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The Hobbit 1977

The Dark Herald explains how the 1977 Rankin/Bass version of The Hobbit came to be:

There is no getting across to kids of later generations what a TV Special meant to us. You had no control over it whatsoever. None. You either watched it at the exact time the network scheduled it for or you didn’t watch it at all that year. You could possibly catch a missed episode of a regular show during reruns in the summer but not a Special. Miss it and it was gone, no place to rent it, and streaming it was decades away. When you heard that Special fanfare from the TV you dropped everything and ran!

A few guitar strings were plucked, one by one, and then John Huston’s unmistakable cadence read the first words Tolkien published about the world that would become Middle-earth. There was a respect there for what J.R.R. Tolkien began with that sentence.

The “Many ages ago” that followed was intended to draw children into myth and it worked magnificently. Tolkien nerds used to regard it as heresy because Tolkien didn’t write it but then they had no idea what horrors the future held.

Even at the time it was hardly the worst version of The Hobbit. That would be the Hobbit (1966) a 12 minute “rights retainer” featuring Princess Mika and Slaag the Dragon whom Bilbo kills at the end. There had been radio and play adaptations before 1977, mostly British naturally. The rights to Hobbit had been sold separately by Tolkien then parceled out again and again after that.

By 1977 The Hobbit’s rights were such a trainwreck that Arthur Rankin was able to snatch up the TV rights for pennies with the following opening credit “Based on the Original Version of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit.” The rights for that being distinct from the 1951 revision, which is what the TV special was actually based on. In the 1937 edition, Elves were called, Gnomes” (from the Greek gnosis for “knowledge.” And Bilbo won the ring from Gollum fair and square, they even parted on friendly terms. Those and some other changes were enough to make it legally distinct.

And the Rankin/Bass version was certainly distinct in its own right. It looks like something made by Studio Ghibli – Because it was made by Studio Ghibli.

Okay, fine. It was made by Topcraft although, when that studio failed the remains became Studio Ghibli, and you can absolutely see the design DNA in The Hobbit.

You can also see Tolkien’s come to that, his own Thrór’s Map was used directly in the TV show and was part of the influence of the design aesthetic. J.R.R Tolkien approved of Arthur Rackham artwork and it was clearly another strong influence. The Hobbit (1977) was a Japanese take on the Western fairytale as grotesque. You can see its influence in Nausicaä. Rankin/Bass helped keep the lights on at Topcraft until Nausicaä came out. The Japanese approach isn’t interested in cleaning the fairy tale up, it leans into the distortions. Faces stretch, bodies warp, and the line between the comic and the unsettling disappears. What reads as “off” to a Western eye is often deliberate: characters are designed to move, to emote, to perform, even if that means abandoning symmetry or beauty. It turned what was supposed to be a children’s story into something just a little grimdark – perfect for its Generation X audience.

It was an art design for Tolkien when no one agreed what that looked like and there weren’t any brand managers ruining it. There was also some leftover hippy influence clinging to it, like your older sister’s boyfriend’s van that still smelled “funny.” College age-Boomers had first experienced Tolkien – differently.

It’s such a pity that after doing a very good job of bringing THE LORD OF THE RINGS to life, Peter Jackson wasn’t able to avoid screwing up THE HOBBIT even though he had a perfectly good template from which to work on the basis of the 1977 version.

And perhaps his biggest mistake wasn’t expanding it to three films, but not licensing the original music.

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The Hard Problem

Over at Veriphysics, we’re utilizing the Triveritas to tackle the hard problem of consciousness:

The Hard Problem of Consciousness (Chalmers, 1995) asks why and how objective physical processes give rise to subjective experience. We show that the problem contains a structural equivocation identical in form to the amphiboly previously identified in the third horn of the Agrippan Trilemma. The word explain in “explain consciousness” admits two readings: (A) identify the structural relationship between physical configurations and phenomenal states such that logical, mathematical, and empirical conditions are simultaneously satisfied, and (B) make the physical-to-phenomenal transition feel intuitively necessary such that no residual “why” question can be asked. Reading B is not a well-formed scientific demand; no fundamental physical theory satisfies it. The “hardness” of the Hard Problem is load-bearing on this equivocation. Under Reading A, what remains is a difficult scientific problem, not a hard philosophical problem. We score the major competing theories of consciousness (IIT, GWT, Orch-OR, Higher-Order Theories) under the Triveritas framework, diagnose why each fails, show that the proliferation of theories is an artifact of single-dimension evaluation, and demonstrate that existing interventional evidence (blindsight, differential anesthesia, split-brain, cortical stimulation) constitutes structurally warranted base cases that the field has systematically undervalued by applying Reading B to evidence evaluation. We address illusionism as a form of arbitrary termination that fails on its own terms. No new Triveritas machinery is introduced. The same recursive lattice that solved the Trilemma and the three foundational problems in philosophy of science dissolves the explanatory gap by the same mechanism: diagnosing a structural equivocation that made a tractable problem appear impossible.

You can follow along with the daily posts there if the question of how you know what you think you know, and if your knowledge is actually justified is the sort of thing that keeps you up at nights.

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The Absence of Evidence

Sometimes the absence of evidence is the inevitable result of the authorities being very determined to avoid looking at it.

Jeffrey Epstein had only been arrested four months earlier in Manhattan on sex trafficking charges when New Mexico local talk show host Eddy Aragon received a disturbing email.

It was November 2019 and the anonymous sender claimed to have been on the staff of Epstein’s secluded, 10,000-acre Zorro Ranch in the south-western desert state. They said they could reveal the location of the bodies of two young ‘foreign’ girls who’d been buried ‘somewhere in the hills’ on the estate on Epstein’s orders after they were strangled to death during ‘rough, fetish sex’.

They also could supply seven videos of Epstein, including two in which he was having sex with underage girls, another that was a ‘rape fantasy video’ and a fourth in which a girl from California’s Bay Area confessed to ‘Madame G’ – a likely reference to Ghislaine Maxwell – that she’d tried to commit suicide.

The sender, who said they had ‘been there and seen it all’, offered to send the videos and the bodies’ location on a computer thumb drive in return for payment of a single Bitcoin, the digital cryptocurrency worth around $6,500 at the time and widely believed to be untraceable.

‘I felt my blood run cold – this was serious,’ Aragon told the Daily Mail this week of the moment he discovered the email. He had no bitcoin to pay the sender, but ‘turned it over to the FBI’ as the message ‘felt very legitimate’.

It now appears that the email was not followed up – just as the claims of at least a dozen women who said they were groomed, sexually assaulted or raped there – often as teenagers – hadn’t been investigated either. Unlike Epstein’s other homes, the Zorro ranch was never even searched.

The fact is that the Western world is ruled by gay satanic pedophiles. You can try to dance around it or chant “conspiracy theory” all you like, but none of that is going to change the absolute and undeniable fact.

It’s not an accident that the great “successes” of the last 30 years have been observably untalented retards. If you don’t take their satanic little ticket, you are redirected, deplatformed, delegitimized, suppressed, attacked, and otherwise prevented from getting the exposure required to hit the big time.

Big Bear had 330,000 subscribers on YouTube at the time he was deplatformed. He’d probably have over 30 million now and his book would be a #1 New York Times bestseller if he wasn’t unauthorized. Ben Shapiro was the 14th most-read columnist on WND back when he had to compete on a level playing field. He’d still be a nobody if he wasn’t a ticket-taker.

I don’t say this out of any bitterness or regret. It’s merely a factual observation as well as an expression of contempt for those mediocrities who suffer from Imposter Syndrome due to the obvious fact that they are imposters. To the contrary, I thank God and my guardian angel for whatever prevented me from either a) being aware of the ticket on offer or b) being tempted to take it.

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Nationality is Real Again

Whatever happened to the sacred principle of the free movement of peoples supposedly enshrined in the the European Union’s so-called “rights of Man”? And how can it be said that a “German” man who has lived somewhere else for three months is not every bit as American, or Australian, or Japanese as any other individual there who doesn’t happen to be of German descent?

German men who remain abroad for more than three months without prior approval may start facing penalties under a military-related legal requirement, according to the Berliner Zeitung. The rule obliges men between the ages of 17 and 45 to obtain permission before extended stays abroad. It came into force on January 1, 2026, but April is when the first three-month period expires and enforcement may begin, the outlet has said.

Germany is in the process of a massive military buildup, with plans to spend reportedly more than €500 billion (around $580 billion) on defense by 2029. German officials have set 2029 as the deadline for the armed forces to be “war-ready” for a potential conflict with Russia.

Moscow has repeatedly denied any plans to attack NATO as “nonsense” and ridiculed Western politicians over such claims. In February Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stated that Russia had “no reason” to attack the EU or NATO unless attacked first.

The new requirement, which was introduced under the Military Service Modernization Act and reportedly largely went unnoticed, previously applied only during a “state of tension” or a “state of defense,” defined as situations of heightened external threat or armed attack. Since the amendment took effect, it now applies at all times, including in peacetime. The Defense Ministry said the measure is intended to maintain a reliable registry of individuals eligible for military service.

If borders are just lines on a map, what does it matter who crosses those lines or when they are crossed? And can’t a German “man” simply declare himself to identify as a woman to avoid any duty to perform military service?

Nothing about Clown World is real. Even its most sacred beliefs are thrown aside the moment there is any threat to the ruling clowns.

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Desperation and No Deal

The Fake Trump thinks he sounds strong and commanding, but not being an Alpha, he just sounds desperate.

The biggest bridge in Iran comes tumbling down, never to be used again — Much more to follow! IT IS TIME FOR IRAN TO MAKE A DEAL BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE, AND THERE IS NOTHING LEFT OF WHAT STILL COULD BECOME A GREAT COUNTRY!

President DONALD J. TRUMP

This is just nonsense. First, Iran doesn’t want to make a deal. They know they’re winning. They are an ancient culture that has survived far worse than this and they don’t care in the slightest if they lose a few 80-year-old leaders, something the aging octogenarians of the US government can’t possibly understand.

Second, even if they did want to make a deal, who would want to try talking to the USA or Israel? They’ve assassinated everyone who would normally do the talking. So there is a) no one to talk and b) nothing to talk about.

If I were one of Iran’s strategists, I wouldn’t talk, discuss any ceasefires, or even demand any surrenders. I’d simply keep up the constant, steady pressure until the empire collapses, which it absolutely will within months. I suspect the Iranians may actually be expanding the scope of their objectives from breaking the regional power of Israel by forcing the US military out of the region to bringing down the US global empire.

And if they have actually established a viable military supply pipeline from China and North Korea, they very likely have the ability to do it.

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North Korean Missiles in Iran

  • June 16, 2025: North Korean leader Kim Jong Un stated, “We will provide support if Iran needs it,” while the Israel-Iran war continues. Following this statement, claims emerged that North Korea could send its strategic weapon, the Hwasong-16B missile, to Iran. As the Israel-Iran war becomes a crisis closely monitored by the entire world, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has openly supported the Tehran administration. Kim indicated a new geopolitical balance with his statement, “We will provide the necessary support if Iran needs it.” Following Kim’s remarks, all eyes turned to the Hwasong-16B missile, which North Korea describes as a “symbol of absolute superiority.” In recent months, Kim Jong Un personally supervised the test launch of the missile, which he had defined as “the pinnacle of defense technology.”
  • April 2, 2026: multiple reports that North Korea has delivered 500 Hwasong-18 missiles to the IRGC.

This isn’t confirmed yet, but we’ll know if one of them is used. And given how the US, the UK, and the EU have been supplying Ukraine, they can hardly complain that China, North Korea, and Russia are supplying weapons and satellite intelligence to Iran, which has been their ally for a long time.

In the meantime, Iran’s missile launchers continue to undestroy themselves. Six weeks in, what was 90 percent destroyed in the first 48 hours is now only 50 percent destroyed.

Around half of Iran’s missile launchers and kamikaze drones remain intact despite a month of US-Israeli strikes, CNN reports, citing a military intelligence assessment.

This isn’t a surprise to anyone who knows military history. The utility of air power has been wildly exaggerated by its advocates since Giulio Douhet and those exaggerations have been exposed in every military conflict from WWII to Desert Storm.

The overwrought threats of Donald Trump to Iran’s civilian infrastructure may be in response to Iran’s reported destruction of a significant part of the Israeli air force. If it’s true that a 300-missile barrage took out 40 planes on the ground yesterday, this will change the situation in the Middle East considerably in that Israel will no longer be able to hit back against Iran by itself.

Could these reports, which appear to be Chinese-generated, be fake? Absolutely. Are they unreliable? Definitely. And yet, they are less likely to be fake than the relentless US and Israeli insistence that a) all of Iran’s offensive capabilities were destroyed five weeks ago and b) none of Iran’s attacks have accomplished anything more than scratch the paint on a minor Israeli government official’s car.

It’s fascinating how Iranian missiles never hit anything, but so many targets keep getting “damaged by falling debris”.

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Refinements

Apparently the damage being inflicted on Iran needs to be a little readjusted in retrospect:

The “destruction of Iran’s capability” has been revised downward from 90% in week 1 to 82% in week 2 to 70% in week 3, shedding 10 percentage points per briefing cycle with the consistency of a subscription service. At current trajectory, Iran reaches full strength by May. We appear to be un-destroying things. JINSA’s own analyst cheered on March 5 that “Iran’s missile firepower has almost run out”. Three weeks later his own think tank published a report documenting the opposite. Iran is apparently getting un-bombed too.

Rubio then helpfully clarified the war’s “clear objectives” via the State Department’s official account. Four items: air force, navy, missiles, factories. Notably absent: uranium, nuclear weapons, regime change, and opening Hormuz – the four items the war was launched to achieve.

The timeline underwent a similar refinement: “two or three days” on February 28, “four weeks” on March 1, “four to six, maybe eight weeks” from Hegseth on March 4, Pentagon internally planning through September, and then silence.

I had no idea that the end of empire would prove so… comical?

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They’re Trying to Tell You

“We need to be sad about Trump. This is not funny. This is not good. But he’s gone. And that’s it… Sadly, the Trump we all knew and loved no longer exists.”
—Alex Jones

For whatever reason, the mainstream and conservative media figures can’t tell you what they know. I don’t know why, perhaps they fear for their “credibility” or perhaps they simply aren’t permitted to tell the truth and still keep their lofty, well-paid positions. Regardless, it’s obvious they all know that Short, Fat, Wall of Text Trump isn’t President Donald Trump. They know he isn’t and they’re trying to tell you that.

It’s not a metaphor when they keep asking “how can the Donald Trump who once said X be the same Donald Trump who now says Y?”

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