cost is hidden elsewhere in their economies (and in part because they freeload on the US, in things like the US’s higher cost for drugs). If you’re offered a choice between ‘drugs are expensive’ and ‘drugs are cheap, but you never get any new drugs’, you personally may prefer the cheap option, but don’t complain when society’s revealed preference is for the expensive option.

            Here’s another important point. I don’t know what you need or want, and you don’t know what I need or want, and neither of us can speak for society as a whole. We can only see what people do with their labor and what they’re willing to trade it for. If millions of people all want to trade their labor to watch a sports game or buy a computer or have the latest and greatest healthcare, who are you to tell them they don’t need it and that they can’t trade for it? All centralized economic systems rely on some group at the top to determine for people what they need and what they can trade for, and that group has power, and so rather than meeting the needs of the people (individually or collectively), what ends up getting met is the needs of the group at the top.

            Take housing. Your example makes no sense. If I have a block of apartments that people are willing to rent for $500, and a company comes by and buys them and then rents them out for $600, then either nobody is going to rent them from the company at $600 or the original seller would have ended up with the prices bid up to $600 by the original buyers. In the real world, we have rent control (driven by the same impulse that gives us communism). We have a block of apartments that could rent for $600, but due to rent control rent at $500 (shafting the owner), so the price of housing goes up for everyone else (shafting people that need to buy housing), and the owner has no incentive to maintain the controlled property because it’s losing money (shafting the people in the rent controlled property). The only people benefiting are those that made the decision to put in rent control because it sounds good and gets them votes.

          8. In reply to civilis, july 25th at 6:12PM

            Regarding your first paragraph. We are in total agreement, the current human condition is exactly the reason communism doesn’t work. That said, all small ideas or items labelled “communist” or “socialist” should not be discarded based on the label, as seems to happen a lot, even though the idea as a whole does not work.

            Regarding your second paragraph. For two years I was involved in the US healthcare system, yes you can be treated without ability to pay for emergency situations, but no coverage is offered for long-term illnesses. Many people I met could choose between buying their meds, or buying food. Regarding the best outcomes, the US is not doing great. For example, there is a recent study on maternal deaths in the US which shows a disturbing increase, and by looking at the rates of infant mortality rates numbers from the CDC, it does not look great compared to other industrialized nations. We could also look at the incidence of obesity, hypertension, cardiovascular disease, diabetes etc.

            You mentioned as an example before that healthcare is a limited resource, it is indeed, but disease is usually more of a constant than it is a variable. Therefore, increased access does not mean increased load. The US has good outcome rates in treatment of disease, but as many studies have shown that is the early access and diagnoses of said diseases that prevent them from becoming a bigger problem. Should you not then invest more in free/cheap early
            healthcare instead of being good at dealing with the disease that could have been prevented?
            Regarding the medications, I did not mean that you can buy a cheap version of a drug versus another expensive version of the drug. What I meant was that I’ve seen the exact same medications in different countries being sold at extremely different prices. So, the theory is that possibly it is the capitalist model that has a massive effect on the price change, as the factory prices are pretty constant but the vendor/pharmacy pricing is a big variable.
            And I can tell you from personal experience, as a doctor, the pharma companies are not the good guys, the pressure from them is immense and the clinical trials are often questionable…

            About the third paragraph. My use of the word “need” was in relation to us a species. That is, the basic things to live, the other things are “artificial needs”. As you put it, “All centralized economic systems rely on some group at the top to determine for people what they need”. I also found the example that the needs that are created for us, are actually to fulfill the needs of the people at the top, excellent. That begs the question, are governing systems made to feed the needs of the few at the top, good?

            The housing example was maybe in error on my part. As the housing market here is quite different. The basic model, about possible dangers of capitalism, is that individuals slowly reach the point where they own nothing, as they cannot compete. For example, buying land. Land was in large part individually owned, but the buisness driven model has created large entities with large financial capabilities.
            So, if an individual wants to buy land and meets the entity as a rival buyer, the individual loses. Slowly, there will be no land for an individual to own, and must rent it and be at the mercy of said entity. Therefore, it is my theory that an individual in pure capitalist models will with time be less and less likely to succeed (or “own”).

            The other thought I had, is that the capitalist model depends on a ever expanding model. It must expand, otherwise it collapses, which it does on a regular basis. Perhaps that is good. The worry is then also, we live in a pretty closed biome and resources are limited and endless expansion of populace and usage of resources to fuel the capitalist model is not viable in the long term. We won’t live to see it I hope, but it will probably happen.

            This has been thouroughly enjoyable conversation. I hope I did not offend you in any way, as my opinions are stated as neutral but the internet seems incapable to convey the tone of voice 🙂 I do not stand for one way over another. Communism does not work, and overabundance of socialism seems to createpeople who live on the system as it is easier, and capitalism drives individuals to success but it has it’s issues and dangers as well, as the governing people are easily led into making decisions for companies, instead of the populace as a whole.

            I’m “unfortunately” going off grid for a few days, hunting and enjoying myself :). Thank you for your input, it is always good to have some food for thought.

          9. “Marx is very broadly influential”

            Somebody (I think it was P.J. O’Rourke, but can’t swear to it) once said that Marxism was like Godzilla; very big, very heavy, very influential in some ways….but not real.

      5. I have been trying to put my finger on the reason I enjoyed your writing style so much. I believe that at least part of it is that it is a pleasure to read someone who understands that we already have a gender-neutral pronoun in the English language. Thank you!

      6. HI, as a Mensa member I can assure you that you are incorrect so far as politics goes.

        Politics in Mensa is across the board, and divided pretty much as the population is so far as left/right goes, at least in the US, with the exception there are more people willing to identify with third parties, and even there they will be Libertarian or Green. The response the far left folks get is large and negative, and largely consists of ridicule, as is the response to the far religious-right folks.

        At the same time, those from left or right that instead argue honestly without thoughtless doctrinaire mumbo-jumbo get respect or tolerance, though not necessarily agreement.

        The organization specifically takes no political positions, though at times it is a struggle to keep it that way. Activists and do-gooders are always trying to push the limits.

        So far as most common occupation, heck if I know. But it is a rather eclectic bunch of occupations, I have seen everything from postal worker to farmer to truck driver to PhD. Sometimes all from the same person! We’ve even had porn performers and prison inmates.

        Like your Darkship stories, I haven’t got to any others yet.

  8. I admit to not being much of a science fiction reader (currently reading some Dashiell Hammett) but I had to poke around to see what all the fuss was about with WorldCon. Easy answer is that those people are insane. The twitter chain published at File770 would be considered world class parody if they all weren’t deadly serious. Under represented Filipina writers? Really? Based on…? Claim you were misgendered? Looks to me like that was the path you chose. Someone who goes out of their way to confuse people shouldn’t get upset when they succeed. (Note, The Dain Curse is terribly politically incorrect and a fun read. Which I believe is the point.)

  9. A little summary for those asking. I happened to stumble on what was happening on Twitter. There were two loosely connected issues from what I gathered:

    1. WC published its program and misgendered a “non-gendered” person in its bio of said person. This is apparently a Really Bad Thing. Mary Three Names decided to signal her virtue to all and sundry and withdrew from all programming. WC apologized, of course. But, you can’t stop the signal, Mal.

    2. Around the time Mary made her move, someone pointed out there were very few Hugo nominees slated (SWIDT) for programming slots. Why? Because they are not well known! As in, not commercially successful. Hmm, I wonder how a bunch of authors nobody has heard of became Hugo nominee? (Okay, stop laughing now, Puppies – at least hold it together a minute.) This demanded even more virtue signaling. After all, these noms were made on merit, and you can’t plan your programming to maximize something as crass as popularity. These noms are bestest and need to be seen! Nobody puts Baby in a corner! So, then, authors on the program, including the self-appointed fascist-in-chief (the guy with the hammer of correction), withdrew in order to open spots for Hugo nominees. Let that sink in a second. Unknown Hugo nominees at Worldcon need slots in the programming to promote themselves because even the WC members don’t know who they are. Of course, this cascaded into virtually all the participants withdrawing. Then people started looking at the program itself and decided it clearly wasn’t woke enough.

    The obvious solution? Tear up you’re entire program and start over to respond to all the criticism – only weeks before the con. Oh, and throw in the obligatory self-flagellation to signal your virtue even harder.

    Every time I read “We must do better,” I can’t help but hear Inigo Montoya.

    1. “Every time I read “We must do better,” I can’t help but hear Inigo Montoya.”

      That’s because whoever wrote that made a typo. The writer actually meant to type “We must do bitter,” which is an accurate description of the collectivist mindset*.

      *For certain values of “mind”

      1. Would the PC version of that now be “You assisted my normative cis-gender patriarchal figure in a non-consensual suicide, prepare to be involuntarily removed from this plane of reality.

        1. Hmm. Almost, but not quite tone-perfect. I would probably go with, ‘Prepare to undergo existential reassignment surgery and become a Metabolically Challenged American.’

    2. Nice summary. Also from Twitter, I picked up that the misgendering issue seems to be part of a larger problem with published biographies. Whoever was doing it didn’t just ask people for bios and pictures. Instead, the bios were apparently generated, at least in part, from an online survey and the pictures taken from places like Facebook, without permission.

      I guess you get what you pay for in volunteer organizations.

    3. I am so, so glad I decided to skip this years Worldcon. Already have a membership for Dublin 2019, but thats mostly being used as an excuse to go to Ireland.

      1. For similar reasons, Niner and I are thinking of Worldcon 2020 which is (last time I checked) slated to be in New Zealand. Because it’s been 30 years since I was there, and I mainly want to see if the Royal Oaks Tavern is where I think I remember it (It was a great liberty, but the details were – and still are – a bit woolly)

    4. To be fair, I would think that if you’re nominated for a Hugo and you’re attending WorldCon, you should automatically be programmed onto a panel or three (assuming you want to be on them, of course). That’s generally Programming 101, and if this WorldCon didn’t even do that, then they deserve the grief on that basis alone.

      1. this made me think of a standing-room-only filled auditorium facing an empty table for a discussion of “Agoraphobia in Space Opera”. No, I don’t know why.

    5. Actually, I think Scalzi got his panties in a twist because his last two “under performing” novels only got him one panel slot and a kaffeeklatsch. Rather than suck up the puncture to his ego, he got wind of the paucity of no-name minorities and women on panels and loudly donated his panel slot (singular) and spot on the kaffeeklatsch to the oh-so-oppressed of the world.

      You have to hand it to the spineless suckwad: excellent virtue signaling by a straight (okay, assumed) white privileged male to the SJW mob. It may buy him a couple of years before they turn on him.

  10. I am amused by the nominations for the so-called Retro Hugos for 1943, which included Van Vogt’s timeless pro-Second and libertarian “The Weapon Shops.” I wonder if the organizers see the irony…

    1. I doubt it, just as I doubt any of the people who nominated it actually read it. Writing something like “The Weapons Shops” today would probably get you blacklisted even if you weren’t a cishet white male like Van Vogt was.

    2. Note that, for those trying to read the material before voting (and who don’t have the Dec, 1942 Astounding where it first appeared), this is the novelette version, and not the novel that included the short work and two other works.

      The easiest places to find the short version are The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Vol 1, and Healy/McComas Adventures In Time and Space.

      1. And if “The Weapon Shop” doesn’t win, it has nothing to do with its politics, I suspect. The Retros, particularly in the short fiction categories, are incredibly strong. So it’s up against:
        “Bridle and Saddle” and “Foundation” (both were part of the novel version of Asimov’s Foundation when collected as a book).
        “Goldfish Bowl” – Heinlein under his Anson MacDonald pen name
        “The Star Mouse” – Fredric Brown
        “There Shall Be Darkness” – C. L. Moore

        No matter what the vote results will be, the sixth place finisher in the category will be a brilliant story.

        1. I have read them all. And The Weapon Shop should win, but does not have a chance, Foundation will walk away with this one, and it is hard to argue with it.

      2. Ben, do you seriously think anyone here will be purchasing a membership and voting after the treatment meted out at Sasquan?

        I know you’ve been around the con world forever, but surely you can’t be that deep in denial.

        Those people aren’t coming back. Ever.

        1. I don’t know, although I certainly know how I’d bet. I do know that there is still some overlap (besides me) between the people here and the ones who attend Worldcon, although it’s certainly a small and decreasing number. It is certainly true that it’s much more likely that I’d see more people from here next month at Dragoncon than I will next month at Worldcon — but I’ll be at both.

          But the Retros are particularly dear to my heart, since I’m one of the people who pushed them through the Worldcon Business Meeting. And, while it’s certainly true that far fewer people nominate and vote in the Retros than in the current-year Hugos, I believe that most of the Retro nominators and voters (particularly the nominators) are well versed in the field, and produce a really strong ballot, particularly this year and likely next, considering how strong the nominees were this year (and next year has a lot of really good choices, as well).

          I knew what I was nominating when I nominated “The Weapon Shop”. Nothing to do with politics — it’s a brilliant story (although I will admit I didn’t vote it first — that went to “Foundation” on my ballot), as is every other candidate on that ballot. When the sixth place finisher will be one of Asimov, Brown, Heinlein, Moore, or Van Vogt — it’s (very much my opinion) going to be a better story than whatever wins the current year Novelette (all of which I read before voting, or making this statement).

          And when I see a statement like, “… just as I doubt any of the people who nominated it actually read it” –I view it as a misapprehension that denigrates a wonderful story. I can’t speak for all of the other nominators — but I know for a fact that I read it, and nominated it (and reread most of the stories in the 1942 Astoundings and Unknowns, plus some other likely places before nominating).

          I can completely understand why many people here are not going to Worldcons. The past is hard to forget, particularly when it keeps getting reopened. And I think that divide isn’t good for fandom, as I’ve watched it, and participated in it, through the years.

          For me, it means that I end up going to Dragoncon and Worldcon to see everybody I want to. And all I can do is make it clear that I welcome everybody to either — that both cons, and their attendees, are part of the greater fandom I grew up with.

          So, to summarize, I think that you’re certainly largely right — that very few will be purchasing a Worldcon membership. And I regret that this might well be a reasonable decision. All I can hope is that, over time, the divide can heal — I think that everybody would be better off if it did. I don’t know how to make it do so; all I can do is try to remain a part of all the communities, and make it clear that the others aren’t Other — they’re Us.

          1. Hi Ben,

            This was my last year with a Worldcon membership. Thank you for pushing through the Retro Hugos, because I had a LOT more fun voting for them, than for the “regular” Hugos.

            “The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Vol 1”, Vol 2A and 2B are three great books that every science fiction fan should read. (I rate 2B over 2A, but I re-read all three). But it is rather funny to be voting for Hugos for stories in collections for “great works that weren’t eligible for Hugos.” 🙂

            “And all I can do is make it clear that I welcome everybody to either”

            Well, I[‘m pretty sure everyone actually IS welcome to DragonCon. But I’d say it’s pretty clear we’re not all welcome at Worldcon. And life’s too short to go where I’m not wanted.

            The Dragon isn’t happening for me this year, but hopefully it is next year, so I hope to see you again then.

            Just one question about San jose: Is Bruce Schneier really not going? Because a crypto panel with Schneier and Diffie, now that would have been a treat

  11. What gets me is that so many of the authors complaining are holding up WisCon as who WorldCon should be modeling themselves after.

    I don’t know that anything, except a Soviet gulag, should be modeled after WisCon.

      1. There used to be less drama at Wiscon. But that was also when they outright banned anyone who was male or to the right of Joseph Stalin.

        1. I just knew you were going to show up and make that pun. I woulda done it but I wasn’t clever enough to make it pithy.

    1. Even if all you know of WisCon is that it is in Madison, that should be enough to put it firmly on the No Way, No How list. It’s called MadTown for sound reason – and that’s on the better days.

  12. …and it’s all over a friggin’ typo. You know that ‘e’ had to have been autocorrected to “he” somewhere in the process. These people are such fools, I swear.

    1. Hell I can’t even get autocorrect to take REAL words sometimes. And every time I write goat it gets turned into goat.

      1. For some reason autocorrect thinks I really like to talk about ducks and I use the word ducking a lot.

        1. Oh it’s so much worse when you’re an angry South Australian. The housemate got very frustrated when autocorrect decided that all his swearing would be turned into cute, fluffy, noisy ducks.

          Ducking? Only when avoiding direct fire until you have the opportunity to return it!

    2. Logically, rationally, there is no way possible in the Universe that the staff at World Con isn’t 100% dedicated to respecting people’s chosen pronouns, no matter what they are.

      The chance of the error not being an honest mistake approaches absolute zero.

      Which makes the major virtue signalers look like ungracious a**holes. (Looking at you, Mary.)

      Puppies might be enjoying the spectacle (I am too) but it’s really incredibly toxic, abusive, and… sad.

      1. Logic doesn’t enter into it. Their inner demons said it was time for a sacrifice, and a victim was duly picked and assigned the role.

        They’re about one stage away from chanting “Ouroborindra! Ouroborindra! Ouroborindra ba-ba-hee!”

      2. Yep. That was the capper for me. They have a thoroughly ultra-liberal organization, and it didn’t even *occur* to them to presume it was an innocent error. They jumped straight into misgendering and Muh Safe Spaces and threats. If anybody needed more proof that ceding to any of their demands is worse than useless, this is it.

        1. Still, it is in the pattern of how making things woke makes things inadvertently makes things more racist and sexist. (The Last Jedi and women drivers, a clothes line for black men named for chimpanzees, etc.)

        2. I was told they had 27 panels on gay topics. So the obvious conclusion to jump to is that WorldCon is a bunch of hatemongers and Literally Hitler.

          1. And the primary organizers of San Jose Worldcon are both gay men.

            I guess that was their sin, they were only G, not LBTQ

            Shakes head

          2. Well, now, that’s funny. Here’s all the LGBTQ topics in programming as of Saturday morning:

            2:00
            PM
            Across the Gender Spectrum 1 hour 2:00 PM – 3:00 PM | San Jose Convention Center , 210F
            Heather Rose Jones | Roni Gosch
            Panel Culture LGBTQ gender
            3:00
            PM
            Beyond Yaoi: Trends in LGBTQ+ Representation in Anime & Manga 1 hour 3:00 PM – 4:00 PM | San Jose Convention Center , 212C
            Moderator Gideon Marcus | Todd Allis | Reuben Baron | Lauren Schiller | Janice Marcus
            Talk Culture Anime LGBTQ
            Friday August 17, 2018
            11:00
            AM
            Pronouns Matter — Gender Courtesy for Fans 1 hour 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM | San Jose Convention Center , 210C
            Moderator Ann Leckie | Roni Gosch | Angela Lujan | Ellen Kuehnle | Rivers Solomon
            Panel Culture LGBTQ gender
            4:00
            PM
            Queer Joy in SF/F 1 hour 4:00 PM – 5:00 PM | San Jose Convention Center , 210B
            Moderator Cecilia Tan | Nina Niskanen | Bogi Takács | Rivers Solomon | Erica Frank
            Panel Culture Literature Media Science Technology Comics & Graphic Novels LGBTQ
            Saturday August 18, 2018
            5:00
            PM
            Ethical Non-Monogamy 101 1 hour 5:00 PM – 6:00 PM | San Jose Convention Center , 212D
            Moderator Vanessa Rose Phin | Leigh Ann Hildebrand | BE Allatt | Warren Frey
            Panel Culture LGBTQ Relationships
            6:00
            PM
            The Meta of Slash: Its Influence on Fan Culture 1 hour 6:00 PM – 7:00 PM | San Jose Convention Center , 210DH
            Moderator Constance Penley (University of California, Santa Barbara) | Cecilia Tan | Laura Antoniou | K.M. Szpara | Megan Kent | Charlotte C. Hill
            Panel Culture Media Writing LGBTQ gender

            There is one additional panel that is “gender” but not LGBTQ:

            Sunday August 19, 2018
            2:00
            PM
            What Does a Nontoxic Masculinity Look Like? 1 hour 2:00 PM – 3:00 PM | San Jose Convention Center , 211C
            Moderator Vanessa Rose Phin | Leigh Ann Hildebrand | Foz Meadows | Reuben Baron
            Panel Culture Writing gender

            I think they’re scoring most of the 18 Dance items as “Gender Free” and “LGBTQI+ welcome!”

            I must say, watching this from a distance is far more entertaining than actually going to it would have been

      3. Yeah, the whole thing might have been avoided had the people involved acted like grownups.

        But they didn’t, so here we are.

        1. Yeah, that Booger douche could have simply asked the ConCom to fix the error, but noooooooooo. He had to throw a public hissy fit like the oozing twat he is.

      4. The “E” hit the oppression lottery. That the faux outrage itself harmed an innocent is in reality a bonus to them. Because these kind of bitter, outrage merchants, get off on the wreckage like all psychopaths.

    3. If any SJW could actually code and/or have business sense there’s a webservice waiting to be written: Something like gravitar except it keeps track of your pronouns. Then you could have a bookmarklet (do people still use those?) to automatically replace a person’s name in your convention announcement or blog post or whatever with their proper pronoun, automatically choosing the one (or two or whatever) that fit with the grammar of the sentence.

      Monetize it by compiling mailing lists to sell to do-good-feel-good 501(c)(3)s and 507 political groups.

  13. I don’t put anything beyond them at this point, and I hope they go away soon.

    This is a group of people that literally went to a guy who can’t stop saying good things about NAMBLA and was like “Hey, do you want our highest honor?”

    I know I show up here a lot to beat that same drum, but seriously that’s so fucked and nobody talks about it.

      1. Samuel R. Delany and unfortunately yes:

        His Comments: http://shetterly.blogspot.com/2014/07/a-conversation-with-samuel-r-delany.html

        He has other comments in the introduction to Hogg that are also reprehensible and not done in the narrative itself, but speaking his own opinion about how he finds the subject matter to be erotic. The subject matter concerns the rape of a young boy. I don’t know how to link to that.

        If you want to, as Delany suggests, “expose” yourself to NAMBLA to find what it’s all about (and you don’t mind permanently scarring your soul) this documentary is a good place to start:

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ygrd29-_O3I&t=2s

        I’m not really on the same page with most here, probably, as far as wanting to “save” the Hugos because so far as I can see this doesn’t seem to be an isolated problem. I don’t know why anyone wants any part of it. I’m sure these thoughts aren’t at the forefront of people’s minds when they talk about the good parts of the Hugos, but it’s like… if someone pissed in my food I can’t just eat the good parts. The whole plate is getting tossed.

        http://www.jasonsanford.com/blog/2018/2/golden-age-sf-not-golden-everyone

        1. James Gunn is in a whole different category. Like, with Gunn you can say he’s joking and I think he probably was even if it was in super poor taste. Delany, in his own personal voice in interviews, not in a story, is like: “Yeah, NAMBLA’s great! People who say otherwise are ignorant. What’s wrong about having sex with nine year olds?”

      2. It’s Samuel Delany. I left a comment earlier with some links but it may have been eaten by moderation. If you don’t mind getting put on a watchlist, google his name plus NAMBLA.

    1. Unfortunately, I think for too many, something like being a fan of NAMBLA isn’t all that big of a deal. Just the other day, one of the political blogs I frequent (Ace of Spades HQ, for the curious) had a post up talking about how it appeared that the age of consent was likely to be the next target in the Perpetual War on the Sexual Squares. I also recently saw mention (I think over in the comments at Sarah Hoyt’s blog) that there’s currently work being done to rehabilitate Marion Zimmer Bradley.

      1. I can’t think of any other conclusion than that you’re correct. I mean, Samuel Delany gives an interview talking about how it should be okay to have sex with nine year olds and then writes a whole novel about child rape and then just like last month he gets a Locus Award with NO public outcry?!?! I keep trying to think of media people I can tip off about that. It makes me so goddamn furious I feel like I’m going to explode if I don’t say something. And to be clear, they can give awards to pedophile apologists all they want I just think people deserve to know that so they can declare how fucked that is.

        1. In other words, they have (and should have) the legal right to give awards to pedophile apologists, but it would be immoral to do so. I agree 100%, and that is a very useful distinction (legal right vs. moral obligation) to keep in mind. For example, I believe that Twitter, Facebook, et al. should have a legal right to engage in viewpoint discrimination, and kick conservatives off if they feel like, because if you start having the government regulate what viewpoints are and aren’t acceptable it never ends well. But I also think they have a moral obligation not to kick people off for their political views (as long as those people aren’t conspiring to engage in criminal activity: I think there would be a moral duty to kick people off your platform if you find them planning out how to set a bomb in a crowded area). And so I have no qualms whatsoever with boycotting Facebook and Twitter for their viewpoint discrimination (and in fact I refuse to have a Facebook or Twitter account for just that reason), even though I would oppose any attempt to make such viewpoint discrimination illegal.

          1. That’s pretty much my take. What makes me red in the face furious though is how they’ll do something like celebrate a NAMBLA supporter and then get all holier than thou and stuck up about their own superiority. How do you sanction one of the worst crimes possible and still keep your head so far up your ass congratulating yourself for clearing the low moral bar of simply not being a Nazi and STILL think you’re better than everyone else???

          2. I’ve seen Brendan O’Neill lay out the logic of this argument in several panel discussions on free speech available on YouTube. He’s also quite against ever having a personal twitter account.

          3. Getting a bit problematic for Twitter and FB at the moment though, since they’re trying to be both a public forum and insisting they’re not being biased / or are a publisher / public space for people to gather and discuss, while trying to claim the protections of a private company that can indeed censor.

            https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/326/501#writing-USSC_CR_0326_0501_ZO

            The other case that’s relevant is that one where a federal judge ruled that Trump cannot, in fact, block people from his account as his account is used as a ‘public office’.

            I don’t think they’re looking too deeply into how this will eventually (if the legal beagles are smart) force social media to comply with first amendment rules, because right now they’re too busy playing Gotcha, Trump!

      2. Oh, I’ve been seeing new attempts to try get pedophilia ‘recognized’ as a ‘sexual orientation’ as opposed to ‘you are a sick, sick person.’ Their latest one is to go and re-brand themselves as ‘minor-attracted’ somethings.

        About the only thing I feel any kind of sympathy for are the ones who ‘recognize what’s wrong, haven’t hurt anyone, and can’t / have trouble finding help in dealing with it because they don’t want to hurt anyone’ that doesn’t involve a bullet through the brainpan.

        1. I think people of a certain philosophical bent have a hard time giving up on someone as unfixable. If I’m feeling charitable, that’s the excuse I give for them. Now, I think it’s a combination of willful blindness and just truly being a bad person. I tried raising these issues directly with people in SFWA about four’ish years ago but no one cared. Tried adding a comment (that was so reasonable it made me feel like I’d betrayed myself simply linking to Delany’s interview and pointing out he was being awarded actively) at File770 more recently, and it was deleted. So at this point, I’m ready to hoist the black flag. I can’t stand that whole organization.

  14. The WorldCon is run by amateurs, which is both good and bad.

    Good as in they should all be enthusiasts who love the thing they’re involved in, but bad because amateurs tend to be well intentioned but ill-informed.

    Sad really, but I did go WTF.

  15. BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! Get woke, go broke. Is it still irony if they cant even see the steaming pile of irony the created and then stepped in?

  16. I see that they’ve put Puppinette in charge of salvaging the programming.

    Yep, because if there’s one thing this giant dumpster fire needs, it’s more old tires!

    Her description of how she runs programming for the Nebulas:

    For instance, at the Nebulas, the programming team has advocates for Disability, Hybrid author, Traditionally published, Game writer, Indie, Novelist, Short Story, Agent, Editor, Affiliate, Early career writer, Mid-career writer, Late career writer, LGBTQ, Aspiring member, & PoC

    Note that “writing stories that don’t suck” is conspicuously absent from this list.

    Note to self: call broker, buy stock in ConAgra, makers of Orville Redenbacher’s Popcorn.

    1. It’s extra delicious that this old white cis het woman selflessly “volunteers” for the gatekeeping job.

      Someone with a Twitter account should suggest to Miss Anne Robinette Kowal that a POC genderqueer person would do a better job of revamping the program, and that “wypipo” like her should just shut the hell up.

    2. > Note that “writing stories that don’t suck” is conspicuously absent from this list.

      Also notably absent are “Religious author”, “Conservative author”, and “Libertarian author”. It’s almost like they only value some kinds of diversity.

      1. Heck, even “author who isn’t a communist” would be an improvement.

        Baby steps, Ms Kowal. Baby steps.

  17. Another (relatively) minor issue that I’ve read at https://io9.gizmodo.com/whats-causing-the-mysterious-hums-heard-around-the-worl-1827554310:
    “Others, like Hugo winner John Scalzi, have also shared their experiences as budding writers and artists, imploring Worldcon to give newer creators the same treatment they received when they were first starting out.”
    Hypocritical, according to what I’ve read of how John Scalzi treats newer creators.

    1. > “Others, like Hugo winner John Scalzi, have also shared their experiences as budding writers and artists, imploring Worldcon to give newer creators the same treatment they received when they were first starting out.”

      Yeah, that was his second reaction. His first reaction was one of his patented passive aggressive sniffs about the Great John Scalzi only getting one panel slot.

      However, he soon realized which way the wind was blowing and sent up the Virtue Signal.

      I’ve noted before that Scalzi has a keen ear for the sound of approaching tumbrils, and will do anything humanly possible to divert them in someone else’s direction. Tumbrils will play hell with a nice lawn, don’tcha know?

    2. They’re all minor issues.

      That’s part of the entertainment. Like the Princess and the Pea. The smaller the issue that has you all worked up, the higher status you can claim to have.

  18. To: International Lord of Hate (IntSecRef Decode – Larry Correia)

    From: Evil League of Evil Faceless Minion #6969 (IntSecRef Decode – The Evil League of Evil has no record of any associate with the designation “Faceless Minion #6969”. Furthermore, our organization completely disavows any knowledge of, approval for, or participation in any activities past, present or future undertaken by this individual.)

    Re: Subterfuge

    I have completed arrangements for infiltration of the Annual Conclave of Liberalism (classic form: WorldCon) and am preparing efforts to undermine their agenda by means of social sabotage (ref: exposing them to themselves).

    Lacking sufficient wit/ideas to steal, I have decided to forego the traditional route of ribbons and instead am returning to the out-of-system method of a flyer. I am confident that this will achieve our aims, because it worked so well the last time, right? (Ref: No reference found. Seriously, we have no idea who this person is.)

    Attached please find the proposed copy to be shared.

    Looking forward to victory!

    Your most humble and obedient servant,

    Faceless Minion #6969

    (Note: The text accompanying the above communique is presented here out of sheer morbid fascination.)

    An open letter to The World Science Fiction Society

    In recent years, there has been much attention, even outside the normal industry/fannish venues, concerning the Hugo Awards. Alas, this attention has come due to contentious activities surrounding the awards, most notably the nominations process. Sadly, the focus of much of the non-traditional coverage has brought about an image of dysfunction and/or dissension within fandom and the WSFS/WorldCon communities.

    And indeed, this view is shared by many within the competing camps surrounding the issues. The host of the Hugo Awards Ceremony once wrote “Congratulations, you f***ed up the Hugos.” while many of the groups charged with interfering in the awards themselves claim that the award had become lessened in recent years.

    To rectify this, I suggest a page be taken from mainstream promotional efforts: re-branding. While the idea of recognizing quality works in the field as voted by a group of international fans meeting once a year certainly has merit, the title of “Hugo” may have come to reflect the divide and arguments in defining “quality” that have driven the near (and sometimes outright) abuse too many people have experienced. To this end, choosing a different designation for the award may be the simplest/cleanest method of bringing a new sense of purpose to those handing it out.

    And I would like to take the further opportunity to offer a suggestion for that new title: The Teresa.

    This would, of course, be named after long-time editor Teresa Nielson Hayden.

    It is certainly a fitting name change, as the former Tor editor once famously wrote “…the Hugo is ours.” She did note that copyrights and trademarks hold the award as property of WSFS/WorldCon, but she almost immediately reiterated that it was an “us” vs “them” situation, decrying “their” nomination efforts as opposed to “real” nominations.

    The benefits of this alternative designation should be obvious:

    “Hugo”, of course, refers to Hugo Gernsback, an editor from the early days of science fiction publishing, when patriarchal exclusionary thought was the norm. “Teresa” refers to the more modern, nuanced and inclusive era we now enjoy.

    It would show a clear distinction between the close-minded efforts of the various slate campaigns and the steadfast openness that fandom is growing and maturing into.

    Given the toxic and sexist vitriol put forth by the aforementioned slate groups (whatever their protestations to the contrary) it seems it would be very unlikely that they would make further attempts at the WSFS’s top prize if it were to have this new name.

    And might I add a further suggestion? Allow for a retroactive renaming of previous winners, back until either 2000 or 2001. The exact date of change would be left to a committee for the pedantic definition of “millennium”. Participation in this would be voluntary, of course, being up to the individual winners or their literary estates.

    This change would offer a clear, sharp division between the current environment of understanding and inclusiveness and a darker, more ignorant time when the award was only given to straight white males such as Anne McCaffrey, Samuel R. Delany, Ursula K. LeGuin, David Gerrold and Octavia Butler.

    In the hopes that these ideas will lead to a new time of understanding, as well as some honest self-reflection, I am,

    David Langley

  19. I looked at that fozmeadows link above and am amused to report that even though I buy indie SF on Kindle by the metric carload I didn’t recognize a single name at all in that blog post. I also don’t know who or what fozmeadows is (not even if that’s a name or an acronym or something else).

    And so now back to my regularly scheduled Brunner, Del Arroz, Stirling, Grant, Hardy, Cole, Lozito, and Vox Day reading festival, to name only those authors whose works I’ve purchased since July 1 2018.

    And why isn’t Correia on that list, huh? Because he’s apparently too busy playing games with his kids and building a castle and no doubt painting miniatures to actually write anything, that’s why. Still waiting for more Grimnoir!!!

    1. Foz Meadows is the wife of an apparently male university professor. Also some sort of LGBT type and alleged writer of science fiction and or fantasy.

      Said professor by some coincidence apparently has the same obscure academic interests as a troll, whose handle some of us at times misspell as camel floppy. Said troll has been known to post from locations Meadows is known to have been at, at times during what should be university business hours. Said troll has been a fairly persistent anti-puppy, and has waded into controversies that might possibly be beneficial to Foz’s career. But we are assured that the troll and the professor cannot possibly be the same. Professors are never arrogant blowhards who write checks they cannot cash, and dish out what they cannot take. Perhaps the troll is Foz, or perhaps the two have secretly adopted a gangster from Mars as their son.

      1. > gangster from Mars

        That would be a great name for a hip-hop Bowie tribute band: “Ziggy Stardust and the Gangstas from Mars”.

    2. Larry just put out a new MH book! And I don’t see Ringo on that list. His latest Monster Hunter book was released after July 1! Why is he not on your list!?

      (unless, of course, you got Ringo’s book as an e-arc; if so, then all is forgiven)

    3. Larry’s stated previously that the forthcoming Grimnoir books (set, IIRC, some years after the original books) would be tackled after his current projects (We just got a couple of new MHI books, one from the main series and the other the Ringo spin-off) and the coming out in February 2019 Saga of the Forgotten Warrior Book 2. So he is writing stuff. At his current rate, I’d say he’s doing pretty well.

    1. You should just do like I do and use dollar bills… oh wait. You can’t. Because you’re poor. You should try selling lots of books. It’s pretty awesome.

      1. Actually, I hate to say it, but Monty has a good idea.
        Larry could print up a special runs of his books out of toilet paper, and sell those at places like Worldcon or Wiscon for $100 each.
        People like Monty could have his petty revenge, and Larry could rake in more money.

    2. Monty, could you do us all a favor and color the font for your comments white so no one would have to see them?

    1. Clearly, you have not read “Pounded In The Butt By My Hugo Award Loss” by Chuck Tingle.

      Neither have I, but, to quote the ostentatiously-named droid L337 from the latest Star Wars Han Solo movie, “It works.”

  20. What snapped it for me was when they cheered themselves delivering NO AWARD against Mike Resnick and Toni Weisskopf. The CHORFholes were tasteless and classless enough. But to NO AWARD Mike and Toni — two people who have literally devoted their whole adult lives to celebrating and enriching SF/F — and then cheer about it . . . that’s when the mask completely fell. From off their faces. These are not lovers of genre. They do not celebrate the field. They celebrate their “club” and having dominion within it. They are the ugly side of geek enthusiasm. The children who never learned to share, nor let somebody else have a say.

    So, now, I spectate their downward-spiral while experiencing a mixture of sadness, and schadenfreude. We told them identitarianism was a fool’s road. We told them both the Hugo and the convention proper, were being sucked into the Oppression Olympics. They didn’t want to listen. Now, the Hugo is devalued to Venezuela-like levels, and Worldcon has become a hollowed-out shadow of itself — like a one-party Democrat-controlled city. Which in fact, Worldcon is.

    It didn’t have to be this way.

    But . . . you cannot help a terminally-ill patient who insists (s)he is not sick. Who loudly screams that (s)he is, in fact, healthier than ever before. Despite the crashing blood numbers and oxygen hoses and dialysis cart being wheeled into the room.

    1. It was truly amazing to watch what we’d now call after that one reporter woman and her “So what you really mean is…” treatment of Jordan Peterson.

      Pup: I miss my adventure and sensawunder.

      PupKicker: So what you’re saying is that you hate women and POC.

      1. Prediction (if not this year, well, eventually): The accident report will conclude that the crash was the result of Controlled Flight Into Terrain.

        Good to not be aboard.

      2. Julie, I had my Peterson-Newman moment, when I was interviewed by Amy Wallace. Peterson has described several times how he’s given honest interviews to reporters and other people, who only reveal their agendas after the fact — and leave 98% of what Peterson says, in the trash heap. Using only enough of what he says, to fit into their narrative: that despite Peterson being a reasonable guy, Peterson is in fact a Very Bad Man. That’s their story going into the interview, and they will twist the shit up any way necessary, to keep their story coming out of the interview.

        Amy Wallace did to me. And she wasn’t alone, either. It was a real eye-opener, in 2015.

        In fact, seeing Peterson get trashed, has felt almost uncomfortably familiar.

        And the sad part is, Amy Wallace, Cathy Newman, and so many others, think they are not only truth-tellers, but the Good Guys throughout. There is zero doubt in their minds.

        1. Well at least you’re in excellent company.

          And that’s also why anyone anymore is advised to record or tape any interview they do as part of the agreement to do an interview at all.

          1. Yup. “You want to interview me? No problem. I am recording this whole thing myself. Hope that’s not a problem, either.” I wish I’d done that on a dozen different occasions.

        2. I found it particularly interesting the times you said “Sarah, I referred you. They will call you.”
          NOT A SINGLE ONE CALLED THE FEMALE IMMIGRANT FOR WHOM YOU WERE TAKING THAT BULLET (because cancer. Yah, gone. I’m fine.) Not. A. Single. One.

      3. Pretty much. And I am still somewhat surprised anyone takes that ‘reporter’ seriously, when it was clearly obvious that she was trying to railroad Peterson into a response she wanted.

        1. I’ve seen what I call the “So… Game” for a couple of decades by now on comments sections, Forums and Usenet. Newman raised it to such an utterly ridiculous level she got turned into a meme for it.

          A well-earned fate.

      4. I would then recommend both neurological and psychological exams to said PupKicker, as auditory hallucinations of that magnitude could be a symptom of a severe disorder.

    2. It was so depressing that year! But you know what? It at least showed these fetid buttholes for what they really are.

    3. Brad:
      So I’m a registered Independent. I vote for more Democrats than Republicans. I’m rather liberal socially. That said, I supported the Sad Puppies. I had friends who were outraged about it, so I asked them if they could tell me why. It was just regurgitated talking points about how you and Larry are evil and hate gays, women, and POC. No proof of that was ever provided, but I got a lot of “well, I can just tell.” It’s shit like that, you know, that keeps me from ever really considering myself a liberal. That, and what you said at the beginning:

      “What snapped it for me was when they cheered themselves delivering NO AWARD against Mike Resnick and Toni Weisskopf. ”

      Hell, that’s a damn travesty. Mike Resnick is a national treasure. And Toni Weisskopf is one of the people that make Baen what it is: a damn good imprint that publishes fun sci fi. It’s the blatant cruelty and pettiness that turns me against these people. So I admit I take a bit of perverse joy at seeing Worldcon implode.

  21. Right now I am *so* glad that we decided to skip this year’s Worldcon the minute their dealers’ room published booth prices (we paid that much for booths at a 50,000-person comic con and lost money, and that one was only two days’ drive, so we’re sure not going to make money at that rate with a 5,000-person Worlcon that’s four days’ drive away, even if we’ll be staying with family once we get there). When a comic con promoter that runs two of our bread-and-butter shows announced that they’re starting a new convention that weekend, we snapped up booths, and much as I’ll miss getting to see my brother’s new digs, I know I’ve got a lot more chance of making money at Michigan Comic Con than Worldcon. And given our current financial situation, we need financially successful cons.

  22. I have not experienced such schadenfreude since watching the reaction of the media to the results of 2016 Presidential election.

  23. Too bad these folks abhor Kipling as a doubleplusungood CIShet dead white male imperialist. Then they might have known about the Danegeld.

  24. Very off topic; but I wonder if there will be reprints of The Monster Hunters omnibus? I’ve been using them as my gifted drug to introduce your work to folks.

  25. It is important to understand that Larry is a White man who owns devices of death. Women and minorities have a rational fear he will kill them. That is why his presence at certain conferences is problematic.

    He can kill them and get away with because if someone calls the cops they will only start shooting People of Color.

      1. Guns bleach your skin retroactively. This is why black-on-black violence isn’t a real thing, except in the minds of the VRWC. African-American gang members are all innocent baa-lambs, but as soon as one picks up a gun, the Eeevil NRA Mind Control Waves turn him into an Eeevil White Guy and he becomes a mindless serial killer. And the magic is so powerful that it erases his whole past, so that he was ALWAYS white. The same applies to all People of Colour (pbut). Which means Mr. Correia, having handled a gun at least once, is not one of those, QED.

        1. Since Whiteness is a social construct that confers upon its beneficiaries a belief in their own innate superiority and endowed with a right to dominate People of Color by any means necessary it does follow that a man who looks White and acts White is White regardless of ancestry or genetics.

          1. You’ve tipped your hand. You MUST be a parody. Either that, or you’re the fourth*-dumbest troll on the internet.

            *Amazingly, I know three people *dumber* than this. Two have posted here.

          2. But since your definition of White includes a “belief in their own innate superiority” and I most definitely do NOT possess that belief, does that mean I am “not White” despite my relatively pale complexion and majority Northern European ancestry? After all, by your definition I do not “act White”.

          3. Sorry, E P. Throbbin Yobbin says you’re White, and White people are defined by their belief in their own innate superiority. Therefore Throbbin knows you believe in your own innate superiority. Clearly Throbbin, who has never met you and knows nothing about you, is a far better judge of what you actually think and believe than a rotten Whitey like you.

            (File under, ‘Who are you going to believe, your lying eyes or me?’)

          4. E.P.–

            Since Whiteness is a social construct it is not relevant what you do or do not believe; society believes in the innate superiority of Whites who receive benefits at the expense of People of Color because of this belief. Unless you are actively working to abolish Whiteness, you are complicit in the exploitation of People of Color that benefits you.

          5. I am doing my part to abolish Whiteness by explaining how the social construct of Whiteness works to uneducated White people. Some of them are named Tom

          6. Hooray, the troll replied to me! That really makes my day.

            As long as you are still replying, I’d love it if you would explain to me how calling to “abolish Whiteness” does not count as advocating genocide. After all, it seems that it’s impossible for me to stop “being white” (despite the fact that “whiteness is a social construct”). Therefore it seems to me that the only two things I can do in order to participate in the abolition of whiteness are to kill myself, or to refuse to reproduce. (Is that mansplaining? I am female after all, and it’s “my body my choice”.)

          7. Believe me, Throbbin Yobbin, I am not ‘uneducated White people’. I do not require you to mansplain your idiocy to me. I am perfectly versed in all the varieties of illogic that your ideology requires in lieu of rational thinking (which is an Eeevil Tool of the CisHetWhite Patriarchy, or whatever you’re calling it today). I also know that they are 100% B.S. and do not work for any purpose other than keeping your minds wrapped in a protective cloud of stupidity.

            I understand you perfectly. I just don’t agree, because I am not as stupid as you choose to make yourself.

            Your head now has my permission to explode.

    1. If you were really afraid of Larry, you would advocate for MORE people to be able to carry guns, so they could defend themselves against people as big and strong as he is. I’m an average-sized woman and would stand no chance of protecting myself from a guy as big as he is without the use of a firearm.

      1. Ah, but we have already demonstrated that carrying guns turns you into an Eeevil White Guy, which is the only thing in the world that is worse than being shot by one. So people can only protect themselves from Eeevil White Larry by becoming him.

        Why, oh, why are you advocating genocide against People of Colour by demanding that they put their innocent, immaculate hands on horrible, horrible G-*-Ns?!

        1. If picking up a gun is what turns me into Larry, where can I go to collect my multimillion-dollar-bestselling-author privilege?

      2. Yeah, I’m 6’5″, good striker with fast hands and a bit of experience. I carry a gun because I don’t want to have to walk all the way across the room to have to hurt somebody. 😀

    2. Yeah, I think Throbby is playing a part, because even the saltiest kool-aid drinker struggles to cram that many buzzwords into one post. Well done, but you need to be a bit more subtle in your trolling. 😀

  26. It is important to remember that communism has only failed be caused it was menaced by agressive capitalist imperialism. Look at the history of the genocidal American-supported death squads in places like Nicauragua and El Salvador or the CIA stooge Pinochet who probably killed more people than all of the communists combined. The capitalists slaughter anyone who can provide a good example of worker justice so their own people will not see an alternative model of a society based on compassion instead of greed.

      1. I’m thinking Throb Yob has got to be a mole. No one able to operate a computer could type that tripe with a straight face. It’s got to be meant as a caricature of a parody of a joke of what someone thinks a LibProg actually believes.

        1. Sadly, I’ve encountered enough Marx-cultists who sound exactly like this twerp and believe this tripe 100%. He could be trolling, or he could be the real deluded deal.

          Either way, mocking him is the best response.

    1. Poe’s Law has been invoked. I’m betting satire though, the stupidity quotient is just too high for believability.

      Really top notch stuff, old boy.

      *Adjusts evil capitalistic monocle.*

    2. “Look at the history of the genocidal American-supported death squads in places like Nicauragua and El Salvador or the CIA stooge Pinochet who probably killed more people than all of the communists combined.”

      So Pinochet and the CIA killed over 120 million people? 120 million is the 20 Century death toll from all of the various flavors of Socialism, from Adolf Hitler and his National Socialists, to International Socialists like Pol Pot.

      The current population of Chile is a little over 18 million. Could you show me pictures of the 120 million man mound of corpses in Chile?

      What dimension are you living in?

      1. Clearly the CIA killed 120 million people in Chile, because there are not 120 million people living there now. That’s glory for you (as Humpty Dumpty said).

      2. I am not sure where you get the 120 million figure, it sounds like the number of people who were killed in fatigue, dehydration, poisoning, heat stroke and kidney infections from the brutal working conditions in corporate factories and farms.

        At any rate Hitler was a fake socialist not a real one. He was a lackey of the corporations. The same is true of fascism. After all, Mussolini quipped that fascism was best described as corporatism.

        True socialism is about compassion and caring. All those killed by true socialists were in the context of war imposed on them by capitalist powers.

        1. If you’re trolling for lulz, kindly stop. If you believe any of the poisoned balloon juice you are posting, kindly seek professional help. You are darkening counsel, and it is not amusing in the slightest.

        2. Try reading a history book, “Throbbin”. And, let’s dispense with the f*cking “No True Scotsman” fallacy re: Socialism.

    3. Trobbin,
      O boy is the stupidity astronomic with this one.

      Riiiiight. So the Sandinstas who routinely slaughtered the Miskoto indians back in the 80s because of their alleged support of the contras but Miskotos strenously objected to objected to having their land stolen by the Sandinistas and being regarded as untermenschen as well..

      Also pray tell how are the capitalists responsible for Maduro and his thugs effectively destroying a country with the biggest oil reserves at a time of high oil prices?

      Or again Daniel and his wife forced, FORCED to desecrate churches, beat up priests and parishioners and killing demonstrators?

      Pinochet didn’t kill 100 000 000

      Communism fails because it completely defies objective reality to substitute an insane fantasy.
      Live in your delusions don’t drag me into them.

      1. You’re right . So I got goaded into reacting but I won’t have it when some doofus sings the litany about communism. Far too many people have suffered and died because of it. I have family and friends who suffered in varying degrees because of it

    4. So in other words, communism is so fragile, that any resistance causes it to fall apart like a wall of toilet paper. Except in Venezuela where Communism is so strong that no one has toilet paper anymore.

  27. It’s fascinating to see how the Usual Suspects are still deeply obsessed with Sad Puppies. Virtually every article on the WorldCon debacle written by someone on their side goes out of its way to bring up SP, even though we had nothing to do with this. Even before, when the completely Puppy-free Hugo nominations list was announced, they couldn’t stop talking about Puppies.

    A less-informed reader might get the mistaken impression that the Puppies are somehow involved in the current woes. A better-informed one might speculate that’s exactly the mistaken impression the Usual Suspects are trying to give.

    1. Hell, most of the articles opening paragraphs talk about us before they talk about what’s actually happening now. They’re desperate. It’s awesome.

  28. I saw Larry’s post on Facebook about tnh’s plea for everyone (and their money) to please come back.

    Thought about it.

    Yeah… no.

    How about this instead: we keep going to the cons that are actually fun, and she keeps going to the ones for people whose idea of fun is seeing Mary Robinette Kowal LARPing White Savior Woman (“Always first in line to ‘speak for’ minorities everywhere, ’cause they totally can’t speak for themselves, or possibly might say the wrong thing!”, Scalzi LARPing Diversity Man (“Pudgy middle-aged rich white suburban Ohio dude by day, rainbow warrior by night!”), and Teresa Nielsen Hayden LARPing Rosa Klebb.

    1. For those of us not on social media, can you give us a rundown on what she and Mr. Correia said?

      Thanks.

      1. tnh posted a smarmy little cri de coeur about how she totally didn’t want anybody to “feel unwanted” and how it would totally “break her heart” if that were the case.

        Larry was… skeptical.

        The more I think about this, the more I suspect the whole thing was a planned Lenin/Trotsky-type setup. The ConJose people spent years doing the vast amount of work to get the con together, virtue-signaling as hard as they could all the while, only to have the Tor mob deploy their crack MANUFACTURED OUTRAGE!!!! team to mount a last-minute coup.

        Oh, the ConJose team is still “the concom”, in the sense that they’re still the ones responsible for all the scut work (e. g., paying the bills) but the con programming is now totally controlled by the Nielsen Hayden axis.

        Not that I’m going to shed any tears for the ConJose folks. Perhaps some of them will learn a lesson from this experience.

      2. TNH lamented the following on Twitter: “some uncontrollable number of SF fans out there were left believing they were somehow Not Wanted by established fandom. This breaks my heart.”

        Larry replied by pointing out she was one of the most outspoken members of the hate group that tried to push him, his friends, and his fans out of the SF/F community during the Sad Puppy Era. Mostly by lying about them and accusing them of every form of bigotry under the sun.

        The fact that she can, in one breath, accuse an entire swath of the SF/F community of being “racist sexist homophobic Nazis” with zero credible evidence, while also lamenting that some people are feeling excluded simply because of who they are, smacks of so much hypocrisy that I’m not even sure how to react to it. But for now I just laugh.

        1. Well, it’s quite simple, isn’t it? Larry and the Puppies were never any part of the SF/F community, which is defined by its absolute ideological commitment to the daily changes of ‘line’ imposed by the kaleidoscopic orthodoxy of the Postmodern Left. Therefore, by excluding them, TNH excludes nothing, and by dehumanizing them, TNH only gives appropriate treatment to things that were never human to begin with.

          Remember, the only flaw in the Sacrament of Abortion™, according to the Postmodern Left, is that it is unfortunately impossible to perform retroactively. The most you can do is declare your opponents to be unpersons; the Eeevil VRWC unjustly and arbitrarily prevents you from actually liquidating them.

          1. Tom, you display an unprecedented talent for comprehending the inanity of the far left, and for that I salute you. Bravo, sir. (Or is it okay for me to call you sir? Maybe “zir” is more inclusive.)

          2. EP, you may of course call me ‘sir’ if you wish, and I appreciate the courteous intent; but I’m a peasant, I am, and more likely to answer to ‘Hey, you!’

            (It isn’t really a talent; a lot of it comes from being stuck in Canada, I’m afraid.)

          3. Well, I am an American, and as such I take no notice of class distinction and apply “sir” or “ma’am” to all people equally. I’m sorry you are trapped in Canada, though. I’ve met enough sane, rational Canadians to know that many are good people, but I also had to put up with some of the crazy on the regular when I lived in a city where there were many Canadian expats. I can’t comprehend how one can put up with it so constantly.

        2. I think it was some *unknowable* number of people, not *uncontrollable* number of people, but yes.

          Seriously… she thinks that the message of Sad Puppies made them feel unwelcome. It could never have been going to a filk session and and finding out that the songs were anti-religion or anti-conservative rather than fun songs about science fiction or fantasy. Oh no! It could never be going into a con panel and listening to the panelists all agree that people who believe in God are anti-science and can’t figure out how infectious disease works. It could NEVER have been going to a con panel and watching in horror as the GOH couldn’t talk about anything without turning her head to one side and uncontrollably saying BOOOOOOSH! about every 10 minutes. And it certainly wasn’t the jokes and laughter at the expense of the “other” when you knew darned well that you were the other. And lastly, it was NEVER ever EVER hearing said, with complete seriousness that there weren’t many conservatives in sci-fi because they’re just not very *creative* you know.

          Nope.

          It’s because Puppies said all those things and people believed them and then while fighting the Good Fight and necessarily burning of their own village, it seemed to un unknowable number of people that they were unwelcome when it was *only* those Puppies.

          Look, I know anyone can see this. And people do, “puppy kickers” do. They sift through it all looking for sin and sinners.

          Nothing I’ve said was anything other than pervasive, common, usual, and utterly *invisible* to you. You’re proud of being “woke” when what you are is blind.

          1. I checked again and it was “uncountable number”. My brain must have skimmed a bit and typed a work that looked similar, but semantically didn’t really fit. Sorry about that.

            You are spot-on about the wrongthink analysis. I’ve been a religious person all my life (only recently realized I was politically conservative as well) and the amount of ridicule is unbearable. They either don’t realize that rational, intelligent, science-loving religious people exist, or they treat us like the exception and assume that because we love science we must not be *really* religious. Like all I do is listen to sermons and think about how nice it might be to get to hang out in heaven someday.

            I recall my high school physics teacher (a good man, but clueless about the topic of religion) asking the class “What’s the difference between science and religion?” and I being the bravest one in the room, answered, “They both describe the world, but from different perspectives.” He replied by saying “No, the difference is that science makes predictions, and religion does not.” I wanted to scream, “Have you even read the Bible?” but was too much in shock to respond. I think he was trying to make a joke, but to me all he really did was reveal that he had never bothered to understand the thing he was trying to criticize. Religion is a punchline, and nothing more.

  29. “mildly disturbing

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    mildly disturbing Retweeted Alyshondra Meacham
    MRK & allies may go down as the people who saved Worldcon from Puppy Active Measures. Would be great if people can chip in for this!”

    What Puppies?

        1. I’m imagining one of those group photos of everyone who attended a convention event, but with faces scratched out or inanimate objects mysteriously placed in the foreground. A group of panelists where there are more pairs of feet under the table than there are faces above it. That sort of thing.

          1. Not a chance. Uncle Joe and his crew didn’t have Photoshop so were forced to make due with those crude methods. These days, even those as incompetent as the usual puppykickers can make people disappear from photos so smoothly that it will look like they were never there.

          2. The very excellent movie “The Death of Stalin” had Soviet era remove and replace photo editing as a credits gag.

          3. I have seen “The Death of Stalin” and I agree, it was a fantastic movie, and the end credits effects were perfectly done. The whole film was such a perfect blend of the horrifying and the humorous. I think I need to watch it again now.

      1. When the leaders of a revolutionary movement grow senile, they generally start having flashbacks to old battles. When Stalin was dying, he warned the CPSU to be ceaselessly vigilant against Mensheviks and Social-Revolutionaries. The Mensheviks had been outlawed in 1921; the SRs were on the losing side in the Russian civil war, and their remaining leaders were formally tried and condemned in 1922. But dotty old Uncle Joe was still seeing them under every bed in 1953.

        Is it any surprise that dotty old Aunt Teresa and her friends are seeing puppies in their certified pet-free zone?

  30. Because SJWs are never happy, I expect Mary Three Names’ reprogramming to please very few and may cause an even greater sh*t storm.

    Look to see many panels with 12-15 panelists talking to less than 5 geeks in the audience.

    This one may actually be fun to attend!

    1. They’re starting to release the program online.

      I want to be scrupulously fair and say that *possibly* there are so many good panels that the ones that people are pulling out and posting and mocking are a small number compared to the total but oh is it amazing.

      And they’ve even given old ladies with long publishing careers a panel or two, pointing out how old they are.

    2. They’ve got a How to be an Ally panel that includes, “and what to do when you mess up.”

      Because you will.

      Oh, and a “non-toxic masculinity” panel with all women panelists.

      I’d like to see the “non-toxic femininity” panel with all men. 😉

      At the end of the day, though, filling all market niches is what a good free market person believes in, so more power to them. A person does sort of wonder though, who goes to a panel at a sci-fi convention to find out how to properly grovel when you screw up and how not to be “toxic” if you’re male.

  31. Just a heads up, apparently one of sarkisian’s fam boy assaulted one of her detractors. Cheek out the quartering on youtube

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