#Arkhaven INFOGALACTIC #Castalia House
CHATEAU GRIEF Episode 242: For the Crater Good
THE SAGA OF EVIL MONKEY MAN! Episode 36: Still In Niagara
BEN GARRISON Episode 105: Biden’s Backbone
CHUCK DIXON PRESENTS: ADVENTURE Episode 76: The Brigand
STONETOSS Episode 190: Incephalitis
WARDOGS INC. Episode 29: Enemy Spotted
Check out today’s WDI. Some AI art has been added for flavor, turning a text episode into an illustrated one.
As with gun violence, inventory shrinkage actually just a diversity problem:
Target (TGT) has become a target for major thefts, and it’s taking a huge chunk out of profits.
The retailer estimated in its earnings release Wednesday that inventory shrinkage — mostly the theft of merchandise — would clip profits by a whopping $500 million this year. Factoring in an about $700 million profit hit from inventory shrinkage in 2022, Target is on pace to see $1.2 billion in profits go up in smoke, due primarily to organized retail crime.
Target Chairman and CEO Brian Cornell says the problem is getting worse, is nationwide, and across various merchandise departments.
“The unfortunate fact is violent incidents are increasing at our stores and across the entire retail industry. And when products are stolen, simply put they are no longer available for guests who depend on them,” Cornell said on a call with reporters.
“Left unchecked, organized retail crime degrades the communities we call home. As we work to address this problem, the safety of our guests and our team members will always be our primary concern. Beyond safety concerns, worsening shrink rates are putting significant pressure on our financial results,” he said.
Once more, we see that the materialist perspective is totally incapable of explaining the corpocracy’s embrace of diversity and inclusivity.
Gordon Gecko lied. Not only is greed not good, it’s not even the causal factor it is assumed to be.
Simplicius analyzes Russia’s recent destruction of at least one Patriot missile battery:
Here’s what is known so far: Russia was said to have conducted a layered, multi-vectored attack which came from various sides including north, east, and south, which included both Geran drones as screening cover, Kalibr missiles, Kh-101s, and finally the Kinzhals. The attack also likely included other cheaper types of drones as decoys to saturate the air defense, and in fact Kiev does attest to that, as in their official ‘shoot down’ graphic they include several drones they comically ID’d as Orlan ‘Supercum’ which was later changed to ‘Supercam’.
First, let’s break down how such an attack happens. Most logically, the cheaper decoy drones are sent in first to see if they can bait out any of the air defense into opening up on them. Kiev would try to use only its less important SHORAD (Short Range AD) systems against them, such as German Gepards and any Tunguskas/Shilkas and such that they might have.
Next would come the cruise missiles in order to bait out the true high value AD that may have held back with the first wave, and which Ukraine’s SHORAD systems may be useless against. Once the Patriot/SAMP-T/Iris-T/NASAMs/Crotale, etc., start opening up on the cruise missiles, Russia will be watching as closely as possible, with a variety of methods, in order to try to identify the air defense positions. I’ll get to those methods a little later.
It should be stated that there are certain positions Russia already knows are likely, and are prefigured into their search matrices. For instance, Mim-104 Patriot system is an extremely complex and large system, you can’t just set it up anywhere, like in the middle of an apartment building courtyard or something like that. These systems not only require a lot of room but also, since they are much less mobile than drivable units like Gepards and such, they are preferably situated somewhere that doesn’t have a lot of civilian ‘eyes’ in the area, so that no one films or rats them out, whether accidentally or not.
This leaves only a few real, solid choices where you can put such a system. And they are almost always put in airports, as an example. It comes as no surprise then that during the attacks on 5/16, word now has it that two of the Patriots were located at Zhuliany airport in Kiev and one at or near the Zoo.
Coordinates: 50.452699, 30.459805
As for the airfield “Zhulyany”, footage from the surveillance camera got into the Network. In the video, you can clearly see the launches of 32 missiles (a total of 16 for each launcher), as well as the work of barreled anti-aircraft artillery – apparently, the Patriots were covered by the Gepard.
After the ammunition load was used up, an explosion was heard: the Russian “Kinzal” managed to hit the positional area, despite “Patriots” and one “Gepard”. One was destroyed, the second was seriously damaged, but survived. The third launcher escaped damage.
Anatomy of MIM-104 Patriot Destruction, Simplicius, 18 May 2023
If it hasn’t become clear by now, the reason Russia and China are refusing to take the offensive is because the NATO forces, which chiefly consist of the US military and its resources, are being rapidly and irreparably drained in the current environment. There is, therefore, no reason to take an aggressive stance so long as the NATO forces are throwing themselves into the vortex of assured destrucution.
A longtime opinion-leading clown performs a 180 on Ukraine’s membership in NATO:
Former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger has signalled a U-turn in his views on Ukraine’s prospective NATO membership. The veteran politician told The Economist that he now believes peace in Europe cannot be achieved without Ukraine joining the US-led military bloc.
Last fall, Kissinger insisted that “it was not a wise American policy to attempt to include Ukraine into NATO.” He said the bloc’s eastward expansion since the fall of Soviet Union in 1991 had essentially removed Russia’s historic “safety belt,” but insisted that was no justification for Russia’s “surprise attack” on Ukraine.
However, in his interview on Wednesday with the British outlet, the politician, who turns 100 on May 27, suggested that “for the safety of Europe, it is better to have Ukraine in NATO.” He acknowledged that he currently finds himself “in the weird position that people say, ‘Look at him, he’s changed his mind. Now he’s for membership of Ukraine in NATO.’”
The reason for such shift is “twofold,” Kissinger said. “One, Russia is no longer the conventional threat it used to be. And, secondly, we have now armed Ukraine to a point where it will be the best-armed, most modern country and with the least experienced leadership in Europe,” he explained.
Translation: Kissinger has gotten the message that Clown World has gone all-in on Ukraine. They believe their Clown World Order will fall anyhow if Russia defeats Ukraine, so they might as well take the risk of direct conflict and an open Russia-NATO war. Because NATO is no longer anything more than Globohomo’s Rainbou Army.
Clown intellectuals like Kissinger, Kagan, and Kristol never “change their minds” in response to changing circumstances. Notice that none of the negative points upon which Kissinger based his previous opinion have changed. What they do is their masters’ tea leaves and adjust their public narrative accordingly.
ALT★HERO Episode 72: “SDL”
FRANKENSTEIN – THE RETURN Episode 4: Rebirth of the Monster
FAIRY DOOR Episode 21: Enchanted Instrument
WITCH HUNTER Episode10: Killer Split Ends
The AH fans demanded a dark lord. Arkhaven gave them a dark lord.
A reader at AC wanted to let the Miles Mathis Committee know we had recently been discussing the limits of the materialist perspective here, which discussion happened to touch upon some of the less-logical conclusions of Miles and a few other materialist commentators:
Regarding this: The Limits of The Materialist Perspective
I got a response from Miles Mathis.
ME: We are having a bit of a discussion about you over at voxday.net. I really enjoyed your essays here:
MILES: Fuck em. I’m busy writing new papers. They should try it instead of reading old Langley scripts on me. Calling me vain has been done and gone nowhere.
Doesn’t speak wonders for the reading comprehension there, does it? The thing is, Miles knows who I am. I’ve linked to a number of his papers and I’ve even bought a few of his books. So, to claim an observation that the utility of his analysis is limited by his materialist perspective and concomitant refusal to admit the possibility of a supramaterial element driving the historical activities of “the Phoenician Navy” rather than mere pecuniary interests is “an old Langley script” on him is more than a little bizarre.
Also, I don’t write papers. I write books.
Taiwan island submits to the globohomo death cult:
Gay and lesbian couples will now be able to legally adopt children in Taiwan, after the island’s legislature voted in favor of the change on Tuesday. Taiwan became the first jurisdiction in Asia to legalize same-sex marriage four years ago.
The mainland supports future Chinese generations:
There has been a decline in births since 2017 as well as a falling marriage rate, independent demographer He Yafu told the Global Times on Sunday. The measures target important issues affecting the willingness to marry and have children, and they will help curb some of bad social customs through long-term efforts, observers noted. With economic and social development, the Chinese younger generations’ concept of marriage has undergone changes, He said, pointing out that the key to improve the culture of marriage and childbirth lies with young people.
“The society needs to guide young people more on the concept of marriage and childbirth, and encourage young people to get married and have children,” He said.
Indeed, efforts to improve society’s marriage culture and environment will hedge against the possible negative effects of some of the demographic downturn, analysts noted.
He pointed out that population problems are chronic and that population declines will have little impact on China’s economy and society in the short term. China is expected to introduce measures to reduce the cost of marriage and childbirth and vigorously create a childbearing-friendly social environment, he said.
The future belongs to those who show up for it. Clown World is desperately attempting to shore up its weakening position with technology and parasitical behavior. Russia and China, along with the European Christian remnant in the West, are taking actions that will inevitably assure their ascendance.
Build platforms. Build homesteads. Build families. And prepare to defend all of them from the increasingly desperate clowns and the NPCs they have programmed.
The Essential Malady compares Chuck Dixon’s Conan, which is based on Robert E. Howard’s public domain Conan, with Tor’s Conan, which is presumably licensed from the Swedes holding the rights to the later portrayals of Conan the Barbarian.
Last month I reviewed The Siege of the Black Citadel by “The Legend” Chuck Dixon. I mentioned in the review that it was the first I had read that wasn’t written by Robert E. Howard (excepting comics). I expressed that I was reluctant to read stories by other authors because I didn’t believe they could live up to Howard’s work but that Dixon came very close which is high praise.
Late last year, the first new Conan novel since 2011 was published by Titan Books some months before Dixon’s new story was out. This is written by S.M. Stirling who has been a published author since the 1980s though I hadn’t heard of him until now. Blood of the Serpent is written as a prequel to what is probably Howard’s most recognised story, “Red Nails” and indeed, the events are so closely tied that it is included at the back. When I noticed my library had a copy, I thought it would be worth reading to compare with both Howard and Dixon.
It wasn’t but read on as I elaborate.
S.M. Stirling is a competent enough writer and he has made use of plot details provided in “Red Nails” to construct his narrative. What is wrong with this has little to do with his writing and more to do with what is revealed in the Afterword:
“Red Nails” is pure Howard… Raw and powerful, it’s also very much of its time— written almost a century ago, when our culture could be less socially aware and genre fiction in particular often exhibited rough edges some of today’s readers may find jarring.
From this alone we can establish that both the publisher and the author are embarrassed by (or dislike) the source material. It is not clear who wrote the Afterword so I will assume this is a shared opinion. It would have been more honest to put this in the Foreword so a potential reader could have saved themselves the hassle of finding out. As opposed to “some” of today’s readers, the main reason Howard is seeing a resurgence in popularity is because readers are looking for exactly what they find within Howard. Far from “jarring”, they find his stories refreshing and exciting.
The other problem is if you think Howard had “rough edges”, then why write a new story so closely related instead of one that can stand on its own? Blood of the Serpent is completely dependent on “Red Nails”. The ending is the beginning of the latter and so the ending to Blood of the Serpent isn’t really an ending at all without knowledge of what it is leading up to. What makes this even worse is that it is over three times the length and establishes nothing that wasn’t done more efficiently and eloquently in the opening pages of “Red Nails”. So on these points alone it is pointless but it gets worse still.
Read the whole thing. Apparently it does get worse, and the comparison is considerably in The Legend’s favor. And this explains why Castalia is beginning to delve into revivals of public domain icons, because if we don’t provide correct continuations that respect and hold true to those icons, the Zero History crowd will provide false continuations that invert and betray them.
BOB Episode 137: Rex Ardeat
上嫁小鼠 Episode 4: 爆头
UNITED FORCES Episode 4: I REALLY Need My Chainsaw
STONETOSS Episode 189: Ride or Die
Okay… so BOB is bringing the serious heat today…
It would be difficult for me to disagree more strongly with anyone than I do with this literary heretic spewing textual heresy on SocialGalactic:
One book I’ve really come to hate is Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Doesn’t get more reddit than that. The author thinks he is much more clever than he is. I read it in high school, and was underwhelmed. Based on the hype, I was expecting something epic, but all I got was nonsense humor that wasn’t even funny.
First, Douglas Adams is one of the funniest authors to ever write a novel. I place the top five in this order:
Wodehouse remains the greatest of the humor writers, not merely due to the very high standard he set, but the size of his ouevre and its reliability across a broad spectrum of topics and characters. Whether he was utilizing Hollywood actresses or agriculturally-inclined aristocrats and pigs, he could always find the humor in the situation.
Stanley is one of the funniest novelists ever and the fact that I convinced him to write The Promethean is my single greatest literary triumph. With regards to his first novel, The Missionaries, an SJW reporter once asked me what was the best book Castalia House had published, read it, and later told me: “It’s the most racist and offensive book I have ever read, and I just couldn’t stop laughing. Now I hate myself.”
The fact that Bruce Bethke essentially stopped writing fiction after Head Crash is one of the great literary tragedies of our age.
And while Terry Pratchett’s earliest work and later work can be forgotten, his middle period, when he matured as a writer, brought in an element of social commentary, and learned how to actually write humor instead of telling the reader what he was supposed to find funny, was very, very good.
Adams had more than a few tricks at his disposal, but his patented subdued punch line never ceased to be effective. My two favorites: