The Other McCain

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

‘Monster People’: Were Alec Holowka’s Fears Paranoid — Or Prophetic?

Posted on | September 4, 2019 | Comments Off on ‘Monster People’: Were Alec Holowka’s Fears Paranoid — Or Prophetic?

 

Last week, independent videogame developer Alec Holowka committed suicide four days after being accused by Zoe Quinn of abusive behavior when Holowka and Quinn briefly lived together in 2009. Nearly three years before his suicide, Holowka wrote a Facebook post in which he said “monster people” in the gaming community were attempting to destroy his career in order to drive him to suicide. Diana Davison described Holowka’s 2016 message:

He discussed “cognitive distortion” and stated, “I believe that certain people in the indie game community want me dead.” He elaborated, saying that on a daily basis he lived with the fear “they are trying to covertly hurt me and my career to the point where I’m driven to suicide.”
Holowka said he had trouble attending conferences, knowing that these people who he believed wished to harm him would be at those events but had tried to engage in exposure therapy by forcing himself to attend. He doesn’t name any of the individuals who he felt held this animosity towards him and acknowledges that he was struggling with a psychological problem.

Holowka says his enemies in the indie game community “committed actions and created circumstances that lead me to suicidal ideation. They are smart people who are capable of predicting what results their actions would cause.” Holowka says these enemies are “sociopathic” in their hostility toward him. He discusses how he’s trying to deal with his “cognitive distortions” through therapy. Here’s the whole post:

 

The question is whether Holowka’s fears were paranoid — an irrational delusion — or whether the hostility he perceived was real. In the wake of last week’s events, it certainly would seem that Quinn, at least, harbored a deep grudge against Holowka and, after soaring to prominence in the wake of the 2014 #GamerGate controversy, Quinn gained enough influence that, when she went public Aug. 27 with her accusations against him, Holowka’s partners almost instantly dropped him from the development project he’d co-founded. Was Quinn one of the “monster people” he was talking about in that October 2016 Facebook post?

We don’t know. It could be that other of Holowka’s former associates had their own grudges against him, and that he perceived their animosity as dangerous to his career, even if he didn’t expect Quinn to be the agent of his destruction. What is clear is that Holowka felt that he had enemies who were “trying to covertly hurt me and my career,” and that he believed the intention of these enemies was to drive him to commit suicide.



 

Category: Sex Trouble

In The Mailbox: 09.03.19 (Late Edition)

Posted on | September 4, 2019 | 1 Comment

— compiled by Wombat-socho

OVER THE TRANSOM
Bacon Time: Look Out!!! Weather Hype!!!
EBL: Messaging In Hong Kong That The Chicoms Can’t Block
Twitchy: NY Post Reports Ilhan Omar’s Husband Filing For Divorce Over Affair
Louder With Crowder: Vegan Suing Her Neighbors Over BBQ Smells

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: How To Effectively & Emotionally Communicate With A Woman
American Greatness: Inspector General’s Report Exposes Another Collusion Myth
American Power: Pete Buttigieg Was Rising, But Then Came South Bend’s Policing Crisis
American Thinker: Liberals Embrace Anti-Feminism In Transgender Sports Debate
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Daily 4th Amendment News
Babalu Blog: In Socialist Cuba’s Marvelous Education System, Not Even The Teachers Can Spell
Baldilocks: My August 2019 Post Digest For DaTechGuy Blog (also, hit her tip jar.)
BattleSwarm: Nice First-Person Defensive Gun Use Piece, also, Dave Chappelle On Jussie Smollett
Camp of the Saints: Send In The Adolescent Clowns
CDR Salamander: 6.8mm On The Way – Eventually, Everyone Goes Salamander
Da Tech Guy: This Just In – Trump Is Right On China
Don Surber: Highlights Of The News
Dustbury: Should I Not Have Done That?
First Street Journal: Be Careful For What You Wish…
The Geller Report: Thirteen Bombs Found In Storage At Bangladeshi Mosque, also, NYPD Searching For Man Who Asked Imam To Help Blow Up Precinct
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post of The Day, also, Standards Of Living
Hollywood In Toto: Whoopi & Joy Behar Shred Will & Grace Blacklisters, also, Hollywood Can’t Stop Othering Red State America
Joe For America: Alyssa Milano Challenges Ted Cruz to 2nd Amendment Debate, Cruz Accepts
Legal Insurrection: Ilhan Omar’s Current Husband Spills The Beans, also, Germany’s AfD Surges In Eastern States
The PanAm Post: The “New” FARC – Urban Terrorism & Attacks On The Economy, also, Mexican Children With Cancer Dying Due To Lack of Medicines
Power Line: Ilhan Omar Feels The Heat, also, A Conservative Plan To Reduce Shootings & Other Homicides
Shark Tank: Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Gaza) Blames Israel For Honor Killing
Shot In The Dark: Crocodile Tears On A Stick
STUMP: Taxing Tuesday – Back To Work!
This Ain’t Hell: Yer Workweek Music, also, Biden Vs. Multiple Round Magazines
Victory Girls: New Mattis Book Blasts Joe Biden
Volokh Conspiracy: Bloomberg Law’s False & Misleading Report About Leif Olson
Weasel Zippers: Professor On Hurricane Dorian – “These Storms Are Manmade Storms”, also, MSNBC Says It’s Time For Anti-Gun Activists To Start Going After NRA Members
Mark Steyn: Sixteen Tons, also, Triumph Of The Will & Grace

Amazon Warehouse Deals




Category: Linkagery

In The Mailbox: 09.03.19 (Afternoon Edition)

Posted on | September 3, 2019 | 1 Comment

— compiled by Wombat-socho

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: Will A State’s Attorney Plead The Fifth?
EBL: It’s Out Of Control – Pedestrians Being Killed By Cyclists In NYC
Twitchy: Megan McArdle Defends WaPo Fact Checkers Who Slammed Sanders’ Medical Bankruptcy Claim By Further Dismantling That Claim
Louder With Crowder: Crowder Declares Taylor Swift “A Piece Of Sh*t”

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: A Weekend At The Spa Grand Prix
American Greatness: From Icon To Just A Con
American Power: The Joke Police Are Looking To Strip Dave Chappelle Of His Speech Rights
American Thinker: It’ll Be Trump In A Landslide, And Here’s Why
Animal Magnetism: Goodbye, Blue (Labor Day) Monday
Babalu Blog: QOTD From Cuba’s New Socialist Cardinal
Baldilocks: Spinning A Web
BattleSwarm: Jack Hacked, also, Democratic Presidential Candidate Clown Car Update
Camp of the Saints: On The Death Of The Rule Of Law, Part III
CDR Salamander: Hong Kong’s Reminder & Warning
Da Tech Guy: Hey, DaTechGuy, What’s Taking So Long With Da Move?
Don Surber: Trumping Red China In Hong Kong
Dustbury: Strange Search Engine Queries, also, Metal Babe
First Street Journal: The Tolerant Left Doesn’t Want To Tolerate The Straight Pride Parade
Fred On Everything: Dispatches From The Race War
The Geller Report: “Apologies Are Not Enough” Eric Trump To Sue MSNBC Over Lawrence O’Donnell Report, also, Only 4% Of Donations To Ilhan Omar Came From Minnesota
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post of The Day, also, NGC 1097
Hollywood In Toto: Media Can’t Spin Away Hollywood’s New Blacklist, also, Chappelle’s Sticks & Stones Offends With Purpose
Joe For America: Will & Grace Star Endorses Sign Calling Black Republicans Mentally Ill, Wants Trump Supporters Outed
JustOneMinute: Is Climate Change The New Gay Marriage?
Legal Insurrection: Red Caps Trigger Fragile Pulitzer Prize Finalist, also, GOP Senators Accuse Sen. Whitehouse (D-RI) Of Openly Threatening SCOTUS With Political Retribution
The PanAm Post: The Myth Of Natural Resources
Power Line: Will IG’s FISA Report Spur Criminal Charges? also, How Montgomery County, Maryland, Enables Rapists
Shark Tank: The Great Progressive “Gay Pride” Hypocrisy
Shot In The Dark: Fall Weiss
STUMP: Mortality With Meep – Some Mortality Trends In The Storyline Game
This Ain’t Hell: Another Five Return, also, “The Bible Stays”
Victory Girls: Technicality Prevents Justice For Kate Steinle
Volokh Conspiracy: So Much Wrongness In Just One Matthew Dowd Tweet
Weasel Zippers: 27 Shot, Seven Killed In Chicago This Weekend, But Nobody Seems To Care, also, Growing Number Of Governments Shutting Down Internet To Quash Dissent
Megan McArdle: Boris Johnson Is Presiding Over Britain’s Stupidest Hour
Mark Steyn: Experts As Ideologues, also, Movie Magic – No Computer Required

Amazon Warehouse Deals




Category: Linkagery

Book Launch!

Posted on | September 3, 2019 | 1 Comment

— by Wombat-socho

I could have sworn we had a “Shameless Capitalism” tag in here somewhere, but I guess not. Anyway, since I took the day off yesterday, I’ll be doubling up on the linkagery today as soon as I get back from having my claws filed this afternoon, but I did want to mention that I have a new book out. It’s a collection of short SF stories titled The Anti-Dog Tank and Other Stories, and it’s available for $1.99 from Amazon. You can also read it through Kindle Unlimited or the Prime Lending Library, if you have access to those. I think if you liked my essay collections, The Last Falangist and What Did You Do In The Cold War, Dad?, you’ll like The Anti-Dog Tank and Other Stories.

Category: Books

The Dangerous Myth of ‘Gender Equality’

Posted on | September 3, 2019 | Comments Off on The Dangerous Myth of ‘Gender Equality’

 

Rational Male author Rollo Tomassi called my attention to a recently published study by Florida State University psychology professor James McNulty and his colleagues, summarized thus:

Sex is critical to marriage. Yet, there are several reasons to expect spouses to experience declines in the desire for sex over time, and the rates of any declines in sexual desire may differ for men and women.. . . Results demonstrated that women’s sexual desire declined more steeply over time than did men’s sexual desire, which did not decline on average. Further, childbirth accentuated this sex difference by partially, though not completely, accounting for declines in women’s sexual desire but not men’s. Finally, declines in women’s but not men’s sexual desire predicted declines in both partners’ marital satisfaction.

These results are surprising only to people who permit political ideology to blind them to what any adult with common sense already knows.

Men and women are different.

The differences between men and women are socially significant.

Pretending that men and women are the same, for the sake of an ideology that treats male-female differences as a product of patriarchal oppression, is a surefire formula for social catastrophe, and while some women may benefit in some ways from a regime of legally enforced “gender equality,” most women will suffer as a result of the instability and conflict that such a regime will predictably produce.

Having spent five years studying radical feminism, I can tell you that there are some feminists (see Sheila Jeffreys, Anticlimax, 1990) who never bought into so-called “pro-sex” feminism. They understood that what was being sold to women as “sexual liberation” from the 1960s onward — a celebration of shameless promiscuity as “empowering” — was contrary to women’s best interests. Indeed, it is unnatural to expect women to enjoy meaningless hook-ups, and such behavior tends to undermine women’s psychological health, to say nothing of the risks of venereal disease and other gynecological problems. Furthermore, a culture that promotes sexual promiscuity will expose women to greater risk of male violence. If nothing else, The Law of Large Numbers suggests that the more men a woman has sex with, the greater her risk of encountering at least one violence-prone partner. The harms of “sexual liberation” are so numerous that they cannot be summarized in a single blog post, but my point is that the harmful effects on women of this kind of “equality” are obvious enough that radical feminists cannot deny the common-sense observation: Men and women are different, and nowhere is this difference more clear than in the matter of sexual behavior.

What the Florida State study found — not surprisingly — was that men and women began marriage with different levels of sexual desire. Men want more sex than women do, quite generally. Everyone with two eyes and a brain can observe this as a matter of fact, and adjust their expectations accordingly, but the ideology of “gender equality” tells us we’re not supposed to notice this difference, let alone talk about it.

What happens when we silence discussion of important facts? How are relationships damaged by unrealistic expectations? Why do so many feminists become enraged by any attempt to explain meaningful differences between men and women? Who is afraid facts?



 

Category: Sex Trouble

Please Go Hit Kirby’s Tip Jar

Posted on | September 3, 2019 | 2 Comments

My brother Kirby has been out of work for two months because of health problems. The good news is, he apparently won’t need more surgery. The bad news is, he’s still getting tied up with the process of getting medical clearance to return to work, so I sent him $100 via Pay Pal. He’s also got a fundraiser at Go Fund Me, if you’d like to contribute that way.

Thanks in advance and God bless.

Category: Family

Let’s Take Chris Hayes Seriously

Posted on | September 2, 2019 | Comments Off on Let’s Take Chris Hayes Seriously

 

Nothing was easier than the point-and-laugh reaction over the weekend after Chris Hayes argued on MSNBC that “the weirdest thing about the Electoral College is the fact that if it wasn’t specifically in the Constitution for the presidency, it would be unconstitutional.”

This bizarre tautology — “The ocean would be dry if it wasn’t so wet” — provoked howls of laughter, and a stinging rebuttal on Twitter:

As I’ve pointed out before, Hillary Clinton’s popular-vote majority in 2016 was entirely explained by her lopsided margin in California:

One of the “arguments” (an excuse, actually) employed by Democrats after Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 election was, “She won the popular vote!” To which the proper reply is, “Where?” In a handful of large urban states where Republican Donald Trump did not campaign, Clinton won by huge margins, and this proves . . .? Nothing, really.
In California, Clinton won with 62% of the vote, 7.4 million to 3.9 million, a margin of nearly 3.5 million votes (3,446,281 to be exact). Nationwide, Clinton got 65,853,516 votes to Trump’s 62,984,825 — a margin of exactly 2,868,691. In other words, her margin in California alone was more than enough to account for why she “won” the popular vote, which is completely irrelevant in our Electoral College system.

If it had been the intent of our Founding Fathers that the president be elected by a nationwide referendum, they could have done that, and yet they didn’t, to the puzzlement of Chris Hayes. Presidential campaigns might be organized much differently — why bother visiting New Hampshire or Iowa? — if it were all just a 50-percent-plus-one referendum. But the Constitution says otherwise.

When you look at election maps, you see that the Republican Party suffers from a disadvantage because it has failed to organize or campaign effectively in three large states — California (55 Electoral College votes), New York (29) and Illinois (20). Given the landslide majorities enjoyed by Democrats in those states (62% for Hillary in California, 59% in New York, 56% in Illinois), the GOP begins every presidential campaign by conceding 104 Electoral College votes to Democrats, who thus more or less automatically have 39% of the 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency. And yet if you look at the county-by-county map, you realize that, even in these three Democrat landslide states, there are still large areas where the GOP vote is a majority. Republicans win among rural, small-town and suburban voters, whereas the Democrat vote is concentrated in urban areas. Does anyone, even Chris Hayes, imagine that the authors of our Constitution intended the federal government to represent only urban interests? Don’t be absurd.

Seriously, what was the substance of Chris Hayes’s argument?

You can see why, on just basic tactical grounds, why the Republican Party would want to continue a system in which they can lose a majority of votes and still get all the powers of the presidency, appointing the Supreme Court justices and judges and signing legislation, vetoing legislation, commanding the army, everything, right? All of that with less [or fewer] votes than the Democrat got.
No wonder they like. But I think there’s actually a deeper philosophical thing happening, which is the question of what exactly American democracy is for. And the weirdest thing about the Electoral College is the fact that if it wasn’t specifically in the Constitution for the presidency, it would be unconstitutional.
Here’s what I mean by that. Starting the 1960s, 1961 particularly, the Supreme Court started developing a jurisprudence of one person, one vote, right? The idea is that each individual vote has to carry roughly the same amount of weight as each other individual vote which is a pretty intuitive concept but it was not a reality.

In other words, Chris Hayes is basing his argument against the Constitution on Supreme Court decisions from the 1960s. What he calls “a jurisprudence of one person, one vote” was established in a series of cases (Baker v. Carr, 1962; Gray v. Sanders, 1963; Wesberry v. Sanders and Reynolds v. Sims, 1964) in which the Warren Court replaced the actual requirements of the Constitution with an egalitarian doctrine derived from an imaginative interpretation of the Fourteen Amendment.

Justice John Marshall Harlan II’s dissent in Reynolds is a memorable denunciation of the Warren Court majority’s usurpation of authority that the Constitution never contemplated for the Supreme Court, given that nothing in the Constitution (and certainly not in the Fourteenth Amendment) gives the federal government any role in determining legislative districts. As in so many other issues during the 1960s and ’70s, the Supreme Court’s claim to near-dictatorial power (“the pervasive overlordship of the federal judiciary,” as Harlan called it) helped inspire the rise of the conservative movement as a means of limiting this kind of judicial tyranny. The mischievous activity of the Warren Court, which Chris Hayes argues is more relevant than the Constitution itself, tended toward a manifestly un-democratic system — centralized government by an elite that recognized no limitations to its power to interfere with the lives of citizens in ways that would have shocked the Founders.

The fact that Chris Hayes and other Democrats are now arguing for the abolition of the Electoral College is yet another reason to re-elect Trump in 2020, just in case you needed another reason.



 

Category: Constitution, MSNBC

What Was the Texas Gunman’s Motive?

Posted on | September 2, 2019 | Comments Off on What Was the Texas Gunman’s Motive?

The man whose shooting rampage in Odessa, Texas, killed seven people had been fired from his job at a trucking company shortly before the spree that ended when he was shot by police. Seth Ator, 36, had a minor criminal record involving offenses committed when he was 19, but authorities were at a loss to explain what happened Saturday:

Ator was pulled over by Texas troopers in Midland on Saturday afternoon for failing to use his signal, police said. He then shot at them with what police described as an AR-type weapon and sped away. Driving on streets and the highway, he sprayed bullets randomly at residents and motorists, police said.
The man then hijacked a postal truck and ditched his gold Honda, shooting at people as he made his way into Odessa about 20 miles away. There, police confronted him in a movie theater parking lot and killed him in a shootout.

There is no “manifesto,” no “white supremacy,” no terrorist connection, just a Texas truck driver who got fired from his job. The “AR-type weapon” is the most popular rifle in America — there are an estimated 20 million such rifles owned by civilians in the United States. Any gun-control proposal to ban and confiscate these weapons would obviously be a non-starter, particularly in Texas: “Come and take it,” as they say.

But Democrats don’t care about obvious facts.



 

Category: Crime, Texas
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