Brickmuppet Blog 2.0

November 19, 2021

Not Guilty! Not Guilty! Not Guilty! ( Updated )

Yay! Kudos to the jury, who were under obscene pressure and in genuine fear while they did due diligence with their deliberations..and nevertheless held fast.

more...

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April 07, 2021

Eyewitnesses to That Which Some Would Deny

An interesting correspondence from General Eisenhower after seeing a concentration camp. He was very keen on getting non-military documentation of the atrocities as he knew that there would be an effort to deny or minimize it, and an understandable tendency to not fully comprehend the horror of what had happened.

A similar notion is found in the text of a telegram from Marshall (original here).

Update: The video of Eisenhower, Bradley, and Patton inspecting a concentration camp is actually blocked by YouTube for some TOS violation. This is why we have Bitchute.

Watch on Bitchute.

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January 10, 2021

Responding to the Purging of Parler

I was saddened to learn that MeWe wasn't Pixy's social media outlet, but I've signed up for it anyway.

I do not like microblogging, but it's good to have some other alternatives to Twitter, now that Parler is gone and Gab is the junior Bostonian Baptist Anti-Fun League circa 1947.

I'm also on Pawoo, but honestly haven't posted there since Dec 7th. Maybe some of you can post Fediverse and other alternatives in the comments.

UPDATE: While I was typing on MeWe about my curry....I burned my curry.

Gah!

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1 I don't know how much longer it'll last but as of 11:30PM Sunday (Central) parler.com is still up.

Posted by: Rick C at Mon Jan 11 00:34:10 2021 (eqaFC)

2 And now it's gone.

Posted by: bouff at Mon Jan 11 03:12:39 2021 (pJ2Io)

3 Meanwhile, Fediverse is continuing on ticking.
Also, guys? Don't use your real name on Mewe unless it's real in your other identities. For one thing, I cannot tell who the heck you are!

Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at Mon Jan 11 14:43:07 2021 (LZ7Bg)

4 Yeah, the Fediverse isn't entirely immune to this sort of crap, but it's a lot more resistant. We should never have abandoned Usenet.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Mon Jan 11 22:12:39 2021 (PiXy!)

5 ALERT: Someone is planning a false flag event this weekend. Either the 16th, 17th, or 19th at state capitols and DC (the date of the supposed patriot event varies). Poorly designed posters have been mailed out to conservatives and conservative groups. The FBI is in on it, since they are now making noises about "uncovering the plot". (Sources, the Blaze, ABC, etc..)

The president is being held incommunicado, and our normal modes of communication are recording the event are being shut down. This is (other than the sheer hell of it) so that we cannot shine a light on what really happens this weekend.

The posters call for armed men to show up at the capitols for a march. This is a TRAP. Unfortunately, with a few million pissed off people, it's almost inevitable that enough idiots will show to give them their set-piece Tienanmen square massacre. If by some miracle, everyone stays home, I'm sure antifa, or Hollywood CGI will fill in.

What is planned next is a brutal crackdown on America in "response" to inaugurate the new regime. The capitol hill protest didn't do what they want, so this is plan B. These liars will now make up reality to suit them, so that they have some bloody shirt to wave giving them moral authority for the rest of the evil they plan.

Hope I'm just paranoid, but we'll find out this weekend.

Posted by: anonymous at Tue Jan 12 07:43:24 2021 (LL2wD)

6 Yeah, I've seen the flyers being circulated. The communist iconography couldn't be any more blatant if they had photoshopped Che's face onto the Statue of Liberty.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Tue Jan 12 09:40:18 2021 (PiXy!)

7 Do ya'll have any of these flyers? Has anyone contacted authorities to warn them?

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Tue Jan 12 14:07:49 2021 (5iiQK)

8 I've only seen them on Twitter. They're obviously fake, but I don't know what the level of fakery is. A real photo of a fake flyer? A fake photo of nonexistent flyer? A real photo of a real flyer for a fake protest?

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Tue Jan 12 23:03:07 2021 (PiXy!)

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October 14, 2020

I'm Going to Link to This

It's not really news.

It's not unexpected.

It's been known for a while.

But I'm gonna link to it.

Because doing so has become important.

Because I can.

IT'S RIGHT HERE.

I do this because this dog bites man story became very important to spread to the four winds this afternoon.

There's some discussion of why that is here, here, here, here and here.

Unlike a lot of people who are seeing that this story sees the light of day, I'm not stunning and brave. I don't have to sit pondering the potential cost to my livelihood and social circle that speaking this truth will entail. I don't have to ask myself "Is it worth losing my site?" "Is THIS, where I make my stand? "Will it matter enough to make the cost I pay worthwhile?"

That calculus does not trouble me, as it does so many others, because I don't do Twitter and don't have a Facebook page. I blog at Mee.nu!

Because Mee.Nu is still free, in both senses of the word.

You should probably migrate your social media here.

UPDATE: Pixy, the administrator of Me.Nu has taken a break from his usual policy of being apolitical on his tech blog to opine upon this dumpster fire at length.

UPDATE 2: Sargon also got his channel locked in the series of purges that have happened the last 36 hours.

Watch on Bitchute

In fairness to YouTube, the company says that this ban was not related to his coverage of the NY Post Story. Rather, they say they banned him for a post from some months ago in which he decried the normalization of Pedophelia.

"Wait..WHAT!? That's their cover story!?"

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October 03, 2020

The Vanishings Have Begun

CoronaChan, was a You-Tube channel that aggregate news related to the current pandemic. Its mirror still exists on Bitchute.

Midnight Tease is down as I type this.

Perhaps Ben referred to Taiwan as, you know, a country.

That's what happened two two Hololive V-tubers, Kiryu Coco and Akai Haato, who, in the course of a joint You-Tube livestream looked up their analytics online (a very common thing for V-Tubers and YouTubers to do), discussed where their viewers were, and, I gather thanked the residents of each country. A lot of their viewers are in Taiwan, and they mentioned and....

For those "inappropriate remarks", they have been suspended, by Hololive's parent company, Cover Corporation for at least three weeks.

There is coverage of this here, here, here, here and here...though it's anyone's guess how long those links will go somewhere.

The whole affair came as something of a shock, particularly since these are not small talents, Kiryu Coco is much bigger than one would think as as she's frequently the top super-chat earner on You-Tube in any given month. This made such waves that even American V-Tubers who avoid politics completely have taken a moment to mention it...and say "Taiwan".

It's telling that according to the ANN and Niche Gamer articles linked above that China's One China Policy was specifically mentioned in the Simplified Chinese version.

There has been a bit of backlash particularly about that latter discrepancy.

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1 I'm OK. Site should be back up, now. It was a simple matter of mis-reading a bill. I thought it was due January 10th, not October 1st. It means a lot that someone noticed, though...hopefully I'll get back to posting about models or World of Warships again, soon.

And someday, I'll detail my epic 5 year adventure.

Posted by: Ben at Sat Oct 3 19:37:55 2020 (9Wcjc)

2 So for some reason this site seems to have gone into night mode or something, with black on black text.... Hopefully that's just a glitch on my end....

Posted by: Mauser at Sun Oct 4 03:27:36 2020 (Ix1l6)

3 It's black text on a black background for me as well...

Posted by: Siergen at Sun Oct 4 08:53:02 2020 (jIT9h)

4 Well, I was playing around with the settings and tried to switch to a dark background with white text, but for some reason the white text remained black. Now the text on the Styles dashboard is invisible and I'm fumbling around in the dark trying to fix it.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Sun Oct 4 14:29:14 2020 (5iiQK)

5 Hololive is an idol production company, Japanese-style; indeed they initially intended to be a singing-type of idol thing, just on Youtube, and the whole vtuber streaming kind of happened organically. The downside is, of course, that it also imported a bunch of the pathologies of that market to a new platform.

The real trick there is that their performers basically start off with a huge leg up. The technical challenge of setting up a cute little avatar image and getting the streaming going is not that large. But building an audience is tough - most people stream to almost nobody, and it takes a lot of work and luck to go from a dozen people to a thousand.

The Hololive folks, now that they've got that critical mass, basically walk into the job already successful there. They launched their EN side with five streamers all with thousands of people watching, just because the company could afford to spread a little hype around the market - because they've got their already-popular stuff feeding into it, it's like being a brand new cover band getting picked to tour with and open for an established band that can pack the stadium every night. Of course they still have to be engaging enough to keep people watching, but there are plenty of people who have that trait but not the interest needed to get a career off the ground.

The downside is that yeah, the idol industry is not pretty; it's about sucking a bunch of money out of the wallets of lonely young men, and part of that is not pissing off the lonely young men. In Japan this usually manifests in "no boys" - no boyfriends, no partners, definitely no getting married, to keep up the fantasy that you're at least theoretically available (even if the guys have no chance, a lot of them just won't deal with the reality of "my idol is interested in a man who is not me!")

If you take the Japanese money, you've got to deal with that kind of pathology; if you take the Chinese money, well, you have the Chinese equivalent.

In either case, the company reaction is pretty much par for the course - even though as observers we can nod and say "man, the idol industry sucks," that's how it is. As far as the production company is concerned, the idols are there to do a job and get paid, and they're disposable if they cause the company trouble; how much more so for a vtuber, when they're just anonymous actresses for an identity that the company manufactured?

Posted by: Avatar_exADV at Sun Oct 4 16:58:12 2020 (v29Tn)

6 Brickmuppet, do you know HTML at all? If so, you can hit F12 and use the browser tools to disable the black background so you can read the control panel. You might have to do it more than once--so that I could read the text here I had to turn off hte background-color on both the html body tag, and the div with the "main" id.

Posted by: Rick C at Sun Oct 4 17:13:24 2020 (eqaFC)

Hololive is an idol production company

Oh.

An idol company.
So the "doesn't have their employees back" thing doesn't aply, since in this country they'd be a 13th amendment violation.
Interestingly, several of their V-tubers got their audiences on their own and (as I understand it) Hololive walked in and offered them marketing deals.

Now Hololive is doing auditions for V-Tubers whose ascendance they can micro-manage. I've heard (from a few English language V-Tubers) that even the ones who built their own following have, in the last few days. been shocked to learn that Hololive owns the characters now, and they can be replaced. ( I have no confirmation from that other than hearsay, but learning that Hololive is an Idol company means that they are the Weyland-Yutani of meat markets).....and yeah...looking it up, If I'd known ANYTHING about the Idol scene I'd have known what hololive was. I thought they were a new company looking to get in on the V-Tuber thing.

Still no luck on the Blog obviously. In fact, it is supposed to be back to its old settings now.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Sun Oct 4 17:16:03 2020 (5iiQK)

8 Huh. So I can just color my text using the widget at the top of the comment field.

Also, if you highlight the text, it's readable.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Sun Oct 4 17:17:49 2020 (5iiQK)

9 The only thing I want to know is if Kizuna Ai is owned by Hololive.

Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at Sun Oct 4 18:46:26 2020 (LZ7Bg)

10 No. Kizuna Ai was affiliated with upd8 but now she is run through Kizuna Ai Incorporated.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Sun Oct 4 21:30:37 2020 (5iiQK)

11 Time to have some kind of Taiwan film festival!
Did you guys see the story about the new CCP Chinese ethics and law textbook, where they include the story of Jesus and the woman caught in adultery... where Jesus waits until the Pharisees have gone away, and then HE stones the woman to death?
Seriously, I think it's clear who the baddies are.

Posted by: Suburbanbanshee at Mon Oct 5 08:43:25 2020 (sF8WE)

12 While Cover Corp (Hololive) is indeed an idol company, they take a percentage (albeit a large one) rather than taking the whole amount and paying a salary. And the talents are largely individual; from what I've seen (Korone, Coco, now Gawr Gura) many of the girls could walk away, set up an alternate new character, and have 50,000 followers on day one.

I hope that what went on behind the scenes is more along the lines of "you did nothing wrong, but we have to pretend to punish you because these Chinese assholes are insane".

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Tue Oct 6 10:25:05 2020 (PiXy!)

While Cover Corp (Hololive) is indeed an idol company, they take a percentage (albeit a large one) rather than taking the whole amount and paying a salary.

OK. That's better than I'd feared. It also makes sense given how the first lot of V-tubers were recruited (Most, if not all were already established.)

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Tue Oct 6 10:51:03 2020 (5iiQK)

14 I'll admit that I find Coco quite funny and I've watched quite a bit of Fubuki playing various games (and they just announced a Fubuki nendo, so there's a buy!) Haven't quite fallen all the way in the hole, though, there's a bunch of them I can't recognize and a few I only know names for but can't really get into watching.

Posted by: Avatar_exADV at Tue Oct 6 14:43:27 2020 (v29Tn)

15 Remember the good old days, when the internet was free, and it really did interpret censorship as damage, and route around it?

Posted by: Ubu at Thu Oct 8 00:35:44 2020 (UlsdO)

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July 21, 2020

Things That Make You Want To Say 共匪

Watch on Bitchute.

There's a lot to unpack in yesterday's NTD report. It looks like the 3 Gorges Dam may not be long for this world, the WuFlu (or something) is spreading big way, However the most disturbing bit of information is that the Uyghur Population in Xinjiang has dropped by 80 percent in the last three years.

That's worse than the drop in the Jewish population in Europe in the 1940s which was a drop of between 60 and 70%.

A U.S. and Australian report also makes some additions to the list of companies benefitting from Uyghur slavery. They include Ralph Lauren, Tommy Hilfiger, and, to absolutely no one's surprise, Hugo Boss.

In other news it appears that malware embedded in chinese electronics and software is an even more pernicious issue than thought.

GoldenHelper, as researchers from security firm Trustwave dubbed the malware, hid inside the Golden Tax Invoicing software, which all companies registered in China are mandated to use to pay value-added taxes. The malware is able to bypass the User Account Control, the Windows mechanism that requires users to give their approval before software can install programs or make other system changes. Once that’s done, GoldenSpy can install modules with System-level privileges.

Golly.

Additionally, it appears that this mess in the Himalayas is not lost patrols or communications glitches, but the fact that China is seriously poking at India.

China is a nuclear power which should give everyone pause. However, it should be remembered that even at the height of the cold war the U.S.A. and U.S.S.R. were able to come to the table and ratify arms control treaties. Logically, China should be welcomed into the ongoing nuclear arms limitation/reduction treaty negotiations. And indeed they would be, if they hadn't rejected that offer from America and Russias with prejudice.

China, with the world’s biggest nuclear arsenal after the U.S. and Russia, has maintained it will not join in talks with Washington and Moscow on reducing its number of warheads.

On the upside: The CCP seems to be having its own walk away movement.

So there's hope that there will be a reckoning for the 共匪.

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June 25, 2020

A Forgotten Battle

Academia doesn't cover this sort of thing much, but it's deeply important history and a reminder of why the second amendment exists.

Another example of this sort of thing, albeit without the racial component was the 'Battle of Athens', in 1946.

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May 18, 2020

共匪 Or Why One Should Not Discuss Wild Pig Infestations in You Tube Comments

Look at that post title.

The blog is still here, because Me.Nu is not Alphabet affiliated.

Allow me to explain.

共匪 is a Chinese character compound that some of you will recognize as "wild boar" which is its Japanese meaning.

( Update: and by some of you, I mean morons like me. See comments)

Youtube is now deleting ANY comment that has that kanji compound in it.

"Rats! Now no one will know about my prize-winning rodeo pig!"

You see in Chinese, 共匪 is the pictograph of a slang term that means "Communist Bandit"*.

The paper says comments will be deleted within 15 seconds and having tried this myself, I note that it will indeed happen within 12 and 20 seconds of the comment being posted. That's some pretty impressive bot work.

Anyway, it's just another example of YouTube enthusiastically doing censorship for the disease spreading, organ jacking, genocidal, slavers, in the CCP.**

One more thing:

共匪共匪共匪共匪共匪共匪共匪共匪共匪共匪共匪共匪共匪共匪共匪共匪共匪共匪共匪共匪共匪共匪共匪共匪共匪共匪共匪共匪共匪共匪共匪

* Probably 'cause commies are pigs.

** When you've got a left wing rag like the Independent calling out your communist atrocities you've jumped the shark with your murderous shenanigans.

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April 28, 2020

The Mob Comes For SakimiChan

Whatever one thinks of Mr Hambly or B.I.T.C., the situation they're reporting on seems to be very real, disturbing and I think we can agree, unacceptable.

Beautyphobes strike again.

It appears that SakimiChan, who (in addition to being a talented and popular artist) gives monthly tutorials on how to draw, has run afoul of the Guild Of Professionally Offended Karens.

Specifically, GOPOK is appalled that an old tutorial in artistry is focussed on rendering the wrong sort of body type.

Sakimi-chan was soon bombarded with criticism and harassment by like-minded art authoritarians, or ‘arthoritarians,’ with the harassment ranging from claims that she was a terrible artist because she did not ‘understand anatomy,’ to accusations of fatphobia based on a tutorial on drawing plus-sized bodies that did not conform to the critics’ very specific standards of representation, to outright calls for the continued bullying and harassment of Sakimi-chan:

Well that' sucks.

If you agree that these puritanical scolds ought to get bent, then follow Sakimichan on Pixiv and on Twitter: Support her quest to add beauty to the world on Patreon and buy her stuff on Gumroad and/or Art Station.

Here's what for her is a low res-piece of 'GravityGal' from her Pixiv...

Yes ladies, she draws dudes too...

...and if you're into it, yaoi, yuri...and interpretational furry.

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March 03, 2020

A List That Ought to Be Shared Far and Wide

Deep in the heart of Coronaville , it appears that Uyghers are being trucked in from their "re-education" camps to staff the factories in the plague zones that are either unsafe to operate due to contamination or have massive numbers of people out sick. The purpose of this appears to meet government mandated targets for production in an attempt to rescue an economy hammered by having its workforce immobilized by this disease. Of course if members of a demographic that the CCP is trying to exterminate are infected with a deadly pathogen, then, (presumably) they won't be required to be trucked back to the concentration camps. As far as the CCP is concerned, "two bats, one stone".

As vile as it is, this situation is actually worse than that.

The utilization of these people in the disease wracked regions is a current expedient, but it turns out that this pool of 80,000 or so workers has been used as a sort of slavery temp service since at least 2017.Long before COVID19 was unleashed upon the world, this cadre has been used by various firms to round out the labor pools at factories that include those of western companies set up in China.

This practice has been noted in a in-depth report by The Australian Strategic Policy Institute a PDF of which is here. It gives extensive citations regarding the practice and helpfully notes which companies have been taking advantage of this abhorrent service.

Abercrombie & Fitch,

Acer,

Adidas,

Alstom,

Amazon,

Apple,

ASUS,

BAIC Motor,

BMW,

Bombardier,

Bosch,

BYD,

Calvin Klein,

Candy,

Carter’s,

Cerruti 1881,

Changan Automobile,

Cisco,

CRRC,

Dell,

Electrolux,

Fila,

Founder Group,

GAC Group (automobiles),

Gap,

Geely Auto,

General Motors,

Google,

Goertek,

H&M,

Haier,

Hart Schaffner Marx,

Hisense,

Hitachi,

HP,

HTC,

Huawei,

iFlyTek,

Jack & Jones,

Jaguar,

Japan Display Inc.,

L.L.Bean,

Lacoste,

Land Rover,

Lenovo,

LG,

Li-Ning,

Mayor,

Meizu,

Mercedes-Benz,

MG,

Microsoft,

Mitsubishi,

Mitsumi,

Nike,

Nintendo,

Nokia,

The North Face,

Oculus,

Oppo,

Panasonic,

Polo Ralph Lauren,

Puma,

Roewe,

SAIC Motor,

Samsung,

SGMW,

Sharp,

Siemens,

Skechers,

Sony,

TDK,

Tommy Hilfiger,

Toshiba,

Tsinghua Tongfang,

Uniqlo,

Victoria’s Secret,

Vivo,

Volkswagen,

Xiaomi,

Zara,

Zegna,

ZTE.

I note that many of the western entities on this list not only profess their own piousness but frequently presume to lecture us on what they claim are our moral failings (usually sins involving mere words).

China is a brutal dictatorship, and a nuclear power. Our ability to affect their internal affairs are necessarily limited. However, while we can't stamp out all evil in the world, willingly engaging in this atrocity is another matter entirely.

This is a list that needs to get some distribution and attention.

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January 14, 2020

Good Grief

A lot of people have been talking about the situation between MxR Plays and Jukin. There's been a lot of sea-lawyering on this but here is some actual lawyering and, well, while it does not in any way change my opinion of whose the jerk and whose the victim it does indicate that the situation is much less cut and dried than people have been suggesting.

The process is the punishment.

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January 09, 2020

Meanwhile at C&Rsenal

I'll just leave this without comment except to say that C&Rsenal is (likely soon to be was) one of the better history channels out there. Watch it while you can. All their customer support contacts are now gone.

They've also been demonetized, so you can support them as I have for over a year on Patre...OH look! They're also on Subscribestar now!

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January 08, 2020

Protecting Their Viewers From The Dangers of Knowledge

While looking up stuff on the looming Virginia Gun Bills I clicked on a citation in the description of a You Tube video and I got this message...

^{Click here then click on the "Go to site tab"}

The site in question is this one, the Virginia Legislative Information System which gives legislative agenda for the General Assembly and the text of laws, proposed laws and proposed revisions to existing laws.

Youtube declared this dangerous.

Yeah.

It's been hard to find any recent news about this situation other than sanctimonious articles calling the sanctuary movement outside mischief makers though I suppose it's possible that there have simply been few developments since Mid - December. One of those is the fact that the sanctuary movement now stands at stands at 87 Second Amendment Sanctuary Counties, 11 cities and 18 towns. Governor Blackface-McBaby Butcher seems to be deliberately trying to incite an incident, and given how provocative he's being combined with all the AnCap aspies getting ready for "The Boogaloo" the left may indeed get their Horst Wessel moment.

How did we go from one of the most second amendment friendly states in the union to this? Virginia went Democrat (Barely, its really a matter of a very few seats in the legislature and the Governor) due to 4 or 5 things. There was a HUGE infusion of outside money, both from domestic leftwing groups and indirectly from people like Soros. A vast wave of immigration and refugees that were settled here during the Obama administration and a large number of domestic immigrants from California and the Northeast who having voted in policies that made their homes intolerable to live in moved here and kept their voting patterns Finally the ineptitude of the VA republican party, which, being so close to DC is basically the epicenter of the Republican establishment's anti-Trump wing. For years they talked of securing the border but now openly call anyone who does so racist. The bad blood that has developed between the party and its voters is hard to imagine. Finally the vast increase of the federal civil service under Obama resulted in Urban sprawl populated with people whose lifestyles depend on big government.

This situation has the potential to be a powder-keg and perception will be molded by Silicon Valley, and the dying husks of the news media and Hollywood. I'm not optimistic. I'm even less so given that having watched both CNN and Fox I note that they look like they are reporting from two alternate realities. Both of those boomer broadcasting services are closer to each other than the online forums which are ensconcing people in echo chambers. The U.S. Civil War was fought by people that had more in common.

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December 26, 2019

Meanwhile, Here in the Commonwealth of Virginia

Virginia's governor is looking to make a name for himself outside the minstrel show and child sacrifice circuits. The legislature, which recently went blue is looking to help him out with this, and in the process provide the rest of the nation with a helpful primer on what to expect from progressive electoral victories in the future.

Her earlier video which goes into detail about the incoming laws is here. It is on You-Tube and so likely to vanish in short order. There is a pithier but more profane backgrounder on this situation from Razorfist.

This situation is much more serious than a lot of people realize and has frightening potential to turn pear-shaped in very short order once these bills start getting passed in early to mid January. The volatile state of affairs is unlikely to be helped by bored aspie hotheads coming to the state with the intention of participating in the opening phases of what they eagerly refer to as "The Boogaloo".

If this thing comes to a head, it will not be catharsis, it will not be a bar fight, it will be hell on earth. Legislators are literally talking about using the national guard to go door to door to "enforce compliance" and there is an addendum to the odious bills being drafted that will allow all those county officials and sheriffs that support the sanctuary movement be removed from office (and presumably arrested). Partially in response, Tazewell County has voted unanimously to raise a Militia. It should be noted that this county mobilization is explicitly legal under the State's constitution for the same reason that our state's motto is Sic Semper Tyrannis.

Virginia is unlikely to be an example to the rest of the country, but, one way or another, we have an excellent chance to be a horrible, horrible warning.

Admiral Josh Painter has his usual insightful thoughts on the matter.

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December 09, 2019

A Primer on COPPA

We've mentioned this before, but here is an actual lawyer talking for just under an hour about the COPPA mess.

A reminder: Today is the deadline to send polite feedback to the FTC on this looming fiasco.

He provides some suggested talking points for creators here.
He also has some suggested talking points for viewers here.

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October 16, 2019

Blizzard Makes Amends

OK, I'm only being 86.8 percent facetious.

They did get slightly more consistent in their totalitarian douchebaggery.

Originally Blizzard opted not to ban the players when they first held up the sign during the October 8th competition, but American University elected to resign from competition anyway to stand in solidarity with Chinese player, blitzchung, who had been banned from competition for saying "Liberate Hong Kong. Revolution of our times!” during a post-game interview.

Kudos to these American University students for pushing this. They gave up a fair amount of money by standing on principles. They also are grounded enough to note in their statement that they are in North America and Blitz Chung is in Hong Kong.

Chambers said the team wants to remind people that Blitzchung risked far more than he and his teammates did to make a point.

"He risked real things,” Chambers said. "We risked getting banned from a tournament structure we don’t intend to compete in anymore. He lost his permanent Grandmasters spot, which is a money printer. He risked getting arrested by security services in Hong Kong. He actually is the hero here."

Note Blizzard's official announcement and public explanation on the matter which, which consists of an anonymous tweet and a quiet banning.

But hey; Blizzard is courageously putting to rest the notion that American Media Companies are not just tolerating totalitarianism in overseas markets, they are helping to bring the censorship here.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 03:46 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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October 13, 2019

Lion Rock is This Week's Suribachi

^{Note the protective plastic sheets being used to prevent the statue from being dinged by their huge brass balls.}

I'm sure it will be removed posthaste, but the Hong Kong activists, acting in the dead of night, managed to get their 'Lady Liberty' Statue to the peak of Lion Rock.

Previously the statue, which had been sculpted back in August, had resided at the Benjamin Franklin Center University Avenue.

The fact that there is a Benjamin Franklin Center in Hong Kong is surprising, a bit awesome, and should be cause for some reflection on this side of the pond. We have a lot to live up to.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 10:04 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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October 10, 2019

Of Quislelings, Collaborators and Business Decisions

A fairly comprehensive discussion of the current situation with Blizzard, the NBA, South Park and various other horror stories.

UPDATE: Aaaand we won't be using that video's cover image. The video is here. The hottest of bluecheck hot takes is at 26:51

Also: Extradition is now a swear word.

more...

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 08:20 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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1 There is a part of me that wants Activision-Blizzard to get away with this fiasco, for the simple reason it will cause the Chinese to keep pushing the line and see at what point it becomes a bridge too far for Bobby Kotick and his C-suite subordinates. For example:

There has been a move over the last few years among the PRC's officialdom to crackdown on public display and expression of homosexuality on the Chinese social media and Internet. What if the next diktat that Activision-Blizzard gets told as a condition of allowing their games in the PRC, is that they can no longer show any gay or lesbian people on any of their streams? Will being told that they can not, say, show people like Overwatch League player Austin Wilmot (Who goes by the gamer tag Muma and plays on OWL's Houston Outlaws.) in any interviews, profiles, and special videos, be the bridge too far? Or will Activision-Blizzard throw even the homosexual community under the bus to get that sweet, sweet Chinese money?

At least if that happens, the contortions and knots Activision-Blizzard will go through will be even more entertaining to watch than the mess they have now.

Posted by: cxt217 at Thu Oct 10 23:10:25 2019 (LMsTt)

2 Many LGBTQ+ gamers I follow are insisting that their gaming streams are already being shut down on several streaming services, usually for content guideline violations. But considering how much of that is going on in a broader sense, I really can't say how much of it is targeted at that specific demographic.

On a related note, all the problems that the Chinese maker/programmer/Shenzen promoter Naomi Wu got into was predicated on the reveal of the open "secret" that she's (allegedly) bisexual. It's one of those things that she never says or advocates, but is well known. Because of her pro-Shenzen content, the Chinese government generally leaves her alone except when her sex life gets brought up. At least in her case, as long as she absolutely doesn't talk about or go out of her way to present herself in any kind of non-hetero relationship, they're happy to ignore her. But they've also made it clear that she's walking on the edge of a knife blade with regular police check-ins.
And, of course, I'm sure you've noticed the latest wrinkle that since Steve Kerr, NBA coach and former player and noted Lefty activist, has been attacked for his non-interest in commenting; Democrats have suddenly decided the NBA must be defended because Kerr is a reliable voice against Trump.

Posted by: Ben at Fri Oct 11 10:08:55 2019 (osxtX)

3 Well, the modern Democrat Party and media (But I repeat myself.) have never been shy of defending Communists...Even the kind that would knife them in the back when they get a chance (All of them.).

Posted by: cxt217 at Fri Oct 11 11:45:09 2019 (LMsTt)

4 Speaking of Naomi Wu, I just heard about a brilliant bit of kit she just put together, which projects an image on your face from the bill of a hat to foil facial recognition without wearing a mask.

Posted by: Mauser at Sat Oct 12 02:35:49 2019 (Ix1l6)

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October 09, 2019

A Guest Editorial From An Anonymous Blizzard Employee

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 07:45 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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October 08, 2019

Tooting Our Own Horn

Regarding this weeks issue with China, censorship South Park, Anime, Blizzard, the NBA, Vans, Disney, videogame content, and, "global beauty standards", we were discussing this here back in June.

One thing in particular that's not getting a lot about of coverage about this censorship: The Blizzard link is to a 20 minute video has an interesting bit of background on how China's censors have been removing or white washing (literally!) black and other dark skinned characters in video games for some time.

This is a BIG deal and it deserves a lot more attention that the flurry of attention that is likely to be over by the end of the week.

For instance, this cancerous dynamic is actually the source of many of the "reactionism clauses" that are popping up in the Orwellian TOS's of tech and media companies.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 08:52 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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