The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

The Centurion, Some Collections, & A Fistful Of Manga

Posted on | August 9, 2020 | 1 Comment

— by Wombat-socho

Leonard Wibberley is best known for his hilarious Cold War comedy The Mouse That Roared, which was later made into a fine movie starring Peter Sellers, but today I want to talk about a more serious Wibberley novel, The Centurion. The novel is about the Roman centurion, Longinus, who appears at several points in the Gospel, most notably when he pleads with Jesus to save his dying servant, and again during the Passion when he bears witness to Christ’s divinity. Wibberley shows us the man behind the legend, a man with the thankless job of maintaining the peace in this troublesome province of the Roman Empire, filled with people who hate and fear the Romans only slightly less than they hate each other. Longinus has served Rome for decades, and when we meet him, he is a man without dreams or ambition, who just wants to do his job, but there’s this Jewish rabbi wandering around preaching and performing miracles…stirring up the people and making procurator Pontius Pilate worried. In addition to Longinus, we also meet Jesus and his disciples, the latter of which are a long way from being the saints and legends they’ll become. It is because Longinus seeks Jesus’ help that Pilate puts him in charge of the crucifixion detail, and ultimately, gives him charge of the detail watching the grave as well. It is not a cheerful novel; no account of the Passion could be, but it is nonetheless a novel full of hope, and one that will make you think. Recommended.

Give Me LibertyCon is an all-star anthology done as a benefit for the scholarship fund named for the late founder of LibertyCon, Tim Bolgeo. There’s a lot of Tuckerizing going on here, and I probably would have enjoyed the collection more if I knew who even half of these people were.

I’m not quite done with Noir Fatale, edited by Larry Correia and Kacey Ezell, because I can only read so much noir SF/fantasy at a time. If that’s your thing, you’ll really like Noir Fatale, and if not, you should look elsewhere. Maybe at SPOTREPS, a collection of near-future combat SF concerned with a low-intensity war between Red China and the U.S., with an expy for Antifa on the side of the Chinese and a motley crew of local police, sheriffs, and militia doing most of the fighting. Edited by Peter Nealen, SPOTREPS has stories by Larry Correia, Brad Torgerson, and my buddy Jonathan LaForce, who cleverly sneaks a romance into the middle of a militia forward observer team making the lives of the “assisting” Red Chinese miserable by reaching out and touching them with 155mm artillery. Recommended.

I’m still following Komi Can’t Communicate, whose eighth volume is due out next week, because it’s a really touching story about a girl who can’t talk to people except through her phone or by writing on her notepad. There is the usual assortment of weird high-school classmates to lighten things up, but the main plot is about her normal classmate Tadano helping Komi reach her goal of making 100 friends.

As you all know, I’m hopelessly addicted to the mobile game Fate/Grand Order. If mobile games aren’t your thing, and you don’t want to wade through the jungle of visual novels, anime, and whatnot that make up the Fate franchise, I recommend Fate/Grand Order – Mortalis: Stella, the first in a series of manga that explain how little old no-talent you and your confused kouhai got drafted to (literally) save the world.  Does a good job of pulling together some details that aren’t immediately clear in the game or are dealt with there in flashbacks. Recommended. On the other hand, Today’s Menu For The Emiya Family is a weird combination of manga and cookbook in which the many characters of Fate/Stay Night come by and help with dinner. If you like cookbooks with slice-of-life stories in between the recipes, this is the kind of manga you will like.

Next week, if all goes well, the final (maybe) novel in Tom Kratman’s Carreraverse and some other stuff.

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Category: Books

FMJRA 2.0: Who’s Gonna Drown In Your Blue Sea?

Posted on | August 8, 2020 | Comments Off on FMJRA 2.0: Who’s Gonna Drown In Your Blue Sea?

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Rule 5 Sunday: Summertime 2D Girls
Animal Magnetism
90 Miles From Tyranny
A View From The Beach
EBL
Proof Positive

Implied Meanings
The Pirate’s Cove
Bacon Time
Dark Brightness
EBL

The Other Podcast Rides Again
EBL

The McCain Supremacy
EBL

Democrats vs. Suburbia: Biden Will Make ‘Magic Dirt Theory’ Federal Policy
357 Magnum
EBL

FMJRA 2.0: Gonna Teach You Tricks That’ll Blow Your Mongrel Mind
A View From The Beach
EBL

Targeted for Destruction
Pushing Rubber Downhill
Men Of The West
EBL

In The Mailbox: 08.03.20
357 Magnum
A View From The Beach
EBL
Proof Positive

Florida Man Strikes Again
Bacon Time
357 Magnum
EBL

In The Mailbox: 08.04.20
A View From The Beach
EBL
Proof Positive

After Being Denied Tenure …
357 Magnum
EBL

Climate Scientist Explains …
Dark Brightness
EBL

Play Stupid Games, Win Stupid Prizes
357 Magnum
BattleSwarm Blog
EBL

In The Mailbox: 08.06.20 (Afternoon Edition)
357 Magnum
A View From The Beach
EBL
Proof Positive

In The Mailbox: 08.06.20 (Evening Edition)
357 Magnum
A View From The Beach
EBL
Proof Positive

In The Mailbox: 08.07.20
A View From The Beach
EBL
Proof Positive

Top linkers for the week ending August 7:

  1.  EBL (16)
  2.  357 Magnum (8)
  3.  A View From The Beach (7)
  4.  Proof Positive (6)

Thanks to everyone for all the linkagery!

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Category: FMJRA Award

The Other Podcast Rides Again!

Posted on | August 8, 2020 | Comments Off on The Other Podcast Rides Again!

We will discuss the weekly news with my good friends John Hoge and the Lovely Dianna™ at 7 p.m. ET on our new Podbeam account.

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO THE SHOW LIVE!

If you miss the live show, the Podbeam archive is here.




 

Category: Talk Radio

A Musical Interlude

Posted on | August 8, 2020 | 2 Comments

So I’ve spent the past day researching, which involves viewing a lot of old YouTube videos. When I’m watching YouTube videos for my own amusement (rather than research), my preferences are fireworks, “storm chasing” and rare old Beatles sessions. Somehow, the algorithm for “suggested” videos popped up this interesting performance:

 

This fascinates me, because (a) how does someone so young discover an old Buddy Holly song? and (b) the arrangement is so simple. Besides her ukulele, the only instrumentation is a Takamine guitar and a Suzuki Omnichord, a 1980s-era electronic autoharp. New models sell for about $270, but the instrument is scarcely more sophisticated than many children’s toys you could buy for around $100 nowadays. The audio mix was done with Garageband software, and the video was recorded on her iPhone, edited with VideoLeap software. Even the microphone — a Shure 545S Series 2 Unidyne III — is rather cheap, less than $100 on Amazon.

My friend John Hoge worked as a recording engineer in Nashville back in the day, and can tell you what it would have cost to book studio time in the era of analog tape recording. Circa 1981, when I was chasing the rock-and-roll dream, the cheapest 8-track studio in Atlanta charged $25 an hour, at a time when minimum wage was $3.35 an hour. In other words, you’d have to work an 8-hour day at minimum wage to earn enough for one hour in the studio, and a full week’s wages wouldn’t pay for an eight-hour session. By the late 1980s, you could buy a 4-track cassette recorder for about $450 — about two-days’ pay[*], at minimum wage — but the audio quality was low (e.g., tape hiss) and it wasn’t until the late 1990s, by which time I’d outgrown my rock-and-roll dream, that home digital recording equipment became something affordable to the masses.

[* — see note below about this egregiously wrong estimate.]

Young people, in addition to their lack of knowledge of classic Buddy Holly tunes, generally have no idea how cheap technology has revolutionized so many things that we now take for granted.

Back in 1957, Buddy Holly had to travel to Clovis, New Mexico, to record in Norman Petty‘s studio, where “Everyday” was recorded as the B-side of “Peggy Sue.” You couldn’t just program a synthesizer (or use an Omnichord) for your backup track, either. You had to have an actual band to accompany you, or else pay studio musicians at union scale. Because the equipment needed for recording — what Marx would call “the means of production” — was so expensive, getting access to studio time usually required the support of a manager or a record company. Young musicians would generally spend years playing bar gigs and such before they could hope to get a shot at a recording contract. By the time the Beatles signed with EMI in 1962, they had been together five years, played every dance hall in northern England and done four stints as a house band in bars in Hamburg, Germany.

What the advent of cheap high-quality recording technology has done is to topple the barriers between musical talent and the audience. You don’t need a manager or an agent, you don’t need a record company, a studio, a producer, a contract — no lawyers, no paperwork, nothing — to be able to record a song, produce a video and upload it to YouTube where, potentially, you could become an instant superstar.

Allison Young has about 50,000 subscribers on YouTube, and her most popular video has gotten nearly 400,000 views:

 

Wow — “Till There Was You,” a song which was a hit for Anita Bryant in 1959, the year I was born! Think of all the old songs that might be remade for YouTube by young performers. If I could persuade Allison Young to sign a contract, I’d help her find those songs (because I know them all), but such is the nature of technology that Ms. Young probably doesn’t think my knowledge as a would-be A&R man could be helpful to her. This is something else about technology. Because everybody can look up anything on Wikipedia, young people have little respect for the possession of actual knowledge. So I reckon my career as a latter-day Colonel Parker will never happen. Sigh.

UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers! One of the commenters points out a math error:

“$450 / $5.15 (min wage in 1997) is 87 hours of labor ( 2 weeks of pay).”

Thanks. I actually can do basic math, I just didn’t bother to do it, and so my estimate was disastrously wrong.




 

Category: Music

In The Mailbox: 08.07.20

Posted on | August 7, 2020 | 1 Comment

— compiled by Wombat-socho

OVER THE TRANSOM
Ammo.com: The Long Hot Summer Of 1967
357 Magnum: What’s The Use Of Government?
EBL: Sturgis 2020
Twitchy: NV Gov Sisolak, Who Cheered On Protesters, Gets Pissy Over “Evangelicals For Trump” Campaign Event
Louder With Crowder: Portland Rioters Assault Two Old Ladies
Vox Popoli: Conservatives Fiddle While America Burns, also, Tortious Interference In California
According To Hoyt: When Psychosis Took Over The Culture
Cobb: My Stoic Journey – The Sound Of No Hands Clapping

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Conservative: Justice For Assyrians – A Kurdish Perspective
American Greatness: Former Campaign Staffers Sue Tom Steyer
American Power: Pelosi Lashes Out At Judy Woodruff During PBS Interview
American Thinker: Joe Biden, Susan Rice, & SEAL Team Six, also, Democrat Domestic Terrorism Can No Longer Be Ignored
Animal Magnetism: Rule Five Election Odds Friday
Babalu Blog: Tampa Bay Times Lies About Venceremos Brigades To Protect Karen Bass
BattleSwarm: LinkSwarm For August 7
Cafe Hayek: People Believe The Damnedest Things
CDR Salamander: Mini Hospital Ships & Influence Squadrons
Da Tech Guy: Thanks To The Private Sector, America Is A Spacefaring Nation Again, also, Is John Podesta’s Wargaming Session “Confederate” Enough To Make My Point?
Don Surber: Durham’s Investigation Drags On, also, Don’t Bother Saving Newspapers
First Street Journal: Unemployment Drops To 10.2% – But Not Really
The Geller Report: Antifa Members Trained With Islamic Terrorists In Syria -Using Obama Program Cash? also, Police Create Super PAC To Target “Defund” Politicians
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post of The Day, also, Cultural Appropriation
Hollywood In Toto: Denver In Decay Will Capture Another City Rocked By Violence, also, Reporters Ignored Richard Gere Slamming Hollywood For Appeasing Red China
JustOneMinute: Three Billboards Outside Sedalia Missouri
The Lid: Rioters Move Into Suburban Portland, Use Paint To Tr & Intimidate Old Ladies
Legal Insurrection: Democrats About Face, Suddenly In Favor Of Opening Schools, also, Violence In Portland Continues To Rage Without Federal Involvement
Michelle Malkin: New Sovereign Nation Show Debuts This Saturday On Newsmax
Power Line: COVID & The Death Of Common Sense, also, Diversity, Silicon Valley Style
Shark Tank: FL Democrats Grumpy Over Trump’s “Bus Tour”
Shot In The Dark: “Terribly Sad”
STUMP: Meep Quicktake – Congressional Bailout Bill Status & Positioning
The Political Hat: Racism As Health Crisis, also, New York Tries To Shoot The NRA In The Head
This Ain’t Hell: Valor Friday, also, James O’Keefe & Project Veritas Denied 2A Rights
Victory Girls: WaPo’s Gerson Attempts Drive-By Smear Of “White” Christians
Volokh Conspiracy: Cancelling John Marshall?
Weasel Zippers: “The Most Horrific Displays Of Hate I’ve Ever Seen”, also, Ethics Committee Orders Tlaib To Return Campaign Funds She Paid Herself
Megan McArdle: Politicians Are Using An Old Playbook For A Totally New Crisis
Mark Steyn: From COVID To Canceled, also, In Residence At Cymbeline’s Castle

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Category: Linkagery

In The Mailbox: 08.06.20 (Evening Edition)

Posted on | August 7, 2020 | 2 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: What Happens When People Give Up On City Government?
EBL: Joe Biden’s Plan To Destroy The American Dream, also, What Happened In Beirut?
Twitchy: Dana Loesch Tears Into CNN’s Take On President Trump’s “Baseless Attack” On “Practicing Catholic” Joe Biden
Louder With Crowder: Hodge Twins Wreck Oprah For Her Recent “White Privilege” Comments
Vox Popoli: No Accountability, also, QAnon Is Winning The Narrative Battle

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Conservative: Let’s Face It, Red China Is Its Own Worst Enemy
American Greatness: The Three Perils Threatening The United States, also, The NHL Gets Woke
American Thinker: The Truth About Slavery
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Daily Personal Heroes News
Babalu Blog: Karen “I’m Not A Communist” Bass Speaks In Front Of Fidel Castro Poster
CDR Salamander: Tom Wolfe, Tomorrowland, Transformationalism, & Getting Ready For The Next War
Da Tech Guy: Want To Understand Why The Left Defends Antifa? also, Someone Read These Guys The Constitution
Don Surber: Today In #GetWokeGoBroke, also, Satire Becomes Real Life As NYT Publishes Communist Propaganda
First Street Journal: Sure Would Be A Shame If Someone Hacked The DNC Again
The Geller Report: Minneapolis Star-Tribune Endorses Ilhan Omar’s Primary Challenger, also, 28 Million Mail-In Ballots Went Missing In The Last Four Elections
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post Of The Day, also, 18 USC 1001
Hollywood In Toto: Joe Rogan – Voters “Uncomfortable With A Mentally Compromised” Biden, also, Reel Redemption Pulls Off The Near Impossible
The Lid: Joe Biden Says All Blacks Think Alike
Legal Insurrection: Andrew Cuomo Now Basically Begging Rich New Yorkers To Return To NYC, also, In “Totally Non-Political Move”, NYS AG Files Lawsuit To Dissolve NRA
The PanAm Post: Chilean Economy Declines 12.4% Thanks To Corona-chan, also, Venezuelan Oil Minister’s Front Man’s Assets To Be Handed Over To FARC Victims
Power Line: YouTube Can’t Handle The Truth, also, Biden’s Racism & Nastiness Exposed Yet Again
Shark Tank: Mucarsel-Powell Plays Race Card In New Ad
Shot In The Dark: Berg’s Law Part I – Welcome To Law School
The Political Hat: Struggle Sessions Come To Seattle
This Ain’t Hell: Special Forces Colonel Facing Multiple Sexual Assault Charges, also, NY AG Files Lawsuit To Dissolve One Of The Country’s Oldest Civil Rights Organizations
Victory Girls: Tyranny In LA – No Water For You!
Volokh Conspiracy: 2A Rights Of The Successfully Treated/Formerly Mentally Ill
Weasel Zippers: Nevada Sent More Than 200,000 Mail-In Primary Ballots To The Wrong Addresses, also, Billionaire Oprah Denounces “White Privilege”
Mark Steyn: Machiavelli For Dessert

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Category: Linkagery

In The Mailbox: 08.06.20 (Afternoon Edition)

Posted on | August 6, 2020 | 1 Comment

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Summertime Jeanne d’Arc, from the Fate/Grand Order Summer Event

OVER THE TRANSOM
Ninety Miles From Tyranny: The 90 Miles Mystery Box, Episode #1069
Red Pilled Jew: Need Help Gathering “Drag Queen Story Hour” Pictures
357 Magnum: The Bombing Of Hiroshima
EBL: Remember When Joe Biden Supported George Wallace?
Twitchy: More Stupidity From Teen Vogue About Buildings & Genocide
Louder With Crowder: Joe Biden Just Asked A black Reporter If He Does Coke. No, Really.
Vox Popoli: But They Changed The World! also, The Death Of The Devil Mouse
Gab News: A Warning For Christians About Big Tech Tyranny

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: Soundcloud – A Bunch Of Lying, Leftist, Terrorist-Supporting Idiots
American Conservative: The Foreign Policy We Need
American Greatness: Terrorism Expert Testifies That Antifa Developed From Communist Terrorist Organizations Like The Weather Underground
American Thinker: To Save America, Defund The Public Schools, also, Newly Released George Floyd Bodycam Footage Should Make Keith Ellison Nervous
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Hump Day News
Babalu Blog: Biden & Democrats Vow To Abandon Democracy Activists In Cuba & Venezuela If Elected
BattleSwarm: Beirut Blast – How Many Kilotons? also, Austin City Clerk Bars Homeless Ban From November Ballot
Cafe Hayek: Scary Understanding
CDR Salamander: COVID & Central American Gangs
Da Tech Guy: William J. LePetomane For Minneapolis Mayor, also, The Left & Free Speech
Don Surber: Biden May Have Flunked His Cognitive Test, also, Trump Is American Conservatism
First Street Journal: The Democrats Want To Put Election Ballots In The Hands Of Postal Workers, Who’ve Already Endorsed Joe Biden
The Geller Report: Rashida Tlaib Wins Democratic Primary, Declares Jihad Squad “Here To Stay”, also, Obama Spying “Beyond What Anyone Thought Possible”
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post Of The Day, also, I’m Not Making This Up, You Know
Hollywood In Toto: Did CNN, PBS Cross The Line With Two New Documentaries? also, Fallon & Meyers Purposely Ignore TikTok’s Toxic Side Effects
JustOneMinute: Blown Away!
The Lid: CNN’s Brian Stelter Claims Right-Wing Media Behind Push To Scrub Biden/Trump Debates
Legal Insurrection: Sen. Hirono Walks Out Of Hearing After Refusing To Criticize Or Denounce Antifa, also, Reporter Discovers The “Real” Reason For Mega Trucks
Michelle Malkin: Fact Check – Yes, The Mob Is Coming For You
The PanAm Post: Argentina’s Government Threatens Supreme Court Autonomy, also, Hugo Chavez’ Former Nurse Hid $9.5 Million In Secret Account
Power Line: Joe Biden In Action, also, Guess Who Wants Cops Around? Blacks, That’s Who
Protein Wisdom: There Is No Constitutionally Valid Marxism
Shark Tank: Jessi Melton Lies About Netanyahu, Claims She’s Being Stalked
Shot In The Dark: This Is A Job For The Counselor Squad
STUMP: Taxing Thursday – It’s Up To You, New York, New York
The Political Hat: Wokeism at Work, also, Anti-Science Ways Of Knowing
This Ain’t Hell: Lawsuit – #BLM Priced Out By Costs Of Defending Themselves, also, 75 Years Ago Today
Victory Girls: Keith Ellison – Rape Shouldn’t Be Reported To Police
Volokh Conspiracy: Med School Prof Removed From Fellowship Director Post, Apparently For Opposing Affirmative Action
Weasel Zippers: The Biden Interview Gets Even Worse, also, Antifa Tries To Stop Car, Attacks It, Then Follows Driver Home In Portland
Mark Steyn: Manacle Mania, also, Plagued By Luxury Beliefs

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Category: Linkagery

Play Stupid Games, Win Stupid Prizes

Posted on | August 6, 2020 | 3 Comments

SJW Akilah Hughes is not the sharpest tool in the shed.

My lifelong policy — as a matter of principle, really — is to avoid lawsuits. Specifically, I take to heart the advice Andrew Jackson got from his mother: “Andy, never tell a lie, nor take what is not your own, nor sue for slander, settle those cases yourself.” Or as has been quoted elsewhere: “Never bring a suit in law for assault and battery or for defamation. The law affords no remedy for such outrages that can satisfy the feelings of a true man.” In general, I don’t like being in courtrooms for any reason, and cannot imagine why anyone would choose to be a plaintiff in a lawsuit, if he could possibly find any other remedy for a situation..

Unfortunately, we live in an age when litigiousness is encouraged by our culture — all those TV courtroom dramas where justice always triumphs and lawyers are portrayed as heroes — so as soon as anyone gets their feelings hurt, their automatic response is, “I’ll sue you!”

Well, today, boys and girls, let’s learn about a few helpful legal phrases, including “fair use” and “malicious intent”:

On Aug 25, 2017, [YouTube comedian Akilah] Hughes filed a copyright infringement claim in New York federal court against fellow YouTube content creator Carl Benjamin [a/k/a “Sargon of Akkad”] alleging that he violated fair use principles when he used selections of Hughes’s video entitled “We Thought She Would Win” to make his own video entitled “SJW Levels of Awareness” cut and edited from the original work posted by Hughes. The judge ruled that the video met three of the four fair-use standards and dismissed the lawsuit with prejudice. Benjamin filed a motion dated February 18, 2020 requesting attorney’s fees and costs. . . .
On August 5, 2020 Judge Richard J. Sullivan ruled against Hughes and awarded Benjamin over $38,000 in attorney’s fees, finding that Hughes’ claims were “objectively unreasonable” and that this was “clear from the face of the complaint and the videos at the heart of the dispute.” He also noted that because of Hughes’ public messages on Twitter promising to “bankrupt” and de-platform Benjamin, she displayed clear malicious intent, which was another criterion for awarding legal fees.

Noted legal scholar Ace of Spades offers this scholarly commentary:

$38,000, bitch.
She’s currently chain-slandering Sargon on Twitter, repeatedly calling him a “white supremacist.”
He should sue her ass for that, too — he’s now playing with house money, after all.
She’s also attacking the judge. The judge who repeatedly warned her she had no case and that if she pursued things, she was doomed to lose and might wind up having to pay the other party’s attorney fees.
But she’s an SJW — she’s special. She can ignore the law.
Or maybe not.
As Ya Boi Zach advises: “Ignore ’em when you can, sue ’em when you can’t.”

The “fair use” window in U.S. copyright law is very large, especially when it comes to online content. If you publish something on the Internet, and someone wishes to mock or criticize what you have published, any competent attorney would advise you against suing for copyright infringment, because the “fair use” doctrine certain includes quoting what you said or as in this case, showing a video clip of you saying what you said. But perhaps Akilah Hughes doesn’t know any competent lawyers. Maybe she should seek advice from Bill Schmalfeldt.

Here is the 2-minute edit Sargon did of Akilah’s stupid video:

 

Sargon’s title, “SJW Levels of Awareness,” is entirely apt, and this dimwit SJW doesn’t seem to have gained any higher level yet.

Notice her use of “white supremacist” (defined as anyone who disagrees with a liberal) and her use of “harassed” to mean criticized.

If you vote Republican, you are a “white supremacist,” according to Akilah Hughes, and if you use your Twitter account to say anything negative to Akilah Hughes, she calls that “harassment.”

Also, she doesn’t know the difference between hoard and horde, but please tell me again how “ignorant” Trump voters are.




 

Category: Culture, Racism
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