Castalia Library is go

On last night’s Darkstream, I was extremely pleased to announce that the first book in the Castalia Library, The Missionaries by Owen Stanley, has been printed and bound. It will begin shipping on Friday. Below are three pictures of the very first book that was completed at the bindery yesterday.

Unfortunately, since the first set of goatskins did not pass the rigorous quality standards required by the bindery, the Libraria books are not ready. We do not know when they will be ready because the second set of goatskins are still in Italy. So, we are sending a free Library edition of The Missionaries to all Libraria subscribers now, and will send the elite goatskin editions out as soon as they are ready. Due to the slim nature of the volume, we elected to go with a vertical alignment of the title on the spine, as Franklin Library did with books like Machiavelli’s The Prince and Shakespeare’s Poems, although we followed the example of the two-line approach of the latter as we felt it was more attractive than the single-line approach of the former.

In the third image, you can see how the endpapers feature a map of the archipelago that contains the fictional Elephant Island, which features a little Easter Egg for those who enjoy maps. You can also see the gilding on the pages as well as the gold ribbon bookmark. A number of people have asked if there will be copies available for purchase; as we are only producing 500, there are a few still available but they will be offered first to Castalia Library subscribers at the subscription price with the exception of two copies that will be offered at the retail price of $150 on Abe Books. If there are any left, they will be offered at the retail price at Arkhaven.


Anonymous is a Red State cuckservative

Never, ever, trust a cuckservative, as the President has now learned:

Victoria Coates, an art history Ph.D. who served as an adviser to Ted Cruz’s 2016 presidential campaign, has been identified as “Anonymous,” administration sources tell RCP reporter Paul Sperry:

A protégé of Bush administration Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Coates embedded with the U.S. military to cover the Iraq War for RedState.com, a blog run by Erick Erickson, an early critic of Trump but who has since modulated his opposition. She filed positive reports from Baghdad, while knocking down criticism that the war was a debacle.

NSC investigators put stock in the fact that Coates has a history of concealing her identity in her writings. For years she blogged anonymously for RedState.com. The site eventually revealed that Coates was the blogger writing under the pseudonym “Academic Elephant.”

They found her by one of my favorite means of distinguishing truth from falsehood, textual analysis:

The sources said that to crack the identity of the rogue Trump official,  investigators ran previously published works authored by Coates through forensic author identification programs, and they matched the prose style of Anonymous.

Investigators were able to profile the author of the op-ed and book by sentence structure, grammar, punctuation and syntax. They then compared that writing profile to Coates’. The stylistic traits synced up, sources said.

Researchers have found that authorship recognition tools can identify an author with a high level of accuracy when there are several thousand words of available content to analyze, as was the case with the sample size the White House analyzed. Coates’ own body of written work spans two decades and includes several books and dozens of columns, as well as policy papers, speeches and a doctoral thesis.

In short, the authors share the same punchy but at times breezy writing style, with pithy sentences punctuating a fluid narrative.

What’s more, the same manners of expression and phrases, such as “like-minded” and “clear-eyed,” kept turning up in the writings of both Coates and the secret Trump betrayer. The two also shared distinct vocabulary — such as the uncommon “sextant” — another linguistic fingerprint that pointed to the same authorship.

As we’ve observed here over the years, it is ridiculously easy to identify someone once you are sufficiently familiar with their literary style and habits. For example, I can quite often spot a banned troll on his first anonymous post-ban comment; no two people think or write exactly the same way. And it’s very easy to tell when news reports are concocting fake quotes from nonexistent people; if it sounds like it’s from a movie, it’s reliably fake.

Anyhow, it’s good that the treacherous infiltrator was exposed and removed.


The financialization of the US economy

Encapsulated in a single picture.

The coronavirus death toll in the U.S. — now topping 23,000 — skyrocketed as families continued to huddle in their homes uncertain of what’s next, while an unthinkable number of more than 16 million people have now filed for unemployment amid an economy grappling with the shutdown.

Yet, somehow, the stock market has managed to push higher. In other words, at least those fortunate enough to own stocks had something to smile about. Democratic strategist Justin Horwitz summed up the disconnect with this tweet that went viral across Twitter TWTR, +2.68{de336c7190f620554615b98f51c6a13b1cc922a472176e2638084251692035b3} :

As you can see, that’s CNBC’s Jim Cramer talking about the rally in the market while the chyron points out the grim reality of the historic job losses.

One commenter captured much of the response on social media by saying, “The Dow is not the economy. It is a giant government sanctioned Ponzi scheme for the wealthy.”

Another pointed to the fact that, according to Federal Reserve data, 84{de336c7190f620554615b98f51c6a13b1cc922a472176e2638084251692035b3} of stocks owned by U.S. households are held by the wealthiest 10{de336c7190f620554615b98f51c6a13b1cc922a472176e2638084251692035b3} of Americans — essentially Wall Street vs. Main Street.

The financial industry doesn’t lubricate the economy. To the contrary, it is both a huge parasite and a massive anchor that drains more than one-third of ALL corporate profits out of the real economy. To put this in perspective, the total amount of all retail trade profit was $154 billion in 2018. The total amount of all transportation and warehousing profit was $55.6 billion. The total amount of all food, beverage, and tobacco profits was $50.5 billion.

The total amount of financial profit was $448.3 billion, and that almost certainly understates it. If you want to know what is wrong with the economy, the answer is “the transfer of profit to the financial institutions” which is done through ever-expanding debt. This is why either a debt jubilee or mass defaults and the total collapse of the US economy is absolutely inevitable.



Selling with the devil

CDAN isn’t letting a certain corporation bury its unholy marketing:

This massive corporation that all of you know and the entire world knows was trying to promote its new mixed reality device. How they chose to do this was to hook up with the “most legendary performance artist working now.” In reality, she makes her money putting herself into as many Satanic images as she can and even had 666 in her social media profile for a long time.

The ad that emerged was people wearing the device to witness a ghostly version of the artist appearing out of nowhere while walking around while wearing a symbolic red dress. This was released on Good Friday, which was certainly unusual.

The video was not well received at all. After a flood of negative comments and about 90{de336c7190f620554615b98f51c6a13b1cc922a472176e2638084251692035b3} thumbs down, the company set the video to private and also removed all traces of the campaign from its official website – although it still appears in Google search results.

In case you still had any doubts about the evil intentions of Bill Gates, that should pretty much do it.


No need for school

Conventional classroom education is expensive, unhealthy, and unethical:

The recent coronavirus pandemic has forced students to take to virtual online classrooms to complete their coursework. Even though it may take time for students to adjust to this new format, their education might not suffer, especially if they are in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) fields.

A new study led by Cornell University researchers shows that STEM students learn just as much in online classrooms as they do in traditional in-person classes. Online courses might be less satisfying than in-person classes, but many more students can access them and they are much cheaper to facilitate.

STEM students in Russia participated in this study in the 2017-18 academic year. Researchers divided 325 students into one of three classroom styles for two of their courses: a fully online class through a program called OpenEdu; an in-person course as their local university or a blended course with online course lectures; and in-person discussion sessions.

Results of the study show that students in all three groups scored pretty similarly on their final exams. Students in the online course scored 7.2{de336c7190f620554615b98f51c6a13b1cc922a472176e2638084251692035b3} higher on their regular coursework, but this is probably because they were allowed to make up to three attempts on their weekly assignments, allowing them to boost their scores.

The analyses show that there is one drawback to the online classroom style: students in the online group were less-satisfied with their class experience than students in the in-person or blended learning groups.

There really isn’t any reason to maintain the conventional school system anymore, except for the global elite’s interest in imposing its centralized propaganda.


An Arkhaven subscription

A number of people have been asking for some form of Arkhaven subscription for over a year now, and as I’ve mentioned, I’ve been reluctant to commit to that for various reasons, most of them related to a lack of confidence about our ability to fulfil the necessary commitments involved. And I’m still not willing to commit to a new print comic from the same series being released every month, as there are too many moving parts involved in the process to be certain that we can do that, while the collapse of the retail market obviously further complicates things in that regard.

However, the recent developments concerning the ongoing crash of the mainstream comics industry and the discovery of the massive Webtoons market has caused us to modify our strategic thinking, especially due to the way that the latter is presently tied to a certain company with which Replatformers will be familiar. In light of this recalibration, we have decided to make available an Arkhaven subscription for The Legend Chuck Dixon, beginning with Chuck Dixon’s Avalon, which is the first of what we hope will be many of his Arkhaven comics available in episodic format on Webtoons.

There are currently four levels of support for the new comics subscription. Initially, the rewards are focused on utilizing existing content, some of which has never before been released from The Legend’s archives, but once we hit certain levels, the rewards will change to reflect our ability to provide new content, including brand new series from The Legend as well as more of his literary adaptations such as Right Ho, Jeeves, The Hobbit, and A Throne of Bones. The image on the upper left is a sketch for the cover of the first issue of the latter. The levels are stackable, so Collector’s Only will include the other three.

  • $1 Ace’s Army
  • $3 Lawdog’s Legion
  • $5 Rebel’s Renegades
  • $20 Collector’s Only

We haven’t set any formal goals yet, but we probably need to be around $3k monthly before we can reasonably commit to providing pure subscriber-driven content, which would result in a) weekly digital episodes, b) gold logo single issues for the subscribers, and c) retail omnibuses (with subscriber’s discount) of the new comic. In the meantime, we have begun the episodic offensive. Speaking of which, I’m pleased to be able to announce the first weekly episodes of both Right Ho, Jeeves and Alt★Hero. We intend to begin with three weekly series, expanding that to five as soon as the relevant artists are brought up to speed on the new format.

This is a critical moment in the war for the comics industry. And while we’re too small to be in a position to win that war yet, this is an excellent opportunity for us to gain ground in preparation for the next round. Even if you’re not interested in comics, or in a position to subscribe, I would encourage you to subscribe to the various weekly series at Webtoons, as that is a free and easy way to take part in this. I realize that this isn’t exactly what some of you have been asking for, but I believe this is a necessary first step towards that.

On a related note, an illustrator and fan of a certain French superhero sent this excellent portrayal of Dynamique contemplating the ongoing collapse of establishment comics. I think it is fair to say that it is a matter of absolutely no concern to her.


The Devil Mouse is dying

Corona-chan has hit the Devil Mouse hard:

Media industry analyst Hal Vogel estimated that Disney is losing roughly $30 million a day amid the coronavirus pandemic, The New York Times reported. Disney has closed its theme parks and cruise lines, and has postponed the releases of several films, including Black Widow and Mulan, leading to massive drops in revenue as the coronavirus pandemic continues to spread.

Disney’s focus on “experiences” over “on-screen entertainment” was once both coveted and imitated, but is now completely impossible to execute amid a pandemic that forces everyone to socially distance.

Even Disney’s new streaming service, Disney+, which is ideal for those staying inside, and reportedly racked up 50 million subscribers in 5 months is financially struggling due to the lack of new content, as all entertainment productions have come to a standstill.

The combination of these losses led Disney to borrow $6 billion last month, and they continue to lose “$30 million or more a day,” according to Vogel.

I really don’t see how Marvel stays alive in this scenario. They’re getting hit from both ends, by Disney and by Diamond, as the struggles of the former make it difficult to bail them out from the situation created by the non-payments of the latter. The challenges facing the establishment comics is why we are now redoubling our efforts to produce new content and why we are supporting The Legend in his latest endeavor.


Corona-chan hates fatties

One thing I noticed in all the pictures of the victims of the coronavirus was that those who were not very old tended to be very overweight. Apparently this may not have been just the coincidental result of a pro-body positivity bias on the part of the editors selecting the photos.

For months, scientists have been poring over data about cases and deaths to understand why it is that COVID-19 manifests itself in different ways around the world, with certain factors such as the age of the population repeatedly popping up as among the most significant determinants.

Now, one of the largest studies conducted of COVID-19 infection in the United States has found that obesity of patients was the single biggest factor in whether those with COVID-19 had to be admitted to a hospital.

“The chronic condition with the strongest association with critical illness was obesity, with a substantially higher odds ratio than any cardiovascular or pulmonary disease,” write lead author Christopher M. Petrilli of the NYU Grossman School and colleagues in a paper, “Factors associated with hospitalization and critical illness among 4,103 patients with Covid-19 disease in New York City.”

Remember, the first element of scientody is observation.


And then they came for anime

There is literally nothing that is safe from SJWs. Not even being part of a foreign industry conducted in a foreign language that they don’t understand is enough to protect one from their rapacious and never-ending demands to submit to their narrative:

Fans of Japanese animation are getting increasingly angry at the politically correct reworking of the cartoons when they’re translated into English.

A recent announcement about anime production has alarmed consumers worried about the intrusion of political correctness into their entertainment. Funimation, a company that translates and distributes anime in English and which has a long record of censoring the English-language versions of the original Japanese shows, has joined a key committee overseeing anime production….

‘The Rising of the Shield Hero’ was deemed controversial in the USA because it included a storyline about a false accusation of rape. In the politically correct era of the Me Too movement, the suggestion that a woman might make a false accusation was considered provocative. The listen-and-believe agenda was deemed to apply to fiction. If Western partners – so politicised and vulnerable to social media pressure – were involved in assessing storylines, would such a plot be approved?

Western companies, staffed by individuals with assertive political and social outlooks, will attempt to influence Japanese studios, imposing their own beliefs. When progressives have the ability to meddle in the creative process they will not hold back, even if it leads to disastrous financial consequences. We already have evidence of this in the collapse of American superhero comics.

If you are not a fan of anime or manga, why should you care? Evidence shows that incremental expansion of control within culture affects us all. Political correctness in pop culture has already distorted production and reception of card games, video games, comics, movies and other areas. In high culture, moralising authoritarians exert powerful domination over fiction publication, theatre, ballet and museums, even leaving aside academia. Suppression of creativity and diversity of thought will continue and expand unless we actively expose and oppose it.

This is why we fight back every single time, in every single industry, no matter how seemingly insignificant. And as will be announced later today, we’re taking the opportunity of the SJW-inspired collapse in establishment superhero comics mentioned in the article to take back the ground that has been conceded to them.

Sometimes people ask me why I bother with comics when it obviously is not an area of particular interest to me. And it’s not, to be sure, as I have previously pointed out on the Darkstream, unless you read Eco and Dante in the original Italian, Goethe and Nietzsche in the original German, and Balzac in the original French, and your favorite authors are Eco, Hesse, and Murakami, you can’t possibly even hope to aspire to my level of literary snobdom. You need not remind me of the comic genre’s dearth of intellectual value; the fact that Neil Gaiman’s Sandman is considered the creme de la creme of comics should be a major point of embarrassment rather than pride.

But if you consider the level of influence Hollywood has had over Western culture for the last sixty years, then simply consider the list of movies that performed best at the box office, it is patently obvious that comics is one battleground that must not be conceded to the enemies of Western civilization.