Author: VD

None can tell the difference

John Derbyshire awakes to the reality of the bifactional ruling party:

 I don’t know whether people nowadays still read George Orwell’s novel Animal Farm. It’s a bit of a Cold War piece. The Cold War did happen, though. And, as I’ve remarked elsewhere, it was a very big deal. It has lessons to teach; and Orwell was one of our best teachers.

The story of the novel is that the farm animals, under the leadership of the pigs, stage a revolution against the human owners of the farm. They drive out the owners and take the place over, again under the pigs’ leadership.

In the last chapter, though, an odd thing happens. The pigs start behaving like humans. One day, as the other animals are hard at work weeding the turnip field, the pigs invite a delegation of neighboring farmers—all humans, of course—to inspect the pig-owned farm. Then the pigs and their human guests have a party in the farmhouse.

The other animals hear laughter and singing from the farmhouse. They sneak up to look in through the windows at what’s going on. They see the pigs and the humans in happy concord, making flattering speeches and toasting each other. Last line of the novel:


The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again: but already it was impossible to say which was which.

Watching the GOP’s response to this media-manufactured outrage, I’ve feeling a bit like one of those farm animals. Do we really have two political parties, each representing a broad interest? Or is the current party system just a hoax on the rest of us by an Establishment who all fundamentally believe the same things?

The latter. Next question?

In the meantime, the Establishment has spoken. Voting is unnecessary. Hillary has already won the pre-election. Please to take your now-demoralized populism home and refrain from voting for the Literally Hitler Donald Trump on November 8th.

CLIO & ME: An Intellectual Autobiography

“Martin van Creveld ranks high among military historians, and given the changes in technology since Napoleonic Times, his work is a necessary supplement to Clausewitz.” 
– Jerry Pournelle

Dr. Martin van Creveld is a significant contributor to the literature of war. A Professor Emeritus at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Dr. van Creveld is one of the world’s leading writers on military history and strategy, with a special interest in the future of war. He is fluent in Hebrew, German, Dutch, and English, and has authored more than twenty books, including the influential Technology and War: 2000 BC to the Present (1988), The Transformation of War (1991), and The Culture of War (2010). He is known for his development of the concept of “nontrinitarian” warfare as well as contributing two books to the 4GW canon, and he is deeply respected by military officers and professional strategists around the world.

CLIO & ME: An Intellectual Biography is Dr. van Creveld’s most personal book, an honest, heartfelt account of his lifelong love affair with the Muse of History. It is an autobiography, not of the life, but of the mind, and as such, will be of great interest to historians and students of history alike. This “intellectual autobiography” reveals one of the great historical minds of the 21st Century to be eternally curious, endlessly inquisitive, and, unexpectedly, possessed of more than a little charm. CLIO & ME: An Intellectual Biography is 288 pages, DRM-Free, and retails for $4.99 on Amazon.

I have to say that has been a real pleasure for me to work with Martin, who is very warm and friendly in person, in stark contrast to the vast and coldly calculating mind that one occasionally glimpses in his work. He is certainly the only Castalia author with whom I am on hugging terms. But it is not at all surprising to learn that some of his professors later confessed themselves to have been intimidated by him in his youth. This is a rare opportunity to see inside the head of a genuine genius, with the historian’s lens reversed and turned on himself for a change.

Anyone who admires the military historian must read this work, of course, but it will also be of interest to those who enjoy reading biographies.

Has Ecuador caved?

And sold out Julian Assange? Given the melodrama, I would assume the rumors that Assange has been either a) poisoned by Pamela Anderson or b) given up by the government of Ecuador for U.S. extradition are complete BS, but who knows about anything these days?

Julian Assange says his internet link was ‘severed’ by state agents hours after he had to prove he was not poisoned by a Pret vegan sandwich brought to him by Pamela Anderson. The WikiLeaks founder’s only connection to the outside world from his Ecuadorian embassy hideout in London was cut today, with supporters saying America was behind the cyber attack.  It came as rumours spread that Mr Assange may have died over the weekend after a visit from Pamela Anderson, 49.

Who are the Nazis?

It’s always remarkable how the Left never realizes it is projecting:

Gov. Pat McCrory Sunday called the weekend firebombing of a North Carolina Republican headquarters “an attack on our democracy,” while one GOP official called it an act of “political terrorism.”

In a tweet, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump blamed “Animals representing Hillary Clinton and Dems in North Carolina.”

Hillsborough police said somebody threw a bottle of flammable liquid through the window of Orange County’s GOP headquarters, setting supplies and furniture ablaze. A swastika and the words “Nazi Republicans get out of town or else” were spray painted on the side of an adjacent building.

The Left is making it increasingly clear there is not room for both them and the Right in theUSA. One of these days, they’re going to attack the wrong person, or the wrong people, and then they’ll discover that their fears didn’t do the real thing justice.

The reason the Right behaves well is for the same reason that a well-armed society is a polite one. It understands the costs of civil conflict. But that doesn’t mean the costs are never worth paying when the other side keeps upping the ante.

Yeah, she’s DOMINATING

At this point, Hillary Clinton could be dead for all we know, given how they’re trying to come up with excuses for her to avoid the third debate. Which is strange, given how the media has almost unanimously pronounced her the winner of the first two.

Democratic strategist David Axelrod on Saturday suggested that Hillary Clinton skip her third and final presidential debate with Donald Trump. The former White House adviser to President Obama responded to Trump’s call for a drug test before his next debate with Clinton later this month.”You have to wonder if @HillaryClinton will/should reconsider next debate, given the depths to which this has sunk,” Axelrod tweeted.

Look, David, if you’re going to drug your candidate to the point that she’s singing to herself about the pretty unicorns on her shoulder, it’s hardly outrageous that her opponent should observe the obvious fact that she’s on serious drugs.

I wish I played violin

This is the coolest musical thing I have seen since the invention of the sampler. Can you imagine what Charlie Daniels might have done with that thing?

Compare and contrast

The example of Mike Cernovich illustrates the fundamental difference between Infogalactic and Wikipedia. As one Gab commenter, @sak, observed this morning:

Infogalactic gives me facts that helps me to understand who Cernovich is and what he has achieved. Wikipedia makes sure I know he is a thought criminal against sjw orthodoxy. I know which one I will choose in future.

Don’t take his word for it. Don’t take my word for it. See the current versions for yourself.

In favor of Wikipedia, it must be said that this actually represents a big step forward for the Wikipedians. At least they’re admitting that the bestselling author of Gorilla Mindset, who has more than 133,000 followers on Twitter, exists. Between 16 July 2015 and 13 October, 2016, Wikipedians denied his notability, having previously deleted the page about him there.
  • “Subject matter isn’t notable for anything other than their involvement in the Gamergate controversy.”
  • “Not only is this your typical case of BLP1E pretty much all reliable sources written about him are extremely negative. Absolutely no good can come from keeping this as an article.”
  • “It’s unlikely based on events thus far that Cernovich will ever be notable for any other efforts.”
One unintended consequence of Infogalactic’s rise is likely to be a gradual reduction in Wikipedia’s shameless left-wing bias. That won’t be enough to save its preeminence, but it will still be an improvement.

Speaking of contrasts, an important note on the different speeds you’ll see on the two sites. Wikipedia utilizes an incredibly inefficient and outmoded approach that solves for its design inefficiencies by utilizing a tremendous amount of servers and storage to cover for them. We could do that, or we can use the resources it would require to fix the design inefficiencies and do it right.

For better or for worse, we have chosen the latter approach as we are more concerned about being competitive in the long haul than in the short run. That being said, a page should only take a really long time to load once, the first time it is accessed. After that, it’s in the cache and it will pop up much more quickly. The bigger the page, the more links, the more database queries, and therefore the inefficiencies will affect the load time.


Anyhow, don’t worry about it. We’re very aware of the problem, and fixing it is one of our top priorities, but we’re going to fix it correctly and in a manner that doesn’t create more problems down the road.

When life is like Blasphemous Rumors

I don’t fault those who find it difficult to believe in God due to tragic events, particularly those that tend to smack of the Divine having a sick sense of humor:

Dennis Byrd, a former Jets defensive lineman best known for battling back from a serious spinal injury and recovering to walk again, has died at the age of 50. Byrd was killed in a car crash in Claremore, Oklahoma, today.

According to Fox 23, Byrd was driving down the highway when his vehicle was struck head on by another vehicle, which had crossed the center line. A 12-year-old passenger in Byrd’s vehicle was hospitalized, as was the 17-year-old boy driving the vehicle that hit Byrd’s vehicle. Byrd was pronounced dead at the scene.

A second-round draft pick of the Jets in 1989, Byrd played four NFL seasons before suffering a serious neck injury in a collision with a teammate. Byrd was paralyzed and his career was over, but after lengthy physical therapy he was able to walk again. At the Jets’ home opener in 1993, Byrd walked to the middle of the field to represent his team in the pregame coin toss, and there he was given the team’s Most Inspirational Player Award, which is now known as the Dennis Byrd Award.

In the 1980s, Depeche Mode wrote what may be the greatest philosophical lyric ever written in pop music.

I don’t want to start any blasphemous rumors
But I think that God’s got a sick sense of humor
And when I die
I expect to find Him laughing

As an indifferent agnostic, that fairly well described my religious perspective before I became a Christian. But that is why it is so important to understand the correct application of the Problem of Evil, and to grasp what it means for the world to be fallen, why it is necessary for Christians to be in the world, but not of it, and why the Word became flesh and died on the Cross.

Depeche Mode was right, in a sense, though it is not God who has the sick and sadistic sense of humor, but the Prince of this world. Neither God nor Jesus Christ rule over the Silent Planet, and they are not the architects of human misfortune.

I do, however, contra Umberto Eco, firmly believe that God possesses a sense of humor. I have sensed it. And one cannot read the New Testament without recognizing that Jesus was almost brutally sarcastic.

The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the Name of the Lord.

Why Infogalactic matters

And why it is important for everyone to use it and support it:

Cultural Marxism refers to a school or offshoot of Marxism that conceives of culture as central to the legitimation of oppression, in addition to the economic factors that Karl Marx emphasized.[1] An outgrowth of Western Marxism that found popularity in the 1960s as cultural studies, Cultural Marxism asserts that traditional cultural phenomena commonly believed to be intrinsic to Western society, such as the drive for individual acquisition associated with capitalism, nationalism, the nuclear family, gender roles, race and other forms of cultural identity,[1] are actually historically recent developments that serve to justify and maintain the existing hierarchy of power. Cultural Marxists use Marxist methods, including historical research, the identification of economic interest, and the study of the mutually conditioning relations between parts of a social order, to try to understand the complexity of power in contemporary society and to criticise cultural phenomena that appear natural, but are actually ideological.

This is the Cultural Marxism page that Wikipedians deleted and tried to bury. It’s just a start, as it needs sections on Gramsci and Lukacs, but it is already a huge improvement on Wikipedia. And we also know why the rabid SJWs deleted it and tried to bury it; they appear to have taken their lead from a classic Guardian hit-article published in January 2015.

The whole story is transparently barmy. If humanities faculties are really geared to brainwashing students into accepting the postulates of far-left ideology, the composition of western parliaments and presidencies and the roaring success of corporate capitalism suggests they’re doing an astoundingly bad job. Anyone who takes a cool look at the last three decades of politics will think it bizarre that anyone could interpret what’s happened as the triumph of an all-powerful left.

The theory of cultural Marxism is also blatantly antisemitic, drawing on the idea of Jews as a fifth column bringing down western civilisation from within, a racist trope that has a longer history than Marxism. Like the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the theory was fabricated to order, for a special purpose: the institution and perpetuation of culture war. We can even nominate an author for this lunacy: William S Lind, a polymath of the American hard right, who sought to put rightwing activism on a new footing as the cold war drew to a close.

What a beautiful example of its type! Talk about the legitimate history, bring up the modern references, then denounce the whole thing as hogwash for a spurious logical reason that doesn’t hold up for three seconds to anyone who isn’t a mindless SJW. That’s exactly how they like to do it. Everything is aimed at convincing the Right to disbelieve what it is seeing, and to lay down its arms and not resist the endless provocations and forays of the Left.

Culture war? What culture war? We’re not fighting a culture war, and if anyone claims we are, then by all the gods in which we don’t believe, we’ll hunt you down and make sure you lose your job!

Also, I have to thank Infogalactic’s new subscribers. Infogalactic is now nearly halfway to the initial goal of 100 subscribers, and I’m very pleased to say that the 48 monthly subscribers are now covering 100 percent of Infogalactic’s current burn rate. The reason that Infogalactic will need to continue to increase the number of subscribers, first to 100, then eventually to 1000, is because as the traffic grows, the burden on the servers will correspondingly grow as well. Right now we’re on track to record multiple millions of pageviews in the first month, which is astonishing… but the English Wikipedia alone saw 7.8 billion pageviews in August alone.

I’m not at all surprised at the staunch support, but what is surprising is that in the first week we’ve already seen experienced Wikipedia editors come on board, even though we’re still in Phase One. Why, when the base tech is virtually identical? Because we don’t have a culture of deletionism or insist on enforcing the SJW Narrative. The trickle has started. Before long, it will become a flood.

And don’t worry that I’m going to shill for Infogalactic every day any more than I do for Castalia House. (Mike Cernovich reading that, just shook his head and muttered something about my being an upper-middle-class pussy.) But I did need to thank the Burn Unit members and let them know that thanks to them, the second major support hurdle has been surmounted. It is a significant step, because it means that we’re all in it for the long march.

UPDATE: Now this is a very interesting development! From the comments:

I am really loving using infogalactic for my attribs when fighting online. Seeing that URL seems to make SJWs crazy. I get double the level of trolling of both destroying their argument and deprecating their favorite tool as well.

But it also underlines why Infogalactic has to not only be different than Wikipedia, it has to be objectively better.