Don't Draw the Attention of Kek

There is a minor kerfuffle happening on Twitter right now, whereby some antifa found her live-in boyfriend lying dead.  He, too, was apparently some well-known “punch a Nazi” antifa.  She then proceeded to “live Tweet” the aftermath—the police coming, the clean up, etc. Apparently she has received donations after this performance piece, and I do not begrudge that at all, because even simple funerals are terribly expensive.

As one would predict, she is now being hounded by many acolytes of Kek, who are doing the whole “the only good communist is a dead communist” thing on her Twitter feed.  None of this should be surprising or even interesting.  Based on absolutely nothing, I suspect the woman to be a malignant narcissist who is happy to be either loved or hated but never ignored.  My only interest is what young people might be learning from watching things like this unfold.  Are they learning the fundamental human truth that if you love something, you keep it to yourself?  If it is important to you, then you don’t expose it to the world to be pissed on by your enemies, or even by bored strangers?  I wonder if we will we see this kind of self-flagellating over-exposure increase or decrease in the next few decades.

Misc.

Book I will buy the next time I have money:  https://www.amazon.com/Libido-Dominandi-Liberation-Political-Control/dp/1587314657

Stuff I have read and want to comment on, but probably won't any time soon. 

https://mountainguerrilla.wordpress.com/2017/02/07/skull-stomping-sacred-cows-reality-isnt-nice-its-a-2x4-to-the-teeth/

This will blow your mind.  It is hard for me to even comprehend this.  Almost 75% of newborns in Paris are tested for sickle-cell anemia.  Sailer goes into detail as to how the infants are screened-- both parents must be at risk, and to be at risk means coming from specific regions.  For example, he writes:  "All nonwhite Indochinese, East Asians, and Polynesians are not tested." In fact, I cannot properly summarize the article.  It is a must-read. http://takimag.com/article/le_grand_remplacement_steve_sailer/print#ixzz4Y4zx8pY4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bs0h9ieLPyw&feature=youtu.be&t=54m50s

http://blog.dilbert.com/post/154289405111/the-time-that-reality-forked-right-in-front-of-you

http://www.parapundit.com/archives/010105.html

http://www.parapundit.com/archives/010102.html

Good and Hard

I started blogging again in part because we really are living in interesting times.  I want to document how great it is for those of us who love Trump.  I already regret not blogging the ramp up to the election.  At first, I was simply excited for the man to blow up the Republican party, since that was a long time coming.  The fact that he destroyed the Bush dynasty was enough for me (please clap).  Then, he destroyed the Clinton dynasty.  If he had done nothing more once he got into office but suck his own toes from that moment forward I would have considered him the best President of my lifetime.

But he just kept going.  His first two weeks were amazing.  He actually came through on many of his campaign promises.  I never want to be like one of those useful idiots who worshipped Obama, so I am continually having to pull back on how much I like this guy. I even like many of his mistakes.  For example, Education Realist made some great points about Betsy DeVos.  While I am happy she was confirmed, ER has convinced me she wasn’t the best pick.  I hope she is capable of addressing the nightmare that is Common Core, but she might be in over her head.

Before the election, I had some pundit tweet to me a part of that famous Menken quotation:  “… the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.” He wrote this in the context that we rubes who wanted to destroy the Republican party didn’t understand what is good for us, unlike those beltway consultants who make a living advising establishment conservatives. The full quotation is “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard,” and I could not agree more. We knew what we wanted.  There were enough of us to vote what we wanted into office.  The pundits and establishmentarians didn’t see Trump coming, didn’t understand why we wanted someone like him, and still cannot understand the history unfolding in front of their eyes.

The times we are living in are miraculous.  Perhaps Trump can reverse things, or perhaps it is too late. Either way, to witness white middle class America finally turn and fight instead of continuing to retreat is a rare gift and blessing. I am in awe to be alive right now.

Why I don’t review many books

Growing up, I read all the time.  In my small Texas town, the school librarian would give me the catalogs she received and had me order new books, because I knew the library better than she did.  But when the kids were young, I stopped reading books (I still read voraciously online).  I would keep a paperback in the diaper bag, but every time I found my location (forget keeping a bookmark in place) I had to put the book down. So, for several years I just didn’t read books, until I started using an e-reader, which was a game-changer.

For the past few years I have tracked what I read through Goodreads. I probably should have deleted my account when they banned Vox Day, but the ability to track my progress kept me on the dark side. (Come on, #alt-tech, we need an unconverged Goodreads!)

A lot of what I read are self-published books and I am proud to support anything that hits mainstream publishers where it hurts.  However, self-published books are prone to problems that traditional editors would normally catch.  I get it—I have priced editors, and know that many self-published authors do not have the money to pay for professional editing services (you need two of ‘em—one for content; the other for writing mechanics).  However, these same people who don’t pony up for professional editing then complain when reviewers deduct stars on Amazon due to content and editing mistakes.

Self-published authors also like to complain that reviewers “don’t understand” Amazon’s ranking system.  See, Amazon lump 3-star review into the “negative review” category.  Only 4- and 5-star reviews appear in the “positive review” category. Most books are average (funny how that works out).  They aren’t particularly bad, but they aren’t very good, either.   An average book is (and should be) 3 stars.  But now, instead of pressuring Amazon to change their system, authors are putting pressure on their readers to inflate their ratings so that written reviews appear in the “positive review” category. I get enough of this garbage from students—I am not going to let someone whose product I just paid for tell me that I owe them a more positive review. Down with review inflation!

Further, the “meh” reviews are warranted, in my opinion.  As an example, for a reader like me, a grammatical mistake knocks me out of the book.  I leave the book’s universe and start editing it in my head.  When this happens once per page, I never fully get into the book.  And yes, that will cost at least one star in the review.  Self-published authors do not tend to think this is fair, judging by their comments on social media.  As a reader who spends a lot on books, I think this is very fair.  Yes, a good mechanics editor would have cost you around $500 up front, and it is possible (likely) that you would never earn that back. Well, you are going to pay either way—pay up front for professional editing, or pay on the back-end in mediocre reviews.  Them’s the breaks.

So, I don’t review books on Amazon or Goodreads unless I really like them, and feel that the author has treated his product with respect. I think I might be putting my catty reviews here, however. 

Dr. Flea Has Fled

I am re-reading some of my old posts.  What a blast from the past.  I had a good laugh at one post from 2006, where I exclaimed delightfully over a pediatrician’s blog called “Dr. Flea.”  I never followed up on here about that blog, alas, although I used it as an example in many, many classes.  See, Dr. Flea “live blogged” his med-mal case, with predictable results.

Draw Your Own Conclusions...

There is a lot of wisdom here.  Penn Jillette thinks he is making an obvious point ("Of course we don't mock those who will kill us.  Whaddya think we are-- stupid?", but he misses the mark entirely.  If the way to prevent "Piss Christ" is for Christians to become more violent, then what does he think is going to happen?  "Well, of course I do not joke about Islam-- they will kill me!"  Indeed.

Old Friend

I love this dusty old blog.  I keep thinking I will start fresh but keep coming back to you, old friend.

But at least it is formatted nicely…

I only wish the papers I grade were this interesting. And don't forget this little gem.  H/T Five Feet of Fury.

Regret

One of the many differences between women and men, at least on the right-hand side of the IQ bell curve, is that men will have a thought and pursue it relentlessly via blogging, while women often have better things to do than to try to promote their ideas or fight for credit when an insight is finally pushing its way into conventional wisdom.  For example, Half Sigma/Lion of the Blogosphere is really good about reminding his readers of his predictive “hits,” and good on him for doing so.  Steve Sailer makes sure that he points out when and where his ideas are appropriated by more mainstream writers.  This is very masculine behavior. 

Back when my daughter was first born, I began to suspect that the whole “breast is best” campaign was ultimately some status competition between elite women and working class women.  I even made some tentative comments on other people’s blogs, but never pursued it vigorously.  I was roundly and personally attacked for this thought, and I backed down, because I did not want anyone to dislike me.  I wish I had fought for my ideas now that more and more evidence is coming out that breastfeeding studies were incorrect or misused.  Of course, everyone wants credit for something they did not work for, and I didn’t even really try to nail this idea down on my own blog.

Venn Diagram

I find it interesting that there are very few web pages which contain the words “‘elke the stallion’ AND steatopygia,” according to Google.  I do not have any stimulating or relevant things to say about the uncommon intersection of the sets of vastly different people searching for these two terms. 

What I Read in 2013

I admit that this is the main reason why I have started blogging again.  VD posted his “Reading List 2013” and I realize that I haven’t been keeping track.  Buying a Kindle changed my life.  Whereas before when I had to haul around a physical book, and I was always losing the bookmark (and the book), I had mostly stopped reading aside from what I did on the computer.  I am back to reading now that I can keep everything on a slim little Paperwhite (never the Fire, because the kids won’t leave it alone).

Here is a partial list.  I know I have omitted some, and I haven’t included all of the “how to” freebies I cannot seem to not download (gardening, backyard chickens, essential oils, fermentation, etc.)

Plague Year by Jeff Carlson

The Scientist and the Sociopath by Joseph D’Agnese

The Sociopath Next Door by Martha Stout

Feed the Animal by Richard Nikoley

The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan

Crimes Against Magic by Steve McHugh

The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror 2010 edited by Paula Guran

The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror 2012 edited by Paula Guran

The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror 2013 edited by Paula Guran

The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson

Sh*t My Dad Says by Justin Jalpern

Hard Magic by Larry Correia

The Last Witchking by Vox Day

Goblin Moon by Teresa Edgerton

Troll Valley by Lars Walker

Draw One in the Dark by Sarah Hoyt

Hailstone Mountain by Lars Walker

This Book Is Full of Spiders: Seriously, Dude, Don't Touch It by David Wong

John Dies at the End by David Wong

Sea Sick by Iain Rob Wright

Enjoy the Decline by Aaron Clarey

Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson

The War in Heaven by Theodore Beale

Erlings Word by Lars Walker

Interrupt by Jeff Carlson

My favorite finds of the year were the novels of Lars Walker.  I am really enjoying the the Erling Skjalgsson saga!

I looked at Goodread’s “Best Books of 2013.”  Dan Brown’s Inferno was #1 in “Mystery & Thriller.”  Margaret Atwood and Jim Butcher were top in “Science Fiction” and “Paranormal Fantasy.”  The latest Stephen King novel led the “Horror” category.  What a depressing list.  The only thing that looks remotely interesting is Temple Grandin’s latest, The Autistic Brain.

I'm Back!

I’m Back!

I cannot believe I started this blog in 2004.  Has it been ten years?  I intend to start blogging again in the tradition of blog as a diary.  I have been missing telling the truth.  Facebook and Twitter are not places to tell the truth.  I have no desire to hurt friends or family.  I also have no desire to fight with anyone.  For now, I can be almost anonymous.  I say “almost,” because Google insists on linking Gmail accounts, so it is only a matter of time before they out us all.

I stayed away for years because I was afraid of being outed professionally for my reactionary beliefs.  However, as the economy continues to decline, my “profession” is falling away.  This is for the best, as I was a minor cog in an evil machine.  I justified what I did (and still do) by noting that there are hundreds of people lined up to take my job, and that my participation (or lack of) changes nothing about the industry.  The work I did allowed me to be at home with my kids (although I was distracted and exhausted, working nights and dozing on the couch during the day).  It also paid well.  Later, I will write more about the industry, which is in its death throes.  I hope that by 2015 it will be dead, dead, dead, although this would put me in a personal financial pickle.

Happy 2014!

Hope and Change

I haven't blogged in over 20 months! Mostly, I haven't had much to say. However, I am feeling more heartened now than I ever have before. A momentous thing is happening this year, a thing that represents a great change, that somehow gives me hope for the future... Andrew Breitbart's Big Hollywood blog. Watching conservatives come out of the closet like this moves me in a way I never would have imagined.

When I was in my early twenties, I was quite left-of-center. A lot of this posture and puffery was due to my intensely-felt desire to root for the underdog and to fight what I perceived as injustice. As I got older, I began to realize how imaginary the injustice really was as I encountered more and more of that nasty Real World I had assiduously avoided in college.

One thing I began to dimly realize was how certain groups were immune to criticism and how other groups were criticized immediately, no matter how mild the comments made. Certain groups had to preface every utterance with a disclaimer, and other groups could make bold, outrageous statements with impunity, even riotous support.

[c.f. Razib's comment: "I will tell you something that many readers might find shocking, but people who know me will know is true, I would try something on people in my freshmen year classes when I first met them, I would assert, "White men should be killed and their women should be used as fuck-animals... " versus the way that most Christians have to preface even the midlest comment with, "I don't mean to offend anyone..."]

Thank you, Andrew Breitbart! Big Hollywood is professional, constantly updated, always engaging, and profoundly entertaining. It is clear that a lot of time and planning went into making this blog a success. A lot of people have taken tremendous career risks by choosing to blog on Big Hollywood. Thank you, brave souls, for speaking out!

Code Monkey Like You

I was actually cheered up by a NYT article, for once. The internet has really allowed people to circumvent the traditional marketing chain. This is wonderful news for creative types!

I haven't had a chance to explore anything more about Jonathan Coulton, but I love Code Monkey.

Via Half Sigma, which has a lot of great content that I would love to respond to, blog about, argue with, etc., had I the time.

I emote, therefore I am

I am so sick of cheap sympathy. I am tired of the phony grief over what happened at Virginia Tech. By phony I mean the cheap and syrupy sympathy from people who have absolutely no connection with the university, people for whom the event is some abstract event they gawk at on the television.

I have gotten multiple solicitations this morning from different universities, some employers and other alma maters, asking for all of us to come together and send notes of condolence in groups—this department, that department. Then, everyone falls all over themselves in a rush to compose the most cliché-filled and saccharine note, usually saying something stupid like, “Now we are all Hokies.” It’s revolting.

First of all, those of us without connection to the school have no idea the pain that the students and families are suffering. Even as bad as it is right now, it will be much, much worse in the future. Six months or a year from now, when the families and loved ones start to come out of their initial shock, they will be screaming with grief. Once the scab starts coming off the wound, all of these flash-mourners will be nowhere around. These cookie-cutter notes do nothing but make the senders feel better. It is especially telling that everyone wants to do this little exercise as a group, so that the group members can earn maximum credit for their pornographic displays of emotion.

The solicitations aren’t even asking for anything useful like money. Have any of these trendy grievers priced a funeral lately? How about weekly therapy sessions?

I won’t say anything because I am coward. But I will believe that my colleagues actually care when they check up on the VT community in a year or five.

Hate Crimes Only Go One Way

It is being reported that Cho Seung-Hui, the resident alien who committed the most heinous campus massacre on American soil, wrote notes railing against "rich kids," "debauchery" and "deceitful charlatans." While Virginia Tech is not releasing any more information right now, I wager the young man’s writing was a bit more pointed than that. I think there is a high probability that VT is scrambling to figure out how to spin what he really wrote. I love that “South Korea's Foreign Ministry said Tuesday the government hoped the Virginia Tech shootings, allegedly carried out by a 23-year-old South Korean native, would not ‘stir up racial prejudice or confrontation.’” Isn’t that nice? I think the words, “I am sorry,” would be sufficient.

We are living in interesting times, and I know I am not the only one wondering, after each affront, whether this event is “the one.” We are reaching a tipping point, and I think the incendiary event will be relatively mild. I don’t think last assault by a foreigner on our soil will do it, but it is certainly winding the spring tighter.

What’s the Word?

For the heck of it, I went Googling to find a word which means “lover of Scotland or all things Scottish,” in the vein of “Francophile” and “Anglophile.” I found two words, neither of which are perfectly satisfactory and not at all in common usage: “Caledonophile” and “Ecossophile.” (Both, of course, are more pleasing than the more-common Scotophile.) Searching for these two words together lead me to a nice little Googlewhack of sorts. Who says that MySpace.com isn't good for anything?

This is how I chose to waste 20 minutes while the chicken finished baking.

Show of Hands

Thank you to Majority Rights for a pointer to the band Show of Hands. Wow! I love acoustic folk music, but usually just ignore the lyrics. For example, I adore Tracy Chapman and the Indigo Girls (I know, I know!). For the past several days, I haven’t been able to stop playing Roots and Country Life. I have ordered Witness from the band’s website, and can’t wait to hear the rest of the album. Thank you very much, Guessed Worker!

Incompetent and Evil

This post is brought to you in a roundabout way by Mean Mr. Mustard’s comments on a Fred Reed article. Russell’s post about paranoia is interesting and, I believe, debatable. Is it possible to be both incompetent and evil? I think that is more common than we tend to acknowledge.

For example, I am teaching from two different textbook which I think are both. I usually try to give academics the benefit of the doubt. I know that once people get into the Marxist echo-chamber, it is difficult to see any other world-view. Many times, as well, certain turns of phrase are simply poorly-written instead of being deliberately misleading. However, past a certain point I think you have to stop assuming good faith on the part of a text-book author.

Take, for example, del Carmen’s Criminal Procedure: Law and Practice, 6th edition (Belmont, CA: Thomson/Wadsworth Publishing Company (2003). It informs us that the US Supreme Court runs the political gamut from conservative (Rehnquist, Scalia, Thomas) to moderately conservative (Kennedy, O’Connor) to moderate (Breyer, Ginsburg, Souter, Stevens) (del Carmen, 2003, at 5). This I would classify as incompetent.

More ominously, the textbook maintains that it is almost impossible to define the rule of law as it operates in the United States (del Carmen, 2003, at 23). I would be much less irritated by this promotion of critical legal theory in a book intended for law students, who would be expected to read more skeptically, but this is an introductory text written for para-professionals such as police and corrections officers. It is one thing to alert students to the finer points of an academic debate within a profession, but it is entirely another to use a relatively-obscure academic debate to cast aspersions on the foundations of Anglo-Saxon common law. This I would classify as evil.

What does this have to do with Russell's post? Absolutely nothing. It has just been rattling about in my brain for awhile now.

You paid what for that coffee maker?!?

I had initially wanted to bzz Storyville coffee on this blog. I have never bzzed before on this blog, and I will likely never do it again, but I really like the coffee (and I am a woman obsessed with coffee). However, the Storyville site is down, and has been for days. Trés obnoxious. So, instead of promoting Storyville, I will send all four of my loyal readers back to Sweet Maria’s. Sweet Maria’s provides freshly roasted coffee from people who know coffee. Plus they will teach you how to roast your own, if you are into that kind of thing.

Receiving the coffee from Storyville has reminded me of a few things I had forgotten since I left Seattle. Number one: Starbucks coffee is burned sawdust. Number two: As long as the beans are good, even a $17 dollar coffee maker makes great coffee.

Yes, I own the cheapest Mr. Coffee Wal-Mart had to offer. I dream of a Technivorm, but I have told my husband that if we ever have $200 to burn, I want another shotgun. Some days I entertain the thought of actually buying the Dutch monstrosity, but then I realize that if I actually fork over that kind of cash to purchase a machine which pulls 220v to boil water, then I have to upgrade my el cheapo coffee grinder to some kind of yuppie burr grinder. Plus, I would have to unplug the stove. Granted, I would use the coffee maker every day, and I don’t use my oven every day, so . . .

No, buying a $200 coffee maker is the equivalent to admitting defeat. I think it comes with a radio preset to NPR. I purchase the Technivorn, the next step is driving north for weekly cultural trips to Ithaca. There comes a time when a woman has to draw the line.

Right after my next cup of coffee.