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The Ugliness of Burning Man

The absence of beauty at Burning Man (PDF) sends up major red flags, in the trained artist’s eye of Miles Mathis:

What’s wrong with a bunch of people getting together and sharing their garage-craft creations and watching light shows? On the surface, nothing. If this event took place in a culture that still had a top end of art, I don’t think it would bother me at all. I am not interested in car shows, but car shows don’t distress me. I am not interested in monster trucks, but they don’t distress me as an artist. There are a lot of things that I don’t participate in or even that I don’t really understand that don’t distress me. I think of them as things that other people do, and no harm done. But events like Burning Man give me a bad vibe. They always have. I remind you of my paper on the Taos GlamTrash Fashion Show of many years ago, where I first tried to explain this. That event affected me just like Burning Man, because I think they come from the same place. My fiancée at the time didn’t understand my response to that, even after reading that paper, so I guess that is one reason I feel compelled to return to it. I think our disagreement on that was one reason we never got married. She never could understand why that event or those people bothered me so much. She thought I was just a stick-in-the-mud, raining on everyone’s parade.

My belief remains firm that if she really understood where the whole concept came from, she would agree with me. My hope is that maybe by viewing Steve Outtrim’s videos, she and others like her could finally comprehend the enormity of this whole project. She could not take my word for it, since we were too close. It is hard to take someone standing right next to you as an authority on anything. Strangely, that seems to require some distance. So the fact that this wealthy insider, who knows these people personally, would come to the same conclusion as me, might mean something.

The basic problem, as I see it, is that we are living in a time utterly devoid of real art. By that I mean art of beauty, subtlety and elevation. Sure, it still exists in museums, but almost nobody alive is now creating it. If they are, nobody cares. What is more, it didn’t just die out naturally. It has been killed with malice aforethought by the very people Steve Outtrim is outing: by the billionaires and trillionaires and their hirelings in the military, government, big tech, media, and academia. The death of real art and the rise of Modernism was not an organic fall and rise. It was planned and staged for various reasons which I have enumerated in hundreds of papers over three decades. These include the use of art in money laundering and the capture of the field for the talentless children of these rich families, who wanted to be artists but were not capable of it.

So someone like me can’t help but see Burning Man in that context. It is not just a meeting of grungeartisans and light show mavens. No, it is sold as a premier art event, drawing far more people and press than any art show in New York. In this sense, it is the low end of art posing as the high end.

Since the high end is extinct, almost no one notices. In the screaming artistic void that is the 21st century, the military tries to paper over the vacuum by filling it with fireworks and monstrous metal contraptions. Beneath that it promotes a bevy of marginally talented people—some of them admittedly energetic—far beyond their deserts. All to ensure that high art remains in the grave.

Burning Man and Modern Art, 3 September 2021

I find it intriguing how so many non-Christians, from Miles Mathis and Stefan Molyneux to Steve Keen and Camille Paglia, all react so similarly to the various aspects of Promethean pharisatanry despite their various and very different areas of expertise and knowledge. Whether they happen to be primarily in tune with the Good, the Beautiful, or the True, they are all offended on a deeply visceral level by the intentional violations of what they perceive to be correct and worthwhile.

Their understanding of the entire situation is intrinsically limited by their materialistic perspectives, but their perceptions are valid, their instincts are correct, and their revulsion is both real and entirely justified. This may help us understand how Christians not only admired the noble and virtuous pagans of the past, but went out of their way to protect and preserve their work. It is evidence of how God speaks to people in the darkness, and how He offers them many different pathways to lead them out of it and into the Light of the Truth that is Jesus Christ.

And, of course, it’s also fascinating to observe, over time, how integral core Christian theology and the Bible are required in order to make sense of the entire picture at hand. The more I read of anything from Renaissance history to Roman stoicism to modern esotericism, the more it becomes clear that the rampant evil that presently rules the world and is at war with everything Good, Beautiful, and True is the same ancient and seductive one that first convinced the exiles of Egypt to worship the idol of the golden calf, the same entity that Jesus Christ called the prince of this world, and whose blandishments he rejected in the desert.

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Requiem For a Viszla

Dana Perino’s eulogy for “America’s Dog”, Jasper the Viszla:

Jasper was first on “The Five” in June 2012, a tiny puppy that I could easily hold in my arms. I think he slept through that first appearance, but a star was born.

I couldn’t help bringing up Jasper and his antics on air. Greg Gutfeld loved to tease me about it, which made me do it more. He even came up with a fake dog of his named Casper. No one knows what happened to Casper. Somebody check Greg’s basement, please.

I would post photos of Jasper and all his antics and adventures. People got a kick out of his “lil’ ear” – half of his left ear was missing – perhaps bitten off by a sibling when they were fighting for room in the womb. It gave him real character.

A viewer of “The Five,” FiveFanPhotoshops (now a good friend and my illustrator for Let Me Tell You About Jasper), created incredible pictures of Jasper in all sorts of places – the U.S. Open, the World Cup, presidential debates, and even space.

They were remarkable, made people laugh, and even fooled people “Is that real?”

His following grew. Soon, people were asking about Jasper more often than about politics. And that suited me just fine.

TSA agents would ask if I’d packed Jasper in the suitcase. Police officers would ask me, “How’s Jasper today?” Fans visiting New York City would be on the lookout for him as well. Once, a jogger in Central Park stopped us.

“Oh wow, is that Jasper?” Yes. Would he like a photo? Absolutely.

So, I asked Peter to take the picture with the man’s camera, and went to get in the shot.

“Oh….um, just Jasper.”

Oh. Yes, of course. My star was happily eclipsed.

This weekend we heard from a woman who was visiting Manhattan last winter with her sister. She made her get up early and dragged her to a certain spot in the park at 7:15 a.m. where she hoped to catch a glimpse of Jasper. To their delight, there he was with Peter, looking for fish in the pond. She got pictures with the dog she knew through social media and Fox News. She contacted us this weekend to send her condolences and said that meeting Jasper was the highlight of her trip.

I’ve heard from friends and strangers who said they’d never been dog people until Jasper. Some became dog owners because they wanted to experience that special bond as well. Others had just followed him because he was nicknamed America’s Dog on “Red Eye” (that was the show before Gutfeld Exclamation Point)– not because we thought he was better than any other dog, but because I said I’d be happy to share Jasper with everyone. I’d do all the work, and they could claim him as one of their own.

When the pandemic shutdowns started in March 2020, I added a Facebook Live reading for kids every afternoon for 15 minutes. I didn’t plan on having Jasper be a part of them, but he insisted on sitting next to me. He’d look at the camera or at the book’s illustrations, and the kids (and the parents and grandparents watching alone) loved it. I got a note from one of those parents this weekend – their kids still remembered Jasper’s readings and considered him their dog, too.

At Fox News, everyone knew of Jasper – and even though he didn’t come to work with me, his presence was felt there as well. The producers of “The Five” knew him his entire life and have indulged me with his appearances. Jasper gave us a lot of material to work with.

Staff throughout the building would ask about him, and they’d post his funny photos and videos to the website. One of the best was when Peter and Jasper rode a Harley and sidecar in a Fourth of July parade in Batman and Robin costumes, Jasper wearing his Doggles (no eye protection, no ride – Jasper knew the rules and never tried to take them off). We won “Best Dog” that year at the parade. America strong indeed. I was so proud.

RIP Jasper. Viszlas aren’t just the most beautiful dogs, they are the best dogs. Their earnest expressions, combined with their boundless, but dignified liking for everyone, makes them irresistible even to people who usually don’t like dogs. And they’re always up for anything, so long as it involves doing it with their family.

The Mark of the Australian Beast

Australia returns to its penal colony roots:

The Australian state of Victoria will “lock out” unvaccinated people from participating in the economy, Premier Dan Andrews has announced. Victoria is currently under draconian lockdown restrictions, with residents of Melbourne – who make up the vast majority of the state’s population – living under a 9pm to 5am curfew, forbidden from leaving their homes except to work, buy groceries, or get a Covid-19 vaccination. When the lockdown is lifted, Premier Dan Andrews said on Sunday, future restrictions will apply only to those who are unvaccinated.

“There is going to be a vaccinated economy, and you get to participate in that if you are vaccinated,” Andrews stated. “We’re going to move to a situation where, to protect the health system, we are going to lock out people who are not vaccinated and can be.”

So much for the once-vaunted courage of the ANZACs. What a lot of feeble sheep they are turning out to be! Historically they went to war for considerably less egregious violations of the rights of foreigners. Then again, on the plus side, this is sound encouragement for sane Australians to leave before China takes over the continent.

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Monday Arktoons

EMBER WAR Episode 17: The Crucible

SAVAGE MEMES Episode 13: Female Empowerment

ECONCOMICS Episode 11: The Grey Rainbow

GUN GHOUL Episode 18: God’s Hand of Vengeance

Gun Ghoul Episode 18

CALL FOR VOLUNTEERS:

Arktoons has grown substantially, with nearly 2 million views since launch, and is regularly setting new records for users and visits per day. We have a bunch of exciting new projects in the works. However, we could use more help taking these ideas from the drawing board to reality.

So, if you have Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator, and you can commit six or more hours a week to fight with us in the front lines of the culture war, then please contact ArkhavenComics-AT-outlook-DOT-com.

Means vs Ends

A programmer rightly condemns the code-first approach to programming:

There are two kinds of programmers, generally speaking. There are programmers who care more about code, and there are programmers who care more about product. The former – I’ll call them “code-first” programmers – are obsessed with how code is architected, what tools, libraries and languages are used, how much test coverage there is – stuff like that. Code-first programmers are psyched when they check in the perfect abstraction, when they get to use the latest language-feature, when they delete dead code. That is, they love the code they write – the code is the thing.

The product-first programmer cares about that stuff too, kind of, but only as a means to an end. For product-first programmers, the code is the scaffolding, the support, the steel beams in the building, but not the end product. The end product is, well, the product, not the code, and what matters to them is how well that product actually solves the underlying problem. Does the building stay upright? Do the elevators work? Is the A/C functioning? Do people like being there? Product-first programmers love building and launching and seeing users use what they’ve built. The product is the thing.

Anyone who has worked at a place like Google has met plenty of code-first programmers. They are the teammates who are always refactoring code and nit-picking spelling in your function comments. They are in the micro-kitchen complaining about “spaghetti code,” “technical debt,” and the lack of rigor in other teams’ code review processes. They are probably not fixing bugs or launching features. You can probably tell I’m not a huge fan of the code-first approach.

When I interview programmers I’m always amazed at how many of them seem to think the code-first approach is what I’m looking for. Trying to impress me, they ask: “What’s your unit test coverage like?” Pretty close to zero; this is a startup. “Do you guys use hot new technology X.” Not yet, no, how would that help us build the right thing faster? “Is there a lot of technical debt?” We will have to rewrite everything at some point, but it doesn’t matter right now because we haven’t even figured out the right thing to build.

They have an understandable but fundamental misconception of what programming is all about. Programming is about building products that solve problems for users not about writing beautiful code for its own sake.

It can be remarkable how difficult it is to convince people, in a wide variety of activities and occupations, that it is the ends, and not the means, that are the actual objective. Whether it is businessmen planning new ventures, people getting involved in politics, or sports teams taking the field, the confusion of means with ends and process with results almost inevitably results in eventual failure.

Process is important, but only with the context of achieving the desired results. It is not important in and of itself.

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Evil Britain Seeks to Vaccinate Kids

And they’re even planning to evade any requirement for parental consent. Of course, those wise 12-year-olds who have “enough maturity” to elect to get vaccinated won’t be paying the bills for the medical treatment they’ll require for the adverse effects. And neither will the British Medical Association nor the British government that is now pushing the worse-than-useless shots on children:

Some 12-year-olds have ‘enough maturity’ to decide whether to get a Covid vaccine, a British Medical Association chief claimed today amid a row over jabbing children.

Dr David Strain claimed youngsters aged 12 to 15 were capable of weighing up the benefits of vaccination against the small risk of serious side effects.He claimed they should be able to overrule their parents’ wishes and get the injection if officials sign off on the plans this week.

Vaccines minister Nadhim Zahawi said yesterday that children would be able to get the vaccine against their parents’ wishes if it is made available for the age group.

The awful consequences of this evil attempt to sacrifice the children for the benefit of keeping Britain’s Boomers alive can already be observed.

An FA Youth Cup match was abandoned Thursday evening as a young footballer was rushed to hospital after suffering a ‘cardiac arrest’ on the pitch.

Fans have been asked to leave the stands after the match between West Bridgford Colts and Boston United was abandoned on Thursday evening.

The game was being held at Regatta Way Sports Ground, the home stadium of the West Bridgford Colts in Gamston, Nottinghamshire.

Eyewitnesses reported a player remaining unresponsive after receiving ‘multiple’ shocks from a defibrillator.

The player, reportedly a member of West Bridford’s team, has been taken to Queen’s Medical Centre in Nottingham as paramedics battle to save his life.

Three ambulances, including the air unit, attended the scene as emergency services rushed to revive him.

UPDATE: The BBC has confirmed the death of the 17-year-old player.

This is pure and unmitigated evil. There is no scientific or medical justification for injecting these awful poisons into children. None whatsoever. These vaccines are murder by medicine.

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From Theory to Reality

We have no plans to introduce vaccine passports. We have vaccinated, as of yesterday, 2,431,648 first dose and 412,167 second dose. No one has been given or will be required to have a vaccine passport

Vaccine Minister Nadhim Zahawi, 10 January 2021

Mr. Zahawi, presumably of the Oxford Zahawis, who is obviously every bit as British as any Angle, any Saxon, and any descendant of Alfred the Great, has unaccountably changed his tune of late.

Nadhim Zahawi today confirmed vaccine passports will be required to gain entry to large venues, arguing the documents are the ‘best way’ to avoid winter Covid closures. The Vaccine Minister said the Government is concerned large venues ‘could end up causing a real spike in infections’ because of groups of people mixing in close proximity.

Minister Nadhim Zahawi confirms vaccine passports WILL be required for entry to large venues from October to avoid winter closures, Daily Mail, 5 September 2021

Nine months is all it requires for conspiracy theory to become conspiracy reality these days. In a more honest and accurate word, conspiracy theorists would be described as spoiler alerts.

ER Doctor Lied About Ivermectin ODs

The Vaccine Nazis must be running short on crisis actors since they’re now hiring actual doctors to publicly lie about the state of the hospitals. Oklahoma ER doctor Dr. Jason McElyea very publicly claimed that people overdosing on ivermectin were causing emergency rooms to be “so backed up that gunshot victims were having hard times getting” access to health facilities.

As always, anything you read in the mainstream media is the one thing you can be certain is not true. Of all the things that never happened, this never happened the most.

The hospital McElyea worked for, NHS Sequoyah, located in Sallisaw, Oklahoma – just issued a statement disavowing McElyea’s claims.

Although Dr. Jason McElyea is not an employee of NHS Sequoyah, he is affiliated with a medical staffing group that provides coverage for our emergency room.

With that said, Dr. McElyea has not worked at our Sallisaw location in over 2 months.

NHS Sequoyah has not treated any patients due to complications related to taking ivermectin. This includes not treating any patients for ivermectin overdose.

All patients who have visited our emergency room have received medical attention as appropriate. Our hospital has not had to turn away any patients seeking emergency care.

We want to reassure our community that our staff is working hard to provide quality healthcare to all patients. We appreciate the opportunity to clarify this issue and as always, we value our community’s support.

Forget being “overwhelmed”. They haven’t even treated ONE SINGLE PATIENT for an Ivermectin overdose. Not one! Please, for the love of God and all that is Good, Beautiful, and True, please keep this incident in mind the next time you see an anecdotal report provided by a doctor in the media. The medical community is corrupted. Many of the doctors speaking out publicly are liars, when they aren’t fake doctors in the first place. Their statements cannot be trusted to even the slightest degree. And if their statements are in line with the Vaccine Nazi regime, they should be assumed to be lying in defense of the Narrative.

Do not EVER believe anything reported in the mainstream news. Be deeply suspicious even if they report that water is wet or that the sun rose in the east this morning.

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