a predictable? doubling down

Over the weekend, I called out Brad Torgersen for trying to play bad cop/completely psychotic cop with Vox Day as the latter, following a weird post of Torgersen’s which was half-distancing, half-ante-upping, and literally calling everyone who would vote NO AWARD over slate candidates an asshole. The problem with the distancing part is that he and Correia actively recruited Vox into the fold – but, again, see the link.

I wasn’t going to write about this today, but… I can’t not, because his follow-up appears to be some sort of fierce yet hilarious doubling-down. Honestly – and I swear I am not making this up, go read it yourself if you don’t believe me – he’s saying that if you’re against the Sad Puppies slate manipulation of the Hugo process to take control over most of the literary awards, you are a Leninist Communist.^*

No, really. Here’s a screencap of the tail end of his post.

Nick Mamatas, please call your office

Also, from the same post, the Chick-fil-A corporation is apparently similarly heroic – he doesn’t use that word, but that’s what he’s saying – for daring to go, as he puts it, “off-script.” Just like he and Correia and Vox Day claim to have done. To eliminate Mr. Torgersen’s euphemism, the Chick-fil-A corporation is heroic for actively supporting and promoting, via money and corporate action, official government discrimination against LGBT people. Just like the Puppies are heroes, apparently, for rigging the Hugo Awards with a bloc slate vote.

Apparently. And critics of that are, presumably, see above.

Hey, don’t blame me, it’s his simile. Also:

Because only supporters of corporations which promote government discrimination against queers are truly Free People, just like only blocs of fans voting the same identical ballots so they can “stick it to” the “SJWs” are Free People. Apparently.

But, you know, politics had nothing to do with the Puppies. They’re just Promoting Good SF. It’s the people upset about slate blocs who are the Commies.

I’m just… wow. I mean wow. Isn’t it great, what the Puppies have brought to fandom? Wow.

---

^*: At least one commenter disagrees, asserting that the opposition to Sad Puppies are actually Nazis. Glad to have that cleared up.

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speaker two needs more work

Speaker two, out of the gate, actually sounded a little better than speaker one. Particularly the tweeter, since with some cajoling, it actually came back online with less effort than the tweeter in speaker one.

So of course I started with speaker one, because yeah, it’s do the worse case first, see what I get. And that came out pretty well. So today I’m working on speaker two, the one that had all the extra crap like fibreglass insulation inside, and start taking it apart.

I get the tweeter driver taken apart, and the foam (like in speaker one) is made pretty much out of spiderweb and motor oil at this point, and I replace it, and then I look at the driver dome diaphragm.

That’s not good

So yeah that’s not good at all. So I work on pulling it off, and it’s not easy, and in fact it’s very not easy at all in ways it should be, and I’m thinking, oh, this is not good, and then I manage to wedge it out of the driver.

oh ick

Yeaaaah, something crawled up there and died

It took a lot of work to get all of that out of the dome and also all of that out of the slot where the driver cone lives (and yeah, it was in there too), and to be honest, I’m really confused that this tweeter worked at all, much less as well as it did.

Anyway, I did all the things I did on the other speaker (rebuilt the crossover, changed the design like in speaker one, added in the new compensation circuit like in speaker one, pulled out the giant twitter rheostat, added a standard quarter-inch connector, also fixed some physical oddness in the back panel that wasn’t in speaker one), and put it all back together pending the new dome.

This is playing back the track I was using most often as a reference before. Once again, given the condition of the cone, I’m astounded it sounds this good. You can hear some of the problems the damaged cone is causing, nonetheless. This one makes it more obvious – lots of sibilance hiss that isn’t in the recording.

But yeah, that’s really most of it. Need a new part, I can order that, the rest is cosmetic. I’m going to build some mini-screens to hide those air-holes in the front, since they aren’t cosmetic; I’m not sure what to do about the outsides or the grille yet; it’ll need something. I could felt them, I suppose, but… I’m not sure. Might be fun to go all brass and stuff, why not?

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since some puppies are deleting things

Hey, looks like some of the Puppies are deleting embarrassing things! Too bad that's not how the internet works. If you know of more, let me know! I'll add them to this post.

John C. Wright's 'The Perversion of a Legend', archived on the Wayback Machine. Excerpt:

A children’s show, of all places, is where you decided to place an ad for a sexual aberration; you pervert your story telling skills to the cause of propaganda and political correctness.

You sold your integrity out to the liberal establishment. In a craven fashion you deflect criticism by slandering and condemning any who object to your treason.

You were not content to leave the matter ambiguous, no, but had publicly to announce that you hate your audience, our way of life, our virtues, values, and religion.

[...]

Mr DiMartino and Mr Konietzko: You are disgusting, limp, soulless sacks of filth. You have earned the contempt and hatred of all decent human beings forever, and we will do all we can to smash the filthy phallic idol of sodomy you bow and serve and worship. Contempt, because you struck from behind, cravenly; and hatred, because you serve a cloud of morally-retarded mental smog called Political Correctness, which is another word for hating everything good and bright and decent and sane in life.

I have no hatred in my heart for any man’s politics, policies, or faith, any more than I have hatred for termites; but once they start undermining my house where I live, it is time to exterminate them.

He's still got his post up about how he regrets not punching Terry Pratchett in the face, though. Don't worry, John, I've saved an archive.

Here's some commentary Corriea and Torgersen probably wish they hadn't said in a pro-Sad-Puppies podcast and almost certainly wish somebody hadn't transcribed (hi), given how much they're trying to distance themselves from Vox Day now:

In response to a question about their decision to bring in Vox Day to the Puppies effort:

Correia: Last year, given that my goal was to get these people to demonstrate to the world what they're like, so I was going though, I was looking at shorter work - I really did like the story... I really did like it... my fanbase, they liked it too... so when I was putting together my slate... I started looking at it, said, okay, I like this story, they hate him, they look under the bed for him before they go to sleep at night, and he's like the devil to them. But [...] in the history of art, scumbags have created art. Okay? Otherwise there's a lot of, you know, Roman Polanski is going to have to give a lot of Academy Awards back, okay?

Correia: Well, here's the thing, and actually, I know the guy? I don't think he is [a scumbag], I think what it is is that he a guy who is an internet curmudgeon who likes to pick fights with people, who got in a fight with a racist, and said racist things, in response to somebody who is hurling racist slurs for years. However, one person was from the approved clique and therefore got a pass, and the other guy is, you know, Satan-slash-Hitler, and the end of the world. So I threw him on there because I did [ed: like? knew? unclear] him, I liked the story, oh boy, that was... that caused some controversy...

Correia: But here's the thing. People who are still bringing that up, it shows that they are not, they don't, it's all about politics. So last year I nominated a guy who said things they don't like. Every year they nominate people who say horrible things about others that aren't part of their pretty little, part of their clique, that's fine. They have given awards, they've given lifetime achievement awards, to people who are public supporters of NAMBLA. Okay? They, this week they're going to back for another author who said extremely racist comments, and got called on it, and now they're trying to explain what she really meant to say.

Correia: So the thing is, for them, it's not about right or wrong, it's about part of my tribe or not part of my tribe. So at the same time, yes, I did nominate this guy's [Vox Day] story, I certainly, who else did I nominate? They ignore everything else on there...

Torgersen: I agree with Larry, in fact, I've been talking about this online [...] we've seen a lot of what I would call activists - and some of them try to be writers, but really they're activists first - try to come into this genre, supposedly the dangerous genre, if you remember Harlan Ellison's anthologies that he put out a few years ago... now the genre doesn't want to be dangerous, the genre wants to be safe. And you have all these people scurrying around calling people names - character assassinations, people get mobbed on blogs, y'know Elizabeth Moon was a a victim of that not to long ago, every year it seems there's somebody who's a new victim.

Torgersen: And they don't even have to necessarily be in the genre? Who was the British guy who was going to be [Jonathan Ross]... I thought that was a great idea... to me, he was going to bring a lot of clout to the Hugos and the Hugos were really going to get a nice spotlight. Well, what happened? Almost immediately, as soon as he was named, as he was going to be the guy, people had a freaking cow. And they were saying, "oh it's not, he's gonna make it so I can't be safe at the Hugos." Which, okay, I'm sorry, I'm military, a lot of this talk about safe spaces is complete crap and it's silly and it's juvenile and it's infantile, and they won, and they got him taken off. [...]

Torgersen: Almost every year there's some controversy over something somebody's written where they get accused of having fun wrong. You know, Larry has brought this up many times, in the genre now, you're having fun wrong, you get accused of cultural appropriation, you get accused of racism, you get accused of sexism, you get accused of trans gender phobia - the activists have really tired their best to make the genre become a game of political correctness. And, most people are running scared. Authors, like Larry said, are terrified of "what can I write?" I see that all the time with new authors now, what can I write, what can I write? [...]

Torgersen: We have a lot of people militating in the genre to try to force - for instance, Orson Scott Card got kicked off a comics thing not too long ago because activists were trying to punish him for some things he had said... [ed: that GBLT people should be illegal, and also, being on the board of the National Organisation for Marriage, and anti-marriage-quality political action group] [...]

Torgersen: More and more of the genre is becoming obsessed with making political points, making sociological points, the Hugos have become this football for activists and other people who want to make a political point. And it's like people have forgotten about the whole point of this enterprise, which is adventure, exploration, and if there's a message, that's the passenger. [...]

eta: OH MAN, LOOK WHO SHOWED UP TO ACCUSE ME OF LIBEL!

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