Category: Uncategorized

Stay Mobile, Stay Safe

A tactical training scenario is posed:

A woman and her infant child were parked outside a small electronics store on a busy thoroughfare in the suburban city where I work.  She was waiting to provide a ride home to her sister and her best friend, both of whom were working in the store.  Five minutes before closing, another car pulled into the parking lot.  It was occupied by two men.  She thought it was strange because it backed into a parking space facing the store and because it had no license plates, either front or back.  Even though it was strange, the car was a Lexus and didn’t seem out of place in the wealthy suburb.

The woman watched as one of the men entered the store while the other stayed in the car with the engine running.  The man in the store asked some unusual questions about a remote control, looked around the store thoroughly and then left a couple minutes later without buying anything.  He returned to the parked car and sat down in the passenger seat.

The woman, still unnoticed by them men, watched as the two men in the car pulled ski masks down over their faces and got out of the car together to walk into the store.  The woman realized she was witnessing a robbery going down.  She wanted to protect her sister and best friend inside, but didn’t want to endanger her infant child in the back seat.

If you were the woman watching, what would you do?

While turning on the car lights proved to be effective, it honestly didn’t occur to me. The first rule is to secure your own position. Turn on the car, keep it running, and back up to keep a safe distance between you and the bad guys. Assuming they’re carrying pistols, 50-60 feet is safe.

Step two, call the sister and the friend. This can be done while you’re moving the car to a safe position. Tell them to exit the store immediately, preferably from the rear entrance so they don’t have to risk crossing paths with the thieves.

Step three, call 911 or whatever the police equivalent is. In European countries, there are usually two different codes, one for police, one for fire and medical emergencies, although 911 does redirect to 112 throughout most of the European Union. Then stay on the line and serve as a spotter.

At no point should you engage, even if you are a man with a gun who knows what he’s doing. The only time I would even consider engaging is in a school or mall shooting scenario, where you can’t possibly make the situation much worse and you’ve got a pretty good chance at ambushing an amateur who isn’t expecting opposition. Otherwise, you risk turning a relatively harmless robbery into a lethal situation.

Life isn’t television. The police don’t point their guns and say “drop it” when they confront armed bad guys and neither should you. If you’re not prepared to pull the trigger on someone from behind without issuing any warnings to them, or you don’t feel as if the situation warrants a lethal ambush, you shouldn’t be engaging in an armed intervention. Serve as the spotter instead. That’s more than enough.

And remember, mobility is the key to safety in dangerous situations. You should always be on the move, or in a position to move instantly if required.

DISCUSS ON SG

You Don’t Get What You Pay For

Mercenary companies always sound very impressive. G4S is the flavor of the day, apparently

With roughly 800,000 employees, G4S maintains its own rapid response units – essentially private strike teams supported by in-house intelligence operations. Many Western PMCs now have access to reconnaissance aircraft, satellite data, and cutting-edge surveillance tools. “They work with corporations that provide satellite imagery, which has been used by PMCs in Africa, Iraq, and Afghanistan,” Todorovski explains.

Alexander Artemonov, a defense analyst at the Eurasia Heritage Foundation, estimates G4S maintains a fighting force of 250,000–280,000, equal to the number of troops Russia deployed in Donbass. The rest of the workforce consists of support staff, prison guards, and logistical teams.

G4S’s arsenal includes everything from AK-47s and Glock 17s to MP5s, sniper rifles, Uzi submachine guns, and even Israeli Hermes 450 drones. Their operatives have access to anti-personnel mines, grenade launchers, and portable anti-air systems. For mobility, they rely on armored Land Cruisers, Humvees, and military-grade carriers like the Cougar and RG-33.

“Mercenaries and auxiliaries are useless and dangerous; and if one holds his state based on these arms, he will stand neither firm nor safe” – Niccolo Machiavelli

As Machiavelli pointed out in his works, mercenaries are actually good at one thing and one thing only: getting paid. They’re not getting paid to fight and die, they’re getting paid to put on a good show and provide deterrence. The ideal mercenary operation is to get paid to defend a location or an individual, deter any attacks from taking place, and go home considerably richer in return for doing nothing.

It’s when they actually have to deliver results that mercenaries tend to show their true colors, as G4S already has:

G4S has also assumed control of prison facilities traditionally run by governments. In the UK, the company managed two immigration detention centers and six prisons, including those in Oakwood and Birmingham. In 2018, the Birmingham facility was returned to government control after inspectors uncovered appalling conditions: inmates roamed freely while staff locked themselves in offices; cells were filthy, infested with rats, and reeked of bodily fluids.

If they can’t manage a prison successfully, what are the odds that they’re even going to show up to fight Russian regulars?

Some might point to the successful use of the Wagner Company by Russia in the Donbass. But first, they were more convict conscripts than mercenaries proper, second, they were utilized as urban warfare cannon fodder, and third, they too showed the expected lack of reliability when Prigozhin staged the short-lived revolt against Moscow that ended his career with an accidentation.

DISCUSS ON SG

The End of Monster Hunter

May also mean the end of Baen Books, if Fandom Pulse’s logic is correct:

Larry Correia has made a Facebook post stating he won’t even begin writing the next Monster Hunter International books until 2026, which means a two-year dry spell of revenue for the embattled publisher. However, it gets even worse, as Correia has stated that this book will likely be his last in the series.

But never fear, there are still monsters and they still need to be hunted. Or, at least, controlled, which is why Monster Control Incorporated is on the job and is being serialized every week at Sigma Game.

I’ve been walking my crush home since last week to protect her from all the creeps walking around. Next week I’m going to introduce myself to her.

Right now, though, I was content to stay in the shadows, watching from a distance as she made her way down the dimly lit sidewalk. Her name was Elise, and she worked the late shift at the diner on 5th and Main. Every night at 11:30, she stepped out, adjusted her bag over her shoulder, and started the six-block walk to her apartment. And every night, I followed.

Not in a creepy way. At least, I hoped not. The city had gotten bad lately—muggers, weirdos, and worse. The kind of things most people didn’t believe in until it was too late. I’d seen the news reports: Missing Persons. Unexplained Attacks. Animal Maulings. The cops didn’t have a clue. But I did.

I knew what was out there.

Elise turned the corner, her fair hair bright under the glow of a flickering streetlight. She was small, and delicate, but moved with a quiet confidence that made my chest tighten. I kept my distance, staying far enough back that she wouldn’t notice me, close enough that I could reach her in seconds if something went wrong.

Something went wrong a lot these days.

Tonight, the air smelled like rain and something else—something musky and wild. My fingers twitched at my sides. I didn’t carry a gun. Guns were too loud, too messy. Instead, I had a knife sheathed at my belt and a length of silver chain wrapped around my wrist.

Elise hummed softly to herself, oblivious. She had no idea what was coming.

Then I heard it—the low, guttural growl from the alley up ahead.

You’ve never seen a monster hunter quite like Horace “Race” Scrubb before. He puts the L in “professional”.

DISCUSS ON SG

An Observer’s Perspective

Postcards from the Age of Reason shares his thoughts on a certain hierarchical taxonomy:

Vox’s Socio-Sexual Hierarchy (SSH) is a taxonomy concerning male interaction. It was derived from his observations and penned during the Game discovery era of males attempting to ascertain and share the labyrinths of the female psyche. The SSH is one of the most important tools in predicting male behavior and is a necessity if one wishes to navigate the world of men as we order each other, with any sense of the interactions involved. Its predictive power is astonishing and I hold it to levels of usefulness just under those The Philosopher himself penned.

I do not have much to add, as there is constant, ongoing discovery and useful insights at Vox’s Sigma Game Substack here:

I will, however, offer advice to those who vehemently reject the concepts outright:

1) It is intuitive to all.

Be it women, low status men, or high status men, everyone recognizes the hierarchy when exposed to it. Women can sniff out low status vs. high status like bloodhounds on the hunt. Men work out the pyramid more exactly, and as such, we have the various ranks. We all intuit the SSH rather young, but Vox’s taxonomy classified the broad patterns more concretely and into a useful system.

2) The SSH is wholly rejected by the mainstream.

This is one telltale sign of the truthfulness or usefulness of whatever is being rejected. The mainstream is opposed to whatever goes against their goals. Game, and the SSH are villainized in the mainstream, leading them huge credence towards their validity. They really do not want Western males recognizing the factors involved in this great game.

Read the whole thing there. I tend to agree with him that there is likely significance to be found in the instinctive and critical reaction to this particular taxonomy that is entirely missing with regards to pretty much all other taxonomies. If it was all just nonsensical labeling of random individuals, or “astrology for men” as some would have it, would there be so many strongly emotional reactions to it?

DISCUSS ON SG

The End of the Middleman

The Internet has reduced the need for retailers and various rising costs have rendered their cut unviable, and increasingly, their businesses too, as Fandom Pulse chronicles the shutdown of Boardlandia:

It’s been a strange space in board gaming for the past several years as companies have turned to direct crowdfunding more and more, abandoning brick-and-mortar shops. While some online retailers have thrived by offering discounts, the industry received an artificial boost due to COVID-19, and a lot of gamers buying board games because they were stuck at home.

That boost faded, and now retailers have been in a precarious situation where most of the big sellers have all transitioned to direct crowdfunding, leaving little room for such retailers to exist. Enter the new tariffs, which have created a panic among board game companies who get their product from China. 

This is why, despite the various difficulties we’ve battled over the last few years, I’m confident that the direct infrastructure we’re still building is going to be the right way to go over the next decade or two.

DISCUSS ON SG

Commentary Question

One of the common forms of medieval analysis was the commentary. Hence Machiavelli’s Discourses on the First Ten of Titus Livy, which is just one of many examples of the form.

If I was to write a commentary of that kind, almost certainly with my new best friend, what author and what work would be of the most interest? Darwin, Dawkins, and anyone modern is out, unless you can make a very convincing case for consideration.

Throw your ideas out there. I’m not saying I will, I’m just saying that some of the experiments I’ve been doing with The Legend are making new possibilities of many kinds apparent to us.

DISCUSS ON SG

India Evicts Pakistanis

It’s always fascinating to hear Westerners talk about the absolute impossibility of restoring their demographics to pre-invasion levels while Easterners blithely engage in ethnic cleansings of far-greater proportions in places like Israel and India that never take more than a few months to accomplish.

Pakistani citizens in India must leave the country before their visas get revoked on April 27, the Ministry of External Affairs ordered on Thursday following the Pahalgam terror attack. India suspended visa services to Pakistani citizens with immediate effect. New Delhi said that all valid visas issued by India to Pakistani citizens will stand revoked with effect from April 27.

On Wednesday, India said it was suspending the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty with immediate effect until Pakistan “credibly and irrevocably” stops its support for cross-border terrorism.

Imagine the outrage if the USA did something similar with regards to the citizens of any of the various nations that are now residing in the USA, or even if the UK were to repatriate all of its Pakistanis.

UPDATE: Pakistan has retaliated for this inhuman crime of forcing Pakistanis to live in Pakistan among other Pakistanis.

Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has announced the following:

– Pakistani airspace is closed to all Indian and Indian-operated airlines, effective immediately.

– The Wagah border crossing will be shut down, and ceremonial duties suspended.

– Pakistan suspends all SAARC visas issued to Indian nationals, and all Indians currently in Pakistan with an SAARC visa are instructed to leave within 48 hours.

– The number of diplomats at the Indian High Commission in Islamabad will be reduced to 30, and military attachés have been declared persona non grata.

– Pakistan exercises the right to temporarily suspend all bilateral agreements with India, including the 1972 Simla agreement.

– Pakistan states that any attempt at diverting the waters from rivers in the Indus will be seen as an act of war, and will be responded to by force.

DISCUSS ON SG

Walking Away is the Right Move

There are various reports that President Trump is rapidly approaching acceptance of the fact that he cannot dictate peace terms to either Russia or Clown World:

The United States will tell both Ukraine and Russia that the US recommends the following to achieve peace in the Russia-Ukraine conflict:

1) Ukraine must agree to a ceasefire, right now.

2) Ukraine and Russia MUST begin direct negotiations with each other

3) Crimea is now Russian territory

4) The areas of Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson, and Zaporozhye that are under Russian control, will remain Russian.

5) Ukraine cannot and will not EVER join NATO.

6) If the two sides agree, the US will remove all anti-Russian economic sanctions

7) If the two sides do not agree, the United States will walk-away from the peace process.

I don’t think that either Russia or the Kiev regime will accept those terms. Russia wants Odessa and the full territories of Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson, and Zaporozhye, and it is within their power to achieve those things without reaching an agreement with anyone. The Kiev regime wants to continue collecting revenue while killing as many young Russians and Ukrainians as possible. A better move would have been for Trump to give Russia whatever it wants in return for imposing peace on the Kiev regime and the various Clown World regimes, since either way, he’s going to end up walking away and dropping all support for Kiev.

DISCUSS ON SG

Talk to the AI

Because the man is extremely disinclined to engage with anyone. Now, as I said when I answered the Kurgan’s three questions, I was not interested in entertaining further discussion or engaging in debate with anyone on the subject. I particularly dislike theological discussions, because not only are most of them totally incapable of going anywhere substantial, but I have yet to meet a single individual who is intellectually honest enough to treat his fundamental assumptions with the same rigor that he treats everyone else’s.

Which means, of course, that I have yet to meet a single person, of any religious or irreligious persuasion, who is capable of genuinely defending the full panoply of his belief system against my critiques of it. And while there was a time when I enjoyed tearing down certain people’s belief systems, and while it remains necessary from time to time, I don’t get a kick out of seeing how it observably distresses people to see what scanty foundations support their intellectual infrastructure. And for some reason, my observation that it really doesn’t matter what nonsense your average person believes to be true, so long as he does his best to serve God, family, and nation, seems to provide most people with cold comfort.

Naturally, my simple act of answering a friend’s questions immediately prompted this self-titled DEFENSE OF THE CATHOLIC CLAIMS. Now, just to be clear, I’m not picking on this guy and I’m not targeting Catholic beliefs here, they simply happen to serve as recent and useful examples of something every single person from every single religious persuasion I have ever encountered always – and I do mean ALWAYS – does. And it should serve to explicate, yet again, why I am not interested in answering anyone’s questions or engaging in debates anymore.

In defense of the Catholic claims that you addressed today on your blog –

Kurgan formulated the first question badly, and you rightly caught his mistake.

Apostolic Succession is the fundamental basis for authority in the Apostolic (Catholic or Orthodox) churches.

A stronger formulation of Kurgan’s first question is “If Jesus gave his apostles the authority to teach, to forgive sins, and to distribute the Sacraments until He returns, as He explicitly states in the Gospels, then in what form does that authority exist on earth today?”

Protestants must say “it doesn’t”, or “everyone has that authority”, or “whoever I agree with has that authority”. None of which make any sense.

This is why it doesn’t matter that the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed was formulated after a later Ecumenical Council. The same Apostolic authority is behind all the Ecumenical Councils. The council of Nicaea is not any more or less authoritative than any other Ecumenical Council.

Kurgan’s second question – “then how is God loving” – was silly, and you addressed it properly.

On the third question of the Blessed Virgin Mary’s perpetual virginity –

First of all, that tradition goes back to the early Church Fathers, who all read the same Gospels you do, which say Jesus had “brothers”. And yet they still believed Mary remained a virgin, for good reasons.

When Gabriel appeared to a girl about to be married and announced that she would be a mother, her response was very strange: “how can this be, for I know not man”? Rather than what most girls would think – that the upcoming marriage would obviously produce a child.

This indicates that Mary was not expecting to consummate her marriage to Joseph, probably because she had already taken a vow of perpetual virginity, which was not uncommon at the time.

As for the word “brothers”, in Greek “adelphoi”, it does not strictly indicate men with the same mother, but rather men who are relatives. The word could apply to half-brothers or cousins. Those brothers are probably from Jesus’ extended family, or maybe Joseph’s children from a previous marriage.

My response:

You make the same mistake he does when you go off on what you imagine Protestants “must” say. You’re obviously wrong. This is why I will not talk to you or anyone else about these things. None of you are intellectually honest enough to examine your own assumptions as critically as you do everyone else’s. I run into this every single time I talk to anyone, of any religious persuasion. So I no longer talk to anyone about these things.

If we grant that the Apostles had authority from Jesus, and then we ask “where is that authority after the Apostles have died?” –

The only possible answers are

“Nobody has it”

“Everybody has it”

“Some people have it”

If Nobody has it, then no council, including Nicaea, has any authority.

If Everybody has it, then every council, including Nicaea, has exactly the same authority as any individual – which amounts to none at all.

If Some people have it, then who and how?

See if you can spot the moving target, kids! I did, of course, and I knew it would be there, of course, because it always is. Furthermore, note the total inability everyone has to simply ask a question, receive an answer, and then stop right there.

I didn’t agree to a debate. I didn’t agree to explain anything. I don’t care what nonsense any of these guys believe. I’m even open to the theoretical possibility that they might somehow, against all probability and despite their observable errors, have accidentally landed on the precise historical and textual interpretations that sets the foundation for perfectly correct theological understanding.

Perhaps, against all the odds, they alone see through the glass with perfect clarity.

Now, I understand that virtually everyone who reads this blog is smarter than the average. I also understand that virtually everyone who reads this blog is a binary thinker who doesn’t really understand what I mean by probabilistic thinking. You see, it’s not about what you can do, it’s about what you are instinctually comfortable with. And most people naturally, instinctively, intuitively, seek certainty above all else. You are creatures of intellectual safety and order, and that is a good thing.

But I am not. I don’t think like you do and I don’t need what you do. I thrive on intellectual chaos and uncertainty. The crazy thing, the amusing thing, is that I am so often accused of that very certainty that doesn’t matter to me at all, usually by people who don’t even know what their own words mean, let alone mine. The following is a fairly common objection, one that happened to be raised on SG today:

Vox is using as authority his own intellect, which we were told is not trustworthy.

Tell me you’re retarded without telling me you’re retarded. So many of you are so blitheringly stupid. This is precisely why I don’t talk about these things. When you say something that is obviously incorrect and stupid, and I show that what you said is incorrect and stupid, I am not appealing to the authority of my intellect.

You morons don’t even understand your own words. And you think you’re going to teach anyone else what God’s Word means?

I will now happily go back to ignoring theological disputes and religious debates. But perhaps now you will have a better understanding of my lack of interest in them. If I’m going to explore these topics, I will do so with my new best friend, who for all his shortcomings and petty dishonesties is at least capable of comprehending his errors when they are pointed out to him. And indeed, we have had several good discussions about potential logical errors in the Summa Theologica, which actually holds up rather better than Arthur C. Clarke imagined it would.

One last piece of advice. If you think something logically follows, then write out the syllogisms. Major premise, minor premise, conclusion. Rhetorically appealing to logic is not the same thing as actually applying it, and you’re never going to fool anyone who is capable of distinguishing between a syllogism and an enthymeme.

DISCUSS ON SG