Hermione Granger At The Marco Polo Bridge

Posted on | June 15, 2019 | Comments Off on Hermione Granger At The Marco Polo Bridge

Aside from the occasional used book, I haven’t bought any books from anyone but Amazon in quite a while. This year, I made an exception and actually paid list price for the Compton Crook Award winner’s debut novel, The Poppy War, by R. F. Kuang. As The post title indicates, this is a coming of age fantasy in a world where magic works…differently, and the gods are feared for a very good reason. Kuang’s novel is about a young girl orphaned by war and fostered by a merchant family who changes her fate by passing the extremely difficult admittance exam for Sinegard, an elite military school where she discovers that her fate isn’t to be an officer in the Imperial military, but something far more dangerous. Despite the foregoing, this is not a book for children or even young adults, because it’s set in the Second Sino-Japanese War, except that everyone is using arrows, swords, and polearms instead of rifles and artillery. While the notion of Chiang Kai-Shek as the Empress is amusing, Kuang spares us and her heroine nothing, not even the Rape of Nanking, which is horrifically re-enacted. I am looking forward to the sequel, The Dragon Republic with some trepidation; I’m hoping our heroine lives happily ever after but am rather afraid she won’t. It’s due out in August.

On a more cheerful note, the first volume of Komi Can’t Communicate is out from Viz Media. I’d been following it thanks to fan translations on the web, and wrote kind of a pre-review here. The manga has more than lived up to my expectations – while a lot of the characters are bizarre, extreme caricatures of typical middle school kids, it’s at its base the story of a girl who can’t talk to people well but badly wants to make friends instead of being placed on a pedestal by her classmates for her “aloof” beauty. The art is nothing special, but the story is good. Worth your time.

The Four Horsemen universe rolls on, and I’ve finished Mark Wandrey’s Dirty Deeds and Jon Osborne’s When The Axe Falls. Wandrey’s book is the tale of a merc who wants to retire on an idyllic island colony…but trouble keeps finding him, and when the Mercenary Guild forces land, he realizes it’s time to saddle up with his fellow retirees and show the aliens why it’s a bad idea to mess with people who’ve grown old in a field where few do. Lots of humor, lots of action. Highly recommended. Osborne’s book is also good, mixing a story of revenge with an underhanded scheme by the Guild to set humans against humans….which turns out to be a bad idea for the humans the Guild is using as a catspaw.

Cash being short, I’m going to head over to the library this week and get caught up on some recent books by David Drake and the 1632 crowd, plus whatever else catches my eye.

Category: Books

In The Mailbox: 06.14.19

Posted on | June 14, 2019 | 2 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

OVER THE TRANSOM
Gungoal: Yet The Left Still Blames Guns Instead Of Mental Illness For Mass Shootings
EBL: National Bourbon Day
Twitchy: Rep. Will Hurd Bounced From Speaking At Black Hat Conference Because He’s A Republican, also, You Can’t Read This Brilliant Thread About The Anniversary Of Net Neutrality’s End Because The Internet Is Gone And We’re All Dead
Louder With Crowder: Change My Mind Google Edition – Hate Speech Q&A, also, High School Valedictorian Excoriates Crappy Counselor, Unhelpful Staff, & Drunk Teacher
According To Hoyt: Yeah, It Was Supposed To Be A Guest Post
Monster Hunter Nation: June Update Post
Vox Popoli: Corporate Cancer Metastasizes, also, The Comics Meltdown Continues

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: The Climate Change Socialists Show Their Hand, also, Friday Hawt Chicks & Links – Ebola Edition
American Greatness: A Conservative Resistance?
American Thinker: US Army War College Surrenders To CAIR
Animal Magnetism: Rule Five Supermassive Friday
Babalu Blog: Cubans On The Street Tell Reporter What Living Under Socialism Is Really Like
BattleSwarm: LinkSwarm For June 14
CDR Salamander: Fullbore Friday
Da Tech Guy: Sports And SABLE Under The Fedora
Don Surber: Mexico Kills Reporters, Trump Tweets – Who Does Media Call The Enemy?
Dustbury: Welcome To The Hotel Zuckerbergia
First Street Journal:
The Geller Report: Hezbollah Isn’t Just In Beirut, It’s In NYC Too, also, Here’s Facebook’s Process To Label You A “Hate Agent”
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post Of The Day, also, Everything’s Up To Date In Kansas City
Hollywood In Toto: Woke Late Night Grabs Gold In Victimization Olympics
JustOneMinute: Iran Behind Tanker Attack In Gulf Of Oman?
Legal Insurrection: Oberlin College Vows To Fight Gibson’s Bakery Verdict, also, DNC Announces The 20 Candidates Who’ll Be On Stage For First Debate
The PanAm Post: Maduro Gives Russia Control Of Two New Gas Deposits
Power Line: Cowardice At Harvard, also, From The Mixed-Up Files Of Ilhan Omar (5) and (6)
Shot In The Dark: The Strib Is Ilhan Omar’s PR Flack, also, People Are Basically Trash
The Political Hat: Happy Flag Day, 2019
This Ain’t Hell: Valor Friday, also, Marine Who Pissed On Taliban Corpse Wins In Court
Victory Girls: The Bell Tolls – Oberlin College’s $33 Million Lesson
Volokh Conspiracy: Short Circuit – A Roundup Of Recent Federal Court Decisions
Weasel Zippers: Left-Wing Billionaire George Soros Buys Two State Prosecutor Elections, also, FEC Chair Takes Shot At Trump Over Soliciting Foreign Info – Why Didn’t She Say Anything About HIllary?
Megan McArdle: A Comeback For Rent Control, Just In Time To Make housing Shortages Worse
Mark Steyn: The Great Fire Of A New London

Amazon Warehouse Deals

Category: Linkagery

Corporate Censorship: A Short History of the Social Media Thought Police Regime

Posted on | June 14, 2019 | Comments Off on Corporate Censorship: A Short History of the Social Media Thought Police Regime

In the sidebar, Ace of Spades beats Ben Shapiro like a rented mule:

Now that YouTube is deplatforming conservatives who don’t tow the line on the sexual left’s zero-tolerance-for-anything-less-than-complete-validation agenda on homosexuality and transgenderism, Ben Shapiro — who, oh yeah, makes a lot of money from YouTube — suddenly has a problem with the left’s deplatforming campaign.
What happened to Muh Private Business, Not-Binary Ben? Did the Muh Private Business mantra stop being sacred when the censors started knocking on your neighbor’s door?
Hey, remember when a lot of us told you that the alligator would soon come for you, licking its chops? But you were still content to feed the alligator your rivals and competitors?

The link is to Twitchy, where Sarah Desprat-Reed says of the “standards” by which YouTube justified demonetizing Steven Crowder:

The “standard” seems to be “hate speech is any speech I don’t like.” . . .
If YouTube’s going to crack down on so-called “egregious actions,” that’s fine. But they’d better be able to explain why “egregious actions” are only egregious when conservatives do them.

Leaving aside Ace’s grudge against Shapiro — the feud has lasted longer than the Mueller investigation — let’s ask: How did we get here?

The current era of social-media censorship can be traced back to #GamerGate, which feminists and other SJWs claimed was about “misogynist” harassment. That’s what inspired the creation of Twitter’s Trust and Safety Council with totalitarian ideologue Anita Sarkeesian in February 2016, a week before my @rsmccain account was banned.

That ban was justified under Twitter’s recently promulgated prohibition on “targeted harassment” although, as was pointed out at the time, no one ever said who was “targeted” or how they’d been “harassed” in my case. Someone in authority at Twitter had evidently decided to make an example of me and, while there was general consternation among conservatives and libertarians at the time, this was forgotten a few months later when Twitter banned Milo Yiannopoulos. What seems to have happened next was that in November 2016, after Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton, everybody in Big Tech bought into the Democrats’ claim that online “fake news” and Russian “bot” accounts explained Hillary’s loss. Quite suddenly, any social-media behavior the Left didn’t like was “hate” and “fascism” and, especially after the August 2017 Charlottesville riot, this mentality led to increased censorship. Among the major-media “journalists” who encouraged the expansion of this Orwellian Thought Police regime was CNN’s Oliver Darcy.

Everybody who’s followed this story can name their own reference points in the saga, but two that stood out for me were, first, the firing of James Damore from Google in August 2017, and second, Amazon’s ban on pickup artist Roosh V’s books in September 2018. Now, nearly five years after the #GamerGate controversy erupted, we have reached the point where Carlos Maza (an employee of NBC-subsidized Vox) can succeed in getting YouTube to punish one of his critics: “We came to this decision because a pattern of egregious actions has harmed the broader community and is against our YouTube Partner Program policies.”

Ah, “a pattern of egregious actions” — keep it nice and vague, eh?

What has happened, essentially, is that after decades of left-wing dominance of academia, younger members of the college-educated class (including journalists and tech-company workers) are overwhelmingly “progressive,” which is to say they are not only Democrat voters, but monomaniacally obsessed with certain ideas, which leads them to engage in virtue-signalling by accusing others of Thought Crimes. They seek to “win” arguments by silencing opposition.

“Twitter Is Now Banning Conservatives For Investigative Journalism About Big Tech’s Abortion Activism” is the latest headline from Madeline Osburn at The Federalist. There was a time when most Christian conservatives seemed inclined to ignore the censorship directed at various “alt-right” types. However, if people like Milo, Roosh and Alex Jones weren’t the kind of polite folks the Religious Right was apt to defend, it was predictable that once these rowdy voices were purged, that next the Thought Police would extend their reach. Crowder is not Alex Jones, and Lila Rose is not Milo Yiannopoulos, but all of them are viewed as enemies by the progressive Thought Police. There is no safe harbor where “respectable” conservatives can enjoy freedom of speech.

UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers!

In related news, PJMedia is now being blacklisted by Pinterest — because nudity? — and tech billionaire Naval Ravikant says, “The Left won the culture wars. Now they’re just driving around shooting survivors.”

UPDATE II: Oh, yeah, did I mention somebody’s got a book out?

Category: Ace of Spades, Blogging, Culture

In The Mailbox: 06.13.19

Posted on | June 13, 2019 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 06.13.19

— compiled by Wombat-socho

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: Don’t Have an Emergency During Shift-change
EBL: Tanker Attacked In The Strait Of Hormuz
Twitchy: Amazon Schools Joe Biden On the US Tax Code, Who Wrote It, And Why
Louder With Crowder: Dan Crenshaw Destroys NYT Writer Over 9/11 Bill

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: It’s Pride Month, So Enjoy Your Time In The Sun
American Greatness: Groups Want Delay On SCOTUS Citizenship Question Decision
American Power: Brace For A Voter Turnout Tsunami
American Thinker: Lingering Obama-Era Move At CFPB Now Threatens Credit Markets
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Daily Random Notes News
Babalu Blog: Cubans Claim Havana Market Sold Them Dog Meat Labeled As Mutton, also, The NYT And Its Glorification Of Communism
BattleSwarm: The Illegal Alien Crisis In Uvalde
CDR Salamander: Everyone Just Calm The F*ck Down
Da Tech Guy: A Handy Primer For The Partner Impaired, also, Did Capitalism Really Kill Millions?
Don Surber: Even Trump Can’t Save The Media, also, Highlights of The News
Dustbury: The Wawa Pedal
First Street Journal: The NYT & WaPo Cover Up Joe Biden’s Stupidity
The Geller Report: Al-Aqsa Mosque Address Threatens Pretty Much Everybody Who Isn’t Muslim, also, Marine Le Pen Ordered To Stand Trial For Tweeting ISIS Killing Pictures
Hogewash: Educational Mismanagement, also, Gibson’s Bakery Jury Awards Triple Damages
Hollywood In Toto: Critics Slam Shaft As Racist, Sexist, AND Homophobic
Legal Insurrection: Oberlin College Hit With Maximum Punitive Damages In Gibson’s Bakery Case, also, Internet Reacts To Oberlin Damages
The PanAm Post: Colombian Guerrilla Wanted For Extradition Is Now Congressman
Power Line: A New Low In Press Cluelessness? also, So Long, Sarah, We’ll Miss You
Shark Tank: Rick Scott Backs Trump’s Ban On Cruise Ships To Cuba
Shot In The Dark: Where Have You Gone, Learned Foot?
The Political Hat: Current College Wokeness – Out With Heterosexism, In With Queer Feminism, & Always Doubleplusgood Newspeak
This Ain’t Hell: Veteran Reads Fake Obituary About His Own Death, Family Upset, also, 5th Fleet Aids Tankers After Iranian Attack
Victory Girls: Civil War Days Event Cancelled By Political Correctness
Volokh Conspiracy: “Photoshop The Change You Want To See In the World”
Weasel Zippers: K-Mart Bans Customers Using Christian Terms At Its Photo Kiosks, But Muslim Terms A-OK, also, NYC Mosque Blasts Call To Prayer To 20-Block Radius
Megan McArdle: Sanders’ Brand Of Socialism Is Hard To Pin Down
Mark Steyn: Do The Wokestapo Wear Hermes Scarves?

Amazon Warehouse Deals

Category: Linkagery

Maximum Punitive Damages: Jury Rains Fire and Brimstone on Oberlin College

Posted on | June 13, 2019 | 1 Comment

Oberlin Dean of Students Meredith Raimondo (photo by Bob Perkoski).

Iran attacked oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman, which might lead to war, but that’s trivial compared to the big news from Ohio today:

The jury just rendered its verdict on punitive damages in the Gibson’s Bakery v. Oberlin College case.
Daniel McGraw, our reporter in the courtroom, reports that in addition to the $11.2 million compensatory damages awarded last Friday, the jury awarded a total of $33 million in punitive damages, which will probably be reduced by the court to $22 million because of the state law cap at twice compensatory (it’s not an absolute cap, but probably will apply here). That brings the total damages to $33 million. . . .
The breakdown was:
David Gibson – $17.5 million punitive damages
Allyn W. Gibson — $8.75 million punitive damages
Gibson Bros. Inc. (the Bakery) – $6,973,500 punitive damages.

Legal Insurrection has covered this story from the beginning, and Professor William Jacobson had his say in the Wall Street Journal:

On a different campus on a different day, it is unlikely a simple shoplifting case would have gained much attention. But the incident occurred the day after Donald Trump was elected president, in the wake of which Oberlin students appeared ready to build on the school’s history of left-wing activism to exercise their angst. Thus this otherwise unexciting crime became their cause célèbre. . . .
In this case, Oberlin students and administrators appeared happy to smear a family-run institution in pursuit of a “social justice” agenda. Ignoring the facts, they attempted to destroy a business without concern for the damage they were inflicting on a family and workers in their own community. . . .
For Oberlin, it didn’t have to end this way. At the height of the controversy, the Gibson family says it asked the school to send a letter to students reiterating what had already become clear: The bakery didn’t engage in racial profiling. Administrators refused. Had the college agreed to refute the baseless claims of racism, it is unlikely that the Gibson family would have pursued the matter in court.
The verdict is in, and it regards more than money. The jury held accountable an unhinged progressive activist college that lost concern for the lives of working people in its community.

If you want to understand what happened, begin with this: Oberlin’s administration promoted to the post of Vice President and Dean of Students the college’s former Title IX coordinator, Meredith Raimondo. In 2014, Raimondo had been named “Special Assistant to the President for Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion,” whatever that means. According to testimony at the trial, Raimondo handed out leaflets urging a boycott of Gibson’s, describing it as “a RACIST establishment with a LONG ACCOUNT of RACIAL PROFILING and DISCRIMINATION.”

This was a grossly stupid thing to do and yet, Raimondo is an allegedly educated person who is being paid more than $100,000 a year in an executive supervisory role at an elite college where the annual cost of attendance is $71,390, including room and board. Dear God, I wouldn’t trust such an incompetent dimwit to supervise a Cub Scout picnic!

It would seem that Raimondo’s only qualification to be Dean of Students is that she is (a) female and (b) has the “correct” politics. That’s apparently the employment policy at Oberlin, as at all “elite” schools — any liberal woman with an advanced degree can get hired, and who cares if she’s grossly stupid and irresponsible? Campus life is so well insulated from real-life consequences that this stupid woman’s incompetence doesn’t really matter until one day, she engages in a deliberate act of defamation and — oops! — there goes $33 million.

However, Raimondo was not the only grossly stupid woman on Oberlin’s staff. There was also Antoinette “Toni” Myers, who in June 2016 was appointed assistant dean of students and director of Oberlin’s Multicultural Resource Center, where her job was to “work collaboratively with faculty, staff, and community partners to facilitate a complex and inclusive vision of diversity and multiculturalism that supports engaged educational excellence,” whatever that means. Myers was mentioned in the plaintiff’s closing argument:

[Gibson’s lead attorney Lee] Plakas closed with a pair of social media send-outs that he thinks the jury should see as indicative of the school being in charge of the entire affair. In August of 2017, when the three shoplifters plead guilty and were put on probation, Toni Myers, Oberlin College’s Multicultural Resource Center Director then, [sent] out a text which said, “After a year, I hope we rain fire and brimstone on that store.”
That year length in question, Plakas said, was the time it would take for the three shoplifters to finish probation and have their criminal record expunged.
He also told the jury that the definition of the “fire and brimstone” that Oberlin College administrators were sharing was two definitions in biblical terms: “torment suffered by sinners in hell” and “punishment that lasts forever.”
His second email mentioned in closing was when Meredith Raimondo sent out one about a college professor’s letter to the editor to the school newspaper on the protests. Roger Copeland, an Oberlin College professor of theater and dance (he is “emeritus” status now) criticized how the school was treating Gibson’s soon after the protests ended.
“F–k him,” Raimondo sent out in an email to the school’s communication’s director. “I’d say unleash the students if I wasn’t convinced this needs to be put behind us.”
Plakas used this now-famed email again. “They can’t say they have no control over their students, how they have free speech and are independent, but they can leash their students on unleash them whenever they want?” he asked the jury.
“When a powerful institution says you are racist, you are doomed.”

Well, the jury in Lorain County has delivered its own “fire and brimstone,” and smoke is rising from the crater of Oberlin College.

Category: Crime, Education, Ohio, Racism

Women’s Anti-American Soccer Team

Posted on | June 13, 2019 | 2 Comments

Purple-haired lesbian SJW:

U.S. Women’s National Soccer team co-captain Megan Rapinoe refused to sing the national anthem during Tuesday’s World Cup game in France, only six days after the 75th anniversary of D-Day.
Rapinioe stood silent with her arms behind her back as the rest of the U.S. team placed their hands over their hearts and sang the Star-Spangled Banner ahead of Tuesday’s game in Reims, France.
The 33-year-old U.S. star kept a stony demeanor as the rest of her team sang the Star-Spangled Banner in the Auguste-Delaune Stadium.
Rapinoe had already warned that she would “never sing the anthem again.”
“I’ll probably never put my hand over my heart. I’ll probably never sing the national anthem again,” Rapinoe said in May adding she views herself as “a walking protest when it comes to the Trump administration,” because of “everything I stand for.”
“I feel like it’s kind of defiance in and of itself to just be who I am and wear the jersey, and represent it,” Rapinoe said. “Because I’m as talented as I am, I get to be here, you don’t get to tell me if I can be here or not. So, it’s kind of a good ‘F you’ to any sort of inequality or bad sentiments that the [Trump] administration might have towards people who don’t look exactly like him. Which, God help us if we all looked like him. Scary. Really scary. Ahh, disturbing.”

Women’s soccer is not for heterosexuals or patriots.

So you protest a president by dishonoring yourself and the entire nation? Statists hate America: Megan Rapinoe: My national anthem protests are an 'F you' to Trump administration https://t.co/RB6rIDOulR

— Chris Loesch (@ChrisLoesch) June 12, 2019

After we all looked back last week on the incredible sacrifices and loss of life suffered on D-Day and remembered the American heroes who made victory possible while marking the 75th Anniversary— the timing of this move seems incredibly callous.

https://t.co/lrUwSVlYQr

— Kari Lake Fox 10 (@KariLakeFox10) June 12, 2019

Category: Sports

Oberlin President Says College’s Deficit Is ‘Unsustainable … We Will Not Exist’

Posted on | June 13, 2019 | Comments Off on Oberlin President Says College’s Deficit Is ‘Unsustainable … We Will Not Exist’

Oberlin College President Carmen Twillie Ambar testfied Wednesday as the lawsuit by Gibson’s Bakery has reached the punitive damages phase:

It was an odd day in the Ohio courtroom today. Oberlin College, which got socked with an $11.2 million verdict last week for their role in defaming a small business as racist, spent half the day saying they weren’t as bad as they seem, and the other half claiming they were much poorer than they seem.
As this Gibson Bros. v Oberlin College lawsuit hits the end of the line, with the jury deciding on whether “punitive” damages will be assessed to Oberlin College, much of the testimony today consisted of the jury hearing how much cash the school has. Or doesn’t have.
But at any time when one tries to define the monetary value of anyone – large institution or ordinary person — it usually comes down to how one might interpret what such fun terms as “revenues” and “expenses” and “deficits” actually mean. Sometimes those terms get interpreted in different ways to get the dollar number one wants.
Oberlin College was so hellbent on getting the message out that their cash liquidity was in such dire straits — as the eight-person jury was figuring out if they wish to add $22.4 million to the school’s legal verdict bill — that they brought out the school’s president, Carmen Twillie Ambar to the stand to tell that part the story.
“We’ve created deficits … and over the next ten years, if this continues, that is unsustainable and we will not exist,” Ambar told the jury. She even indicated the school’s grants — about $60 million a year from the school, and lots of students get those scholarships as only 10% of them pay the full $70,000 a year — were important to preserve as “the accessibility of education” was a key component of the school’s purpose. . . .
Rebecca Vazquez-Skillings, the Oberlin College vice president for finance and administration, was brought to the stand by the plaintiffs’ team to go over the numbers and show how the school had lots of money and how a few million more on this verdict wouldn’t hurt them. . . .
The college has more than $1 billion in funds and net assets according to the latest IRS 990 form, an endowment fund that had grown from $440 million to $887 million in the last 20 years, and because of its non-profit status, pays no taxes on any property it owns.
It also had 18 members of their administration making more than $100,00 a year. The president and chief financial officer of the school were both making more than $500,000 a year. . . .
As for [Oberlin Dean of Students] Meredith Raimondo, she was brought to the stand for a short period in what seemed like an excuse for the plaintiffs to show the jury more emails and texts she was privy to or that originated with her. The punitive stage demands the jury find “malice,” in their deliberations, and these emails and texts tended to prove some of that. . . .
Judge John R. Miraldi had ruled yesterday that an email written by Donica Thomas Varner, Oberlin College’s Vice President and General Counsel, who has been in court since day one, was inadmissible.

Notice that all four of the Oberlin administrators named here — Ambar, Vazquez-Skillings, Raimondo, Varner — are women. Is that just a random coincidence or, as I suspect, is it a result of deliberate anti-male discrimination at Oberlin? Three of them (Ambar, Vazquez-Skillings and Varner) are women of color, and we might further suspect that this reflects anti-white prejudice at Oberlin, which could be of interest to the jury in Lorain County, which is 85% white. Given that this is a case involving Oberlin students making false accusations of racism against private business owners, do you think the jurors will be moved to sympathy by Ambar’s reference to the college’s “unsustainable” deficits?

Oh, and Ambar is being paid more than $500,000 a year to preside over the social justice warrior training camp at Oberlin, while the annual median household income in Lorain County is $52,066.

Where I come from, there’s an old saying, “Payback is a bitch.”

UPDATE: Maximum Punitive Damages: Jury Rains Fire and Brimstone on Oberlin College