#Arkhaven INFOGALACTIC #Castalia House
One of the pioneers of military science fiction has died. He was primarily known as a Baen Books author, although several of his short stories appeared in the THERE WILL BE WAR series.
There is more about Drake and his career on the Arkhaven blog.
3 Minnesota Vikings
0 Las Vegas Raiders
I’d love to be able to say that the Purple People Eaters are back, but in truth, the game was the epitome of a battle between two overmatched third-string quarterbacks. It wasn’t so much a defensive struggle as a display of complete offensive ineptitude, as well as the lowest-scoring game since the infamous Snowplow Game of December 12, 1982 without the excuse of being played in a driving blizzard.
I don’t think I’d ever seen multiple 2-and-17 situations in a game before. And all three quarterbacks combined for an average rating of 64.5. That’s not QBR either, that’s the old school rating that tops out at 158.3, and in which Brock Purdy currently leads the league at 116.1.
In other NFL news, a once-burning question has been resurrected. It has to be asked in light of the man’s 3 TD, 311-yard performance in a victory over Jacksonville with playoff implications.
Is Joe Flacco elite?
UPDATE: This is how elite he is. Per ProFootballTalk:
The situation is unprecedented. Coach Kevin Stefanski named Flacco the starter for the rest of the season. Even though Flacco isn’t really on the team.
Now that’s what you call “leverage”.
PAPER DOLL VERONIKA Episode 89: View from high altitude
AFTER ATLANTIS Episode 17: Power snapped
FULL OF EYES Episode 60: Medallions 1/4: Along the Path
THE SAGA OF THE NANO TEMPLAR Episode 10: The Sheikh is Waiting
AESOPS FABLES Episode 24: The Swallow and the Crow
TREASURY OF TALES Episode 30: The Golden Goose
BOVODAR & THE BEARS Episode 25: The Key, I Think
CHATEAU GRIEF Episode 322: Hard Like Case
QUANTUM MORTIS Episode 58: Costa Nova
What a brave, stunning, and totally unpredicted move by the BBC! What a triumph of inclusivity, equality, and creative genius! And when the show’s ratings start next season in the loo and go further downhill from there, we’ll all know that it is the unmitigated racism of the British people that is solely responsible for its failure.
The sad thing is that Black Doctor Who is actually a concept that could be more than a little entertaining, except it would require actual black people to write and produce what would essentially begin as a parody in the vein of the 1970s films. I mean, who wouldn’t think a gangster Time Lord traveling around time with a blinged-out Tardis full of smoke and skanked-out street entrepreneurs wasn’t at least moderately amusing? Especially if Flavor Flav was the Black Doctor.
Or better yet, Snoop.
But I doubt there is a single British screenwriter who would even dare to imagine writing such a script, and certainly none working for the BBC.
These two useful concepts, one a neologism, the other an aphorism, stem from the same SG thread, which may be of interest to those who have read, at a minimum, both Taleb and Gladwell, but which I will not cite here due to the inevitability of various tangents.
Syncreto-retardery: Relative cognitive incapacity. Syncreto-retardery should not be confused with literal retardery of the below-70 IQ variety, although it is worth noting in this quantified context that the midwit stands no closer to the VHIQ and UHIQ than the literal retard does to him. And let’s not even get started on the average…
VDDQ: “If you admire a man’s books, ignore his Twitter account.”
Very, very few men, myself included, find it easy to ignore the flattering requests for one’s opinion about a wide variety of subjects of which one knows nothing. I do my best to ignore these requests and I’m usually successful in doing so the first two or three times I’m asked. But it can be difficult to resist the temptation to at least say something that sounds more or less reasonable when faced with repeated requests for one’s thoughts on the issue du jour, even when those thoughts are nonexistent.
We wouldn’t think half so well of Aristotle or other great historical thinkers if a) they had social media accounts and b) we had access to them.
The unholy alliance of the Biden administration with the Republican neocons is in a sudden state of alarm and is inexplicably attempting to stir up the US citizenry for war with Russia.
You’ll recall in the last report I emphasized how the tone was now shifting to: “Russia will invade Europe next!” But even I didn’t expect them to run with that new narrative in such a provocative and alarmist way.
Now a new raft of reports and statements from the usual suspects gives us insight into how desperate the establishment warhawks representing MIC interests have really become.
First, these two videos. Biden openly says that American troops will have to fight Russian troops if Ukraine is not shored up immediately.
Kirby and Blinken stepped up the fearmongering as well, evoking spilled “American blood”:
They’re dialing up the fearporn to a hysteric level like never before:
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin warned Congress on Tuesday during a private briefing that if they do not pass more aid to Ukraine, it would “very likely” lead to U.S. troops fighting a war in Europe.
“If [Vladimir] Putin takes over Ukraine, he’ll get Moldova, Georgia, then maybe the Baltics,” House Foreign Affairs Chairman Michael McCaul (R-TX) told The Messenger, after Austin and other senior Biden administration officials briefed House lawmakers on their request for more aid for Ukraine.
“And then the idea that we’ll have to put troops on the ground in Secretary Austin’s word was very likely,” McCaul added. “That’s what we’re trying to avoid.”
Recall in the last report I cited Moldova as precisely the next vector, given the sensitivity of the PMR pressure point for Russia. Most notable is his express use of the qualifier “very likely” to describe U.S. troops fighting on the ground. In fact, the U.S. has been preparing for this grand European war for a while now.
Establishment Alarmism in Overdrive, 8 December 2023
The political situation of the Kiev regime must be crumbling rapidly in Ukraine, and the hysteric tone of the rhetoric suggests that Russia has rebuffed the various settlement overtures that have been made to it. Recall that it wasn’t long ago that Kagan and the other leading neocons were calling for an end to hostilities on the Russian front in order to make a turn to the Chinese front possible. Then, Hamas and Israel opened up the Middle Eastern front.
So, how is it possible that fighting a three-front war is suddenly deemed better than fighting one on two fronts?
The logical answer is that the US no longer has the luxury of deciding upon how many fronts it is going to fight. It has entirely lost the geostrategic initiative due to the failure of its proxy in Ukraine, the weakness of its Greatest Ally in the Middle East, and the observable reluctance of its satrapies in Europe and Asia. On every front, it is the nationalist rebels against Clown World’s global empire who now are in control of what happens next.
And that is not a state to which the self-styled masters of the world have been accustomed for a very long time.
UPDATE: It should not be surprising that the strategists and politicians of Clown World do not recognize the limitations of the US military, given that the US military itself does not yet recognize them.
“You look at what is required to support Ukraine, look at what might be required to support our partner in Israel, and then, of course, you put Taiwan on top of that—we have the construct that we do with combatant commanders and the rest that should allow us to command and control those three things all at one time.”
—Admiral Christopher Grady, Vice Chairman, the Joint Chiefs of Staff
However, notice that the admiral used the term “command and control”. That means they do not have the men, the ships, the planes, or the missiles. They think they’re going to be able to fight two more proxy wars of the kind they have already lost in Ukraine.
I also think it’s a mistake to assume that the Sino-Russian alliance is incapable of opening more than the three obvious fronts. See: Niger, Venezuela.
One of the things I admire about NN Taleb is his ability, unlike most intellectuals, to openly and unashamedly admit that he was wrong about something. That’s one of the reasons I take him seriously even on those rare occasions when I think he has gotten it wrong.
I concede that @DavidSacks is correct about the relative strength of the parties in the Ukraine war, and I was WRONG. Russia is not as weak as it seemed; it has staying power. This means a settlement is the likely outcome.
And by “likely outcome” he means “the rational outcome”. But since NATO is, by most perspectives, an intrinsically irrational party, I wouldn’t place too much confidence in that. After all, what is the point in Russia signing a third Minsk agreement with parties who have repeatedly proven to be agreement-incapable?
Still, it’s good to see the more intelligent elements of the mainstream perspective beginning to understand that Russia was always going to win its war against NATO in Ukraine.
For those who are interested in following along what Castalia is doing with the Library, we’re going to make a concerted effort to keep the Castalia Library Collectors group up to date. The group is approved admission only, so feel free to sign up and then request permission to join the group. Among other things, it has official lists of what the past and present subscription books are for Library/Libraria, History, as well as the non-subscription books.
And while it’s too soon to announce any specifics, I’m very pleased to be able to say we have reached agreements with three major publishers regarding books we plan to offer as separate subscriptions. In a few special cases, one book, or at most two books, in the series will be offered as part of either the Library or the History subscription, but in such cases we will design the book(s) in such a way as to make it clear to which subscription it belongs.
On the bindery front, we still have one final issue to resolve, and two issues that we believe are resolved, but must be further tested to ensure they are, in fact, resolved, before we declare it fully operational and begin work on Heidi (Deutsch) and the two Homers.
Now, money is largely an illusion anyhow, so it’s not actually the stretch it might appear to be as the US Supreme Court contemplates giving the IRS the ability to tax theoretical gains that don’t actually exist yet.
If the Supreme Court rules in favor of the government, and allows it to redefine income to include any unrealized appreciation in any asset, then it will grant the Federal Government a new power to nationalize the entire asset stock of the nation. In hyperinflation, the only refuge people have is the ability to hold real assets and never sell them. But if the Federal Government can claim unrealized inflationary gains as being taxable income, then almost all Americans will be forced to sell their assets just to pay their tax liabilities. But with all assets up for sale at once, the most likely buyer will be the Federal Government itself, which will pay in near worthless paper. In one decision, the Supreme Court would have rendered the Constitution meaningless, effectively illuminated private property rights, and provided the Federal Government with the legal mechanism to pull off a communist revolution without having to fire a single shot.
This would be absolutely and utterly absurd, as well as rendering all taxation perfectly subjective, but then, so much of Clown World is that one can’t simply assume that the US Supreme Court will not find some emanation or penumbra that permits it to invent a new federal power.
I mean, why not simply allow people to book theoretical profits while they’re at it? Sure, you might have held on to the stock too long, but if we simply imagine that you had sold it when it was at its peak, then you’d have made a lot more money, which, if properly recognized, will permit you to stimulate the economy with your imputed profits.
Everybody wins!
ALT★HERO: Q Episode 70: Q Knows
HYPERGAMOUSE Episode 103: Inconsiderate
WARDOGS INC. Episode 35: An Excellent View
