Year: 2023

That Doggone Diabetes

An English Premier League game was stopped after the captain of one of the teams collapsed:

The Premier League game between Bournemouth and Luton was abandoned after Luton captain Tom Lockyer collapsed during the second half. The players were taken off the pitch by referee Simon Hooper and after a lengthy delay, the Bournemouth staff doctor confirmed that Lockyer was ‘alert and responsive.’

Lockyer, who collapsed in the play-off final earlier this year, dropped to the floor in an off the ball incident in the 62nd minute of the game between Bournemouth and Luton. Luton manager Rob Edwards immediately ran onto the pitch as the players surrounded Lockyer before the paramedics stretchered him off after treating him on the pitch for over ten minutes.

Half an hour after the incident, the game was officially called off.

Luton captain Tom Lockyer ‘alert and responsive’ after collapsing against Bournemouth, 16 December 2023

To put this in an American context, it’s comparable to the Bills-Bengals MNF game that was cancelled, if Josh Allen had collapsed instead of Damar Hamlin.

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A SEA OF SKULLS Full Edition

Castalia House is pleased to announce that the full text of A SEA OF SKULLS is now complete at an estimated 914 pages and is available in a new ebook edition at the Arkhaven store for $7.99. This is the initial text edition and therefore lacks an appendix and the additional images that will be added to the print edition, which is expected to be released in the spring and should clock in around 924 pages.

A coupon for a free download will be sent out to the readers who purchased the abbreviated edition back in 2016 and sent in their proofs of purchase from Amazon. The first batch have gone out already, the remainder will go out before midnight. If you don’t get one, or if you didn’t send in your Kindle proof of purchase for it already, please don’t do so now. I’m sure it will be on the various pirate sites before the weekend is out. The coupon for a free download will also be provided to all Castalia Library, Libraria Castalia, and Castalia History subscribers in the December monthly newsletter, which will go out next week.

Merry Christmas, Librarians…

The two leather volumes will be included in the Castalia Library and Libraria Castalia subscriptions sometime next year. An audiobook+ edition will be released once Jeremy Daw has finished recording it. I do not intend to make either the ebook or the audiobook available through Amazon, at least not at this time.

I hope you will enjoy the latest edition to the epic fantasy saga. If you discover any typos or errata, please do not send emails to me as you encounter them, but compile a list and send it to me after you have finished the book. As we did with A THRONE OF BONES, we will do iterative corrections and update the ebook accordingly.

In Selenoth, the war drums are beating throughout the land. The savage orcs of Hagahorn and Zoth Ommog are on the move, imperiling Man, Dwarf, and Elf alike. The Houses Martial of Amorr have gone to war with each other, pitting legion against legion, and family against family, as civil war wracks the disintegrating Empire. In the north, inhuman wolf-demons besiege the last redoubt of Man in the White Sea, while in Savondir, the royal house of de Mirid desperately prepares to defend the kingdom against an invading army that is larger than any it has ever faced before. And in the underground realm of the King of Iron Mountain, a strange new enemy has been attacking dwarf villages throughout the Underdeep.

Beneath the widespread violence that has seized all Selenoth in its grasp, a select few are beginning to recognize the appearance of a historic pattern of almost unimaginable proportions. Are all these conflicts involving Orc, Elf, Man, and Dwarf the natural result of inevitable rivalries, or are they little more than battlegrounds in an ancient war that began long before the dawn of time?

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Annual Interview 2023

These massive annual interviews with the Russian president are going to be important historical documents one day. While Vladimir Putin may not be either the smartest or the most powerful world leader – that is almost certainly Xi Xinping – he has been astonishingly successful despite arguably facing the greatest degree of difficulty of any nation that was not already under military occupation by a conqueror. Two days ago, he gave the 2023 edition:

Yekaterina Berezovskaya: Mr President, last week you announced your decision to run for president. In this regard, what goals do you consider the most important, at home and abroad?

Vladimir Putin: I have spoken about this many times, but it would not hurt to say it once again. For a country like Russia, existence, mere existence, is impossible without sovereignty. Without sovereignty, Russia would cease to exist, at least in the form it exists today and has existed for a thousand years.

Therefore, our main objective is to strengthen sovereignty. But it is a broad concept. For example, strengthening sovereignty on the international stage involves enhancing our defence capability and security on the external contour. It also includes strengthening social sovereignty, which means providing safeguards for the rights and freedoms of our citizens, as well as developing our political and parliamentary systems. And lastly, it includes economic security and sovereignty, as well as technological sovereignty.

I think that right now, to answer your question, there is no need to be specific about all these vectors and avenues, but I am certain that people in this audience and across the country understand perfectly well that Russia would not survive without this. Just like any other country, Russia must assert its financial, economic, and technological sovereignty in order to have a future.

Pavel Zarubin: Since we are discussing the economy, the fact that the Russian economy has not crumbled under pressure from its so-called former partners surprised many people around the world. However, these former partners have been openly seeking to finish their job by exerting even more pressure, as we have been hearing in their public statements.

How strong and resilient is the Russian economy? What is its margin of safety?

Vladimir Putin: Big enough so that we not just feel confident but also progress.

This margin of safety, as we have said on numerous occasions, but let me say it again, rests on several components.

The first and most important element is the high level of unity in Russian society.

The second element is the stability of our financial and economic system. As it turned out, and this came as a big surprise to our so-called partners and, frankly, many of us, over the previous decades Russia has accumulated a sufficient margin of safety and stability in finance and the economy.

And the third element is, of course, the growing capability of our security component, that is, the army and security agencies.

Results of the Year with Vladimir Putin, PRESIDENT OF RUSSIA, 14 December 2023

Notice that Putin stresses “the high level of unity in Russian society” as the primary element in Russia’s economic power, which underlies both its military power and its national sovereignty. This is in complete and direct contradiction to the Clown World claim that “diversity is our strength” and that free trade and the free movement of people is the source of wealth, economic growth, and economic power.

It’s not an accident that both China and Russia have rejected Clown World’s economics and are prospering as a result, despite the relentless doomsaying about their economies by Clown World economists. But Clown World economists will still be babbling nonsensically about the way immigration grows the economy in GDP terms as the White House is burned down by rioting Africans and Westminster is converted into a mosque.

The whole thing is very long, but it is absolutely required reading for anyone who wants to have even a glimmer of understanding about the coming events of 2024.

Kommersant newspaper: Mr President, you said that the world will never be the same again. What would you say to Vladimir Putin from 2000 if you had the chance? What advice would you give? What would you warn him against? Do you have any regrets?

Vladimir Putin: What would I say? I would say: you are on the right track, comrades. What would I warn him against? Against naivety and excessive trust in our so-called partners. As for tips and advice, I would say this: We must have faith in the great Russian people and nation. This faith provides a pathway to reviving, shaping and developing Russia.

I will analyze this on a Darkstream before the end of the year.

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Those Darn Kebabs

More than a thousand people a week than average are dying in Britain in 2023. The experts blame “unhealthy lifestyles”.

Hundreds more middle-aged Brits are dying every month than expected, with experts blaming unhealthy lifestyles and the NHS crisis for the surge in excess deaths. An extra 28,000 deaths, or more than 1,000 a week, were logged across the UK in the first six months of the year, according to fresh analysis of official figures.

The spike in mortality is especially stark among people aged 50 to 64, with 15 per cent more dying than usual. Most of these deaths were caused by largely preventable illnesses, including heart disease, liver damage and diabetes.

Data from the Office for National Statistics shows 353,047 fatalities were recorded between January and June this year. This is 28,024, or 8.6 per cent, more than the 325,023 expected over that period.

Of course, what the experts don’t tell the media is that they have quietly redefined “unhealthy lifestyle” as “getting vaxxed”.

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Neoclown Admits the Defeat of “the West”

Oleksii Mykolaiovych Arestovych is a blogger, actor, political and military columnist. He was a speaker of the Trilateral Contact Group on Ukraine. He worked as a Strategic Communications Adviser of the Office of the President of Ukraine from December 2020 to January 2023.

Translation: He’s one of the Ukraine-based clowns who was responsible for the communications between Clown World Central and the Kiev regime.

And now he’s following the late Henry Kissinger’s lead in publicly acknowledging that Kiev bet on the weak horse and is now facing the consequences. Simplicius provides the translation:

The entire West is losing, both globalists and isolationists – and we, who bet on it, due to our stupidity.

The isolationists won against the Republicans; the globalist Democrats are unable to solve the problems that they themselves created on a global scale.

Isolationists believe in the United States as a city on a hill and want to throw concerns about Europe into the hands of right-wingers like Orban.

And for starters, together throw off Ukraine, which is considered a construct of globalists.

The problem is not that they can’t give us money.

The problem is that they can’t give us shells.

Forty billion was thrown into a widely publicized microchip plant in Phoenix (Arizona), like a transfer from Taiwan.

The plant is standing still, there are no workers.

They tried to recruit Taiwanese, but it didn’t work either.

The Americans cannot launch the military-industrial complex, under the existing system, neither with Moroccans, nor with Mexicans, nor with dances, nor with tambourines.

The fundamental motivation of the market is financial speculation.

Arms companies show growth in capitalization, but never show growth in production (because there is practically none).

If production grows, it does so extremely slowly, so as not to break capitalization schemes.

Their task is to increase the value of shares, and not to create new equipment.

Tens of billions are being invested, but there is no growth in production.

And it won’t, for this it is necessary to change the entire paradigm, all the schemes that ensure his well-being.

I looked at the annual and quarterly reports of Ratheon, Lockheed, Boeing – the same thing everywhere.

Only decisions and actions in an emergency way out of a catastrophe can have an effect both here and in the West.

But there is another problem – there is no entity in the US/EU who could give such a command.

The West was really caught with its pants down.

Now they have to choose between three conflicts – Ukraine, Taiwan, Israel.

Dragging 70,000 shells from Israel to Ukraine and back is the culmination of the failure to fight the war that was forced on them.

At this rate, they will have a fourth and fifth conflict, I suspect, although in order to somehow cope with one (!) they need to stop helping in the other two.

For us this means disaster.

Of course, it’s not the genuine West that has been defeated, as the real West was infiltrated, suborned, and conquered decades ago. This is the defeat of the skinsuit “West”. Nor is the victory of the Sino-Russian alliance a problem for, much less a defeat of, American isolationists, whose position is finally being proven correct after more than a century. What Clown World is learning is a variant on Queen Cersei’s Lesson, which is that power is ultimately more important than either influence or money. Subversion, persuasion, and corruption only takes you so far.

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Beware the Christmas Cakes

First, it’s probably necessary to define Christmas Cakes, technically “unsold Christmas Cakes”, which is, believe it or not, a Japanese term.

“Women are Christmas cakes” because just like how nobody wants to buy a Christmas cake after December 25th, unmarried women over the age of 25 are worthless — believe it or not, this used to be a popular saying in Japan just a few decades ago. Perhaps, the double surprise for those unfamiliar with Japanese culture is that people buy a specific type of pastry to celebrate Christmas here. When I learned about this phrase from my female boss, I was genuinely shocked. As a single woman who just turned 25, I would have been called an “unsold Christmas cake.” The slur implies that a woman is viewed as valuable only if she is either young or married. Although we still have a long way to achieve gender equality, at least we disapprove of such outright insults today. As a growing number of women are postponing or forgoing marriage and pursuing careers instead, the Christmas cake analogy seems to represent outdated anti-feminist and sexist attitudes.

Yeah, so, about that.

Almost all the women I know who are single and over 30 think they’ll eventually find a great husband to take care of them. There is no self-reflection or plan to find out what men want so they would be a better choice over a younger woman.

On average, the whole “I am a strong independent woman who don’t want no man to take care of me” phase so common to young women these days lasts past college and about 18 months into their much-ballyhooed careers. However, once a woman actually experiences, for the first time in her life, how difficult and unpleasant it is to provide for oneself, and how low her standard of living and quality of life is likely going to be for the rest of her life, her opinion about marriage and children often undergoes a dramatic change. This belated realization is very often the point at which a woman suddenly decides that perhaps the traditional life is acceptable to her after all.

Which is why women under 30, who have the intrinsic wisdom to seek a life as a wife and mother in conscious preference to one with a career, are to be vastly preferred to those women who are only settling for a traditional life because they think it will be an easier life than the independent one they previously sought.

And women under the age of 30 would do very well to recall that men possess just as much agency as they do, and that young women who make a strong bid early tend to find themselves married to higher quality men than those who keep waiting for a better option to present itself.

UPDATE: It is educational to observe that even those women who had a traditional life and threw it away to pursue the greener grass on the other side quickly come to realize that the strong and independent life isn’t particularly desirable.

“I told my friends and family I’d never get married again. I needed independence, a fulfilling career, and space to chart my own course, and I didn’t think marriage fit into that vision. I was content to look toward a future without a husband, children, or the trappings of a ‘traditional’ life,’” she wrote.

As she grew older, however, the fun, carefree lifestyle – being wined and dined, going to parties – began to get old. The pursuit of comfort and self became dull, she said. When she turned 38, terror began to take over.

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Disney is the New Enron

The Devil Mouse has been very, very, very naughty. But instead of getting coal in its stocking this Christmas season, it’s getting an audit of the Reedy Creek Improvement District by the State of Florida, and almost certainly, the IRS, as the Dark Herald explains how and why the wolves are circling CEO Bob Iger.

Reedy Creek owns some power plants, and these are taxpayer-supported. Although, they are primarily to be used as emergency backups. Please excuse this next bit because I’m going to have to say allegedly a LOT. Allegedly, it would take years to bring one of them online. The other has allegedly been turned into an air conditioning plant, but they both allegedly still collect subsidies. I mean why pay for something out of your pocket when you can get Uncle Sucker to buy it for you?

The auditors weren’t permitted entry into these plants because the employees that run these Reedy Creek government facilities DON’T WORK FOR REEDY CREEK.

They work for Disney.

Yeah, who’d have guessed? The chief auditor stated that Reedy Creek produces no electricity at all. This startled the hell out of a lot of us because Disney World has huge banks of solar panels. In fact, they’ve committed quite a bit of ecological damage to the local wildlife trails to build them. To say nothing of how badly those filthy things will poison the land when the inevitable hurricane blasts through and wrecks them.

Disney nonetheless ignored real-world environmental terrorism to pat itself on the back over a being phantom friend of the Earth. Disney World loudly and proudly proclaimed that these panels provide 40% of WDW’s power, cleanly!

Allegedly, all of the electricity provided by those solar panels is sold to a third-party utility. Disney World allegedly buys 100% of its power from Duke Energy and only 10% of that is allegedly provided by anything approaching “clean energy.”

And it just gets even better for the new Ken Lay, previously known as “Bob Iger”.

Bob Iger’s worst nightmare just became the last Bob. In American law, no NDA ever written can stop criminal testimony. Chapek is in a perfect position to rat out literally everyone who got him shitcanned out of the company in the most humiliating way possible.

We all knew that Disney was going downhill fast. It’s been impossible to miss the way that the convergence of the corporation has systematically reduced the value of its intellectual properties. But what we couldn’t have known is how it now appears increasingly plausible that fraud and criminal activity of a greater magnitude than anyone imagined could suffice to take down the entire edifice of corpocratic evil.

UPDATE: Better add another few verys in front of that “naughty”.

New bombshell incoming. Disney was acting as a licensed municipal securities dealer for Reedy Creek. Disney isn’t licensed to do any such thing.

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