Aborted by the Market

The end of the age of free money has finally brought about the always-inevitable demise of the wicked e-thots of Jezebel:

Jezebel, a feminist US news site, was shut down by its owners on Thursday, with 23 people laid off and no plans for the outlet to resume publication. G/O Media, which owns Jezebel and other sites including Gizmodo and the Onion, announced the closure in a memo to staff, which was obtained by the Guardian.

“Unfortunately, our business model and the audiences we serve across our network did not align with Jezebel’s,” Jim Spanfeller, the chief executive of G/O Media, wrote in the memo, which was sent to staff on Thursday morning. “And when that became clear, we undertook an expansive search for a new, perhaps better home that might ensure Jezebel a path forward. It became a personal mission of Lea Goldman, who worked tirelessly on the project, talking with over two dozen potential buyers. It is a testament to Jezebel’s heritage and bona fides that so many players engaged us. Still, despite every effort, we could not find Jez a new home.”

Translation: Jezebel was losing so much money on a monthly basis that not even its most ardent ideological admirers in the media believed they had a chance of making a go of it.

Remember this inability to find anyone to fund a well-known and supposedly influential operation when people are talking about success in Clown World. None of it is real, none of it is popular, and none of it is genuinely profitable. It’s all been propped up by free money. The business world covered by the media is a Potemkin one that is little more than a brightly-painted facade that conceals the fact that there is nothing substantial behind it.

Razorfist, as is his wont, empathized with the newly disemployed Jezebelles, and helpfully encouraged them to look at the situation in what they might see as positive light, which is to say, as being aborted from the marketplace.

Looks like you’ll have to propagandize the old-fashioned way: by inserting your insipid horseshit into a children’s movie, video game, or sitcom script while flagrantly denying you’re fucking doing it!

And here is an interesting statement by a member of the union: “A well-run company would have moved away from an advertising model, but instead they are shuttering the brand entirely because of their strategic and commercial ineptitude.”

Not that it was needed at this point, but the statement further confirms the wisdom of building platforms that religiously avoid reliance upon the advertising model and thereby being able to put the interests of the core subscribers first.

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Thursday Arktoons

CHUCK DIXON PRESENTS: ADVENTURE Episode 100: The Brigand

THE SIEGE OF THE BLACK CITADEL Episode 16: Survivors of the Hellgate

FRANKENSTEIN – THE RETURN Episode 12: Terror Under Trance

CHATEAU GRIEF Episode 313: I’m Lavender Decorations

THE GOLDEN AGE Episode 13: Warlock Neuroform

FAIRY DOOR Episode 54: The Hammer

STONETOSS Episode 240: School of Hard Knocks

BEN GARRISON Episode 121: Crowbar in the Clamshell

三更战 Episode 9: 无可挑剔

Congratulations to Chuck Dixon and the Chuck Dixon Presents production team! This marks the 100th episode of CHUCK DIXON PRESENTS: ADVENTURE. Arkhaven, like Castalia, is always very pleased to keep the old classics alive.

CHUCK DIXON PRESENTS: ADVENTURE

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Do They Want Right-Wing Death Squads?

Because left-wing murders are, historically, how a society gets right-wing death squads:

The former head of Spain’s People’s Party in the Catalonia region was shot in the face in Madrid on Thursday, police said. Alejo Vidal-Quadras, 78, was shot on Núñez de Balboa street in the wealthy Salamanca area of central Madrid at about 1.30pm, as he was returning home from a church service, according to witnesses.

A Civil Protection spokesperson said Vidal-Quadras retained consciousness and was rushed to the nearby Gregorio Marañón hospital, while police are now hunting for two people who fled the scene on a motorbike, with the shooter wearing a black helmet. Witnesses described the attacker as a ‘young, small man’ who was wearing jeans and a dark coat and was seemingly waiting for the politician to pass by.

The pair exchanged no words, with the shooter reportedly stepping up and blasting Vidal-Quadras from near point blank range before hopping onto the motorcycle piloted by an accomplice.

Vidal-Quadras was the head of the centre-right PP in Catalonia and was also the Vice-President of the European Parliament from 2009-2014, when he left the group to join newly created party Vox.

People have mostly forgotten that the original Brownshirts were formed in Germany from groups of WWI veterans in response to murderous rampages by Communist militants. For all that it is feared by the Left and Center alike, the violence of the Right has historically been predominantly defensive and reactive.

Even Franco’s Nationalist government only came to power in Spain in response to eight years of murderous Leftist violence, particularly the Red Terror of 1936-1939 that left over 50,000 Spaniards dead, including 6,832 members of the clergy.

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MAILVOX: In Defense of Doug Wilson

In response to a previous post on the anti-nationalist evangelical pastor, a reader submits what he believes to be a defense of the fraudulent Boomangelical:

Firstly, I acknowledge your critiques of Doug, and recognise that he has some enormous Boomer tendencies. 

But. 

He has a growing appeal to disaffected young evangelical men (of whom I belonged). He spearheaded an enormous push towards Classical Christian schooling, founded on Western Civilisation (including the Greco-Roman underpinnings). It’s a huge movement, that is reintroducing the youth to the Good, Beautiful, and True. They have cleaned up church liturgy, and recaptured theological maximalism, with many offshoot ministries pushing phrases like ‘Rebuilding the New Christendom.’ This is all important foundational work to waking up Christians. It has led to me creating a homeschool co-op teaching the Classical method, and we are exposing our children to the glorious things that the Christian West has to offer. 

Ministries like G3 ministries are on the warpath against ‘kinism’ which has significant sway over the Reformed Conservative movements. Guys like Doug want more mainstream appeal, so they have opted to go soft on the racial issue. They have ousted guys like Thomas Achord, which shows they mean business. 

But it is worth noting that there are more guys like Thomas Achord in these organisations who will eventually start speaking out. The time doesn’t seem to have come for that yet. 

I’m sure you’re aware that racism is perhaps one of the most unforgivable sins in the Evangelical church and will get a robust and powerful reaction from the Evangelical base (especially the Boomers). He is pushing young men in the right direction, and Christian Nationalism, as promoted by Stephen Wolfe, is gaining significant traction. 

I will first note that this is precisely the same defense that is regularly offered up on behalf of other gatekeepers like Jordan Peterson and Ben Shapiro, and also of books like the Harry Potter series. Don’t criticize the obvious errors and the demonstrable falsehoods when they are otherwise doing so much good? Don’t you understand that if they tell the truth instead of lying, they won’t be able to reach as many of those who need the truth? Isn’t it better that they read godless tales of evil being portrayed as good than not read at all?

And the answer is no. This is a false, pernicious, and fundamentally short-sighted perspective. It is less a defense than an attempt to negotiate a guilty plea in exchange for a lesser penalty.

Racism, as coined, properly defined, and practically applied today, is not and has never been a sin. The Churchians like Wilson are speaking with forked tongues when they a) define it falsely and in a way that no one actually applies it, and b) therefore falsely claim it to be a sin.

The reader claims Wilson spearheads “a huge movement, that is reintroducing the youth to the Good, Beautiful, and True”, but that is obviously false because nothing that is build on a foundation of lies and sand will stand. The fact that Wilson and company “want more mainstream appeal” and that they “mean business” is not an argument for them, it is evidence against them. By that standard, Joel Osteen and Russell Moore are role models for the modern Evangelical.

It’s great that people are being inspired to homeschool, regardless of whether the inspiration comes from a Churchian evangelical or a Buddhist hippy. But there is no truth in Doug Wilson or in any other so-called “Evangelical” who preaches the Gospel of Civil Rights instead of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and who teaches from To Kill a Mockingbird and I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings instead of the Bible.

Let me be perfectly clear: No one who advocates equality of any kind, and no one who is a civic nationalist of any variety, and no one who falsely asserts that which is not a sin is a sin, should ever be considered a genuine or reliable advocate of the Good, the Beautiful, and the True, no matter what their other positive attributes might be.

Because liars cannot, and will not, defend the truth. They will always produce one reason or another for refusing to do so. And if you are foolish enough to trust or follow a liar, you will come to regret it, as all of you – and readers here should recall, the vast majority of you – who used to lionize Jordan Peterson and consider him to be a great intellectual champion should know.

PS: Stephen Wolfe’s Christian Nationalism is fake nationalism. It’s a religious form of civic nationalism that substitutes Christianity for US citizenship. He’s just another gatekeeper.

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The End of The Escapist

The collapse of The Escapist is an object lesson in when SJWs and financial interests take over a previously successful company:

When people ask me how to get into games journalism these days, my main piece of advice is “don’t.” I’m really not kidding, as while I am privileged to be where I am, it’s an almost impossible path to walk given the state of the industry and the instability found within.

Case in point, a wild scene unfolded last night as long-time gaming site The Escapist fired some of its team members, including EIC Nick Calandra, for reportedly not meeting goals set by its parent company Gamurs.

After Calandra was fired, Escapist staff members, contributors and producers all took to Twitter to announce they were also leaving the site, with many of them indicating they would be working on some new project with Calandra directly.

The departures and firings essentially cleaned out the entirety of The Escapist’s video department, including most significantly at all, the departure of Yahtzee Croshaw, the voice of Zero Punctuation, one of the oldest and most famous game criticism video series, and one I grew up watching long before I started doing this for a living. Croshaw resigned, but he does not own the rights to Zero Punctuation itself, so whatever he does next, it will be without that branding. Though it’s obvious the branding can’t survive without him, even if The Escapist retains it.

By all accounts Calandra was a great EIC, and clearly inspired a lot of loyalty in those working for him, given the events of last night. Gamurs feels like yet another company trying to squeeze blood from a stone with likely unreasonable growth targets in an industry where large increases are more or less impossible.

‘The Escapist’ Faces Mass Resignations After EIC Firing, 7 November 2023

Nor is The Escapist the only place where some major shakeups in entertainment journalism are coming. It’s going to be intriguing to see how things develop going forward, as some of our competitors – who shall go unnamed – are similarly structured and are facing similar pressures, which suggests that it may not be too much longer before experiencing similar disruptions forced by the financial interests.

As to why this is suddenly happening among companies that were acquired in the last ten years, the answer is economic: the acquisitions were made with debt that was obtained at historically low interest rates. Now that the interest rates on that debt is rising, the acquisitions are no longer as profitable as the acquiring company expected them to be, thereby leading the acquirers to put pressure on the acquired companies to produce more and more money.

Once these debt finance-driven demands start cutting into the resources required to perform basic functions, and once key personnel start leaving instead of subjecting themselves to the ever-increasing demands of the new owners, the death spiral has begun and the fate of the organization is sealed.

Which, of course, is a very good thing for its stronger, more conservative competitors.

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Infection is the Strategy

And not just in the context of allowing Covid-19 free access to the UK:

Dominic Cummings: “Britain has not been able to control its borders for many years, it doesn’t have the infrastructure to do it. If we had the capability it would only delay things by a trivial amount. And some people said closing the border was racist.. But if you’re going for a single wave herd immunity by September strategy, then faffing around with the borders wasn’t relevant”

Hugo Keith: “Do you mean, there was no point to shut out borders because the strategy was for people to get infected?”

Dominic Cummings: “Correct”

The borders of the West are being kept open in order to better sicken, harm, and ultimately replace the indigenous people of European Christendom.

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Junior Classics ebook editions

In order to maximize the availability of the Castalia Junior Classics to every homeschooling family, we’ve now made the Junior Classics volumes 1-8 available as ebook editions in DRM-free EPUB format for less than $35 for the 3,500-page set. Ebook backers of the project should check their emails tonight, as we’ll be sending out a code that will provide for a free download of all eight volumes, which are as follows:

  1. Fairy Tales & Fables
  2. Myths & Legends
  3. Tales of Greece & Rome
  4. Heroes of Chivalry
  5. Tales That Never Grow Old
  6. Stories of Boys & Girls
  7. The Animal Book
  8. Heroes of History

Readers have already seen what the covers and spines look like, but the interiors bear consideration too, as the layouts are done to the exacting Castalia Library specifications and feature literally hundreds of classic illustrations. Volume VII: The Animal Book contains the most illustrations of any book we’ve published to date; THE SEA OTTER is a particularly beautiful tale about one of my favorite animals.

    While Volume VIII: Heroes of History doesn’t contain as many illustrations as its predecessor, it does contain 35 stories about unforgettable historical figures from the most famous to the now-obscure spanning more than 2,000 years. Which means the young reader of this volume will come away with a grasp of human history that likely exceeds that of the average college history major.

    Volumes 9 and 10 are expected to be released next summer. We do not anticipate releasing these ebook editions as single volumes, but if we do, it will probably be via Amazon and not via the Arkhaven store.

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