#Arkhaven INFOGALACTIC #Castalia House
FULLSTRIKE! Episode 26: Sensei
THE CHRONICLES OF THE ADVENTURE, HUNTING, AND LIQUIDATION COMMITTEE Episode 20: The Secret Grove
THE WISE OF HEART Episode 44: An Unexpected Proposition
BLADE AND STAFF FOR HIRE Episode 6: ghoul investigation
FLYING SPARKS Episode 93: Inflicting Pain
Somehow, I doubt the UK police are going to arrest everyone who supports the Palestinians in the UK.
Thousands of pro-Palestine supporters are protesting across major UK cities, as police warned that anyone showing support for Hamas could face arrest.
Crowds holding placards demanding Israel ‘stop bombing Gaza’ have taken to the streets of London, Manchester, Liverpool, Bristol, Glasgow, Edinburgh and Newcastle.
The Met Police said they have deployed more than 1,000 officers to police the London demonstration amid fears of clashes.
There are far more people across the UK and Europe who support the Palestinians than support the Greater Israel project that requires either the ethnic cleansing or the genocide of millions of Arabs. It’s much more balanced in the US, of course, partly because Israeli citizens make up a significant proportion of the government and media there, but more because tens of millions of Christian Boomers believe they’ll be raptured straight to Heaven so long as they fly Israeli flags in their sanctuaries.
Anyhow, the IDF appears to be serious about beginning the ethnic cleansing of the northern part of Gaza and the US is engaging in a minor show of force in order to sufficiently intimidate Iran into staying out of the conflict. But there are so many narratives and so many possible outcomes involved here that it’s impossible at this point to say what is real and what is not, much less how the whole situation is going to play out over time.
Less than five years after founder Aaron Schatz sold the popular Football Outsiders site, it’s dead, done, and dusted.
Football Outsiders was founded in 2003 by Aaron Schatz. What began as his passion project grew into a fully fledged website for advanced football analytics and statistics such as DVOA (Defense-adjusted Value Over Average). Football Outsiders went on to strike partnerships with ESPN and became a popular source for hardcore football nerds and casual fans alike. In 2018, Schatz sold Football Outsiders to a company called EdjSports. He stayed on as editor-in-chief, and, according to longtime Football Outsiders writer Mike Tanier, the site continued to operate as normal.
Then, in September 2021, Champion Gaming, co-founded by Simmonds and Hershman, entered the picture. It acquired EdjSports, and Football Outsiders along with it, in late 2021 as part of a “reverse takeover,” a way for private companies to go public quickly without having to go through an Initial Public Offering. As part of the deal, Champion Gaming merged with a shell company called Prime City One Capital. According to a news report from the time, “the group closed a funding round of $3.65 million (CAD $4.62 million), giving it a roughly $12.3 million post-money valuation, and it is on track to begin trading in a few weeks.”
Champion Gaming had ambitions to expand beyond NFL coverage. It struck a licensing deal with Inpredictable, an NBA analytics website run by Mike Beuoy, and partnered with SharpRank, a sports betting resource. The terms and status of these partnerships are unclear; Beuoy and SharpRank did not respond to queries. Champion Gaming also brought on Chris Spagnuolo to oversee content (for a particular microgeneration of sports media consumers, Spagnuolo is best known as the guy who left Barstool Sports after writing a blog calling Rihanna fat), and hired ESPN’s Katie George to be a brand ambassador and create video content. Spagnuolo declined to comment. Defector was not able to reach George for comment.
By the summer after the takeover, changes at the top of the company were underway. In June 2022, Simmonds took over from Hershman as CEO; Wickham took over as CFO; and the company’s president, Chief Innovation Officer, and director all resigned. The company framed the changes as an exciting new chapter. Of Simmonds’s ascent to CEO, Hershman said in a press release, “Given his previous experience as a public markets CEO and his extensive background in online gambling, the board of directors and I determined that his leadership of the Company would be both ideal and appropriate to steer us going forward as we build a leading sports content and data intelligence business.”
But by the fall there were signs that the company was floundering. According to financial documents filed in November 2022, which are publicly available through Sedar, Canada’s securities filing system, the company had little cash flow and was carrying significant debt, especially relative to its revenues. In the first nine months of 2022, Champion Gaming reported $969,789 in revenue and $5,619,803 in losses. (All monetary figures cited in the filings are in CAD.) As of Sept. 30, 2022, the entire company had only $55,776 in cash, with even less coming in. As of the same date, the accounts receivable, meaning revenue the company accrued, but which they still needed to be paid, was only $13,911. On page six of the same filing, the company wrote: “These material uncertainties cast significant doubt as to the Company’s ability to continue as a going concern.”
The company’s main form of cash flow came from issuing equity and borrowing money.
Now, if your sole focus is money, it may make sense to literally sell out. Schatz probably made a nice bit from the initial sale, although he didn’t make the big score that would have resulted from the money guys going public or selling it to a big public corporation would have.
An operation like FO, despite its popularity, never makes all that much money. A million dollars sounds like a lot, but FO probably didn’t do much more than provide a reasonable living to its owners due to the need to pay for all the contract-based content produced. And as usual, the people who practically invented the NFL analytics game are about the only ones not profiting much from it.
“It’s just really disheartening to see this niche, special interest, really passionate sports blog that blossomed into a pretty influential sports analytics company, just get sucked dry so quickly,”
It is always disheartening to see how quickly, and how comprehensively, the financial parasites manage to destroy great little companies. So if you’re doing what you love, if it’s truly a passion, why sell out and run the very high risk of seeing your creation destroyed? For every sell-out that scores big, there are probably ten or more that end up dessicated, defunct, and forgotten. It’s amazing how many organizations that could have continued doing what they were doing almost indefnitely have disappeared as a result of cashing in and cashing out.
That’s one reason why Castalia subscribers need not worry about their source of world-class leather books going away, as long as enough people continue to subscribe to it. I am fully aware of the realities of the merger and acquisition market, which is why I won’t even agree to have “a conversation” with the financial pirates when they “reach out” to see if we’re interested in “exploring mutual opportunities”.
And speaking of Castalia, I would be remiss if I did not point out that CARAVAN OF THE DAMNED, Chuck Dixon’s Conan #2, is back in stock on Amazon.
Anyhow, at the end of the day, a man needs to ask himself: what is my purpose? And also, is money a necessary evil or is it the prime objective?
UPDATE: Caravan has also reached the fulfilment house for those who bought direct. The cover colors look brilliant.
STONETOSS Episode 232: Whodunit
SHOTGUN SAMURAI Episode 16: Shotgun Samurai
FAIRY DOOR Episode 48: Moonstricken
THE SWORD OF GOD Episode 67: Epilogue III–Tactical Stuffy
CHATEAU GRIEF Episode 302: It was Grok to Me
You can call the truth whatever you like. You can utilize rhetoric to make people fear to speak the truth. But none of that will ever change the fact that it is the truth.
Students have accused a Cambridge University professor of racism after he tweeted ‘Import the Arab World, become the Arab World’ in response to footage of pro-Palestinian protesters in London.
Dr James Orr, an academic at the Faculty of Divinity, made the comments on a video showing crowds of demonstrators outside the Israeli embassy in Kensington on Monday – two days after Hamas terrorists attacked Israel.
The footage showed protesters waving Palestinian flags and holding banners in Kensington High Street, where the air was thick with smoke from flares. At one moment it panned to men who were praying on the street.
It is racist for a people to wish to remain a people and retain their language, customs, religion, laws, and culture. That’s literally what the neologism “racism” was coined to describe by the US general who articulated it as part of his personal war on the American Indian, and it is what it has always meant despite repeated attempts to move the goalposts as required for the purposes of rhetorical effectiveness.
The only thing that has changed is that people have been deeply indoctrinated to believe that racism is bad, even that it is a sin. The important thing is to understand that it is not possible to a) prefer to preserve your nation, your language, your customs, your laws, and your religion and b) not be racist.
The sooner people stop running in fear from rhetoric, the better.
The correct response to accusations of racism is a simple question: why do you think racism is bad?
You will not want to miss this one. The Big Bear is back and he’s doing what he does best: standup comedy without a filter, without a leash, and without authorization.
See OwenBenjamin DOT com for details. It will be released on Unauthorized as well.
Iran discovers why neither Russia nor China are interested in talking substantively to the USA or making any deals with it anymore.
Washington has gone back on its promise to unblock $6 billion in frozen Iranian assets even after Tehran released five American citizens accused of espionage against the Islamic Republic.
Under the deal last month, the money was transferred from a South Korean bank to a bank in Qatar, where Tehran could access it under strict monitoring by the US Treasury Department to ensure that the cash is used only for humanitarian purposes.
However, on Thursday, the US and Qatar reportedly reached an “understanding” that Doha will ignore any withdrawal requests from Tehran, according to several officials who spoke to the media on condition of anonymity.
You know, the American Indians could have told them how pointless and self-defeating it is to make any deal with the USA. From 1772 to 1867, the US government signed 374 treaties with American Indian tribes. It broke nearly every single one.
The Russians are right. The USA is agreement-incapable, which is why it is incredibly stupid and short-sighted for any sovereign entity, be it friendly or inimical, to sign any agreement or come to any “understanding” with a representative of the US government.
Prompted by your post today on seeing your neologisms in common usage, I thought it might interest you to know that middle schoolers at a Methodist church in Orlando, FL are using your expanded SSH terms casually in conversation with each other. I’m a parent and small group leader, so I’ve been able to have some interesting conversations. Without giving away that I was aware of the terms, I asked what they meant (as if they were any inscrutable zoomer slang), and they were using them more or less correctly.
The ideas, they disseminate. It’s encouraging that the younger generations will have the opportunity to understand and utilize their behavioral patterns in a way that their predecessors did not. Like most information, it can be used for good or for ill, but making informed decisions tends to lead to better consequences than uninformed ones. And before one can surmount one’s flaws and weaknesses, one must be aware of them.
Speaking of surmounting one’s flaws, a woman on SG seeks to understand what not being solipsistic is like.
Does male non-solipsism mean that when a man gains any information, he does not by default consider its relevance to himself? Sincere question from a mystified woman. #womanposting
That’s correct. It should be readily apparent, in fact, by the way men have a habit of turning themselves into subject matter experts in their particular areas of interest which have nothing whatsoever to do with the man involved. When I was working out the details concerning whether Lionel Messi was the greatest soccer player of all time – and he quite clearly is – the thought of comparing myself to him, or to Ronaldo, or to Pele, never crossed my mind. I simply wasn’t relevant to the topic. It never occurred to me to work out my own career goals-pens+assists per-game average.
Men tend to be more interested in the idea, the subject, or the event for itself than in its potential relationship to himself. This, by the way, is why so many men find women to be tedious and seldom enjoy talking with them, because the female tendency to turn every conversation toward herself is readily apparent, mildly annoying, and generally uninteresting.
For example, let’s say that you took in a family of Ukrainian refugees after the start of the special military operation. Do you mention that every time the topic of the Ukraine war comes up? It might be relevant if the discussion is about refugees or the depopulation of Ukraine, but most of the time, it won’t be. There is a lot to discuss about the war that doesn’t have anything to do with you or your past actions. Every mention of a subject that has something tangentially to do with you is not an invitation to start talking about yourself, and should not be taken as one. In most cases, you would do well to resist that solipsistic urge.
One thing I would encourage women to do, if they want to be held in higher regard by men, is a) to be aware of the conversational context, and b) to never talk about themselves or to mention people that the men don’t know. To better understand the desirability of this try silently counting the number of “I” and “me” used by your interlocutors when they engage in a conversational soliloquy. It can be very enlightening.
A good conversation is not two or more people waiting to talk and exchanging unrelated monologues. Try actually listening to people, no matter how tedious or stupid they are. You really can learn a lot from them, even when what they’re talking about is of zero interest to you.
Gammas and Lambdas are the most solipsistic men, which is why they are also the men who most enjoy talking with women and who are most likely to be a woman’s best male friend. Show me a man who is a woman’s best friend, and if he isn’t gay, nine times out of ten he’ll be a gamma who secretly pines after her.
It’s interesting to observe that another of my neologisms has gradually spread into common usage. It’s always fascinating to see what previously unarticulated concepts are found to be useful by others, and which are not, because the only reason I create them is for my own private reference in the absence of any existing term. There doesn’t appear to be much rhyme or reason to it; I personally think the distinction between the three aspects of science is considerably more useful than identifying the Sigma behavioral pattern, for example.
I created the term midwit to explain the phenomenon I was observing of individuals who, while not stupid by any conventional intellectual measure, nevertheless behaved like angry, retarded chimpanzees whenever presented with any concept or abstract thought beyond their ability to follow. They also exhibited what struck me as the bizarre tendency to attempt to lecture those who were not only their intellectual superiors, but also those whose knowledge, credentials, and experience considerably exceeded their own on the matter at hand.
As the midwit is more intelligent than the norm, albeit not significantly more intelligent, his IQ will generally fall somewhere in the 105 to 120 range. The midwit is therefore someone who, in his formative youthful years, is accustomed to thinking of himself as one of the smartest kids in his junior high school class, even though that is only statistically true of the upper end of the midwit range. But even at the low end, the midwit tends to be smarter than two out of every three people he encounters.
However, unlike the high school athlete who discovers he is unable to compete at the college level, let alone the professional level, the midwit never quite relinquishes the idea that he is, fundamentally, a Smart Boy who Knows Better than everyone else. It is the midwit, more than anyone else, who dictated the need to articulate Vox’s 1st Law.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from insanity.
However, the midwit is even more inclined to claim that anything he cannot understand, and anyone who is observably more intelligent than him, is “stupid”. This is because the midwit relies upon a tautological syllogism.
Those who understand the socio-sexual hierarchy will see that there is a strong correlation between the midwit and the gamma, although the two concepts are not identical. There are no shortage of Delta midwits, and the midwit illogic is not based on psychological issues or insecurity, but rather, ignorance and intellectual immaturity.
The midwit’s fundamental problem is that he is insufficiently intelligent to communicate with the most intelligent. The difference between the midwit and both VHIQ and UHIQ intellects exceeds the 30-point IQ communications gap, and the midwit’s pride in his intelligence prevents him from accepting his relative retardery enough to listen to the simplistic explanations he is able to follow.
Which is why midwits, like the poor, will always be with us.
Haruki Murakami explains how to become a better writer:
“Hello, Mr Murakami. I’ve always enjoyed reading your books. Currently I’m a graduate student, so I’ve got to deal with reports, presentation planning, and emails and letters to professors, and anyway I have to write a lot of compositions. But the fact is, I’m really not good at writing composition. But be that as it may, if I can’t write I can’t graduate and I’m in a tough position, so since it can’t be helped I do my writing while struggling and groaning. Is there nothing I can do to make writing easier? If you have any advice, like what you’d find in a composition primer, I would be most grateful for it.”
Considering that getting into graduate school in the first place is no mean feat, we’re going to give Ms Sakurai the benefit of the doubt and assume she has a decent head on her shoulders, problems with the pen notwithstanding. Also, having shown the wherewithal to recognize her own academic shortcomings, plus the initiative in reaching out to someone who appears to be a more-than-qualified mentor, we’d also say she’s got the commitment and work ethic necessary to overcome her difficulties.
So how did the famous author respond?
“The act of writing is the same as sweet-talking a woman, in that you can get better, to an extent, with practice. Fundamentally, though, your abilities are determined by the talents you’ve been born with. Well, anyway, do your best.”
Haruki Murakami’s advice, Japan Today, 23 Jan 2015
A lot of people ask a lot of writers about how to become a better writer, seeking to learn the secret about making writing less painful, completing a book, writing something that a lot of people want to read, or writing a bestseller. And while Murakami’s answer is effectively the only practical one, I would provide a little more detail on the basis of my experience.