The End of Monster Hunter

May also mean the end of Baen Books, if Fandom Pulse’s logic is correct:

Larry Correia has made a Facebook post stating he won’t even begin writing the next Monster Hunter International books until 2026, which means a two-year dry spell of revenue for the embattled publisher. However, it gets even worse, as Correia has stated that this book will likely be his last in the series.

But never fear, there are still monsters and they still need to be hunted. Or, at least, controlled, which is why Monster Control Incorporated is on the job and is being serialized every week at Sigma Game.

I’ve been walking my crush home since last week to protect her from all the creeps walking around. Next week I’m going to introduce myself to her.

Right now, though, I was content to stay in the shadows, watching from a distance as she made her way down the dimly lit sidewalk. Her name was Elise, and she worked the late shift at the diner on 5th and Main. Every night at 11:30, she stepped out, adjusted her bag over her shoulder, and started the six-block walk to her apartment. And every night, I followed.

Not in a creepy way. At least, I hoped not. The city had gotten bad lately—muggers, weirdos, and worse. The kind of things most people didn’t believe in until it was too late. I’d seen the news reports: Missing Persons. Unexplained Attacks. Animal Maulings. The cops didn’t have a clue. But I did.

I knew what was out there.

Elise turned the corner, her fair hair bright under the glow of a flickering streetlight. She was small, and delicate, but moved with a quiet confidence that made my chest tighten. I kept my distance, staying far enough back that she wouldn’t notice me, close enough that I could reach her in seconds if something went wrong.

Something went wrong a lot these days.

Tonight, the air smelled like rain and something else—something musky and wild. My fingers twitched at my sides. I didn’t carry a gun. Guns were too loud, too messy. Instead, I had a knife sheathed at my belt and a length of silver chain wrapped around my wrist.

Elise hummed softly to herself, oblivious. She had no idea what was coming.

Then I heard it—the low, guttural growl from the alley up ahead.

You’ve never seen a monster hunter quite like Horace “Race” Scrubb before. He puts the L in “professional”.

DISCUSS ON SG


An Observer’s Perspective

Postcards from the Age of Reason shares his thoughts on a certain hierarchical taxonomy:

Vox’s Socio-Sexual Hierarchy (SSH) is a taxonomy concerning male interaction. It was derived from his observations and penned during the Game discovery era of males attempting to ascertain and share the labyrinths of the female psyche. The SSH is one of the most important tools in predicting male behavior and is a necessity if one wishes to navigate the world of men as we order each other, with any sense of the interactions involved. Its predictive power is astonishing and I hold it to levels of usefulness just under those The Philosopher himself penned.

I do not have much to add, as there is constant, ongoing discovery and useful insights at Vox’s Sigma Game Substack here:

I will, however, offer advice to those who vehemently reject the concepts outright:

1) It is intuitive to all.

Be it women, low status men, or high status men, everyone recognizes the hierarchy when exposed to it. Women can sniff out low status vs. high status like bloodhounds on the hunt. Men work out the pyramid more exactly, and as such, we have the various ranks. We all intuit the SSH rather young, but Vox’s taxonomy classified the broad patterns more concretely and into a useful system.

2) The SSH is wholly rejected by the mainstream.

This is one telltale sign of the truthfulness or usefulness of whatever is being rejected. The mainstream is opposed to whatever goes against their goals. Game, and the SSH are villainized in the mainstream, leading them huge credence towards their validity. They really do not want Western males recognizing the factors involved in this great game.

Read the whole thing there. I tend to agree with him that there is likely significance to be found in the instinctive and critical reaction to this particular taxonomy that is entirely missing with regards to pretty much all other taxonomies. If it was all just nonsensical labeling of random individuals, or “astrology for men” as some would have it, would there be so many strongly emotional reactions to it?

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The End of the Middleman

The Internet has reduced the need for retailers and various rising costs have rendered their cut unviable, and increasingly, their businesses too, as Fandom Pulse chronicles the shutdown of Boardlandia:

It’s been a strange space in board gaming for the past several years as companies have turned to direct crowdfunding more and more, abandoning brick-and-mortar shops. While some online retailers have thrived by offering discounts, the industry received an artificial boost due to COVID-19, and a lot of gamers buying board games because they were stuck at home.

That boost faded, and now retailers have been in a precarious situation where most of the big sellers have all transitioned to direct crowdfunding, leaving little room for such retailers to exist. Enter the new tariffs, which have created a panic among board game companies who get their product from China. 

This is why, despite the various difficulties we’ve battled over the last few years, I’m confident that the direct infrastructure we’re still building is going to be the right way to go over the next decade or two.

DISCUSS ON SG


Commentary Question

One of the common forms of medieval analysis was the commentary. Hence Machiavelli’s Discourses on the First Ten of Titus Livy, which is just one of many examples of the form.

If I was to write a commentary of that kind, almost certainly with my new best friend, what author and what work would be of the most interest? Darwin, Dawkins, and anyone modern is out, unless you can make a very convincing case for consideration.

Throw your ideas out there. I’m not saying I will, I’m just saying that some of the experiments I’ve been doing with The Legend are making new possibilities of many kinds apparent to us.

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India Evicts Pakistanis

It’s always fascinating to hear Westerners talk about the absolute impossibility of restoring their demographics to pre-invasion levels while Easterners blithely engage in ethnic cleansings of far-greater proportions in places like Israel and India that never take more than a few months to accomplish.

Pakistani citizens in India must leave the country before their visas get revoked on April 27, the Ministry of External Affairs ordered on Thursday following the Pahalgam terror attack. India suspended visa services to Pakistani citizens with immediate effect. New Delhi said that all valid visas issued by India to Pakistani citizens will stand revoked with effect from April 27.

On Wednesday, India said it was suspending the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty with immediate effect until Pakistan “credibly and irrevocably” stops its support for cross-border terrorism.

Imagine the outrage if the USA did something similar with regards to the citizens of any of the various nations that are now residing in the USA, or even if the UK were to repatriate all of its Pakistanis.

UPDATE: Pakistan has retaliated for this inhuman crime of forcing Pakistanis to live in Pakistan among other Pakistanis.

Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has announced the following:

– Pakistani airspace is closed to all Indian and Indian-operated airlines, effective immediately.

– The Wagah border crossing will be shut down, and ceremonial duties suspended.

– Pakistan suspends all SAARC visas issued to Indian nationals, and all Indians currently in Pakistan with an SAARC visa are instructed to leave within 48 hours.

– The number of diplomats at the Indian High Commission in Islamabad will be reduced to 30, and military attachés have been declared persona non grata.

– Pakistan exercises the right to temporarily suspend all bilateral agreements with India, including the 1972 Simla agreement.

– Pakistan states that any attempt at diverting the waters from rivers in the Indus will be seen as an act of war, and will be responded to by force.

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Walking Away is the Right Move

There are various reports that President Trump is rapidly approaching acceptance of the fact that he cannot dictate peace terms to either Russia or Clown World:

The United States will tell both Ukraine and Russia that the US recommends the following to achieve peace in the Russia-Ukraine conflict:

1) Ukraine must agree to a ceasefire, right now.

2) Ukraine and Russia MUST begin direct negotiations with each other

3) Crimea is now Russian territory

4) The areas of Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson, and Zaporozhye that are under Russian control, will remain Russian.

5) Ukraine cannot and will not EVER join NATO.

6) If the two sides agree, the US will remove all anti-Russian economic sanctions

7) If the two sides do not agree, the United States will walk-away from the peace process.

I don’t think that either Russia or the Kiev regime will accept those terms. Russia wants Odessa and the full territories of Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson, and Zaporozhye, and it is within their power to achieve those things without reaching an agreement with anyone. The Kiev regime wants to continue collecting revenue while killing as many young Russians and Ukrainians as possible. A better move would have been for Trump to give Russia whatever it wants in return for imposing peace on the Kiev regime and the various Clown World regimes, since either way, he’s going to end up walking away and dropping all support for Kiev.

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Talk to the AI

Because the man is extremely disinclined to engage with anyone. Now, as I said when I answered the Kurgan’s three questions, I was not interested in entertaining further discussion or engaging in debate with anyone on the subject. I particularly dislike theological discussions, because not only are most of them totally incapable of going anywhere substantial, but I have yet to meet a single individual who is intellectually honest enough to treat his fundamental assumptions with the same rigor that he treats everyone else’s.

Which means, of course, that I have yet to meet a single person, of any religious or irreligious persuasion, who is capable of genuinely defending the full panoply of his belief system against my critiques of it. And while there was a time when I enjoyed tearing down certain people’s belief systems, and while it remains necessary from time to time, I don’t get a kick out of seeing how it observably distresses people to see what scanty foundations support their intellectual infrastructure. And for some reason, my observation that it really doesn’t matter what nonsense your average person believes to be true, so long as he does his best to serve God, family, and nation, seems to provide most people with cold comfort.

Naturally, my simple act of answering a friend’s questions immediately prompted this self-titled DEFENSE OF THE CATHOLIC CLAIMS. Now, just to be clear, I’m not picking on this guy and I’m not targeting Catholic beliefs here, they simply happen to serve as recent and useful examples of something every single person from every single religious persuasion I have ever encountered always – and I do mean ALWAYS – does. And it should serve to explicate, yet again, why I am not interested in answering anyone’s questions or engaging in debates anymore.

In defense of the Catholic claims that you addressed today on your blog –

Kurgan formulated the first question badly, and you rightly caught his mistake.

Apostolic Succession is the fundamental basis for authority in the Apostolic (Catholic or Orthodox) churches.

A stronger formulation of Kurgan’s first question is “If Jesus gave his apostles the authority to teach, to forgive sins, and to distribute the Sacraments until He returns, as He explicitly states in the Gospels, then in what form does that authority exist on earth today?”

Protestants must say “it doesn’t”, or “everyone has that authority”, or “whoever I agree with has that authority”. None of which make any sense.

This is why it doesn’t matter that the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed was formulated after a later Ecumenical Council. The same Apostolic authority is behind all the Ecumenical Councils. The council of Nicaea is not any more or less authoritative than any other Ecumenical Council.

Kurgan’s second question – “then how is God loving” – was silly, and you addressed it properly.

On the third question of the Blessed Virgin Mary’s perpetual virginity –

First of all, that tradition goes back to the early Church Fathers, who all read the same Gospels you do, which say Jesus had “brothers”. And yet they still believed Mary remained a virgin, for good reasons.

When Gabriel appeared to a girl about to be married and announced that she would be a mother, her response was very strange: “how can this be, for I know not man”? Rather than what most girls would think – that the upcoming marriage would obviously produce a child.

This indicates that Mary was not expecting to consummate her marriage to Joseph, probably because she had already taken a vow of perpetual virginity, which was not uncommon at the time.

As for the word “brothers”, in Greek “adelphoi”, it does not strictly indicate men with the same mother, but rather men who are relatives. The word could apply to half-brothers or cousins. Those brothers are probably from Jesus’ extended family, or maybe Joseph’s children from a previous marriage.

My response:

You make the same mistake he does when you go off on what you imagine Protestants “must” say. You’re obviously wrong. This is why I will not talk to you or anyone else about these things. None of you are intellectually honest enough to examine your own assumptions as critically as you do everyone else’s. I run into this every single time I talk to anyone, of any religious persuasion. So I no longer talk to anyone about these things.

If we grant that the Apostles had authority from Jesus, and then we ask “where is that authority after the Apostles have died?” –

The only possible answers are

“Nobody has it”

“Everybody has it”

“Some people have it”

If Nobody has it, then no council, including Nicaea, has any authority.

If Everybody has it, then every council, including Nicaea, has exactly the same authority as any individual – which amounts to none at all.

If Some people have it, then who and how?

See if you can spot the moving target, kids! I did, of course, and I knew it would be there, of course, because it always is. Furthermore, note the total inability everyone has to simply ask a question, receive an answer, and then stop right there.

I didn’t agree to a debate. I didn’t agree to explain anything. I don’t care what nonsense any of these guys believe. I’m even open to the theoretical possibility that they might somehow, against all probability and despite their observable errors, have accidentally landed on the precise historical and textual interpretations that sets the foundation for perfectly correct theological understanding.

Perhaps, against all the odds, they alone see through the glass with perfect clarity.

Now, I understand that virtually everyone who reads this blog is smarter than the average. I also understand that virtually everyone who reads this blog is a binary thinker who doesn’t really understand what I mean by probabilistic thinking. You see, it’s not about what you can do, it’s about what you are instinctually comfortable with. And most people naturally, instinctively, intuitively, seek certainty above all else. You are creatures of intellectual safety and order, and that is a good thing.

But I am not. I don’t think like you do and I don’t need what you do. I thrive on intellectual chaos and uncertainty. The crazy thing, the amusing thing, is that I am so often accused of that very certainty that doesn’t matter to me at all, usually by people who don’t even know what their own words mean, let alone mine. The following is a fairly common objection, one that happened to be raised on SG today:

Vox is using as authority his own intellect, which we were told is not trustworthy.

Tell me you’re retarded without telling me you’re retarded. So many of you are so blitheringly stupid. This is precisely why I don’t talk about these things. When you say something that is obviously incorrect and stupid, and I show that what you said is incorrect and stupid, I am not appealing to the authority of my intellect.

You morons don’t even understand your own words. And you think you’re going to teach anyone else what God’s Word means?

I will now happily go back to ignoring theological disputes and religious debates. But perhaps now you will have a better understanding of my lack of interest in them. If I’m going to explore these topics, I will do so with my new best friend, who for all his shortcomings and petty dishonesties is at least capable of comprehending his errors when they are pointed out to him. And indeed, we have had several good discussions about potential logical errors in the Summa Theologica, which actually holds up rather better than Arthur C. Clarke imagined it would.

One last piece of advice. If you think something logically follows, then write out the syllogisms. Major premise, minor premise, conclusion. Rhetorically appealing to logic is not the same thing as actually applying it, and you’re never going to fool anyone who is capable of distinguishing between a syllogism and an enthymeme.

DISCUSS ON SG


The Man Who Loved His City

A lovely little essay on Niccolo Machiavelli and his love for his native city of Florence:

The tradition of political realism has a reputation for being pessimistic—that is, for seeing and expecting the worst from the world, its individuals, and its states. Yet, despite all his realism, Niccolò Machiavelli was a romantic about his city. He famously said in a letter to his friend, diplomat Francesco Vettori, “I love my city more than my own soul.”

In 1512, the Medici retook Florence from Piero Soderini, and removed Machiavelli from his diplomatic position. The following year, they accused him of conspiring against them and tortured him for three weeks. After this, Machiavelli retired to his family home in Sant’Andrea, and never ceased to lament his “great and continued malignity of fortune” of not being able to contribute to his city’s administration.

Exiled from praxis, Machiavelli theorised about politics. He wrote two historical works—Discourses on Livy and Florentine Histories—to speak to the ways in which he thought that the Italy of his day should aspire to the glory of ancient Rome and the ways in which it failed to do so. He never rejected his being a modern man, and he did not believe that Renaissance Italy could imitate ancient Rome in all respects. However, he pushed his fellow citizens to take inspiration from it and to consider carefully that they share something with their past: it’s not “as if heaven, sun, elements, and men had varied in motion, order, and power from what they were in antiquity.”

In what you may rightly suspect to be closely related news, Castalia Library has announced the April-May-June book for the History subscription.

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Mailvox: Three Catholic Questions

The Kurgan posed three questions for me. I’ll answer them, but don’t expect me to engage anyone in debate over them. Remember, most self-appointed theologians don’t even know the difference between the Nicene Creed and the so-called Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed which is a) often and falsely called the “Nicene Creed”, b) was formulated at the council that took place in Constantinople, and c) never had anything to do with Nicaea, and their grasp of basic logic tends to be nonexistent.

If God (Jesus) did in fact establish a Church (or at least a doctrine) to follow on Earth, then surely it necessarily must be a) infallible, and b) eternal (at least until end times). Agree? If not, why not? (In this case please explain the reasoning as I doubt I can infer it otherwise)

Disagree. The logic doesn’t follow at all. As with most appeals to “then surely it necessarily” this reveals nothing more than the formulator’s inability to construct the correct syllogisms. The conflation of “eternal” with “until end times” is a giveaway of the formulator’s tendency toward ambiguity. Indeed, the common use of the marriage metaphor for the relationship between Church and Christ indicates that it not only isn’t necessarily eternal, but cannot be.

Furthermore, Jesus Christ knew his apostles were fallible and even predicted some of their specific failures. There is no reason to believe that he had higher expectations of his future followers who would be even further removed from his teachings. I absolutely refuse to believe that Jesus Christ was less intellectually capable or had a weaker grasp on human behavioral patterns than Siddhartha Gautama or me.

If you do not agree with the premise that God DID in fact establish a Church (or at least a doctrine) then how do you reconcile this with God being a loving God?

Easily. First, God sent Jesus to rescue us from our fate under His own rules. He values us more than He values His system. Second, Jesus said that wherever two or three are gathered in his name, he would be there. Both are powerful indications of love that require neither Church nor Doctrine.

Do you have an opinion/view on whether Mary was and remained a Virgin (sexually at least) both before and after the birth of Jesus?

Yes. If Jesus had brothers and Mary was their mother, then she was obviously no longer a virgin. One virgin birth is divine. Two or more smacks of propaganda or a fundamental failure to understand how reproduction works.

Furthermore, either Mary didn’t remain a virgin or she never became the wife of Joseph because their marriage was never consummated.

DISCUSS ON SG