Author: VD

Wednesday Arktoons

ALT★HERO Episode 77: Battle Plan

THE LOST ERA TRANSCRIPTS Episode 2: First Story

FAIRY DOOR Episode 26: Vi’s Price

A MIND PROGRAMMED Episode 24: Medical Emergency

THE TUNNELS OF WOE Episode 1: Chapter 1: The Nameless Thing

CHATEAU GRIEF Episode 257: Details Are Sketchy

We’re pleased to welcome two new series, THE TUNNELS OF WOE and THE LOST ERA TRANSCRIPTS. The TRANSCRIPTS are not a comic, but rather, a graphic record of the world we have lost, as explained in the Introduction.

Pete Hampton was a wildly eccentric, some would say ‘mad’ genius. He was a painter, naturalist, and showman. His paintings and stories told of his adventures in the Puente Hills in Whittier, and La Habra Heights, California.

As a child, Pete displayed a passionate love of nature, and a tremendous talent for depicting the world around him. In his youth he saw this pastoral corner of Southern California give way to the post WWII housing boom. Miles of grove land, and the beautiful hillsides fell to housing tracts, and shopping malls. Pete’s life became a mission. He was determined to save the remaining hills from development.

To accomplish this mission he painted thousands of pictures of the life and countryside he grew up in. He created slide shows of his paintings in the hope that people would see his shows, and be inspired to join him in his crusade.

The Lost Era slide show was begun in 1961, but never completed. In the archives of Pete’s work I discovered the hand written note books and fragments of the narration for the show, along with hundreds of paintings that accompanied the narrative. I have re-created the slide show here in book form in The Lost Era Transcripts.

Through Pete Hampton’s art you will view one of the untouched pastoral corners still remaining in mid-century Southern California.

You’ll get an intimate look into the strange world of this most eccentric genius, a world of transcendent beauty, and breath taking terror.

https://www.arkhaven.com/comics/historical/the-lost-era-transcripts
THE LOST ERA TRANSCRIPTS

DISCUSS ON SG

Why “Posterity” Matters

Six years ago, I debated Col. Tom Kratman on the topic of what the word “posterity” means in the context of the U.S. Constitution, specifically, the preamble which declares to whom the Constitution and the Bill of Rights applies.

I was correct, of course, to point out that posterity meant only the American Revolutionaries and their descendants, which is why the rights protected by the U.S. Constitution do not apply to many U.S. residents and even citizens. If you are not a direct descendant of an American Revolutionary, then the Constitution does not apply to you, no matter what the U.S. Supreme Court might claim.

The importance of correct interpretation of historical legal terms can be seen in the recent protest by the Global Times against sovereign U.S. States passing laws against foreign entities buying up their land.

CNN reported on Monday that “a growing number of states are considering or have passed measures this legislative term to ban ‘foreign adversaries’ and foreign entities – specifically China – from buying farmland.” These bills could violate the US Constitution, and also fuel an atmosphere of racism and anti-China sentiment.

Against the backdrop of increasingly strong anti-China sentiment in the US, it seems the “land purchase ban” is an inevitable product. Regarding the “land purchase ban,” several US-China relations experts interviewed by CNN warned against knee-jerk responses and called for lawmakers to act on evidence, not suspicion. There are certainly some rational people in the US who can see that this approach violates the US Constitution. However, in the current political atmosphere in the US, all anti-China actions are politically correct domestically, those who are willing to come out and speak up are the minority and their voices are often ignored.

The Posterity for whom the Constitution is intended to defend the Blessings of Liberty consists solely of the genetic descendants of the People of the several and united States. Posterity does not include immigrants, descendants of immigrants, invaders, conquerors, tourists, students, Americans born in Portugal, or anyone else who happens to subsequently reside in the same geographic location, or share the same civic ideals, as the original We the People.

Nor does it include sovereign foreign governments.

But as you can see, once the definition of “posterity” is expanded past its true and proper meaning, there is no reason it cannot be further expanded into a universal principle. Which, of course, is complete nonsense, and thereby demonstrates the practical impossibility of every other interpretation.

DISCUSS ON SG

Oxygen > Inspiration

In this soft and easy age, it is understandable if people forget that there are more important things than being “inspirational”. Competence, in particular, being one of them.

OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, who went missing aboard his Titan submersible vessel along with four other passengers on Sunday, told an interviewer he didn’t want to hire a bunch of “50-year-old white guys” like other submarine companies because he wanted his team to be “inspirational.”

“When I started the business, one of the things you’ll find, there are other sub-operators out there but they typically have gentleman who are ex-military submariners and you’ll see a whole bunch of 50-year-old white guys,” Rush told a representative with Teledyne Marine.

“I wanted our team to be younger, to be inspirational and I’m not going to inspire a 16-year-old to go pursue marine technology but a 25-year-old you know who’s a subpilot or a platform operator or one of our techs can be inspirational,” Rush continued. “So we’ve really tried to to get very intelligent, motivated, younger individuals involved because we’re doing things that are completely new.”

“We’re taking approaches that are used largely in the aerospace industry, is related to safety and some of the the preponderance of checklists things we do for risk assessments and things like that, that are more aviation related than ocean related and we can train people to do that. We can train someone to pilot the sub, we use a game controller so anybody can drive the sub.”

Setting aside the fact that game controllers use very, very inexpensive plastic parts that have been known to fail, Rush’s preference for youth, inspiration, and color appear to have proven fatal.

Former OceanGate director of marine operations David Lochridge — one of those “50-year-old white guys” Rush wanted to avoid hiring for not being “inspirational” enough — was fired by Rush in 2018 after he reportedly blew the whistle on OceanGate by raising safety concerns over their first-of-a-kind carbon fiber hull and other systems.

Personally, I’m finding the entire OceanGate debacle to be absolutely inspiring. But let’s not fail to address the obvious: hadn’t this guy ever heard of either Watergate, Heaven’s Gate, or Pizzagate?

DISCUSS ON SG

Of All the Boomers Who Ever Boomed

These may have been the boomerest. From SocialGalactic:

Late 80s high school friend attended a state retreat for gifted kids. They chose a theme song at the end, Alphaville’s “Forever Young”.

The Boomers in charge overrode with “Imagine”.

I don’t know that anything summarizes the awfulness of the Wicked Generation better or more succinctly than that. It’s all right there, the generational solipsism, the entitlement, the inexplicable abuse of power, the Beatles, and most of all, the total lack of regard for their children and grandchildren.

It’s not just that the Boomers abused their power and privilege, as they observably did, but the weird and foolish ways they chose to do so.

It’s ironic from a musical perspective too, because Forever Young is a much better and much more epic song than Imagine. Based on the streaming statistics, the younger generations would even appear to agree.

DISCUSS ON SG

A Confession

I suppose I might as well come clean about my fake chair and fake library now that the cat is out of the bag. It’s actually just a commercial green screen image that costs $2.99 sold by a streaming software company. My apologies to everyone who was taken in by this shameful deception. I was just trying to impress everyone.

I hope you will find the wherewithal to forgive me for this moral failure.

DISCUSS ON SG

You Really Didn’t, Donald

President Trump still thinks he hired the best people for his administration:

During a portion of an interview with the Fox News Channel aired on Monday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “Special Report,” 2024 Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump responded to questions on why he hired so many people who he has now criticized or have criticized him by stating the overwhelming majority of people he hired were good hires, he did hire the best people, and that he “didn’t know” Washington, but does now.

Trump said, [relevant remarks begin around 16:10] “When I came down to Washington, I was in Washington 17 times in my life in D.C., and I never stayed overnight. I was never there. I didn’t know the people. I didn’t know that world, other than I was involved in politics from the other side very much. And I had — I put great people in, but I put some people like Bill Barr and Bolton and a few of them that — actually, Bolton was good because everybody — every time I negotiated, people said, oh, they’ve got this maniac here. He’s going to go to war with us and they’d concede every point. It was actually pretty good in a certain way. But we put people in that were great and we put people in that weren’t. I now know Washington probably better than anybody. I know the good ones and the bad ones.”

Host Bret Baier then noted that Trump vowed to only hire the best people in 2016. Trump responded, “Well, I did do that.”

No. The best people absolutely were not hired. Mike Cernovich explained why: all the genuine experts were eliminated during the vetting process by the Swamp creatures performing it.

Does anyone truly believe that his economics advisors were better than Steve Keen or me? Does anyone seriously think that he wouldn’t have done better to consult with the likes of Lind and van Creveld on defense matters?

And let’s not even get started on Fauci….

DISCUSS ON SG

Phonics are the Only Way

Mississippi is no longer the uneducated laughing stock of the US public school system:

It’s a cliché that Kymyona Burk heard a little too often: “Thank God for Mississippi.”

As the state’s literacy director, she knew politicians in other states would say it when their reading test scores were down — because at least they weren’t ranked as low as Mississippi. Or Louisiana. Or Alabama.

Lately, the way people talk about those states has started to change. Instead of looking down on the Gulf South, they’re seeing it as a model.

Mississippi went from being ranked the second-worst state in 2013 for fourth-grade reading to 21st in 2022. Louisiana and Alabama, meanwhile, were among only three states to see modest gains in fourth-grade reading during the pandemic, which saw massive learning setbacks in most other states.

The turnaround in these three states has grabbed the attention of educators nationally, showing rapid progress is possible anywhere, even in areas that have struggled for decades with poverty and dismal literacy rates. The states have passed laws adopting similar reforms that emphasize phonics and early screenings for struggling kids.

We utilized phonics to teach our children and all of them were reading simple sentences before they were four years old. Originally, with a Powerpoint slideshow, and later with a homemade Android app, then followed by the Bob Books. Any child can learn to read before the age of five if provided with a daily phonics run, first through the alphabet, then through the randomized phonemes.

Phonics vs whole language is the precisely akin to the difference between learning to read Japanese through kana and through kanji. The former is easy and can be accomplished in a matter of months. The latter is incredibly difficult and requires years of study for even basic literacy.

Don’t ever take any teacher, professional educator, or scientist seriously if they oppose phonics for any reason. At best, they are ignorant and maleducated. At worst, they are malevolent and seeking to intellectually lobotomize children.

DISCUSS ON SG

The Bindery is Installed

If posting and streaming are light and I’m generally unresponsive this week, don’t be surprised. Today marked the completion of the Castalia Bindery installation, which means that all of the machines we require, and more, are now physically present inside the bindery space.

This is a more significant development than it might seem, since today was a major operation that, in the case of one machine, required two forklifts, two ramps, eight men, and the partial disassembly of the machine concerned. It took three hours, and we faced challenges that ranged from missed trains to a rented forklift that was DOA, but there were no accidents or incidents, and by the time we knocked off around 7 PM, the big machine was fully reassembled inside the building.

Tomorrow, all the machines will be tested, connected to the compressed air system, and the training will begin in earnest. We’re not live yet, but we are on the verge of getting there.

DISCUSS ON SG