Category: Uncategorized

Monday Night McCarthy

After three quarters of the offense doing less than nothing and scoring -1 points, the Vikings finally managed to put it all together and come back for a 27-24 win against the Bears. McCarthy looked frighteningly bad under pressure throughout the first three quarters, holding the ball too long, getting repeatedly sacked, and even throwing a pick-six to an ex-Viking, until apparently Kevin O’Connell told the OC to start throwing the ball down the field to Justin Jefferson. An excellent 4th quarter meant McCarthy finished with respectable stats: 13 of 20 for 143 yards, 2 TD, 1 INT, 98.5 QBR plus a rushing TD, and in his first game he accomplished something that tended to evade Kurt Cousins in his entire tenure, namely, a big win over a conference rival on national TV.

Other observations:

  • The defense has to improve its pass rush. It had three sacks; it should have had nine.
  • Jordan Mason was a nice pickup at RB for the Vikings. He looked shifty.
  • Caleb Williams looked like a cross between an eel and the young Russell Wilson in the pocket.
  • Justin Jefferson hasn’t missed a beat. When in doubt, throw him the ball. Also, when not in doubt, throw him the ball.
  • The Vikings clearly missed the Hitman in the secondary. And on the blitz.
  • McCarthy’s accuracy was not great and he was holding the ball a little too long when Chicago was obviously blitzing. On the TD pass to Aaron Jones, the ball was two yards short. But he’s got courage, the other players clearly like him, and the potential is definitely there.
  • McCarthy is the first Vikings quarterback to throw multiple touchdown passes in his debut since Fran Tarkenton threw four against the Bears in 1961.

All in all, beating Chicago at Soldier Field on Monday Night is not a bad start for a young QB, especially on a night when the defense wasn’t particularly good. And ruining Ben Johnson’s debut as a head coach is just a bonus.

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No Confidence in France

The French government collapsed again for the second time in nine months:

Emmanuel Macron has faced humiliation today as his government lost a confidence vote, plunging France into political chaos after Prime Minister Francois Bayrou warned his peers to not make ‘the same mistake as the British’.

The French parliament voted to bring down the government today over its plans to tame its skyrocketing national debt, with the political crisis only deepening as the President now has the task of finding a fifth Prime Minister in under two years.

François Bayrou only became France’s PM nine months ago, but now, he must resign after 364 of 573 of the government’s deputies voted against the vote of confidence.

The 74-year-old centrist pledged to ‘fight like a dog’ to stay in power, but could not prevent the collapse of his government on Monday night.

As Assembly President Yaël Braun-Pivet announced the result, MPs applauded loudly and Mr Bayrou sat in silence.

‘The National Assembly has not approved the Prime Minister’s general policy statement,’ Ms Braun-Pivet said.

‘The Prime Minister now has to submit the resignation of the government to the President of the republic.’

This will happen on Tuesday, Ms Braun-Pivet added, and the current French administration will immediately dissolve.

The Front National had better not imagine that it can be successful without delivering massive change, and even bigger repatriations, for the French people when it finally comes to power as the very last political alternative.

Liberalism is dead. We’re rapidly approaching the last gasp for any form of democracy in Western Europe.

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The End of Anti-Racist Liberalism

In which ESR, a smart, well-educated anti-racist liberal, reluctantly accepts that the racists who fought against the imposition of civil rights in the United States were right all along:

“The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere / The ceremony of innocence is drowned;”

The part of me that was once an idealistic anti-racist liberal marching for civil rights died its final death last night as I watched the video of Irina Zarutska on the Charlotte light rail, being fatally stabbed in the throat from behind by a black savage I refuse to name.

What has finally broken me is, incidents like that aren’t even a surprise anymore. The frequency of brutal, senseless murders by “African-Americans”, both individually and in predatory mobs, has risen exactly as rapidly as social and coercive controls on their behavior have weakened.

Meanwhile, for anybody who’s wondering, American whites still have about the same crime rate as Switzerland. When enforcement of norms disintegrates, only intelligent people with low time preference still act civilized.

As I’ve watched us sliding down the civilizational failure gradient, the question I’ve been increasingly unable to dismiss is this: was the whole ugly apparatus of racial repression – segregation, sundown towns, lynchings -really just senseless hatred? Or was it a rational containment strategy evolved under pressure from living alongside a large, visually distinct population of low-IQ savages?

I think I know the answer now. And I hate knowing it. I preferred my innocence.

It doesn’t do any good to protest that this particular savage was “mentally ill”, whatever you think that means. The mobs that routinely form to beat up and kill whites unwary enough to wander onto their turf aren’t psychotic, unless all Blacks are psychotic.

Yes, yes, I know. If you were to select a population of whites for the same distribution of IQ and time preference as American Blacks, and then coddle them, scholarship out their brightest kids for four generations, and tell them all of their failures are society’s fault, you’d get the same level of pathology and violence in about the time it took you to say “dyscultural and dysgenic”.

That doesn’t matter. We’re not dealing with that hypothetical. We’re dealing with reality. The reality is that we have a predation problem that will only be solved when our actual population of low IQ savages is contained again. Creatures like Irina’s murderer, cognitively unable to participate in civilization, must be subject to either segregation or repression so brutal that they live in fear of it.

I don’t really want to live in the kind of society that can do either these things. But Irina Zarutska’s murder is the seal on my realization that there are no longer soft options, only hard choices.

I’d prefer the one where armed citizens routinely shoot down creatures like that at the time of the attempted crime, or immediately after it. All the alternatives seem far worse.

My only observation would be that the problem isn’t four generations in the making, it’s one that would require about 1,000 years of relentless eugenics to solve given the time to civilization required for the erstwhile savages of Northern Europe.

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Focus on the Homeland

A long overdue shift from maintaining the failing Pax Americana to defending the US homeland would be a very welcome change.

Pentagon officials are proposing the department prioritize protecting the homeland and Western Hemisphere, a striking reversal from the military’s yearslong mandate to focus on the threat from China. A draft of the newest National Defense Strategy, which landed on Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s desk last week, places domestic and regional missions above countering adversaries such as Beijing and Moscow, according to three people briefed on early versions of the report.

The move would mark a major shift from recent Democrat and Republican administrations, including President Donald Trump’s first term in office, when he referred to Beijing as America’s greatest rival. And it would likely inflame China hawks in both parties who view the country’s leadership as a danger to U.S. security.

“This is going to be a major shift for the U.S. and its allies on multiple continents,” said one of the people briefed on the draft document. “The old, trusted U.S. promises are being questioned.”

Why the American people should give one quantum of a damn about “old, trusted US promises” given to foreigners when none of the promises given to them have been kept is an obvious question. But Simplicius and others doubt that this “major shift” is real anyhow.

Recall the US even under Trump has dragged its feet for years on initiatives to pull troops from Iraq, Europe, etc. An excuse is always somehow resurrected at the last moment which buys the MIC time and keeps US occupation forces perpetually in places where their presence stirs conflict, exacerbates tensions, and unnecessarily provokes so-called “adversaries” like Russia, China, or Iran. US troops in Syria, for instance—which Trump has likewise failed to pull—have done nothing but facilitate conflict, act as JTACs for Israeli strike corridors, etc.; the claim of being some sort of ‘peacekeepers’ is a sham.

If the troops are brought back from Europe and the Middle East, the borders are manned, and the mass repatriations begin, then perhaps we can take some of these pronouncements seriously. But until then, it’s all just irrelevant noise.

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Baseless Con

Castalia doesn’t support any con that treats people this way, particularly not one of our authors:

For the last five years, Libertarian author Robert Kroese has been running an alternative convention to the mainstream industry-run cons such as WorldCon, with the intention of making it an alternative. Unfortunately, the convention has turned into much the same liberal gatekeeping as those conventions, as the convention banned me after Kroese could not handle my calling modern woke D&D “Satanic” (rightfully in my opinion), and proceeded to cancel me over my journalism calling out problems in the gaming industry.

There’s much more to the reason robkroese went full-cancel that has to do with his personal ego with the convention rather than anything I’ve done, which is why his continued actions have been beyond absurd, and it’s been a debate of whether Fandom Pulse should address this matter at all.

I’m chosing to for two reasons: 1. Fandom Pulse provides the best comprehensive coverage of conventions with bad behaviors, and this is no different despite my being the focus of the story, 2. because at the convention, Kroese is taking the stage dedicating an entire panel to personally attacking me, which I’ve never heard of a convention doing in the history of cons, making this an incredibly exceptional situation. Despite saying there’s no panel, what is giving a 20-minute talk from a stage of a convention if not a panel?

Below is the history of what transpired and why this is simply a mockery of the name “BasedCon.”

The cucks and cons who act as if they’re any sort of alternative to the SJWs in genre fiction, while attempting to police ideas, politics, and tone in exactly the same manner as those to whom they purport to be an alternative, are as useless and ultimately ephemeral as the Bush Republicans.

They’re just another form of gatekeeper, and they are always opposed to anything that isn’t more of the status quo, only with a conservative varnish. But they’ll cancel people over insufficient enthusiasm for the Gazacaust as readily as the SJWs will cancel someone for insufficient enthusiasm for transgender children.

Anyhow, this is why we don’t support BasedCon, although since we’re not into the business of socially policing anyone, we don’t have any problem with those who choose to attend it, or WorldCon, or ComicCon, or any of the various other events that we ignore as we continue to build infrastructure that will not only last generations, but hopefully, centuries.

Before the end of October, we’ll have the ability to produce mainstream-sized print runs, but in leather. It’s taken a very long time for all of the pieces to come together, but we’re finally getting to where we knew we needed to be. And there will very likely be some developments well beyond what anyone is imagining is possible in the next few years, as our strategic plan for the next stage will take most people by surprise.

Which is why I’m making it clear now that we will work with anyone who simply wishes to do business in a professional manner, regardless of whatever their past antics may have been. We are focused on producing the best and most beautiful books in the world, and while there is certain content we will not publish, we don’t concern ourselves with policing the opinions of our current or prospective partners.

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Japanese PM Resigns

Okay, I jumped the gun on this one by a few weeks, but the inevitable has now occurred:

Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba resigned on Sunday, ushering in a potentially lengthy period of policy uncertainty at a shaky moment for the world’s fourth-largest economy. Having just ironed out final details of a trade deal with the United States to lower President Donald Trump’s punishing tariffs, Ishiba, 68, told a press conference he must take responsibility for a series of bruising election losses.

Since coming to power less than a year ago, the unlikely premier has overseen his ruling coalition lose its majorities in elections for both houses of parliament amid voter anger over rising living costs. He instructed his Liberal Democratic Party – which has ruled Japan for almost all of the post-war period – to hold an emergency leadership race, adding he would continue his duties until his successor was elected.

“With Japan having signed the trade agreement and the president having signed the executive order, we have passed a key hurdle,” Ishiba said, his voice seeming to catch with emotion. “I would like to pass the baton to the next generation.”

Ishiba has faced calls to resign since the latest of those losses in an election for the upper house in July.

Ishiba has also been pushing Clown World immigration policies on Japan, which has been a factor in the rise of the new anti-immigration Japanese party that helped keep the LDP out of the majority.

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Most Authors Will Get Nothing

A lot of authors are very excited about the announcement of the Anthropic settlement that promises to pay out about $3,000 per work to the authors whose work was pirated.

There’s just one problem: the settlement excludes 92.8 percent of the pirated works, including pretty much all foreign authors, foreign publishers – including Castalia House – and self-published authors. Even worse, there is absolutely no path to legal redress for them in the US courts.

AI Central explains why.

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Mailvox: Tactical Dominance isn’t Victory

An American military analyst shared his professional opinion about the challenge facing the Israeli military, as the Netanyahu regime appears to be writing checks the IDF knows it can’t cash:

Israel’s professional military is what has generated its tactical dominance — operationally and strategically, its position is deteriorating faster than almost anyone predicted, evidently excluding me, and the General who was in charge of training the IDF’s generals.

The IDF’s general officer corps is currently openly fretting about a potential war with both Egypt and Turkiye — they didn’t consider either scenario even a remote possibility 2 years ago, with the only people who frequently pointed out the possibility of war with Egypt being old Shin Bet Egypt hands that’ve scrupulously documented the Egyptian military’s build-up.

To be clear, the IDF’s generals concluded that they’d functionally lost the Gaza war like 4 months after it started. They’re not stupid. A major contributing factor to this strategic miscarriage is the IDF’s conscription policy, which has cultivated a general sentiment of martial invincibility that really is not grounded in material reality. That’s enabled the Israeli government’s designated wingnuts to push through flamboyantly strategically self-defeating regional policies because their support base has a “we can take them” attitude rooted in their temporary service, despite Israel not having fought anyone even approaching peer status in 50 years.

I shouldn’t even have to expound upon the IDF’s conscripts’ bad battlefield performance, and their high casualty rates when they actually see combat. The professional Israeli Army has borne the brunt of the actual fighting, and even they’ve been experiencing manpower shortages for over a year now — largely from casualties absorbed.

Now, I don’t put much stock in American military analysts anymore, much less European military analysts, since most of them have been so observably wrong with regards to both the Ukrainian and the Taiwan situation. But, in the case, the analyst correctly predicted the same thing that students of Martin van Creveld also knew, which is that a Gaza operation would most likely cause the serious deterioration of both the IDF’s military capabilities as well as its strategic position in the region.

Goliath can’t find David for an extended period of time without degrading its morale, its morals, and its military capabilities. It’s the same reason police make terrible combat soldiers. Becoming accustomed to outnumbering and outgunning the opponent by a significant margin is not conducive to developing the skills, mindset, and practices required to defeat a genuine peer; there is a reason why the oddsmakers favor college football teams who test themselves with formidable opponents early in the season over those who schedule cupcakes.

Imagine if Notre Dame played nothing but high school teams all season, then went up against Ohio State. That’s pretty much what the IDF has done for the last 50 years. Although its special operations have been wildly successful with the support of the USA in Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon, none of these geostrategic accomplishments – and the unseating of the Assad regime in Syria was particularly impressive – actually have anything to do with genuine military combat. And I see no signs that the IDF has begun to start even trying to apply the lessons of the new generation of infantry warfare developed in Nagorno-Karabakh and Ukraine.

This may explain why the Netanyahu regime recently backed down from its intentions to announce the annexation of the West Bank. The ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians from Greater Israel is obviously its goal, but saner heads in Israel understand that openly pursuing that objective will likely trigger a war it is unlikely to win.

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Never Seen That Before

The Golden Gophers were up 59-0 over some team called Northwestern State which looked more like Northwestern College in Roseville. After the stadium ran out of fireworks, and it became clear that even the substitutes were too much for the NSU players, the referee announced that the game had been called by mutual consent midway through the fourth quarter with the score at 66-0.

I’m not saying it was the wrong decision. In fact, given the circumstances, it was probably the right thing to do. I just want to know why they didn’t call the game early back in the days when the Gophers were losing 73-0 to Nebraska.

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Fear of a Dark Lord

People occasionally ask me why I am often referred to as a “dark lord” and why my various minions, ilk, followers, and fans address me as “SDL”. This is just one of the many reasons why:

I’ve discovered that any reference to you or the SSH shuts down, and makes inoperable, Proton’s AI, Lumo.

When even artificial intelligences fear to speak your name, or dare to even attempt to write in your style, well, you just might be a dark lord.

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