Over at Castalia Library is an interesting comparison of the three primary English translations as reviewed by three different AIs, as well as a poll on the desirability of doing a leather edition of Kokoro. If it’s of interest, share your thoughts with us, as there are a few different options.
Another Year, Another War
And another new set of incoming refugees, this time from Venezuela:
US forces have captured Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife during Washington’s strikes on the nation’s capital, US President Donald Trump has announced, adding that the two have been flown out of the South American country. Venezuelan authorities have long accused the US of attempting to topple the government in Caracas.
In a statement on Saturday on Truth Social, Trump confirmed that the US had “successfully carried out a large scale strike against Venezuela.”
“Its leader, President Nicolas Maduro, who has been, along with his wife, captured and flown out of the Country. This operation was done in conjunction with US Law Enforcement,” he wrote, adding that additional details would be provided at a news conference in his Florida residence in Mar-a-Lago at 11am. Unnamed US officials told CBS that the operation had been carried out by Delta Force, the US Army’s top special mission unit.
I’m sure we can expect the European Union and all the usual suspects to denounce this attack on the head of a sovereign state, right? Vladimir Putin has to be thinking that he could have saved himself a lot of trouble if he’d simply captured Zelensky and his wife back in 2022.
Anyhow, the long list of failed US interventions and occupations provides no reason that this invasion of Venezuela is going to turn out well for Americans anytime soon. Although I suppose Venezuelan-run child care centers can’t be any worse than the Somali-run ones. Because you know that an influx of Venezuelan immigrants is the only reliable consequence of this action.
The Five Sigmas
You can trust your dark lord, because he gets amazingly physics-like results. 5 Sigma is the level on the scale that that particle physicists use to describe the certainty of a discovery.
Just a little spin on Daniel Dennett’s old Atheist Logic demotivator: you can trust biologists because physicists get amazingly accurate results.
It turns out that if you put MITTENS into physics terms, it’s reliable to the point that you could literally announce the existence of a new particle on it. In particle physics, a 3-sigma result counts as an observation and a 5-sigma result is a discovery. In 2012, the initial announcement of the Higgs Boson was made on the basis of a 5.0 sigma result from ATLAS and 4.9 sigma from CMS.
Even using a Modern Synthesis-friendly extrapolation of observed human fixation rates, the confidence level for MITTENS is 5.3 sigma. That’s how catastrophic MITTENS is for evolution by natural selection. And if their predecessors’ behavior at the 1966 Wistar Symposium is any guide, it’s going to be comical watching the biologists trying desperately, and unsuccessfully, to “correct” the math.
The Lesson of Scott Adams
Mike Cernovich writes a heartfelt love letter to Scott Adams:
What is the lesson of Scott Adams?
On a practical level, the lesson of Scott Adams is the power of showing up. Nobody works harder and on a more regular schedule. You can set your clock to Scott’s show. Too many of us wait for the muse of inspiration or the jolt of information to force us into action. Work, everyday, maybe in obscuring and without tangible benefits for years. Eventually you’ll hit your mark and go beyond.
Scott plugged away with his streams from a small account (after a huge career via Dilbert) and soon became must-watch, and then transcended his role to becoming something much more.
On a spiritual level, we might ask, why do we love Scott? It’s not because he’s so smart (he is). There are not shortage of intelligent, clever, Machiavellian, and rich people with podcasts. When one of them dies, what is lost? All of that Ego and desire for adoration, and does anybody even care? When those people fall while living, who will be there?
Scott is loved because he’s devoted his life to service to humanity. “What is the meaning of life,” is the question we ask every interviewee, and Scott’s answer, “Be useful to humanity.”
Despite pain, sickness, and inevitable death, Scott is doing his daily streams, serving his country and all of humankind until his end.
It’s a beautiful sentiment and a lovely gesture toward a dying man. I have my own thoughts, but let those rest for the nonce. If nothing else, Scott will always be remembered as one of the greatest cartoonists to have ever laid pen to paper as well as the most eloquent commentator on the late 20th century corporation. More than anyone else, he penned its history and laid the framework for how future generations will interpret it.
The world will absolutely be diminished by his loss.
Taiwan > Okinawa
China’s strategists have begun implementing a new rhetorical wedge issue against Clown World. It turns out that China has a far better claim to Taiwan than Japan does to US-occupied Okinawa.
Articles by Chinese media questioning the history of and Japan’s sovereignty over Okinawa Prefecture surged in November, analysis showed, as Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s remarks on a Taiwan emergency sharply deteriorated Tokyo-Beijing ties.
The number of Chinese articles using terms such as “Ryukyu” — a historical name for the former island kingdom that includes present-day Okinawa — and “independence” increased by around 20-fold last month from a year earlier.
Assertions casting doubt on Okinawa’s status as Japanese territory became more prominent, suggesting a possible propaganda campaign triggered by Takaichi’s comments, indicating her government may act if China were to launch a military attack against the self-ruled island.
The apparent aim is to unsettle Japanese society while shaping public opinion within China. Beijing views Taiwan as a renegade province to be reunified with the mainland, by force if necessary. They have been governed separately since 1949, following a civil war.
The articles were extracted from reports by media based in mainland China and Hong Kong in which “Ryukyu” or “Okinawa” and “independence” appeared close together in the text. Under the criteria, about 30 such articles were identified in November 2024.
But the figure rose to around 600 last month, soaring after Nov. 7, when Takaichi said in a parliamentary session that a Chinese attack on Taiwan could constitute a “survival-threatening situation” for Japan, potentially involving its defense forces.
In November, Chinese-linked media articles highlighted Okinawa’s past as an independent kingdom, arguing that the southern island prefecture’s sovereignty did not revert to Japan under the 1972 reversion agreement.
It’s fascinating how quickly the so-called “rules-based world order” is trying to forget the rules that established it back in 1945. But even if we ignore the rules, the historical facts are equally clear:
- The Qing dynasty formally annexed Taiwan in May 1684, making it a prefecture of Fujian province while retaining its administrative seat (now Tainan) under Koxinga as the capital.
- In 1879, Japan annexed the entire Ryukyu archipelago. The Meiji government then established Okinawa Prefecture. The monarchy in Shuri was abolished, and the deposed King Shō Tai was forced to relocate to Tokyo.
The Chinese claim to Taiwan predates the Japanese claim by nearly 200 years. Or, if we subscribe to the rules of the rules-based world order, by nearly 300 years.
The Hallmark of Bad Writing
Stranger Things has come to its inevitably ignominious end. But at least it left us with one epic meme.
The writing in Hollywood has never been very good, and it’s always been completely delusional. But we’re definitely reaching a new nadir, when the writers and the directors can’t even pay attention to the context of the current scene in their absolute focus on inserting their insane propaganda into their creations at the most inopportune possible moment.
It’s very much like when the director decides that the best time to go for some really gut-wrenching emotion is right in the middle of a violent combat action. For some reason, the enemy completely fails to take advantage of the fact that everyone has laid down their guns and is standing around the one member of the party who actually got hit so that they can meaningfully emote for a minute or two, before they rejoin the battle, successfully inspired by their grief and rage.
Replacement 3.0
Americans haven’t been in control of New York City for a long time. Once you start letting immigrants run things, you can’t be surprised when the process continues considerably further than you’d originally imagined and declared would be just fine:
Zohran Mamdani has been sworn in as New York City’s 110th mayor, the first Muslim and African-born person of Indian descent to hold the position. The 34‑year‑old took his midnight oath on a centuries-old Quran in a long‑closed subway station beneath City Hall on Thursday.
At a public inauguration speech outside City Hall later in the day, Mamdani leaned heavily into his democratic socialist ideology, vowing to “govern expansively and audaciously.”
“My fellow New Yorkers – today begins a new era!” he declared in a nearly 25‑minute address before a crowd of about 4,000 people. I was elected as a Democratic socialist and I will govern as a Democratic socialist,” he said. “I will not abandon my principles for fear of being deemed radical.”
It doesn’t really matter at this point. New York was lost in the early 20th century, it was just disguised by the redefinition of “American” under the immigrants’ civic nationalist propaganda. All of the various political moves now are just laying the stage for the shape of the eventual breakup.
What does Mamdani have to offer, and how can he represent heritage Americans in any way when he stands against everything that they stand for? He can’t, of course, nor does he wish to do so. Which is why dissolution is now not only inevitable, but obvious.
It’s the gates of Toledo redux.
Welcome to 2026
It’s going to be a massive year for our community. About which more anon…
However, I can say that we’re launching our first books for our foreign language imprint tonight. So, if you speak French, Italian, or German, be on the lookout for:
- Les Canons de Mars, Chuck Dixon
- Armi di Marte, Chuck Dixon
- Der Tod und Der Teufel, Vox Day
They will soon be followed by an entirely new book entitled:
PROBABILITÉ ZÉRO: L’Impossibilité Mathématique de la Théorie de l’Évolution par Sélection Naturelle.
Also, thanks for helping make Kokoro #1 in Japanese Language Fiction.
2025: The Year Europe Lost its Mind
Or perhaps it was the year it became obvious that the European elites were taking orders from someone who isn’t the Americans and who doesn’t give a damn about the various European peoples.
To be fair to the dismal year on the way out, at least 2025 won’t be a hard act to beat. In particular, if last January anyone was recklessly optimistic enough to hope for the West to come to its senses about its catastrophic relationship with Russia and the war in and over Ukraine, they will have been largely disappointed. (Let’s not waste time on those who were still dreaming about actually defeating Russia: the clinically delusional and deliberately disingenuous are an unrewarding topic.)
It is true that the disappointment delivered by 2025 in this area has not been total. There has been one major positive – if still incomplete and reversible – development: After many abrupt twists and turns, Washington seems to have settled on a policy of “strategic stability” (in the language of the new National Security Strategy) with Moscow. This marks a possible path to mutually beneficial normalization, perhaps even a future détente. (I will plead the Trump Unpredictability Caveat here, though: if the American president and disrupter-in-chief flipflops again, don’t blame this author.)
But, at the same time, the almost 30 countries best labeled NATO-EU Europe, with politically rigid and ideologically zealous Germans in the lead not only in Berlin but Brussels as well, have found the single most perverse issue to finally assert some independence from their US overlords: stalling an end to the Ukraine War. This obstructionism has been so obvious that even (some) Western observers have started noticing it.
Though little noticed, this is actually a historic reversal. Silly pundits used to say that Americans are from Mars and Europeans from Venus. But now when even the traditionally ultra-bellicose Americans have finally been backing out of an ever-worsening confrontation between, in effect, the West and Russia, NATO-EU Europe’s odd – and unpopular – elites have resisted the prospect of peace.
The insanity, the oddity, and the unpopularity of the European elites cannot be exaggerated. I don’t know anyone, of any political persuasion, who actually supports anything the EU is doing. No one wants war. No one will be willing to go to war. If they try to make anyone go to war, they’ll fight their own governments before they’ll fight the Russians.
It wouldn’t surprise me in the least if the Russians already have a plan in place to help those who would rather fight the people that want to fight Russia than fight them.
I expect more than one European government to collapse completely or be overthrown before 2026 is through. And if one goes, there will likely be a domino effect.
KOKORO
“Love is a sin. Do you understand that?”
Natsume Sōseki’s Kokoro (1914) is one of the essential novels of modern Japanese literature—a haunting story of friendship, guilt, and the isolation that follows betrayal. In the more than 100 years since its publication, Sōseki’s masterpiece has not aged a day.
A Friendship Shrouded in Silence A young university student encounters a mysterious older man at a seaside resort. Drawn to his intellect and profound melancholy, the student calls him only “Sensei”. Their friendship deepens over time, but Sensei maintains a calculated reserve, shadowed by a darkness in his past that he refuses to share. When he finally breaks his silence, what he reveals is a shattering betrayal with life-altering consequences.
The Right Tempo for the 21st Century For decades, English readers have viewed Kokoro through the lens of academic translations that often feel as distant as the Meiji era they describe. Kenji Weaver’s vibrant new translation brings the classic into contemporary English without sacrificing the spirit of the original Japanese.
About the Weaver translation:
- Intimate Prose: The language breathes. Sensei’s long confession—one of the great set pieces in world literature—unfolds with the terrible intimacy of a letter you were never meant to read.
- Emotional Immediacy: By rejecting the emphasis on literalism of the two previous English translations, Weaver allows the silences to land and the psychological heat of the story to hit the reader directly.
- Accessible Beauty: From the casual atmosphere of the oceanfront in Kamakura to the suffocating tension of an old man’s deathbed in the country, this version makes Sōseki’s century-old world feel immediate and alive.
For readers who know Kokoro, this translation will feel like hearing a familiar piece of music played at the right tempo. For those coming to it for the first time: this is a story about what it costs to betray someone, and what it costs to keep that secret for a lifetime.
For an example of the new translation, visit Castalia Library.