Our first hardcover

A number of people have been asking when we’re going to be offering print edition of our books, and believe it or not, we’ve actually been doing so for two months. However, there was a glitch at Amazon that prevented the cover image from being displayed on the listing, and we didn’t want to send people there until the issue had been resolved. It was finally resolved yesterday, and so we’re pleased to be able to say that the hardcover edition of AWAKE IN THE NIGHT LAND is now available from Amazon for the retail price of $24.99. It’s discounted somewhat from that, of course, but I only see the converted US pricing, so I don’t know exactly what price Amazon is offering it for in the USA. We switched from the red of the Kindle version to the blue of the Kindle novella cover because the author preferred it, and I have to say, I think it was the right choice. It is 342 pages and it will make a handsome addition to the library of any discerning reader.

Now that we’ve got the process worked out and LL is helping with the layouts, we will gradually be adding more print editions to our catalog. VICTORIA: A Novel of 4th Generation War will be next in trade paperback, since we have an obligation to publish it in that format, and after that, well, it would be helpful to hear suggestions from the people who are seriously interested in buying hardcovers. AWAKE IN THE NIGHT LAND comes with a dust jacket, but we’re subsequently going to be switching to casebound since people expressed a fairly strong preference for that and the books will last longer.

This one is tricky

It should be absolutely fascinating to hear how this latest banker “suicide” is explained away.

The dust has barely settled on the latest high profile banker suicide in which Deutsche Bank’s associate general counsel, and former SEC regulator, Charlie Gambino was found dead, having hung himself by the neck from a stairway banister, and here comes the latest sad entrant in the dead chronicles of 2014 when earlier today, the Post reports, a Citigroup banker was found dead with his throat slashed in the bathtub “of his swanky downtown apartment, authorities said Wednesday.”

Unlike previous “clearcut” suicides, this time there may have been foul play: the Post adds that “there was no knife recovered at the scene, leading officials to suspect the death was not a suicide, and they were trying to determine who had access to his apartment.”

I like how the absence of a knife leads officials “to suspect the death was not a suicide”. After all, perhaps his fingernails were excessively long and sharp? Or maybe his rubber ducky known to be unusually aggressive? Considering that they got the press to bite on the “suicide” of the banker who shot himself “seven or eight times” with a nailgun as well as that of the scientist who managed to stuff himself in a duffel bag, don’t count them out here.

Another fuse uncovered now for me to light

SJWs on Twitter are just so easy. First, you toss the bait:

Vox Day ‏@voxday
It’s amusing to see anti-GG trying to coopt our positions. #GamerGate is of and for gamers. No anti-GG is a core gamer. They put SJW first.

Thus prompting the expected protestations and posturing. Notice how SJWs tend to communicate indirectly in an archly sarcastic, incredulous tone, then rapidly start talking nominally amongst themselves for your benefit. This sort of one-way performance communication is the way they avoid ever actually addressing the point or being pinned down and forced to answer questions. Here is a brief, but representative selection.

TieTuesday ‏@TieTuesdaySA
*looks at over 500 hours of stream time playin games* god i fuckin hate videogames

penguin725SA ‏@penguin725
My steam library with 800 hours of gameplay is ALL IN PROTEST HOW DID HE KNOW DAMMIT OUR SECRET IS OUT

TieTuesday ‏@TieTuesdaySA
and the hundreds of hours into Halo 2/3/Reach in highschool? I’ve been plannin this ruse for ages

GVOLTTheGVOLTTheGV– ‏@GVOLTT
High school? Hell, I’ve been playing games since I was in kindergarten.

St. Nicolas Cage ‏@PeeinMcKellan
I must have put 300 hours into Civ 5 in the span of ten months because I hate it so much.

St. Nicolas Cage ‏@PeeinMcKellan
I skipped class for a week to build a Minecraft server because I want to destroy video games forever.

And once they’ve dutifully stepped in it, you pull the trigger:

Vox Day @voxday
Seeing anti-#GamerGate people babbling about how many games they played is like hearing Nazis talk about how much they like Jewish food.

It is science. Please to fucking love it. #DreadIlk

More SJW shenanigans

Never forget, their narrative is a lie and it is always safer to assume that they are, at the very least, shading the truth for narrative purposes than providing the straight and unvarnished facts in a contextually appropriate manner. Drunk Girl sets the record straight about the men supposedly trying to take advantage of her.

A refusal to learn

We have learned nothing from history and so we are bound to repeat it:

We’ve known for 5,000 years that mass spying on one’s own people is always aimed at grabbing power and crushing dissent, not protecting us from bad guys.

We’ve known for 4,000 years that debts need to be periodically written down, or the entire economy will collapse. And see this.

We’ve known for 2,500 years that prolonged war bankrupts an economy.

We’ve known for 2,000 years that wars are based on lies.

We’ve known for 1,900 years that runaway inequality destroys societies.

We’ve known for thousands of years that debasing currencies leads to economic collapse.

We’ve known for millennia that torture is a form of terrorism.

We’ve known for thousands of years that – when criminals are not punished – crime spreads.

We’ve known for hundreds of years that the failure to punish financial fraud destroys economies, as it destroys all trust in the financial system.

We’ve known for centuries that monopolies and the political influence which accompanies too much power in too few hands are dangerous for free markets.

We’ve known for hundreds of years that companies will try to pawn their debts off on governments, and that it is a huge mistake for governments to allow corporate debt to be backstopped by government.

We’ve known for centuries that powerful people – unless held to account – will get together and steal from everyone else.

It’s not different this time. There will be ethnic cleansing and probably several incidents of mass slaughter, although whether it will be the immigrants or the native people on the short end is yet to be determined.

There will be series of economic crashes and the ongoing depression will deepen and widen, because the incipient credit busts in 1987 and 2001 and 2008 were all papered over with more central bank “money” created ex nihilo.

There will be wars, both due to the great clash of civilizations and pro-globalist elites clinging to government power in the face of furiously nationalistic people denied their will through the limitations and legalistic perversions of representative democracy.

These things are all inevitable. Not likely, inevitable. There is no force on Earth that can stop them, because in our arrogance and foolishness, we have again decided this time it’s different. But it’s not. It never is. And if you’re still a Republican defending income inequality because communism or a Democrat defending big government because poor people or a Libertarian defending open borders and free trade because individual, your entire political perspective is outdated and irrelevant. That world doesn’t exist anymore.

Debt hole is bigger than advertised

The state pensions are going to run out a lot faster than reported:

America’s red ink runs much deeper than you think. Aside from the nearly $18 trillion national debt, many state governments are looking at future budgets that are trillions of dollars in the red. And they’ve hidden the numbers by dramatically under-reporting that debt, according to a new report by the think tank State Budget Solutions.

The group looked at what are known as “unfunded liabilities” — or debt states will owe down the road. It found a number of states are fudging their numbers — big-time — using tricks like assuming their stock investments will soar.

The book-cooking could mean bad news for public pensions and other programs that rely on these budgets. The report finds that, nationwide, states have unfunded liabilities of nearly $5 trillion, or $15,000 per American.

It’s impossible to say when governments are going to stop making interest payments or finally writing off debts. But the date will almost certainly be sooner than those who work off the official statistics estimate.

Of course, the Neo-Keynesians will probably use this as an explanation for why their stimulus plans keep falling. See, they totally would have worked if only they had known the actual size of the problem, but because they didn’t have accurate information, the stimulus was too small to be effective.

FIRE GOODELL NOW

Actually, forget firing him. Roger Goodell should be stripped naked, whipped with tree branches, and then locked in an elevator with Ray Rice and Bill Simmons until he resigns:

Adrian Peterson of the Minnesota Vikings was notified today that he has
been suspended without pay for at least the remainder of the 2014 NFL
season, and will not be considered for reinstatement before April 15,
for violating the NFL Personal Conduct Policy in an incident of abusive
discipline that he inflicted on his four-year-old son last May. Peterson
pled no contest on November 4 in state court in Montgomery County,
Texas to reckless assault of the child.

What an utter fucking joke. I hope the NFLPA declares a strike. As if Goodell gives a quantum of a damn about anything but how he thinks the league looks to women who don’t watch football anyhow.

“The NFL Players Association released a statement shortly after the NFL
announced Peterson’s suspension, and in it the union said the league
lacks the credibility to appropriately handle player discipline. Smith
said the players have lost confidence in Goodell.”

So have the fans. The real fans of the game.

Don’t count out New England

This is an interesting development in light of some skepticism being expressed yesterday concerning rural New England’s revolutionary nature:

WESTMINSTER, Mass. — The fury — and make no mistake, it is white-hot fury — went way beyond the ordinary wrath of offended citizenry. A plan here to ban the sale of tobacco has ignited a call to arms.

The outrage is aimed at a proposal by the local Board of Health that could make Westminster the first town in the country where no one could buy cigarettes, e-cigarettes, cigars and chewing tobacco.

The uproar stems not from a desire by people here to smoke — only 17 percent do (a smidge higher than the statewide average). Many say they have never touched tobacco and find the habit disgusting. Rather, they perceive the ban as a frontal assault on their individual liberties. And they say it would cripple the eight retailers in town who sell tobacco products.

The ban is the major topic at Vincent’s Country Store, where a petition against it sits on the front counter and attracts more signatures every day; at last count, 1,200 people had signed, in a town of 7,400….

“They’re
just taking away everyday freedoms, little by little,” said Nate
Johnson, 32, an egg farmer who also works in an auto body shop, as he
stood outside the store last week. “This isn’t about tobacco, it’s about
control,” he said.
“It’s un-American,” put in Rick Sparrow, 48, a house painter.
As
Wayne and Deborah Hancock grabbed a shopping cart, they joined in. All
quickly agreed that the next freedoms at risk would be guns and
religion.

Don’t be too quick to count the Saxon out. There may be no shortage of Puritan busybodies and pagan Episcopalians, but it’s not an accident that the Shot Heard Round the World was fired in New England. And don’t forget, prior to the Civil War, it was the New England states that were threatening to secede from the Union.