Category: Uncategorized

Odds and False Ends

A few things. First, I’ve got two related posts up at White Bull that may be of interest to those who are either a) trying to break into a new industry or b) interested in the history of the game industry. I used my own experience of going from a complete outsider to an industry oldtimer as a practical example; the first post is here and contains a link to the second one at the end.

Second, if you’d like to see what the very large and very pretty Hypergamouse hardcover looks like, there are some pictures up at Sigma Game. The pictures and a video will go up on Arkhaven later. And speaking of Arkhaven, the Dark Herald has a detailed discussion of one of my favorite books by Tanith Lee, Delusion’s Master, that is well worth reading by anyone who enjoys the dark side of fantasy.

Third, we’ve opened up the SOULSIGMA campaign again for the nine backers whose backings didn’t go through due to some vagaries of the way the FMC system interacts with the payment processor; apparently I selected a suboptimal setting when setting it up. So if you’re one of those nine backers, or if you weren’t but you’d like to jump in there ex post facto, you can back the album here.

And finally, a reader had a question about Umberto Eco’s work and how it relates to conspiracy theory:

I have reread Foucault’s Pendulum and I have read The Name of the Rose and The Prague Cemetery. You said in your 2013 top ten list of books that “Perhaps my subscription to the conspiracy theory of history is one reason I rate Foucault’s Pendulum so highly, but I stand firmly by my high regard for Eco.” I have tried to get a more subtle read on Eco’s work rereading “FP” but It seems to me he is very much interested on demystifying these tropes, for example by constructing a plot in which the conspiracionist take the mad theories from three leftist editors very seriously and end up killing the main architect of the madness because the only way to salvage his hurt pride (the novel is very funny in the constant humillition of Belbo, specially the scenes in which Lorenza is involved) is to not reveal the secret: that there is no secret, it is all false.

In the “PC” something similar happens, where all the conspiracies of the late 19 century are pinned under a despicable guy who has no values but the love of money and will invent anything, including a Jewish conspiracy to take over the world. So Eco gives us a fictional account of the birth of a text, “The protocols of the elders of Sion”, that in the official history is considered to be a libel. Now I am sure these things don’t escape you, because you are much more smarter than me, but I still don’t see how his work vindicates your phrase I quoted. Is it just that you enjoy these themes treated in such a beautiful and sophisticated way, even though the author does not believe in them? Or is it the classic the message trascends the writter, and the story is more true than he seems to believe?

The reader seems to have a fundamental problem understanding the concept of a novel and its relation to the writer. Contra his assumptions, he has no idea what Eco actually thought about any of these things, which would be true of most halfway-decent authors, but is particularly true of an author who just happens to be a world expert on semiotics, signs, and symbols.

The idea that Eco is demystifying anything is absurd on its face. He loved myths, fables, and conspiracies. To look at his various explanations for them as attempts to reduce them to harmlessness in the service of the mainstream Narrative in which nothing happens for a reason and nobody accomplishes anything is to fundamentally miss the point. Eco was more akin to someone who loves puzzles and enjoys putting them together, which is why anyone else who loves puzzles will enjoy reading his book; moreover, let’s not forget the concept of blown cover as cover.

Being a world-famous public intellectual, Eco would have known better than anyone that there are secrets that cannot be safely revealed to everyone. Ergo, what better way to reveal them than by doing so in an innocuous manner that purports to make it clear that the secrets, such as they are, don’t even exist, especially given the inarguable evidence that they do, in fact exist. And this is precisely the sort of interpretation that one could not possibly rule out, given Eco’s very puckish sense of humor.

DISCUSS ON SG

Resurrecting the Iron Curtain

I am certain that Vladimir Putin has no designs on Eastern Europe. But that doesn’t mean the Russians can’t be provoked into invading and occupying Eastern Europe in order to pacify it if the Eastern European retarderati are genuinely stupid enough to attack Russia.

Several countries in Eastern Europe are considering a pre-emptive strike against Russia, according to Financial Times columnist Simon Kuper. The reported development comes despite the Ukraine peace negotiations launched by Moscow and Washington.

According to Kuper, the perceived pivot toward Moscow by US President Donald Trump has brought back the geographical distinctions of the Cold War, namely the idea of “Eastern Europe”, and “Western Europe,” where one sees Russia as an existential threat and the other “isn’t that bothered.”

“We know. That’s why some of our countries are asking, ‘Why don’t we attack Russia now, instead of sitting waiting for it to attack us?’” an unnamed “prominent Eastern European politician” said, without elaborating.

This is the ultimate in foolish “let’s you and him” fight strategies. And it’s based upon the obviously false assumption that if the Eastern European countries start a war with Russia, the USA will be somehow forced into declaring war on Russia in order to defend them.

I don’t know how the God-Emperor could make it any more verbally clear to all of the European countries that the US military is not going to defend them under any circumstances, so it’s becoming apparent that he’s going to have to actually withdraw all of the US troops from Europe in order to convince the Europeans that they are genuinely and completely on their own, and that Uncle Sam is not going to rush in to rescue them from defeat and occupation by the Russian military.

DISCUSS ON SG

Closing the Kursk Pocket

Hal Turner is reporting that the Russians are preparing to eliminate the remaining Ukrainian soldiers still on Russian territory in Kursk.

Flash Traffic on Intel Circuits reports there are 4,700 to 6,300 Ukrainian Armed Forces fighters surrounded in the Kursk region. They have no way out. The way the Russians structured the encirclement, there is no way to unblock and get out, either. The only choice Ukraine has for those troops is surrender or die.

The Ukrainian Armed Forces command went off the air early in the morning of 07.03.2025. In essence, they abandoned the troops. Russia has replied that there will be no concessions for the Ukrainian Armed Forces in the Kursk region. Anyone who does not surrender at dawn on 08.03.2025 will be destroyed by all types of KABs by the night of the next day.

The Russians have obviously concluded that the trap has served its purpose and what passed for the UFA’s Kursk offensive will not be further reinforced.

It’s time for the Kiev regime to surrender. Not just in Kursk, but all across Ukraine. Unconditional surrender, right now. Because there is absolutely nothing that is going to prevent Russia from doing whatever it decides to do, and there is absolutely no benefit to wasting the lives of any more young Ukrainians.

DISCUSS ON SG

The Only Darkstream

Nothing dramatic, actually. But tonight’s Darkstream will be a listening party for the new SOULSIGMA album release, so if you are interested, please stop by. And if you’re not interested, then please don’t because we will not be discussing JD Vance, Russia, the release of the Epstein Files, or anything even remotely related to current events.

DISCUSS ON SG

HBO Reimagines Harry Potter

Sources confirm that actress Janet McTeer (The Old Man, Kaos) is in negotiations to play Harry Potter, while Paapa Essiedu (The Lazarus Project) is finalizing his deal to take on the role of Professor Severus Snape. They join the previously announced John Lithgow, who will step into the role of Albus Dumbledore.

I don’t see why a middle-aged woman shouldn’t play the role of a pre-pubescent boy. After all, what really matters is casting the best actor available. To be honest, I’m a little surprised Anthony Hopkins didn’t get the role.

DISCUSS ON SG

Diversity Enhances the German Experience

A letter posted by a Czech nurse working in a Munich hospital about the ways in which diversity and immigration are enhancing the German hospital experience.

Yesterday, at the hospital, we had a meeting about how the situation here and the other Munich hospitals are unsustainable. Clinics cannot handle the number of migrant medical emergencies, so they are starting to send everything to the main hospitals. Many Muslims are refusing treatment by female staff, and we women are now refusing to go among those migrants. Relations between the staff and migrants are going from bad to worse. Since last weekend, migrants going to the hospitals must be accompanied by police with K-9 units.

Many migrants have ADS, syphilis, open TB and many exotic diseases that we in Europe do not know how to treat. If they receive a prescription to the pharmacy; they learn they have to pay cash, this leads to unbelievable outbursts, especially when it is about drugs for the children. They abandon the children to the pharmacy staff with the words: So, cure them yourselves. So the police are not only guarding the clinics and hospitals, but also the large pharmacies.

We ask openly where are all those who welcomed the migrants in front of TV cameras with signs at train stations ? Yes, for now, the border has been closed, but a million of them are already here and we will definitely not be able to get rid of them. Until now, the number of unemployed in Germany was 2.2 million. Now it will be at least 3.5 million. Most of these people are completely unemployable. Only a minimum of them have any education. What is more, their women usually do not work at all. I estimate that one in ten is pregnant. Hundreds of thousands of them have brought along infants and little kids under six, many emaciated and very needy. If this continues and Germany re-opens its borders, I am going home to the Czech republic. Nobody can keep me here in this situation, not even for double the salary back home. I came to Germany to work, not to Africa or the Middle East!

Even the professor who heads our department told us how sad it makes him to see, but worth the read…especially the cleaning woman, who has cleaned every day for years for 800 euros and then meets crowds of young men in the hallways who just wait with their hands outstretched, waiting for free, and when they don’t get it, they throw a fit. I really don’t need this, but I am afraid that if I return home, at some point it will be the same in the Czech Republic. If the Germans, with their systems, cannot handle this, then guaranteed, back home will be total chaos…

You – who have not come in contact with these people have absolutely no idea what kind of badly behaved desperadoes these people are, and how Muslims act superior to our staff, regarding their religious accommodation. For now, the local hospital staff have not come down with the diseases these people brought here, but with so many hundreds of patients every day of this is just a question of time. In a hospital near the Rhine, migrants attacked the staff with knives after they had handed over an 8 month old on the brink of death, who they dragged across half of Europe for three months. The child died two days later, despite having received top care at one of the best pediatric clinics in Germany. The pediatric physician had to undergo surgery and the two nurses are recovering in the ICU. Nobody has been punished. The local press is forbidden to write about it, so we can only inform you through e-mail.

What would have happened to a German if he had stabbed the doctor and nurses with a knife? Or if he had flung his own syphilis infected urine into a nurses face and so threatened her with infection? At a minimum, he would have gone straight to jail and later to court. With these people so far, nothing has happened.

And so I ask: Where are all those greeters and receivers from the train stations? Sitting pretty at home, enjoying their uncomplicated, safe lives.

The point of no return would appear to have been passed. Immigration was never truly a question of ideology, but simple quantity. History and logic dictate that either the mass repatriations will begin or both Europe and America will see the sort of semi-official death squads that are used to restore order in India, the Asian countries, and Latin America. And, as I have said for decades, the responsibility for the coming bloodshed will not rest upon the nationalist warriors, but upon the heads of those who encouraged the invasions and welcomed the invaders.

The nurse is obviously flat-out wrong about it being impossible to get rid of one million migrants. In less than three years, 8 million people left Ukraine, either by expatriation or death. It is only politically impossible to do so under the present German regime, which is unlikely to survive the coming US-Russian rapprochement.

DISCUSS ON SG

Is Japan Next?

The God-Emperor appears to have turned his sights upon the trade deficit with Japan and the massive expense of maintaining the US military there.

President Donald Trump said Japan is not required to protect the United States militarily and makes “a fortune” from it economically, as he fired off an impromptu broadside at a key ally.

It came as Japan’s trade minister is arranging a trip to Washington during which he will reportedly demand an exemption from imminent U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminum.

“We have a great relationship with Japan. But we have an interesting deal with Japan that we have to protect them, but they don’t have to protect us,” Trump said Thursday.

“And by the way, they make a fortune with us economically,” he said. “I actually ask, who makes these deals?”

In response, Japanese government spokesman Yoshimasa Hayashi said Friday that Japan trusts Washington to keep its obligation to the two countries’ security treaty.

Around 54,000 U.S. military personnel are stationed in Japan, mostly in the Okinawa region east of Taiwan.

The key observation that President Trump appears to have made is that imperialism is not, in the long term, profitable to the imperialist nation. Over time, it increasingly benefits the foreigners who are attracted to the imperial center of power, to the exclusion of the nationals for whose benefit the empire ostensibly exists.

DISCUSS ON SG

We are the Ghost Dancers

The realization that Americans are the Indians now is gradually dawning on more and more people now that the influence of the Boomers and their memories of the 1950s and 1960s are fading away:

At best, at best, we might hope to plant seeds, that our children, and more likely our grandchildren or great-grandchildren, may once again live in a thriving and functional society that does not hate them. We ourselves, we who are live now, are the lost children of history, abandoned and betrayed by our feckless elders, stripped of our patrimony, cursed to have lived to see the last dying embers of the golden age that has now passed, fated from now to know only a darkness that will just become deeper and colder as we live out the rest of our lives. We are Spengler’s Roman soldier, guarding his outpost in Pompeii’s threatening shadow.

I do not say that is what the future holds, only that this is the prevailing sense: things suck, and the suck will only suck harder from here on out. We train and read and pray, not because we think we can roll back the suck, but only to have the strength to endure it, and maybe to carry some small fragments through that will be worth passing on to whoever comes next. We gather to the old symbols because they remind us of who we are, provide some anchor to our identities as the whirling maelstrom seeks to dissolve us into posthuman madness. We practice clean living – insofar as we do practice it, which I think is not very far, let’s be honest – because we know we are under attack, and the drugs and the poisoned food are one of the enemy’s primary weapons.

Irrational hope is a dangerous thing, but to abandon all hope is more dangerous still. The zombie junkies dying in our streets are where the abandonment of all hope leads. Things are unlikely to improve for we Westmen in the near future, or even perhaps in our own lifetimes. Too much is arrayed against us, most especially including our worst enemy: ourselves. Yet the examples of the Ghost Dancers, the Boxers, and the Zealots need not lead to despair. The Amerindian has not regained his lands, but he is far from extinct, and in Canada at least is growing rapidly in numbers, wealth, and political influence. The Han most certainly did regain their country, and while they endured a century and a half of massacre and madness, they have once again taken their place as one of the world’s great peoples. And as for the Jews, say what you will of them, but the destruction of the Temple was certainly not the end of their story, either.

So be it. If we dance, then at least we’ve got some killer beats and grooves to fuel us. But there is no reason to give up hope, however irrational it might seem. The Chinese persisted and got their country back after centuries of foreign rule. The Spanish endured five centuries of foreign rule before expelling all the Muslims and Jews from their country.

We have nothing to complain about except the foolishness of our recent forebears and the innocent stupidity of our youth. Others have faced far more difficult challenges. So start laying the foundation for the next round of Reconquistas. Greatness awaits!

DISCUSS ON SG

Russia Rejects Ceasefire

It always seemed unlikely that they’d try to kick the football a third time:

The Russian Government has completely rejected proposals for a one-month halt in fighting in Ukraine. This rejection also includes a proposed pause in aerial and naval attacks. The fighting will continue. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova made it clear: Russia won’t accept a “respite” without firm agreements on a final settlement.

For Russia, none of these proposals make sense for multiple reasons. First, Russia is winning. If they agree to a “halt” or a “pause” or even the entry of “peacekeepers” both Ukraine and teh collective West, operating as NATO, have proven they simply cannot be trusted. The Russians believe any halt to the combat would be immediately used to re-supply, re-arm present Ukrainian troops, and add more troops, for a continued fight, later.

Russia has good reasons to NOT trust both Ukraine and the West.

Back in 2014, the France, Germany, Ukraine, and Russia, bargained at the Minsk Peace Conference for 19 hours, hammering-out a deal that would have stopped the fighting between Ukraine and two of its oblasts (states) Luhansk and Donetsk.

All the parties to the negotiations signed what became known as the “Minsk Agreement.” Ukraine did not honor even ONE of the terms in that agreement, and on February 21, 2022, just days before Russia decided to enter Ukraine, the Ukrainian Foreign Minister, Kuleba said publicly “Ukraine will never honor the Minsk Agreement.”

Later, about a year or so into the combat, former French President Francois Hollande and former German Chancellor Angela Merkel, both of whom signed the Minsk Agreement, admitted in two separate TV interviews, they attended the Minsk Conference “only to buy time for Ukraine to arm for war against Russia.”

This kabuki theater in which everyone pretends that the USA is capable of fighting Russia in Eastern Europe, or better yet, that Europe is capable of doing so without the US military, is truly insulting to the world’s intelligence. Does Macron really want to see Russian troops at the gates of Paris again? Because this is how they get Russian troops at the gates of Paris again.

Vladimir Putin has mocked Emmanuel Macron, warning him that ‘some people forget how Napoleon’s Russian campaign ended,’ after the French President indicated he would be willing to use his country’s nuclear deterrent to protect Europe. France’s Napoleon Bonaparte invaded the Russian Empire in 1812 in a disastrous six-month military campaign that ended in Russian victory and resulted in some half a million casualties on the French side. Putin’s warning, which did not refer to Macron by name, came a day after the French leader called Moscow ‘a threat to Europe’ and raised the idea of putting other countries under France’s nuclear umbrella.

Russia has never been a threat to Europe. To the contrary, European nations have repeatedly proven themselves to be threats to Russia for literal centuries.

DISCUSS ON SG

THE ONLY SKULL is out

My first complete solo music project, The Only Skull, was released this morning on YouTube, iTunes, and Spotify, as well as a number of other music platforms of varying degrees of obscurity. It’s not entirely solo, as I collaborated with one celebrity corpse and an AI system in composing and recording everything, and all ten songs were mastered by an excellent audio engineer whose primary clients are heading one of the world’s most iconic music festivals this summer.

A link containing the appropriate download will be sent out to the backers later today, and for those who are interested, we’ll hold a listening party on the Friday Darkstream. I have not selected the two bonus tracks yet from the five that have been recorded, and the engineer and I are still working out how we want to approach the promised organic track, which is likely to be a really good new song that does not appear on the album but will be provided later to the relevant backers. It may be that this song will be provided only to the backers, because there is a reasonable chance that it will be released by another artist who is interested in recording and releasing it himself.

    1. Ride and Die
    2. The Only Skull
    3. Angel in Flight
    4. Seasons
    5. Neptune Grieves
    6. My Secret Sin
    7. The Shining Wire
    8. The Word Descended
    9. Once There Was Sorrow
    10. The Ride Never Ends

    Anyhow, I am well aware that this is not an area that most of the readers here are much interested in, but I would encourage you to check it out if you are curious about the current state of the art of music technology at the moment.

    DISCUSS ON SG