Source. The proprieters of band-pass filter have decided to no longer syndicate Dilbert. Instead, here's Calvin and Hobbes.

Since I just talked about Scott Adams mensaing himself into obscurity (or maybe a Fox News gig), I'll follow up real quick. Adams has spent the better part of the last decade whining about how throwing his lot in with the alt-right cost him a bunch of syndication money. He just took his income and influence woes to the next level with a Jordan Peterson-tier pseudointellectual rant on YouTube or Twitch or Rumble or whatever.

He is, of course, screeching that people are misrepresenting his words. It's part of a script that's used frequently enough you'd think people would catch on:

1. Say something douchey, but phrase it with a dash of ambiguity.
2. When people gloss over the specifics (or headlines/Tweets condense them), gripe that your words were misinterpreted.
3. Complain about woke/cancel culture and how you're a victim.

Here's an example from this great dramapost:

Scott Adams

No reasonable person doubts that the Holocaust happened, but wouldn't you like to know how the exact number was calculated, just for context? Without that context, I don't know if I should lump the people who think the Holocaust might have been exaggerated for political purposes with the Holocaust deniers.

I don't know man, it's like his vast intellect is wasted on such parochial matters. Anyway, the playbook: Adams "just asks questions" about various elements of the Holocaust, suggesting that the death toll might have been manipulated for political advantage. People label this "dumb" and "Holocaust denial". Adams can then say, "ackshually, I clearly said 'no reasonable person doubts it happened' my words are being twisted!"

This was in 2006, before reactions were Tweet/Tiktok-length, but it's the same script as today. As the criticisms for his latest diatribe rolled in, he chugged coffee and adderall and banged furiously on his keyboard:

His schtick was persuasion, once.

Lol. Okay but how neat was it to see a c.2006 blog with long-form content and comments. Here's one:

Douglas Yates

Regarding the size of the holocaust, your go-to guy on that sort of statistic is R. J. Rummel. Here's the wiki page on his rather morbid speciality topic: democide. Here's a table with somewhat less round death numbers in various categories - he puts the deaths specifically of jews at 5,291,000; toss in the homosexuals (220k) and gypsies (258k) as well to get to something that reasonably rounds up to 6 million. Which is a subset of the genocide total, which is a subset of the war total (that would add in combat deaths too). Table here. A relevant quote gives some hint of the error range: '"By genocide, the murder of hostages, reprisal raids, forced labor, "euthanasia," starvation, exposure, medical experiments, and terror bombing, and in the concentration and death camps, the Nazis murdered from 15,003,000 to 31,595,000 people, most likely 20,946,000 men, women, handicapped, aged, sick, prisoners of war, forced laborers, camp inmates, critics, homosexuals, Jews, Slavs, Serbs, Germans, Czechs, Italians, Poles, French, Ukrainians, and many others. Among them 1,000,000 were children under eighteen years of age.' Source. I understand the Nazis were excellent recordkeepers so in some places the record is quite solid. Though, of course, there was a war going on at the time... The book with his sources and calculation methods is titled "Democide: Nazi Genocide and Mass Murder" Here's a link to a site that refutes the deniers of the Holocaust. According to this site, the Nazis did not keep accurate records of the victims unless they were going to use them as slave labor. This source also indicates that the 6 million number is based on how many were "missing" in Europe after the war.

It's just a shame that comment ratings and threading hadn't been invented, otherwise blogs might still be around.

Related - internal

Related - external