Author: VD
The Fictional Western
Morgan posted an interesting history of the fictional Western at Arkhaven:
The American fictional western arrived at the beginning of the twentieth century with the publication of Owen Wister’s The Virginian in 1902. The novel created the archetype of the cowboy as hero. The western story quickly became the mythic literature of the recently closed American frontier. A popular genre in the hands of Zane Gray, Eugene Manlove Rhodes, and Frederick Faust (“Max Brand”) to name a few in the legion of western fictioneers in the form of novels, pulp magazines, and later mass-market paperback books. If J. R. R. Tolkien attempted to create a mythology for England, the western writers created a mythology for the United States of America. Many stories had a setting vaguely late 19th Century time and place. Frederick Faust best known as “Max Brand” often set his stories in an undefined “mountain desert.” He used myths and epics as the plot basis for many of his westerns. Faust’s Hired Guns adapted the Iliad for example.
The western genre was a large part of the pulp magazine market from 1920 to the 1950s, possibly having the majority share. Some pulp fiction writers could be described as generalists, they wrote in various genres. Will F. Jenkins as “Murray Leinster” could be found in the pages of Cowboy Stories, Astounding Stories, Clues Detective, and “Swords and Mongols” in Golden Fleece. Frederick Faust wrote historical adventure under the “George Challis” for Argosy magazine in the 1930s. Faust had the Tizzo series set in the time of Renaissance Italy during the time of Cesare Borgia. He also had the pirate novel “The Naked Blade” in Argosy. Those swashbucklers would later be reprinted in paperback form decades later. At the same time, he was writing spy stories as “Frederick Frost.”
The fictional western story underwent the transformation during and after World War II that had earlier taken place with the detective story as written by Dashiell Hammett. The writing became leaner and more historically accurate. The protagonists were morally ambiguous men (and women) who had lived hard lives. Les Savage Jr. was a pioneer with a hard-boiled presentation coupled with a setting of 1820 to the1850s. The indistinct time and place of the mythic western gave way to the historical western.
Read the whole thing there. I will say that while I’m not a huge Louis L’Amour fan, I very much liked FAIR BLOWS THE WIND. Which, of course, isn’t a Western, but does set the stage for a series of them.
Time to Move On
Ok, we tried women’s suffrage and discovered that their primary political concern is killing their own babies. Can we finally call this experiment failed and move on?
Indeed. The only question at this point is if the women’s suffrage experiment will be abandoned a) to prevent societal collapse or b) as a consequence of societal collapse.
Either way, it’s not going to survive. Neither will democracy, or to be more precise, the present illusion of “representative democracy”, for that matter.
The statistical evidence is absolutely clear and undeniable. Sustainable human society is not compatible with the average young woman receiving more than nine years of education. Ironically, it may only be the inferior state of public schooling that has prevented US fertility rates from declining even more dramatically than they have.
The laws of social dynamics may not be as clear-cut as the laws of thermodynamics, and the effects of ignoring them may not be as immediate, but we now have decades of evidence demonstrating how ignoring them will prove every bit as catastrophic over time.
Punjabis United Against America
While actual Americans are horrified by the needless deaths of a family, the Punjabis are trying to get their fellow Punjabi who was responsible let off the hook for his crimes.
We, the undersigned, urge Governor Ron DeSantis and the Florida Board of Executive Clemency to re-examine and reduce the sentence for a 28-year-old truck driver involved in a fatal U-turn crash on Florida’s Turnpike in South Florida. This was a tragic accident — not a deliberate act. While accountability matters, the severity of the charges against him does not align with the circumstances of the incident.
Key Considerations & Precedent:
No criminal intent or history: The incident was a catastrophe, not a criminal act. The driver has no prior record and fully cooperated with authorities.Petition Requests:
Consider alternative sentencing options, such as restorative justice measures, counseling, or community service, aligning with both accountability and compassion.Conclusion:
By granting clemency, you would reaffirm the value of proportional justice, the power of community advocacy, and the potential for rehabilitation. We believe this case is not just about one individual—it speaks to the broader principles of fairness and mercy in the justice system.With deep respect and hope,
Collective Punjabi youth.
I suspect Americans would vastly prefer to see the “Collective Punjabi youth” repatriated to India than see their petition honored by Gov. DeSantis.
There is no such thing as a “multiracial nation”. The concept of “multiculturalism” is a lie. There are always and only multiple nations competing for control of a society’s resources, culture, and laws.
September 1 Paywall
An announcement from UATV.
August has been a relatively quiet month on Unauthorized, as creators, viewers, and devs alike have been getting out and enjoying the dog days of summer. With global payments having returned in July, subscriptions have continued ticking upwards and the team has been able to spend some time on research and planning the future development of the platform.
While this naturally means that there aren’t many new developments to announce, we are pleased to report that the bank transfer payment system put in place last month has been successful enough to allow the reinstatement of the hard paywall. As of September 1st, an active paid subscription to Unauthorized will be required in order to view livestreams and/or published videos.
The plan is to give creators individual control over their content, so that specific videos of their choosing can be made available to the general public after publication. For now, livestreams will remain behind the paywall, at least until the chat system has received the upgrades it is due for.
Read the rest on the UATV substack.
The Vaxx’s 5X Kill Effect
A massive Japanese study has revealed some very informative details about the short- and medium-term effects of the vaxx.
Dr. Murakami’s conclusion was blunt: “…the more doses you get, the sooner you’re likely to die, within a shorter period…”
According to Dr. Murakami, there was no noticeable spike in deaths among the unvaccinated. But among the vaccinated, a clear peak emerged—especially between 90 and 120 days after the shot. “A significant peak forms at three or four months,” he said, pointing to the vaccine as the likely cause. “It’s probably due to the vaccine’s influence, with adverse reactions occurring leading to death.”
The first graph compared death rates between vaccinated and unvaccinated groups.
Then came a graph that was impossible to ignore. It showed a clear pattern: the more vaccine doses a person received, the sooner they died after their final shot. The title translates to: “Number of days from final vaccination to death and number of deaths.” The note on the right reads: “As the number of vaccine doses increases, the peak in deaths appears sooner.”
Each line represents people grouped by the final dose they received before death. In other words, those counted under the third dose curve had received three shots and died before receiving a fourth. What stood out most was the steep green spike representing deaths after the third dose. Not only was it the highest, but it also appeared earlier, around 90 to 120 days. The trend held across the board: as the number of doses increased, the peak of death consistently moved closer to the time of the last injection.
Now, the good news is that it appears that the death rates for the vaxxed return to normal after a period of 10 months after their last shot. It’s also clear that those who only ever received a single shot are considerably better off than those who received more, as their death rates returned to normal within just two months.
How then to account for the continued rise in deaths from rare turbo cancers, strokes, and heart attacks? Well, the death rates are still observably much higher than normal even 16 months after the fifth or sixth shot, so presumably these deaths are largely accounted for among the heavily boosted.
But this is much better news than I’d expected at this point, although it must be cautioned that the Japanese public did not receive exactly the same mRNA therapies that other nations did, so there is likely to be at least a modest amount of variance from one country to another. The point is that risks appear to be decreasing rather than increasing over time with regards to reductions in life expectancy.
This doesn’t mean we’re entirely out of the woods yet, however, as what I always considered to be the more insidious angle, the fertility angle, is showing some signs that the suppressive effect of the vaxx is lingering much longer. We’ll look at those adverse effects another time.
Opposing AI is Marxian
Since it’s obviously too difficult for the average individual who denigrates the use of AI and opposes its use on the grounds of insufficient human involvement to understand their own position well enough to recognize its obvious intellectual roots, I asked Claude to dumb down my observations enough to permit their little midwit minds to grasp it.
The Hidden Marxism Behind “AI Slop” Complaints
When critics dismiss AI-generated art as “soulless pablum” or “AI slop,” they’re often unknowingly channeling a 19th-century economic theory that most economists abandoned long ago. Their argument, stripped to its core, reflects the labor theory of value that Karl Marx popularized—the idea that something’s worth comes from the human work put into it. This perspective, while emotionally appealing, fundamentally misunderstands how we actually value art and creativity.
The Labor Theory in Disguise
Marx argued that a product’s value stemmed from the “socially necessary labor time” required to produce it. A chair was valuable because a carpenter spent hours crafting it; a coat, because a tailor labored over its seams. Critics of AI art make remarkably similar claims: a painting matters because an artist struggled with brushstrokes for days, a novel has worth because a writer agonized over every sentence, a song touches us because a musician practiced for years to master their instrument.
Notice the pattern? The anti-AI argument insists that art without human toil is worthless—that the struggle itself creates the value. When someone calls AI art “slop,” they’re not really critiquing the output’s quality. They’re saying it lacks value because it lacks human labor input. A beautiful AI-generated landscape might be visually indistinguishable from one painted by hand, but critics dismiss it anyway. Why? Because no one suffered for it.
Where This Theory Falls Apart
Economists largely abandoned the labor theory of value because it couldn’t explain basic market realities. Why does water, essential for life, cost less than diamonds? Why can two painters spend equal time on portraits, yet one sells for millions while the other goes unsold? The answer isn’t labor—it’s what economists call subjective value. Things are worth what people believe they’re worth, based on their preferences, needs, and circumstances.
Art has always been the ultimate refutation of labor-value thinking. Van Gogh died penniless despite pouring his soul into his work; his paintings gained value only when audiences decided they mattered. A child’s finger painting might take minutes but become priceless to a parent. Street artists create elaborate chalk drawings knowing rain will wash them away. If labor determined artistic value, none of this would make sense.
The Real Source of Artistic Value
What actually makes art valuable? The answer varies by person and context. Sometimes we value technical skill—but photography didn’t become worthless when cameras replaced the painstaking work of portrait painters. Sometimes we value emotional resonance—but a simple song can move us more than a technical masterpiece. Sometimes we value novelty, sometimes tradition, sometimes the story behind the work, sometimes pure aesthetic pleasure.
AI art can fulfill any of these value sources. It can create novel combinations no human imagined, generate perfectly crafted compositions, or help disabled individuals express visions they couldn’t physically create themselves. When someone uses AI to illustrate their novel or design their album cover, the value comes from bringing their creative vision to life, not from how many hours they spent learning how to use Photoshop.
The Ignorance in the Argument
The “AI slop” position reflects a peculiar ignorance about how art has always evolved. Every new tool faced similar criticisms. Photographers were told they weren’t real artists because machines did the work. Electronic musicians heard that synthesizers were cheating. Digital artists were dismissed because “the computer does it for you.” Yet each tool simply changed how humans express creativity, not whether the results had value.
More fundamentally, the anti-AI position ignorantly assumes we value art for the artist’s effort rather than our own experience. But people don’t listen to music thinking, “I enjoy this because someone practiced his scales for years.” They don’t admire paintings on the basis of the painter’s hours invested. Art’s value lives in the connection between work and audience, not in the production method.
Moving Beyond Marxian Mysticism
The fear driving “AI slop” rhetoric is understandable—artists worry about their livelihoods, and change is scary. But wrapping economic anxiety in Marxian labor mysticism doesn’t help anyone. It obscures real conversations about attribution, consent, and fair compensation while promoting a backward-looking view that confuses suffering with value.
Art made with AI tools isn’t automatically valuable, but neither is it automatically worthless. Like art made with brushes, cameras, or computers, its value depends on whether it resonates, inspires, or satisfies human needs and desires. Artistic value, like all value, is inherently subjective. That’s how value has always worked, despite what Marx claimed.
The next time someone dismisses AI art as “soulless,” ask them this: are they evaluating the work itself, or are they calculating the human hours that weren’t required to make it? The answer usually reveals that they subscribe to an outdated socialist economic theory from 1867, whether they know it or not.
A Tale of Two Frauds
“Second guessing Elon Musk is a fool’s game”
—Jordan Peterson
GUNS OF MARS
I’m very pleased to be able to say that like Easton Press and Franklin Library before them, Castalia Library is finally in the Signed First Edition business. Over the next month, we are offering no less than THREE Signed First Editions, beginning with GUNS OF MARS by Chuck Dixon.
GUNS OF MARS: A Thrilling Return to the Red Planet
Chuck Dixon delivers a masterful homage to Edgar Rice Burroughs’s classic Barsoom series with “Guns of Mars,” a tale that captures all the adventure and wonder of the original while bringing fresh energy to the dying world of Mars.
Like Burroughs’ timeless stories, Dixon transports readers to a harsh but magnificent Barsoom where water is more precious than gold and survival depends on strength, cunning, and an unbreakable will. The novel follows the unlikely partnership between a mysterious human bounty hunter and Kal Keddaq, a fierce Warhoon thark fleeing the consequences of his own choices.
Dixon expertly recreates Burroughs’ signature blend of high adventure and exotic world-building. The Martian landscape comes alive with all its deadly beauty – from the vast canal systems of a forgotten civilization to the savage creatures that prowl the wastes. What sets GUNS OF MARS apart is Dixon’s grittier, more realistic approach to survival on the red planet. While maintaining the romantic adventure spirit of the original series, he grounds the action in believable consequences and genuine peril. The central quest drives a plot that builds to a spectacular confrontation between man, thark, and the monstrous guardians of Mars’ greatest treasure.
Dixon, known for his work on BATMAN and THE PUNISHER, brings his talent for character-driven action to create protagonists who are both heroic and deeply flawed. The evolving relationship between the bounty hunter and the exiled thark forms the emotional core of a story that honors Burroughs’ legacy while standing as a thrilling adventure in its own right.
For fans of the original Barsoom novels and newcomers alike, GUNS OF MARS offers everything that made Burroughs’s Mars irresistible: exotic locales, deadly creatures, ancient mysteries, and the kind of two-fisted adventure that belongs among the classics of planetary romance.
For more details about GUNS OF MARS, including an excerpt and information on where to buy it, visit the Castalia Library substack.
FBI Raids John Bolton
Allegedly, anyhow.
FBI agents raided former Trump National Security Advisor John Bolton’s DC-area home this morning in a high-profile national security probe. The raid began at 7:00 AM and is continuing as of the publication of this story.
That was certainly unexpected. Maybe we’ll get those treason trials after all…
UPDATE: Confirmed by the New York Post.
FBI agents raided the DC-area home of President Trump’s former national security adviser John Boltonon Friday morning in a high-profile national security probe, The Post can exclusively reveal.