#Arkhaven INFOGALACTIC #Castalia House
Does a Christian Have to Forgive His Son’s Murderer?
No, at least, not preemptively. Any time you see a self-professed Christian preemptively forgiving someone who has neither repented nor sought forgiveness, you should recognize the sulfurous stink of Churchianity.
According to His Word, God doesn’t forgive the unrepentant. Which indicates Man not only doesn’t have to, it means he can’t.
Monsieur Lefèvre had always believed himself a man of reason. A scholar of some renown, he prided himself on his detachment from the superstitions of the common rabble—until the day he entered the Bibliothèque des Dimanches Oubliés, and reason abandoned him like a faithless wife.
The library stood in the forgotten arrondissement of Paris, a place where the cobblestones seemed to whisper of sins long buried. Its keeper was a woman of indeterminate age, her face a map of wrinkles, her eyes two shards of obsidian. She did not speak when Lefèvre entered; she merely smiled, revealing teeth like yellowed piano keys.
“You seek the forbidden,” she said at last, not a question.
Lefèvre scoffed. “I seek knowledge, madame. Nothing more.”
“Ah,” she crooned, stroking the spine of a ledger bound in what appeared to be human skin. “But knowledge is forbidden. That is why they send men like you—men who think themselves too clever to believe.”
He demanded to see the rarest volume in her collection. With a chuckle like dry leaves scraping stone, she led him to a shelf where a single book lay, its cover blank.
“The Librarian of Forgotten Sundays,” she whispered. “A chronicle of all the days God chose to erase.”
When Lefèvre opened it, the pages were empty. Yet as he stared, words began to form—his own name, his secrets, his shames. And then, the laughter started. Not hers.
The library’s.
I wasn’t even remotely surprised by the SF-SJWs reaction to the triumphant Puppies’ campaigns. But I did find it a little ironic that a group of people who were supposed to be at least modestly conversant with science clearly weren’t familiar with Newton’s Third Law.
The Hugo Awards have been embroiled in controversy too many times in the last decade to have much relevancy anymore. Once known as science fiction’s Oscars, the publishing industry has turned off most casual readers from their incessant political activism and gotten to a point where it’s hardly notice anymore who’s winning these ballots.
Back in 2016, it took a lot of votes to get a nomination for the Hugo Awards. 3,695 ballots were cast for Worldcon that year, and you’d find familiar names for Best Novel such as Neal Stephenson and Jim Butcher among the list of those nominated ,even though much more niche works eventually won…
All of these problems have only compounded in recent years as more people have tuned out.
By the numbers, the best novel category had 3,695 ballots in 2016. In 2024, even after the controversy in China, there were 1,420 ballots cast,. This year, however, only 1,078 ballots were cast for the most popular category, less than thirty percent of a decade ago.
Once you understand how convergence works, then you know what is going to happen, even if it takes years for the inevitable to play itself out. In fairness to the SF-SJWs, though, this was only a very small part of a large societal trend in the same direction which has rendered many, if not most organizations totally incapable of performing their original functions.
Both the SFWA and the Hugo Awards are already dead from the perspective of their original purposes. It shouldn’t be much longer before they both go the way of the now-defunct Nebula Jury, the Campbell Award, and World Fantasy’s Lovecraft statuette.
Of course it was. Any time the NFL is dabbling in doing something short-sighted, stupid, and harmful to the game itself, you know Roger Goodell is probably behind it.
So why did the league office ask the Lions to propose playoff seeding based on record, regardless of division championship? Because the Commissioner wants it.
Per multiple sources, it became clear during last week’s league meetings that Commissioner Roger Goodell wants to eliminate the guaranteed home game for teams that win their divisions.
Goodell’s preference became clear during the meeting regarding the proposal that was made by the Lions (at the prompting of executive V.P. of football operations Troy Vincent). One source in the room for the session said Goodell became visibly irritated at the resistance to the measure.
Goodell really needs to stick to the business of the league, which he’s very good at, and stop attempting to fix things about the game itself that are not broken. Taking home field advantage away from division winners is the first step toward eliminating both divisions and conferences and will eventually lead to a ridiculous NCAA-style tournament in which two teams from the same division will meet in the Super Bowl.
Simplicius observes that the mainstream media is now openly accepting the idea that Ukraine is going to have to give up its five former separatist provinces that are now part of Russia:
For the first time we’re beginning to see major Western publications begin realistically acknowledging the possibility of Ukraine losing all five of the regions demanded by Putin, including Kherson and Zaporozhye in whole. Until now these long-standing Russian demands were virtually ignored or dismissed out of hand by MSM, which only spoke condescendingly enough about the prospects of Russia keeping Crimea, Lugansk, and Donetsk, let alone the others.
But now, reality is beginning to dawn on them. The Telegraph piece breaks the omerta and broaches the delicate eventuality:
How would the map of Ukraine change after such a one-sided ceasefire? Putin claims five provinces: Crimea, Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia. The last three are still only partially occupied by the Russians.
Agreeing to withdraw Ukrainian forces from these regions would increase the Russian-occupied area from about 20pc to roughly 25pc of Ukraine’s sovereign territory. That might sound like a sacrifice worth making to stop the slaughter, though it would inevitably deprive Kyiv of yet more economic resources and its fortified front lines.
But such a deal would also mean evacuating millions of civilians. After the well-documented murder, torture and abduction of tens of thousands in Bucha, Mariupol and elsewhere, it is unthinkable that Zelensky would abandon his people to Putin’s paramilitaries and secret police. So a war-torn, impoverished country would have to absorb a huge influx of refugees.
Confirmation they understand this would include losing the capital cities of these regions themselves:
Worse, a ceasefire on Putin’s terms would crush Ukrainian morale. Some of the cities that would be lost, including Kherson itself, have already been liberated from the Russians, often at great cost.
It’s clear that little by little the inevitable acceptance of Russia’s full demands is being digested.
But what’s particularly fascinating—and egregious—to observe about the above, is the suggestion that “evacuating millions of civilians”, particularly after many of them were allegedly ‘tortured and murdered’, is something so unthinkable, that it beggars the contemporary imagination, and should definitely be resisted by the moral forces of the world. After all, there is simply no place on earth we could even conceive of where millions of people are currently under similar threat of both mass genocide and forced displacement. The highly principled Western press would certainly apprise us of such an obvious parallel, bringing to light the stupendous hypocrisy thereof, were it to exist somewhere on this small rock, no?
And this highly righteous press would unquestionably condemn the mirroring tragedy—if such a hypothetical one existed—with the same pharisaical outrage as exhibited here, right?
….Right?
The propaganda ministers of Clown World still don’t seem to grasp that it’s no longer possible to decry the actions of the declared bad guy du jour while simultaneously defending precisely the same actions by a different international actor. If the world is supposed to respect the Israeli claim on Palestine due to its historical conquest of Canaan, and assert that the various acts of aggression and ethnic cleansing are justified by that claim, how do they imagine that the much stronger Russian claim to eastern Ukraine or the even stronger Chinese claim to Taiwan are not similarly justified?
The interesting thing which very few people appear to be noticing is the way in which the stage has been set for an Israeli-Turkish struggle for not only Syria, but Jerusalem itself. After all, the Turks owned that land for nearly 200 years, from 1517 to 1917.
Clown World is desperately seeking a way to stay relevant in today’s nationalist world.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer will deliver a speech on Monday acknowledging that the era of globalization has come to an end, The Times has reported. Starmer will make the address in response to US President Donald Trump imposing sweeping tariffs on the majority of America’s trading partners, including the UK, earlier this week, according to the article on Sunday.
The outlet said the prime minister will say that tariffs are “wrong,” but would also stress that he understands Trump’s “economic nationalism” and why the voters, who believe they have seen no benefits from free trade and mass immigration, support it.
Starmer will also stress that the fallout from the US charges on imports means that the government in London should “move further and faster” to boost economic growth at home. An unnamed Downing Street official told The Times that “the world has changed, globalization is over and we are now in a new era.”
It’s not going to work. Acknowledging the obvious doesn’t erase the past. I’m just looking forward to when Herne will sound his horn and the Wild Hunt gets started.
The NFL is a formidably effective business, but its executives can seldom resist the temptation to try breaking what is working extremely well.
The Lions’ proposal to seed the seven playoff teams in each conference without regard to division championship wasn’t something the Lions formulated during a brainstorming session at team headquarters. The suggestion to make the suggestion came from 345 Park Avenue.
Here’s how it happened, as explained by Jeremy Reisman of PrideOfDetroit.com.
As the winner-take-all, regular-season finale between the 14-2 Vikings and 14-2 Lions approached, Detroit receiver Amon-Ra St. Brown spoke out about the unfairness of the loser having to go on the road to face a division winner with a lesser record.
“It’s crazy,” St. Brown said at the time. “I think the rule should be changed. Obviously if you win the division, you should obviously make a playoff spot, but having a 14-win team having to go on the road is kind of crazy. But I guess I don’t make the rules.”
No, St. Brown doesn’t make the rules. But his comments could have a hand in changing them.
As St. Brown’s remarks went viral, NFL executive V.P. of football operations Troy Vincent took notice. And, instead of adding the possibility to the agenda of the Competition Committee for the usual bill-becomes-law protocol, Vincent made a phone call to Lions president Rod Wood.
“Troy Vincent from the league reached out to me and said, ‘I tend to agree with [St. Brown],’” Wood said this week at the league meetings. “‘Would you mind partnering with us on making a proposal on that?’ So we made a proposal.”
Basing playoff seedings on overall records instead of division championships is abysmally retarded. The NFL benefits by strengthening divisions; it made the season ends more exciting when the big division clashes were reserved for the final week, thereby keeping the playoff race alive for the entire season. It’s not as if the outcome was unfair for the Vikings, who were blown out in the first round by the Rams after choking against the Lions.
If divisions don’t matter, if records are the only thing that are important, why play the playoffs at all? Isn’t it unfair for a 15-2 team to have to play a 11-6 team in the playoffs too? Does the NFL really think that imitating the European football leagues, where the title is all but determined weeks, if not months, before season end? I stopped paying attention to the Premier League three months ago, when it became obvious that no one could keep up with Liverpool.
The system works. Divisions matter. If you want a home playoff game, then win your division. Period.
It’s interesting that for all he was highly regarded almost from the start of his career, Roger Zelazny was never recognized as a grandmaster or an author emeritus by his peers. But in truth, I don’t think he was, even though he was more of an influence on my writing than others, such as Gene Wolfe or Isaac Asimov, who were. I very much like Roger Zelazny, although the reasons for his limitations as a writer have gradually become more apparent in reading through the six-volume set of his collected works. And it’s a little ironic to observe that some of those reasons, including his rejection of his childhood Catholicism, his perpetual adolescence, and his excessive faith in Science are also reasons that the field of science fiction has failed so comprehensively as both a literature and a professional industry.
In this selection from an old essay originally published in 1975, and reprinted in The Collected Stories Volume 4: Last Exit to Babylon, it becomes evident that Zelazny was no visionary, or even capable of anticipating the obvious catastrophe that science fiction was heading toward then and in which it presently finds itself.
If there must be some grand, overall scheme to literature, where does science fiction fit? I am leery of that great classifier Aristotle in one respect that bears on the issue. The Hellenic world did not view the passage of time as we do. History was considered in an episodic sense, as the struggles of an unchanging mankind against a relentless and unchanging fate. The slow process of organic evolution had not yet been detected, and the grandest model for a world view was the seeming changeless patternings of the stars. It took the same processes that set the stage for science fiction—eighteenth-century rationalism and nineteenth-century science—to provide for the first time in the history of the world a sense of historical direction, of time as a developmental, nonrepetitive sequence.
This particular world view became a part of science fiction in a far more explicit fashion than in any other body of storytelling, as it provided the basis for its favorite exercise: extrapolation. I feel that because of this, science fiction is the form of literature least affected by Aristotle’s dicta with respect to the nature of the human condition, which he saw as immutable, and the nature of man’s fate, which he saw as inevitable.
Yet science fiction is concerned with the human condition and with man’s fate. It is the speculative nature of its concern that required the abandonment of the Aristotelian strictures involving the given imponderables. Its methods have included a retention of the higher modes of character, a historical, developmental time sense, assimilation of the tensions of a technological society and the production of a “sense of wonder” by exercises of imagination extending awareness into new realms—a sensation capable, at its best, of matching the power of that experience of recognition which Aristotle held to be the strongest effect of tragedy. It might even be argued that the sense of wonder represents a different order of recognition, but I see no reason to ply the possible metaphysics of it at this point.
Since respectability tends to promote a concern for one’s ancestors, we are fortunate to be in on things at the beginning today when one can still aim high and compose one’s features into an attitude of certainty while hoping for agreement. It occurs to me then that there is a relationship between the entire body of science fiction and that high literary form, the epic. Traditionally, the epic was regarded as representing the spirit of an entire people—the Iliad, the Mahābhārata, the Aeneid showing us the values, the concerns, the hoped-for destinies of the Greeks, the ancient Indians, the Romans. Science fiction is less provincial, for it really deals with humanity as such. I am not so temerarious as to suggest that any single work of science fiction has ever come near the epic level (though Olaf Stapledon probably came closest), but wish rather to observe that the impulse behind it is akin to that of the epic chronicler, and is reflected in the desire to deal with the future of humanity, describing in every way possible the spirit and destiny not of a single nation but of Man.
High literature, unfortunately, requires more than good intentions, and so I feel obliged to repeat my caveat to prevent my being misunderstood any more than is usually the case. In speaking of the epic, I am attempting to indicate a similarity in spirit and substance between science fiction as a whole and some of the classical features of the epic form. I am not maintaining that it has been achieved in any particular case or even by the entire field viewed as a single entity. It may have; it may not. I stand too near to see that clearly. I suggest only that science fiction is animated in a similar fashion, occasionally possesses something like a Homeric afflatus and that its general aims are of the same order, producing a greater kinship here than with the realistic novel beside which it was born and bred. The source of this particular vitality may well be the fact that, like its subject, it keeps growing but remains unfinished.
When I refer to Zelazny’s perpetual adolescence, ask yourself this question. In all his works, what percentage of his characters are parents? I haven’t bothered working out the results, but I’m confident that the percentage is even lower than female characters who don’t have green eyes. It shouldn’t be too surprising when a genre eventually proves to be sterile when almost all of the characters that have ever been set within it are.
Requires breaking the rules of the organization and stripping an entire nation of 9.6 million people of its right to express its collective opinion.
The EU needs to deprive Hungary of its voting rights within the bloc to ensure sanctions on Russia stay in place, Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna has said. Budapest has long advocated a diplomatic solution to the Ukraine conflict and called for restrictions against Moscow to be lifted.
Hungary is allegedly “playing on [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s team” and “not on our European team,” Tsahkna told the German newspaper Rheinische Post in an interview published on Saturday. He stated that Budapest could bloc some key decisions related to the bloc’s policy on Russia in the near future, since they require unanimity.
In particular, Hungary could block the next extension of sanctions on Moscow, Estonia’s top diplomat said. “If they block this in June, not only will the sanctions expire, but we would have to hand over the €240 billion to Putin,” Tsahkna said, adding that EU nations would then have to fund Kiev’s war effort with the money “from our taxpayers.”
How does anyone manage to listen to these sanctimonious clowns and take their opinions seriously? The inversion that comes out of their mouths on a regular basis is so diametrically opposed to observable reality and basic terms from the dictionary that it makes one wonder how they manage to successfully feed themselves. Are they so engulfed with lies that they can’t even tell the difference between truth and falsehood anymore?
And at some point, shouldn’t they be able to see that if their “democracy” requires all of these extreme measures simply to function at all, perhaps it isn’t worth preserving?
The media likes to dismiss the idea that the governments of the West are largely comprised of corrupt Satanic pedos as a “conspiracy theory”. The problem with that dismissal is that it’s just not a theory at all:
A Labour MP has been arrested on suspicion of rape and child sex offences, the Mail on Sunday can reveal. Dan Norris, a former Labour minister who ousted Jacob Rees-Mogg as MP for North East Somerset at last year’s General Election, was taken into custody after police raided his constituency home on Friday.
They were later seen removing boxes of Mr Norris’s goods from the property.
Mr Norris, who trained with the NSPCC and worked as a teacher and child protection officer, has been suspended from the party pending the investigation.
According to Wikipedia: Norris has a particular interest in child safety and regularly campaigns against child sexual abuse, having co-written a free booklet on its prevention. He also co-wrote, produced and distributed a booklet, Don’t Bully Me, giving practical advice to children across the United Kingdom on dealing with bullying.
Never trust a man who is excessively interested in children. Children just aren’t that interesting and predators always go where the prey is.