Camestros Felapton

FELAPTONL

Aaaa-ber-dee-dee-deen-push-pineapple-shake-the-tree

Well, I don’t want this blog to be all Freer all the time but Dave really is insistent. A second thing I don’t want to fall for is being pressured into revealing personal information because of continued threats by Dave Freer to attack the Meadows family. What anyone and everyone (including current allies of any Sad Puppy) should take away from this, is that certain individuals will go after people’s families on almost zero pretext. That’s the behaviour they engage in and/or cheer on – if they have been restrained in their use of such tactics previously it has been for cynical reasons.

aberdeen-149398
Me posing for a selfie in Aberdeen completely obscuring the image with my enormous face

Luckily Dave has made one part easy: Aberdeen.

It puzzles me why he’s focused on it but I assume he realised his mad-genius argument was weak. Consequently, he boosted it by claiming that I was in Aberdeen when Toby Meadows was in Aberdeen. Other elements of his argument could be mistakes, bad reasoning, or maybe its even possible for a New South Wales IP to keep looking like Brisbane. Who knows? I know Dave can genuinely fool himself but…Aberdeen? No. Never been and as I’ve pointed out, I haven’t been to Scotland this century.

So Dave overstated his case and made me being in Aberdeen a cornerstone of his argument. And upon this granite rock, he has built his church.

It was tricky for me to immediately counter the Aberdeen aspect of his argument because I didn’t know when the Meadows family were in particular parts of the world. Dave seemed to suggest in Brad Torgersen’s post that he tracked me going TO the UK at the same time as the Meadows and then BACK to Australia at the same time. However, this *may* have been clumsy wording on his part – either way, it was false as the Meadows were (apparently) in the UK already in 2015 when I started blogging and didn’t move until sometime in the first half of 2016.

“Oh? REALLY? Then she would be very grateful that Lou revealed her ‘husband’ has a stalker who not only pretends to be expert in precisely the same fields…er meadows… as her husband, but also was SO devoted a stalker that he/she moved to Aberdeen IIRC (as evidenced by the IP address ‘Camestros’ used then) at the same time as Toby. And then, as evidenced by the IP address, moved back to Brisbane… at the same time as Toby. But wait. There’s more… And lives in the same town, claims to be a fan and somehow – in the tiny pond of Brissy sf fans never knew of her or hubby – among its leading lights. And of course she really does own the Sydney Harbour bridge she’s also trying to sell you” https://web.archive.org/web/20180131175133/https://madgeniusclub.com/2018/01/21/camestros-felapton-is-toby-meadows-spouse-of-foz-meadows/ [empahsis added]

I thought this was an odd thing for Dave to say at the time as he appeared to be engaging in more than self-delusion at this point but rather active deception of his audience. Cashing rhetorical cheques he couldn’t pay. However, as I didn’t know when the Meadows family had moved it was hard to point out the discrepancy.

Dave has since repeated variations on the claim that he KNOWS I was in Aberdeen in his more recent post https://web.archive.org/web/20180131174847/https://madgeniusclub.com/2018/01/28/bare-is-the-brotherless-back/ I won’t quote all the instances, just search the page for “Aberdeen”.

So, Dave has elevated this to a central piece of evidence. Arguably, there are ways of masking IP geolocation via VPN or special browsers, but Dave is clear that this isn’t what has happened – he is claiming that when the Meadows family was in Aberdeen *I* was posting from Aberdeen. If that is NOT true then Dave has been making a false claim to his friends and allies.

If Dave has been making false claims about this then, a reasonable person should doubt all the other unsupported claims he has been making.

Dave is making false claims. In fact, his claims were inadvertently blown out of the water days ago by a supporter of Sad Puppies and a regular commenter at Mad Genius known as ‘Kama’. https://web.archive.org/web/20180131173538/http://louantonelli.blogspot.com.au/2018/01/pay-no-attention-to-that-man-behind.html

In the comment section of Lou Antonelli’s blog, he reveals an IP address of a comment I had posted “two years ago” on his blog. Now, he probably shouldn’t have done that but he did and that particular IP piece of my personal information has been sitting there for some days. That address resolves to Sydney or New South Wales (depending on the geolocator you use). It doesn’t point to Brisbane and it certainly doesn’t point to Aberdeen, Scotland.

On Twitter, Foz Meadows pointed this out DAYS ago. Let that sink in. Foz Meadows has already pointed out to the people pushing this nonsense that THEIR side has already released evidence on Lou Antonelli’s blog that two years ago I was posting from Sydney or at the very least New South Wales – when Dave claims I was in Aberdeen. Dave has continued to make this claim, indeed stridently demand that others give him names of people who could be me on the basis of them being in Aberdeen!

Well, I guess they could rationalise one comment away in their heads or (more likely) just ignored what Foz Meadows wrote. The capacity for Dave and his cheerleaders to ignore inconvenient facts is substantial. Now, prior to this flap obviously I was unaware of what kinds of movements the Meadows family may have made and indeed, in my early postings on this nonsense I didn’t even want to use their name because that was just another messed-up way Dave and Lou and Brad used to make other complicit in their abuse. I also didn’t want to start fact-checking the Meadows’s movements because that itself is messed-up stalkerish behaviour and Foz Meadows deserved to be believed up front and also…obviously I already knew that I wasn’t Toby Meadows. However, given that information is publically available and others have already been out hunting for some tell-tale sign that Toby M is me (and come back with nothing other than he talks about logic a lot – but not all the other stuff I talk about) I have done a minimum.

So some facts.

  • The Meadows were in Aberdeen in the section of 2015 that I was blogging and not in Australia or Sydney.
  • The conferences Toby Meadows attended during 2015 are on his site and they weren’t in Australia.
  • Toby Meadows can’t be in two places at once.
  • Dave Freer has asserted that my movements follow Toby Meadows’s movements and that I was in Aberdeen when he was.
  • I did post in various puppy blogs in 2015 including Mad Genius Club and Brad Torgersen’s blog. I did not do so from Aberdeen because…
  • I’ve never been to Aberdeen.

The last point is hard to check obviously.

What I can do is show posts from me not posting from Aberdeen in 2015. Here’s one, as a GIF – it may take awhile to load.

Aug25CFipAdd

I picked this one because it is exactly the same IP address as Kama already made public. Checking back I have other messages where the IP address is similar but a bit different. They also locate as New South Wales, not Brisbane or Queensland and *definitely* not Aberdeen. I have no comments on my blog* that ever that come from Aberdeen, and therefore NONE from 2015 that come from Aberdeen.

Both Brad and Dave have claimed that I am Toby Meadows BECAUSE, among some other weaker reasons, that they tracked IP addresses. They both have access to my comments and they both have WordPress blogs and can see the IP addresses I’ve used. So either:

  • They haven’t actually checked to see if I posted messages from Aberdeen in 2015 – in which case why are they saying that I did?
  • They HAVE checked and KNOW that I didn’t post messages from Aberdeen – in which case their pants are even more on fire than with the previous point.
  • Some third thing? I mean, I’m not omniscient so maybe somebody messed up a check somewhere or confused a message from a genuine denizen of Aberdeen or who knows. In this case, maybe they are just really, really, really just not very good at anything.

Should they reveal IP addresses? No, that is not only a dick move but might get them into hot water and then they’d be all ‘poor me I’m being oppressed because I did something possibly illegal and definitely stupid’. However, if either of them believes they have a SPECIFIC comment from ME (ie Camestros Felapton posting as Camestros Felapton) that has an IP address that they have CONFIRMED is from ABERDEEN or at the very least SCOTLAND in 2015 then what the heck: post a link to the comment and the conversation can proceed as to the specific truth of that evidence. Or, you know, they could show some integrity and honour and admit that they were wrong.

If not…well most of know what we already knew. Their issue has never been about the truth but about some sad men with some kind of emotional issue that I really don’t understand who wanted to take out their frustrations on a genderqueer blogger because an unrelated man challenged what they said.

*[I assume no comments ever anywhere but obviously that’s uncheckable]

[ETA] Just adding this for completeness https://accordingtohoyt.com/2018/02/05/the-secrets-of-every-heart/#comment-509362

Hoyt flips out at one of her regular commenters after mistaking them for somebody else (sometimes WordPress uses ‘Array’ as a deafult user name)

” He and I have discussed it (YES, Dave had enough info, I had same info and had independently figured it out YEARS GO) and Dave said he wouldn’t blow his cover. Lou Antonelli says Dave -_ WHO DIDN’T KNOW LOU THAT WELL — was not his source.”

camestrosfelapton

148 responses to “Aaaa-ber-dee-dee-deen-push-pineapple-shake-the-tree”

  1. Unfortunately, I doubt Freer even knows how to check the IP addresses of posts, let alone create an animated GIF showing him doing so.

    Liked by 1 person

  2. I’m still in hospital, still being zapped with heavy duty IV antibiotics, and still puzzled by the fact that apparently healthy people can have brains less functional than those of us with lungs full of deeply unpleasant bacteria and temperatures considerably on the wrong side of 37C.

    I’m sorry that my sympathy is all I can offer, but offer it I do to all those hurt by this…

    Liked by 9 people

  3. Any idea on the exact date of the comment Kama is referring to? Just to sort of tidy up the details?

    As a more general point, there’s potentially some killer evidence out there that they could bring forward *if* the claim was true. IPs from Brad’s site as well. An analysis of your posting times to show that you were sleeping during UK time not Australian. Comparisons of the language of TMs publications to your blogs. In theory they have the biggest “win” for a year available to them – to show that we’re all just a dozen people pretending to be a legion, to expose that it really is a conspiracy of insiders – and yet it’s all too much effort to put forward that final set of details that will convince anyone who reads it. Instead Dave is demanding that all and sundry prove a negative (a tactic I’ve seen Dave retreat to before when he feels he can’t back up his theories.)
    My fear is that too much has been invested in this theory over there to allow anyone to back off.

    Liked by 2 people

    • No…I remember posting there once but I can’t find it and I’ve no idea what it was about.

      Dave’s neatly stacked his claim atop me being in Aberdeen in 2015 – as you say, what an opportunity to show how awful we are on such a simple fact…unless, of course, I wasn’t thinking n Aberdeen in 2015…

      Like

  4. Well the IP address quoted by Kama certainly seems to belong to a major Australian ISP (my whois foo is rusty but not dead)

    If you were supposedly an academic in Aberdeen at the time (presumably meaning University of Aberdeen rather than Robert Gordon’s University) those address ranges are also trivial to find. Those are some magic packets…

    Liked by 1 person

  5. By this point everyone should be aware that Freer obviously has never checked any IP adresses and just made shit up. If Im being generous then he did it, because he really thought he was right. But Im not feeling generous towards this individual. He just wanted to have an excuse to harrass and bully.
    Terrible, terrible man.

    Liked by 6 people

  6. “Their issue has never been about the truth but about some sad men with some kind of emotional issue that I really don’t understand who wanted to take out their frustrations on a genderqueer blogger because an unrelated man challenged what they said.”

    I think that statement pretty well summarizes it.

    Liked by 7 people

  7. Something about DF’s phraseology leads me to believe that some past!Dave looked at something (possibly including an IP address that he didn’t understand) that convinced him that Camestros=Mr. Meadows Triumphantly, he filed that info in his brain, but didn’t take screenshots or document his train of thought. He’s had that equation in his mind for at least a year, probably longer, and has repeated it to others as Fact.

    But he doesn’t actually remember the details of where he got this idea, he’s relying on past!Dave. They’re very close! If he can’t trust past!Dave, who can he trust? Checkmate, libs! That’s why he both brags that he discovered this Sekrit Equation, and claims that ANYONE can reproduce his reasoning, it’s not such a Sooper Genius thing after all.

    TLDR: I don’t think DF really remembers where he got this idea, nor can he duplicate the chain of thought that led to it.

    Liked by 3 people

    • Yes, that’s my thinking as well. I think (aside from my manner) where he might have got ‘academic’ from as well (checking dates I think I posted a comment at MGC when I was on the campus of a uni & had access to their wi-fi – there maybe similar evidence that I work at Starbucks & a hotel in Perth) but it wouldn’t fit with the rest of the story (i.e. wrong city).

      I don’t think the fallacy has a name but it is a fallacy of evidential implication. Evidence (any data that informs a hypothesis) has multiple implication – practically you can’t consider ALL the implication but you can’t just cherry pick the ones that help. Evidence that I was a logic professor in Mongolia would support the hypothesis that I was a logic professor but CONTRADICT that I was in, say, Mexico. So ‘logic professor in Mexico’ would be disproven by the evidence despite the evidence supporting some aspects of it.

      Liked by 3 people

    • Doctor Science: I don’t think DF really remembers where he got this idea, nor can he duplicate the chain of thought that led to it.

      I think that Freer’s entire chain of thought and “proof” on this consists of:
      1) Hey look, that SJW blogger Foz Meadow’s husband is a philosopher and logician.
      2) That SJW blogger Camestros Felapton frequently blogs and posts comments about logical analysis and philosophy.
      3) OMG! Camestros Felapton is Foz Meadows’ husband!

      Everything since then has been him trying to twist facts to prove that he’s right… for instance, his laughable claim that Camestros’ Brexit tweet moved to AUS at the same time as the Meadows, when it’s obvious that the tweets mean that Camestros moved long before the Brexit vote. 🙄

      Liked by 2 people

      • I’m sure that’s it as well.

        1) There can’t possibly be two Australian philosophers/logicians who are Foz-adjacent.
        2) Therefore Cam is Toby.

        Comes of living in a little tiny world where everyone does know everyone. Add that to Dave’s usual confabulation and pathological need to be right and there you have it.

        He’s too truculent and too afraid of the existence of people like Foz to back down now.

        Liked by 2 people

  8. I wonder if you’re not making an error here, Camestros? You are assuming that the people you are arguing with came to these conclusions based on factual evidence and can be persuaded away from them based on factual evidence. (Probably because that’s the way you would be persuaded.)

    However, this might be a topic like climate change, where a growing body of social science research shows that opinion (at least on one side) has more to do with group identity and identity signifiers, and presentation of challenging facts only deepen commitment to existing beliefs and can generate hostility if the facts are presented in a manner perceived as insulting to the group (condescending, say).

    This will be the last time I say it, but I am concerned that continuing to respond to Freer et al only makes the situation worse. It’s a completely understandable impulse! He’s spouting nonsense about you! He is Wrong on the Internet and you are the ultimate expert on the subject matter, and what’s more, his Wrong is hurting people.

    But. There’s already enough factual material out there to make it clear to any reasonable person that they are edging perilously close to the Platonic Ideal of Wrong. I fear all each additional response from you is some sort of perverse conditioned Pavlovian reward, whipping the Puppies into further frenzy.

    If they can be reached, I suspect it will be by an appeal more like Foz’s, laying bare her pain, speaking parent to parent, chronic illness sufferer to chronic illness sufferer, reaching into other group identities than Puppy. I could be wrong. But even if that fails, I wonder if you might not be better off trying not to reward the malefactors with your continued public responses, no matter how reasoned and courteous.

    Liked by 4 people

      • It’s tricky to judge when to keep on refuting nonsense, and when to treat it with silent contempt. Given the damage to others I don’t think you had much choice but to make a clear denial and then back it up. I think the point at which you say “no more” is probably approaching, especially if no-one is prepared to put up any extra evidence.

        Liked by 4 people

    • lunarg: “If they can be reached, I suspect it will be by an appeal more like Foz’s, laying bare her pain, speaking parent to parent, chronic illness sufferer to chronic illness sufferer, reaching into other group identities than Puppy. I could be wrong.”

      Unfortunately, it’s my view that you are wrong (although very good-hearted.) Freer’s entire campaign here has been focused on attacking Foz and causing her pain by pretending to unmask Camestros, because she is a queer author. So her laying bare her pain was pretty much exactly what he wanted. However, it did also point out how nasty and bigoted this campaign has been, which seems to be dawning on some Puppies that it is not a good look. But they can’t say sorry, they were wrong, and back off as that would be betraying their tribal identity as righteous warriors against enemies like Camestros and Foz (both of whom they claimed were trying to destroy the Puppies, etc.) The only way they’ve got is to claim to have lost interest in the topic and back off that way. That’s harder for Freer to do as the instigator and source — he’s basically left with claiming that Foz is exaggerating and he caused her no harm. Which continues the bigoted attack on Foz.

      What Camestros is doing is focusing the discussion back on to him, and away from the bigoted, violent speculation about Foz and her family. He cannot stop the Puppies from talking however they want to talk, but since the claims are ostensibly about him, he’s saying, let’s discuss him instead. He’s pointing out that their own group already busted Freer’s claim about his identity and offering Freer the chance to prove that the claim isn’t busted with actual proof or at least proof that led Freer to be “mistaken”. Instead of, you know, speculating about Foz Meadows’ sex life and accusing her of pedophilia. It’s a fairly polite way of saying “put up or shut up.” Which many people have been saying for awhile now, but they’ve been ignoring it mostly to go after Foz. But now Cam is giving them the dialogue they claimed they wanted, so they have to deal with him or slink off. So I think it was a good call on Cam’s part, even though it probably is not a fun experience.

      Liked by 8 people

      • Kat Goodwin: Even I don’t think there’s any reaching Freer at this point. He’s invested too much into this mess. I have hope that some of the bandwagon-jumpers might softly and silently vanish away.
        And you make a very good point about drawing the fire away from the Meadows family. I’m not sure that the response won’t be “stop logicking us or we’ll get even nastier!,” though.

        Liked by 2 people

      • I like Cam’s willingness to be generous and kind to the Meadowseses, but at this point I think Dave and anyone who still believes him are completely impervious to logic.

        The bandwagon-jumpers who are still reachable can now quietly let the matter drop; the true believers are not worth arguing with any more.

        So I think Cam’s proved his point to anyone who isn’t completely delusional and can stop now. Enough already. Let Dave wallow in his own stupidity. He’s never going to apologize to Cam, Foz, Toby, or even Lou, so eh. Plonk.

        Liked by 4 people

  10. And I apologize if that came off as condescending or trying to tell you what to do. I won’t bring the topic up again, I promise!

    Liked by 1 person

  11. It remains hilariously possible that DF checked one of your IP addys and it happened to resolve to Aberdeen, NSW, with the geolocator he was using. Certainly I regularly get geolocated up to 50 miles away and even into a different US state, and I gather the IP situation is often more chaotic in Australia.

    Liked by 3 people

      • I read a short article on the IP geolocation problem, and it’s very true that there are lots of problems with it. That does offer them a way to climb down. “We trusted the IP geolocation too much.”

        Liked by 4 people

    • There are many possible reasons for IP geolocation to be wrong. Correct geolocation of addresses that an ISP uses for residential users depend heavily on the ISP not switching things around – which they occasionally do.

      As an example, I entered the address provided by “Kama” at a site that uses multiple geolocation providers, and different providers lists it as Gosford, Menai, Bronte and Sydney. Now those four form a relatively close grouping with Aberdeen a bit away – but nonetheless I find it absolutely possible to have an address assigned to an ISP customer in Sydney, NSW placed in Aberdeen, NSW.

      That either Dave Freer or the IP location service he used have mixed up Aberdeen NSW with Aberdeen Scotland is also not inconceivable. That particular other-side-of-the-world error is more likely on Freer than on geolocation, but it’s relatively common for me to be placed in Smallville, county A when I’m really 1000 km away in Smallville, county B – and for a long time Facebook claimed my friends where in North Dakota because of a name mixup with a place in Norway.

      And I’ll add that what Doctor Science says up above is very likely – that Dave have found some info at one point, and now puts too much stock on his own memory of that. For example, I can imagine Dave checking Cam’s IP address and noticing it’s in “Aberdeen”, without looking closely at the country. Then several months later he happens to find out that the Meadows once lived in Aberdeen – “hmm, wasn’t that where this Camestros guy lived according to his IP address?” – and a conspiracy theory is born.

      Liked by 2 people

  12. Man, this avant-garde performance art retelling of Ed McBain’s “Rich Man, Poor Man” is just full of twists.

    Liked by 2 people

  13. This problem of how to prove that a pseudonymous writer on the Internet is not a particular individual intrigues me. It really is hard to prove a negative!

    A hypothetical question: If Eric and I visited Sydney, would you be willing to meet us for beers? (Maybe if we promised no pictures?) I think an hour or so of chatting would be sufficient to convince me you weren’t a ringer. (Toby would have very determined accomplices were one willing to learn tiny details of the things you’ve talked about here over the years or in other forums.) And although I’m not the MGC crowd’s favorite person, I think they do give me credit for not making things up.

    This is just hypothetical, although I could add it to my list of reasons we should take a vacation in Australia. 🙂

    Liked by 3 people

  14. Freer’s been saying some weird shit about the esteem in which Tor, File770, the WSFS, etc., hold Camestros, maths-wise. It seems they think Camestros was instrumental in devising or analyzing EPH. I didn’t read a whole lot of that Making Light thread back when they were coming up with the concept, but I suspect Freer may be confusing Camestros with Jameson Quinn? I recall some EPH number-crunching here, but I also recall number-crunching on RSR (had my memory jogged googling for Quinn’s name just now, actually). I also recall some “number-crunching” by some of the MGC crew at the time, but I also remember it being so insanely basic and incorrect that, in retrospect, I’m not surprised they think Camestros is some kind of math sooper-genius.

    Freer just commented (still subscribed to comments on that post, though I’m banned from posting there now):
    “midlevel multinational corporates … don’t have any plausible reason to know the procedures and legal requirement University researchers follow with handling confidential data – to name just one example. So either he’s a liar or has reason to know.”

    That suggests to me Freer thinks Camestros has reviewed the confidential voting data researchers have seen? Or something?

    Freer also said: “I think the thing that annoys me most about this witchhunt Hinesy ginned up is the complete lack of logic involved with the mob that has followed him.” Which is an astounding level of projection. How does asking him to provide proof for his accusations in his hunt for Camestros’s meatspace identity possibly constitute a witch hunt?

    Liked by 3 people

    • Huh? But why would a *philosophy* lecturer know those things either??? If he’s claiming I’ve displayed specialist knowledge in those areas only accessible to an academic then…I couldn’t be in *philosophy* – I’d be some other kind of academic.

      Hmmm I think this maybe the start of a strategic retreat. Looking at it what Dave is trying to say is either I was lying about my expertise or lying about not being an academic – the thrust being that if Dave is wrong then it’s only because I led them astray.

      The end point of that would be a narrative in which I cruelly deceived poor Dave into attacking the Meadows.

      Liked by 5 people

      • Cam, we already KNOW it’s all your fault — whatever “it” may or may not turn out to be. Isn’t that completely self-evident, regardless of any inconvenient facts that might poke their heads up along the way?

        Like

      • It is always somebody else’s fault. They cannot accept responsibility for their mistakes or even their actions. The whole history of the Sad Puppies demonstrates that.

        Liked by 2 people

      • “…any plausible reason to know the procedures and legal requirement University researchers follow with handling confidential data…”

        In fact, unless your research *specifically* involves human subjects, there’s basically not a chance in hell that your average University researcher or faculty member is familiar with that – because they all check the N/A box so they don’t have to go through the certification, as it’s completely irrelevant.

        Like

    • “midlevel multinational corporates … don’t have any plausible reason to know the procedures and legal requirement University researchers follow with handling confidential data…”

      Whut?! My wife is a midlevel multinational corporate. Her multinational corporation has developed software applications for universities (and hospitals and government agencies). Those universities use that software for handling confidential data. She most certainly does know the procedures and legal requirements because she wasted a whole chunk of billable hours sitting through required orientations before she was allowed to do her job.

      Liked by 5 people

      • “midlevel multinational corporates … don’t have any plausible reason to know the procedures and legal requirement University researchers follow with handling confidential data…”

        Utter tosh. Upcoming changes to the European wide data protection means all multinational corporates are sphincter clenchingly aware of this. Though our US based masters seem to still be in denial.

        Liked by 5 people

        • My annual data protection refresher course seems to back this up.

          (Admittedly the main thing I learn each year is not to try to work it out myself, and send any issues up the line in case I mess up. Mind you, that may be exactly what they want me to learn….)

          Liked by 2 people

      • Multinational corporations are miles ahead of university researchers in knowing about the intricacies of confidential data, FFS.

        They have entire departments full of geeks and lots of lawyers to deal with it because they know it might cost them a ton(ne) of money someday. Now, they might ignore it, or be terrible at securing it properly, but they know the deal.

        University researchers have approximately one grad student.

        Liked by 3 people

    • I think you’re right about some sort of conflation of Camestros with Quinn – I remember them getting confused about this before. The mention of handling confidential data is exactly the issue that Freer frothed about when Schneier/Quinn produced their paper on EPH. I’m not sure it’s as clearcut as a literally thinking they’re the same person, more that when Dave gets agitated he pulls out all the old grievances and sort of smooshes them together.

      Liked by 4 people

    • “Freer just commented (still subscribed to comments on that post, though I’m banned from posting there now):
      “midlevel multinational corporates … don’t have any plausible reason to know the procedures and legal requirement University researchers follow with handling confidential data – to name just one example. So either he’s a liar or has reason to know.””

      Does Dave Freer live in a world where no one learns anything they don’t specifically need to know? I shudder to think how much random specialized knowledge I’ve acquired (most of it useless to me, much of it useless to anybody) by means such as: striking up a conversation with a PhD student at a party; going for a job interview and getting carried away doing background research on the company; suffering from insomnia and finding there was nothing on telly worth watching but the Open University…. Is this part of the whole “nobody ever does anything except for their own material advantage” schtick they’ve got going on over there?

      Liked by 6 people

      • I think so, Mr. No Relation — they’re so intellectually incurious and fixated on money and egoboo that they literally can’t imagine taking the time to learn something just for the hell of it. Education isn’t for fun, it has to somehow increase your status and wallet.

        I know rather a lot about the early Plantagenets. Having a recording of a chanson Eleanor of Aquitaine’s grandfather wrote does nothing for my bank account, my ability to cook, how to get the signal from my DVR to the TV, which stores are having good sales, knowing what the damn cat will eat today, or how to argue about WSFS on the internet, but I enjoy it.

        Liked by 5 people

      • I’d really like to meet you some day, Lurkertype. You seem like a fascinating person!

        Like

    • So wait, now Camestros is this guy Jameson Quinn? (And it’s back on Camestros — mission accomplished!)

      And in what universe does a university have a more complicated and secure data system than a multinational corporation? Is he talking about personal interview releases when profs do research, academic databases of quantitative research that universities share with other academics in other places for research or administrative/student data that would certainly need to be kept confidential but which does not involve the faculty except for grades? None of which have particularly stringent security and legal policies in a university that would be strange or more complex than what goes on in corporations where they actually have things like corporate espionage. That’s an interesting tactic for strategic withdrawal — babble more nonsense about data.

      Liked by 5 people

      • @Kat Goodwin
        “So wait, now Camestros is this guy Jameson Quinn?”

        To be clear, I was thinking it’s possible Freer is conflating Camestros and Quinn, because Quinn is actual an expert and worked on EPH, and Freer made a big hullaballoo about how much trust WSFS et al put on Camestros for his mathematical expertise. Given that last bit didn’t happen, I wondered if Freer mixed up the two of them.

        That all hinges upon Freer thinking at all, and on Freer being at least a tiny bit honest. From what I’ve seen in the past few days, I highly doubt either of those is the case

        Liked by 3 people

      • Actually I was wrong. Just got directed to Jim Hines’ Twitter feed which has Freer quotes and he’s still going after Foz. The open bigotry he’s spouting is really vile. Guess the Puppies are really going for hate group status.

        Liked by 2 people

    • There was some discussion of academic confidentiality at the time of the Schneier/Quinn paper, because they did not reveal the full details of people’s votes (which are needed to fully compute the effect of EPH), and this was taken by some to be evidence that they were concealing the way the results are fixed by TOR. If Camestros commented on the matter at the time, that might be a sufficient explanation of what Freer is now saying,

      Like

  17. So Dave’s a lying liar, who’s lying about his one piece of “evidence”, which he made up out of whole cloth? (presumably tartan)

    Shocking. Dave Freer is lying; sun rises in east; water is wet.

    Also note how many people he claims Cam to have been, just this month. Is he Foz? Is he Toby? Is he someone following Foz and Toby around? Is he a pair of medieval syllogisms slightly misspelled?

    Dave made up “evidence” for his own purposes and then fed this “evidence” to various Pups and wrongly convinced Lou to be his tethered goat.

    I can understand Dave wanting to make the Meadowses and Cam look bad, but why pick on fellow Puppy Lou?

    I’m still not ruling out that Cam’s IP address showed as Aberdeen NSW and Dave mistook it for Aberdeen Scotland. He’s just that inept.

    Cam: loved “upon this granite rock”. Good joke. Looking more like a sandcastle at high tide, though.

    I’ve found a lovely photo of the Market Cross (the round thing with pillars on the right of the above photo) that I took in the last century on a sunny summer day. At least we’ve all learned more about the Granite City, aye?

    Liked by 1 person

  18. Okay, I give up, and I feel sympathy for Paul’s viewpoint, in that I worry I might somehow have made things worse by dragging it out, though I can’t really see how.

    Currently, Freer is demanding that I prove that I defended Puppies from all the charges ‘my side’ imputed to them, before he will consider doing anything about the crap he’s said. In the specific question of not attacking families, I COULD come up with a quote of mine saying that whoever sent JdA an exploding package of penis-shaped glitter (I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of typing that) SHOULD face legal consequences. But since I also said it was unfair for JdA to blame SFWA for an anonymous package, Freer will doubtless say it doesn’t count. Let him have the last word and the triumph of declaring that I’m just like everybody else on ‘my side’, as if a triumph over me mattered.

    Liked by 7 people

    • “whoever sent JdA an exploding package of penis-shaped glitter (I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of typing that)”

      Indeed. It has that same quality of “the vice president shot a guy in the face.” There are some lines that just never get old.

      Liked by 7 people

      • “The vice president shot his own lawyer in the face” is the wording I like. You get the friend angle, the lawyer angle — more levels of funny.

        Just like “glitter bomb” conveys most of it, but “penis-shaped glitter” adds that soupcon of extra funny. Particularly since glitter is also known as “the herpes of craft supplies”.

        Not that I advocate sending exploding packages of anything to anyone, but there’s always room for glitter. It makes a substantial mess even if it just falls out of the envelope. I’ve had to tell friends never to do that again even though they meant it in the kindest way, with fancy heart-shaped glitter in festive colors.

        Liked by 3 people

      • “Some lines that just never get old.” Tell me about it! I’ve saved a piece of inbox fodder from a local weekly since August, 2015, just so I can snicker over the title, “It’s a Sausage Party!” when I look at my mailbox.

        Liked by 2 people

    • It’s no skin off your nose and it’ll make Dave feel so happy. Damn generous of you.

      And if it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t have known the glitter was penis-shaped, so… thanks?

      Liked by 3 people

    • @Jaynsand

      Man, those goalposts are moving at lightspeed, aren’t they?

      Who the hell is Dave to demand that you ‘prove you defended Puppies’ about anything? Either he’s behaving like a sleaze towards the Meadows or he isn’t. If he had any sense of decency, he would recognize that nothing anybody else has ever done forced him to behave like a sleaze…he did that all by his little black-hearted self.

      Of course, the operative phrase here is “if he had any sense of decency.” We all know the answer to that, even Lou Antonelli.

      ‘poor me I’m being oppressed because I did something possibly illegal and definitely stupid’.

      Yep, these endless victims fruitlessly tilting at SJW windmills. Pardon me while my tiny tiny violin plays.

      Liked by 6 people

      • @Bonnie: First the goalposts were that Cam is Toby, then that Cam stalks Toby, now Cam is Jameson Quinn, and now Jayn is… I dunno, a big meanie for not condemning everyone non-Pup?

        The goalposts have been shredded in the breeze from how fast they’re moving.

        We all know that Dave lives in a tiny world of his own, with “facts” he made up, and he’s existentially terrified about the existence of queer people. No goalpost shuffling can hide that.

        Liked by 1 person

    • Nobody reasonable would blame you for any choice of Dave’s.
      …so you have to admit every wrongdoing of everyone on “your side” (as defined by who, exactly?) before Dave will reconsider *his own* actions?
      Mmm-hmm.

      Liked by 3 people

    • Responding to Freer’s demand is further complicated by the fact that several of the “offenses” he lists as having been committed by “your side” are outright fabrications on his part. The rest are so distorted from reality that they may as well be fabrications too. He’s essentially demanding that you accept the fantastical made-up version of reality the Pups have created and apologize for the slights they have manufactured. Basically, he wants you to agree with his lies and then apologize for the offenses he has spun with those lies.

      Liked by 4 people

    • Or in other words, homophobic Dave Freer has no evidence to back up any of the claims he made up, including Aberdeen, to set a harassment mob on Foz Meadows and is now desperately screaming “Squirrel!” as loudly as he can.

      Also we are back to the Puppies trying to do a “these are not the droids you are looking for” routine about their past actions. Apologize for all the accusations about our behavior — public, admitted, factual behavior — and we’ll give up on the accusations we just made up is not a very persuasive argument.

      Liked by 3 people

  19. “In this case, maybe they are just really, really, really just not very good at anything.”

    I’m going to go with door number 3.

    Liked by 3 people

  20. “And lives in the same town, claims to be a fan and somehow – in the tiny pond of Brissy sf fans never knew of her or hubby”
    I moved back to Brisbane (strictly speaking, the next council district over, but it all blends together) in 2006. I can attest to several things:
    1. Brisbane is not a town. It’s a city of 2.3 million people. Geographically, it’s enormous – 15,842 km2 (6,116.6 sq mi). It’s hard enough to meet people who you actually know, let alone people you really, really don’t
    2. I’ve lived here both before and after I lived in the UK, and met almost no other SF fans. There are people I know of, who are from quite near me (by Australian standards) who write in the same genre I have, and I’ve never met them, contacted them, or hat any reason to do either. Because that would be weird. Quite a lot of SF fans are socially shy or anxious, and do all their interactions on the internet.
    3. Similarly I have not met Foz or her husband, know of her only from the internet, though they live in the same place as I do, and I can’t imagine even the mad geniuses claiming that all three of are fictional
    4. My IP address, on any given day, will identify me as being where I live, 80 kms away, or sometimes several hundred kms away. Telstra IPs are just weird. (Also, because of being in Australia, some of us – shock! – have VPNs to look at stuff that film and TV and Youtube deem we are just ready to know about. I would have thought the number of SF fans who do this would be greater than the average person in this country.)

    I don’t care for some of Foz’s position vis a vis certain individuals in SF, but I am deeply sympathetic towards her situation and horrified by this harassment. I wish her and her family safety and peace. And the ones doing this? Boils in a painful and difficult to treat location.

    Liked by 4 people

  21. My girlfriend is from Aberdeen. Does that mean you are in fact my girlfriend?
    Alternatively, has he forgotten that there’s a town about 250 km from Sydney called Aberdeen as well?

    Liked by 4 people

  22. ” He’s essentially demanding that you accept the fantastical made-up version of reality the Pups have created and apologize for the slights they have manufactured. Basically, he wants you to agree with his lies and then apologize for the offenses he has spun with those lies.”

    Aaron has summarized it well.

    A screencap was circulating on Twitter yesterday of still more of Freer’s sleazy ranting about Ms. Meadows. His comments were a sludge of malice, bigotry, and gaslighting. I don’t believe he should be ignored; although his snide idiocy doesn’t merit any attention, silence in response to his vicious verbal attacks on others discourages, isolates, and abandons the person/people he maligns. But I do think there is self-evidently no point in trying to reason, compromise, negotiate, or discuss with him; he comes across in his own rhetoric as too dishonest, unreliable, malevolent, and irrational for that.

    Liked by 5 people

    • “I don’t believe he should be ignored; although his snide idiocy doesn’t merit any attention, silence in response to his vicious verbal attacks on others discourages, isolates, and abandons the person/people he maligns.”

      Yeah, the balance I publically debated–is shining a light on this a net good, or fueling the fire? Is sunlight a disinfectant or not?

      Liked by 1 person

  24. @Kathodus: well, they accused me of having inside voting data because I accurately predicted that all of their stacked categories would receive a NO Award win. I’d like to take a lot of credit, but that was an extremely easy prediction to make – like predicting that tomorrow, there will be weather.

    @Camestros: Kudos and support to you for not being baited into revealing your identity (even to protect Foz. I’m sure she would agree that you shouldn’t).

    They can’t get to certain people, so now they’re attacking the network. (As long as you’re friends with so-and-so, I’m going to make your life miserable….)

    Liked by 2 people

    • Their categories all getting No Award was not only predictable, it was widely predicted. LOTS of people were predicting it. Precisely because an unusually high number of people bought supporting m’ships to vote on the Hugos, and it was thought (accurately, as it turns out) that the majority of them did so to vote against slating rather than to vote in favor of slating. The Puppies’ post-awards yapping about leaked results, miscounted votes, and/or foul play was just standard Puppy paranoia and detachment from reality. The results that night were not exactly surprising to anyone who had paid attention to how upset most of fandom was about the Hugo ballot having been manipulated by a small clique of angry bloggers who claimed no one who’d been winning Hugos actually deserved them and fans weren’t actually voting for stories they enjoyed.

      Liked by 2 people

      • The thing to remember about the Pups is that they always assumed (and still assume) that they actually represent the majority of genre fiction fans. When the Pup campaigns were going, the story they spun, and that they took to heart, was that the awards given to stories they didn’t like were the result of an evil cabal of elitists directing the process and subverting the will of the real majority of Hugo voters who they asserted were all ideologically aligned with the Pups. They were surprised when the vote went against them because they had convinced themselves that all the “real majority” of Hugo voters needed was someone to lead them against the evil elitists. They fact that they were a tiny splinter faction on the fringes of fandom is simply not something they can understand.

        There is a bit of conspiracy theory thinking in their response to the “No Awards” at Worldcon – instead of realizing that their assumptions about their popularity were wrong, they then began to launch attacks on Worldcon attendees as being “out of touch” with what they asserted was the real majority of genre fiction fans. This is why Dragoncon looms so large in their minds – it “shows” that Worldcon is tiny and irrelevant and that because they all love Dragoncon, they are the “real” majority. And who can forget Torgersen’s claim that Hugo voters were out of touch with the fans in the movie theater eating popcorn and watching Avengers on the big screen (apparently not aware of the fact that Avengers won a Hugo).

        This isn’t unique to the Pups, claiming to be the actual majority in the face of losses in politics and popular culture is a common theme among conservatives over the last few decades. One only has to go back to Nixon’s use of the phrase “silent majority” to see how the idea of a massive but still somehow oppressed conservative majority pervades conservative thinking. The Pups were surprised that they lost at the Hugos so badly because they were following a long conservative tradition of assuming that they were actually in the majority, when there was no real evidence to support that assumption.

        Liked by 2 people

    • “they’re attacking the network. (As long as you’re friends with so-and-so, I’m going to make your life miserable….)”

      The ironic thing is that this is exactly the behavior they’ve been accusing others of, all along.

      Liked by 2 people

      • Projection is what they do, though. Ironically, the behaviors outlined in their favorite book, SJWs Always Lie, are all their behaviors, projected onto others. It’s their modus operandi — which we can assume is where VD got the list. He knows his own tactics, after all.

        Liked by 3 people

      • Yeah, Foz highlighted a tweet from Antonelli today that displayed such a massive lack of self-awareness that it was almost mind-boggling.

        Like

      • Yeah, that really struck me a little while back, when I originally came across this blog and was reading through some of the earlier posts. I found Camestros’ (very fair-minded) review of one of the SJW books (thanks for doing that, btw) where he lists the tactics VD accuses his enemies of using, said to myself “wait a minute”, and spent a couple hours pulling up various Greatest Hits Of Vox Day that I remembered … and, yup, every single accusation is something VD himself has employed at some point.

        I can’t guess whether this is a huge case of cognitive dissonance where he’s actually believing his own bullshit, or simple systematic dishonesty. I did come to the conclusion that only one rule matters where VD is concerned: don’t watch what he says, just watch what he does.

        Liked by 2 people

        • It’s more than that – it is an active means of transmitting tactics. It’s rather like the obsession the right had with Saul Alinsky’s Rules of Radicals – a text probably long forgotten in leftwing circles. The right would keep reciting it but the pruposes was to say ‘this is what we should do’.

          Liked by 3 people

  25. Glory be, Lou’s apologized. Good for him.

    I hope he now realizes he shouldn’t go spouting off whatever fancies come to Dave’s fevered brain. Don’t go enabling Dave, Lou; he’s using you and making you look like an idiot for his own nefarious purposes.

    Liked by 1 person

  26. Apologies aren’t worth much if you keep doing the same thing over and over again to different people. But at least it was an exit strategy. Apparently he decided that Camestros was not actually out to destroy him and send him to a gas chamber or whatever it was. This time.

    Liked by 1 person

    • Depends. If there’s a consistent pattern of many cases over many years, then yes. But if it’s a handful of cases (and I don’t know of any other outstanding examples from him besides the Gerrold one), it looks more like just a negative personality trait that he has to wrestle with from time to time. Every human being has those, admitting error is a big part of overcoming them. Respect to Mr. Antonelli – and also to Foz Meadows for being thoroughly gracious in accepting the apology.

      Disconfirming one’s beliefs is a hard task.

      Like

      • KMP: If there’s a consistent pattern of many cases over many years, then yes. But if it’s a handful of cases (and I don’t know of any other outstanding examples from him besides the Gerrold one), it looks more like just a negative personality trait that he has to wrestle with from time to time.

        Unfortunately, it’s a pattern of behavior from Lou Antonelli. At least four incidents in less than three years likely means that there are more in the past — including some outside of the SFF sphere — which have not received wide notice.

        Liked by 1 person

  27. I see that a couple of kind/intrepid souls have left comments for Dave bringing Antonelli’s retraction to his attention. I am sure that as a man of integrity he will either join the retraction or post his evidence.

    Like

    • I think he’ll either:
      1. ignore completely
      2. point out he never said he was Lou’s source and that Lou can do what he wants but he is sticking by his argument but not add anything additional.
      3. Say that he has seen the evidence but the comments/ips are no longer available.
      4. Say he was decieved by me in some way.
      5. Concede he was wrong but post new identifying information about me.
      6. Concede that he was wrong but claim that *he* never said I was definitely Toby M – that was just the best hypothesis he had and anyway nobody could refute it.
      7. Apologise

      Or some combination of the above.

      Liked by 1 person

    • zoiks! The reply from one of the regulars amounts to that they aren’t reading because Mike wrote so it is false. It’s rather like an earlier response when Jayn suggested they google Jim Hines’s piece on MZB and they launched into how evil Google is.

      Liked by 1 person

    • I can’t find any comments about Antonelli’s retraction in that webcache (doing a “find” for “retract” “antonelli” or “apolog” reveals none), and I’m not going to read through all the trash in the comments.

      Like

      • JJ, right at the end of the cache version someone links to the f770 article, and in a part which is missing Nate Hoffelder makes a couple of comments about it. Point being, Dave definitely knows Antonelli has retracted and if he doesn’t address that then he can’t claim he just missed it.

        Like

        • Well Freer just posted his weekly column. Mainly the usual ramble about publishing.

          And then this elliptical reference:
          “Now, for the puppy kickers who have no interest in helping writers to make a living, but have struggled through all this skimming for something to be offended by for their little witch-hunt:

          I know, it’s been hard for people who struggle to read anything longer than a tweet. Tch. Shame. Let me try, for the last time, to persuade you that I didn’t turn Jim Hines into a newt. He’s exactly as he always was. And I know you took delight in dressing me up in these clothes, but I really don’t have the legs for it, and I’m doing physical work on farms, and even the hat won’t stay on in the wind, and the skirts keep getting caught on the barbed wire. Why not try one of the authors who doesn’t have a farm to run, and likes dressing in women’s clothing and posing? I’m kinda used to my own broken nose, and I don’t even have a wart. Nor do I weigh the same as a duck. And if you have a dead gerbil stuck up your ass, no, I am not responsible for that either, no matter what you say to the Doctor in ER about having no idea how it got up there.

          If it was me magically placing it, I’d have made it a tarantula for your ‘pleasure’, except I wouldn’t be that cruel to a tarantula or a gerbil. And I know: that makes me a gerbil-or-tarantul-anus-ophobe because how dare I criticize your love. I’m not. I’m mocking and accepting the first accurate accusation yet. I’ll wear that one. You don’t want to be like me. And you so enjoy hurting things, so long as you’re in a mob or safe and anonymous like Fieldsy or they’re very little, like gerbils- as you’ve proven so well. Tell the rest of your twitter-mob if they haven’t already shown their solidarity with this oppressed minority, that it may be the next winner of NYC publishing victim bingo, and a shoo-in for a Hugo. Don’t all rush to the nearest pet shop now.”

          Like

            • Signaling. Scalzi wore a dress: HE works on a farm! Therefore—gerbil stuffing. Nicknames (each is an accusation, so further signaling).

              Ah, well. Back to watching THE SORROW AND THE PITY on TCM.

              Liked by 1 person

  28. I don’t think Antonelli is disconfirming any beliefs whatsoever. And he has quite a pattern of the behavior at this point which I’ve been forced to hear about far more than I would like. That he is willing to retreat a bit and throw out an apology before then joining in on the next Puppy campaign to harass someone else doesn’t give him bonus points with me at this point. He led the charge and he led it for quite awhile before finally giving up. He joined in a gay-bashing quite happily. So those most injured certainly have the right to accept the yet again apologies for this behavior. I just personally see it as lip service at this point. This incident put the last nail in the coffin of my seeing any of the Puppies as just a harmless bunch of cranks.

    The Puppies and most of the “Western” right believe in a sort of global nativism of imaginary, white-ruled “Western civilizations” that they’ve decided are under siege of degradation and dissolution from the ideas of equality and social justice, from the Social Justice Warriors who they claim are lying, trying to take over and ruin all. It’s the same old song of every bigot ever opposing civil rights advances at every point in history: you’re the Other, you’re disgusting, you’re inferior, you’re sneaky, you’re violent, you’re taking “my” stuff and you should shut up. This incident had all of that out in full force and while the stakes weren’t as high as what’s going on with governments, it was a disappointing example of the violence LGBTQ folk face everywhere.

    But on the good side, Antonelli blew the retreat horn. So now the Puppies will be siddling off of this in one way or another (see Camestros’ list.)

    Liked by 3 people

  29. Putting aside geolocation (which is always imprecise), we can use proper allocation lookups for IP addresses.

    IP addresses are all allocated (by IANA) to one of five Regional Internet Registries. The RIRs then allocate IP addresses to ISPs.

    Because the IP address won’t work if the RIR allocation is wrong (RIR allocation is an essential part of internet routing), you can rely on the allocation being accurate.

    The RIR for the Asia-Pacific is APNIC; the RIR for Europe is RIPE (ARIN for North America, LACNIC for Latin American and the Caribbean, AfriNIC for Africa). For each of these, you can go to their website (just put .net on the end of their abbreviated name), and the home page has a WHOIS search. Put in the IP address and it wil either return a lot of information, or it’ll tell you that it belongs to another RIR.

    So this IP address starts with 121. The first thinkg we do is we look at IANA’s list of IP addresses (https://www.iana.org/assignments/ipv4-address-space/ipv4-address-space.xhtml) and this tells us that the 121 block is allocated to APNIC (no great surprise there). That proves, right away, that this address is not in Europe, because it would be a RIPE allocation.

    Next, we do an APNIC WHOIS query, and we get this page: https://wq.apnic.net/static/search.html?query=121.216.176.162

    What that tells us is that the whole range from 121.208.0.0 to 121.223.255.255 is allocated to … Telstra. So that definitely confirms Australia.

    Now it probably is the case that specific bits of that range are located in different parts of Australia – it would make Telstra’s network very hard to administer if they didn’t divide it into segments on a geographical basis. Geolocation can probably spot reasonably well which IP addresses are in which bits of Australia – but it’s also the case that Telstra can reallocate addresses around the country without needing to tell anyone outside of Telstra, which they may well do if demand rises in part of the country and falls elsewhere, so I wouldn’t rely on geolocation for historical information more than a couple of years in the past.

    Just for a second example, take my own IP address (which is a public address for various reasons), 46.33.137.59: IANA confirms that belongs to RIPE and RIPE helpfully says https://apps.db.ripe.net/db-web-ui/#/query?searchtext=46.33.137.59 that 46.33.137.0-46.33.137.255 goes to ICUK, which is indeed my ISP (in the UK).

    Now, you’re completely screwed beyond that because there’s no way to tell where in the UK I actually am, because ICUK operates a completely flat UK-wide network for their DSL customers (this is unusual, and it’s because small UK ISPs work in a weird way that doesn’t apply elsewhere in the world).

    Liked by 2 people

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