He Wasn’t Wrong

Twenty-five years ago, the Atlanta Braves pitcher John Rocker wrote an impassioned observation about the decline of New York.

“Imagine having to take the 7 Train to the ballpark looking like you’re riding through Beirut next to some kid with purple hair, next to some queer with AIDS, right next to some dude who just got out of jail for the fourth time, right next to some 20-year-old mom with four kids. It’s depressing. The biggest thing I don’t like about New York are the foreigners. You can walk an entire block in Times Square and not hear anybody speaking English. Asians and Koreans and Vietnamese and Indians and Russians and Spanish people and everything up there. How the hell did they get in this country?”

He was roundly condemned for this by the national media, by Major League Baseball, and was even forced to undergo professional counseling for the thought crime of noticing the consequences of the foreign invasion the city was undergoing. And now, with what appears to be the imminent election of a socialist Muslim born in Uganda to the highest elective office in New York City, he’s taking a well-earned victory lap.

25 years ago I criticized New York for its rapid decline into a third world country. I was forced to undergo Psychological Counseling, as if I were the crazy one. 25 years later, the city is voting in a muslim socialist for mayor.

This is an object lesson for all of the puritanical goodthinkers and immigration fetishists who drank the equalitarian Kool-Aid. Those Cassandras you condemned for being “crazy” and “racist” and “bigoted” were right all along. All of history, recent and ancient, clearly testifies to the obvious fact that if you permit a sufficient number of foreigners to enter your country, they will change it to suit their preferences with absolutely no respect for what was there before them.

The equalitarian ideology has failed. The Enlightenment has failed. Multiculturalism and anti-racism have failed. Immigration is a clear, present, and existential danger to most of the nations of the West.

If you are still having trouble understanding the concept, ask an American Indian to explain it to you.

DISCUSS ON SG

A US Military Withdrawal

The US pulls a brigade out of Romania:

The US is withdrawing some troops from Romania, on NATO’s eastern flank, as the Pentagon works to shift its focus away from Europe and toward homeland defense and Latin America, US and European officials said on Wednesday.

The US is sending home the 2nd Infantry Brigade Combat Team of the 101st Airborne Division back to Kentucky and will not be replacing the unit after its scheduled rotation out of Eastern Europe, according to US Army Europe and Africa. The redeployment comes as eastern flank NATO countries have faced a spike in threats from Russia in recent weeks, including multiple drone incursions in Polish airspace and repeated violations of Lithuanian airspace.

The Army said the reduction in troops is part of Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s “deliberate process to ensure a balanced U.S. military force posture. This is not an American withdrawal from Europe or a signal of lessened commitment to NATO and Article 5,” the Army press release said. “Rather this is a positive sign of increased European capability and responsibility. Our NATO allies are meeting President Trump’s call to take primary responsibility for the conventional defense of Europe. This force posture adjustment will not change the security environment in Europe.”

Translation: the US military is not going to help Ukraine defend Odessa.

The Army press release notwithstanding, European military capabilities have declined over the last two years, they have not increased in the slightest as their economies collapse and social unrest rises. While the US is unlikely to do what it obviously should, and withdraw entirely from the European zone in order to focus on its own sphere of influence, whoever is calling the shots clearly recognizes that fighting Russia in Europe is a war that it cannot hope to win.

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Vol. 9 Sport & Adventure

As previously promised, we’ve made it possible to order the two-volume set of Volumes 9 and 10 in order to complete your set of the Castalia Junior Classics 2020 edition if you happened to purchase the previous eight volumes over time. Original backers should note that they do not need to buy this set because both volumes are included with your backing of the original crowdfund.

We do not intend to make the full 10-volume set available for purchase until the annual Thanksgiving Sale next month because we do not wish to have anyone to pay the full retail price for a set and then be unpleasantly surprised when the sale price is offered a few weeks later. 

We will not be doing anything on the first leather edition until the new year. Also in the new year, we will make second leather edition sets available by sale and a new subscription starting January 1. We have not determined a price yet, but it will be similar to the price for the original backers of the first set. We do not have any extra complete first edition sets available.

To see the Volume 9 cover, more details about the book, and two example pages with illustrations, please visit Castalia Library.

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The Death of Wikipedia

It’s already apparent on this, the second day of Grokipedia, that Wikipedia is effectively dead. It may not have stopped moving yet, but it’s clearly and inevitably toast. Compare and contrast, for example, the competitive listings on the concept of the Sigma Male, which as yet exists only as a subset of tangential pages on both sites.

The most fundamental difference is not actually Grokipedia’s incorporation of AI, but rather, its long-overdue rejection of the perverse Wikipedia demand for a reliable secondhand source, which not only guarantees inaccurate and outdated information, but is a contradiction in terms. Providing the media with a de facto veto on any and all information that can appear on Wikipedia necessarily rendered it incapable of serving as anything more than a mainstream media repository.

The idea of requiring “reliable sources” sounds superficially reasonable, but the observable facts are that the editors, the sources deemed acceptable, and most of all, the admins, are at the very least every bit as biased as any direct source. A direct source might very well put a spin on the information published on Wikipedia, but at least it would provide the information in the first place!

For example, this is the full description of my music career and discography on Wikipedia, even though my status as an award-winning, three-time Billboard charting musician is undisputed and dozens of my songs are publicly available on Spotify and Apple Music.

Beale was a member of the band Psykosonik between 1992 and 1994.

You simply wouldn’t know that I’ve written and recorded over 100 songs for six different bands. You wouldn’t know that my music was featured in a Nintendo game published by Activision. You wouldn’t know what my band beat out Prince for a Best Dance Record award. And you wouldn’t know that I founded the band a year before I was supposedly a member of it. Now, Grokipedia doesn’t do much better in that regard, but it does provide considerably more detail and context.

Psykosonik, an American techno and industrial music project, formed in 1991 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, drawing inspiration from cyberpunk themes and club scenes. The name derived from a lyric in the band’s early track “Sex Me Up,” altered to “Psykosonik” with a “k” for distinctiveness. Key contributors included Paul Skrowaczewski, who handled musical production and vocals, and Theodore Beale, who provided lyrics influenced by political nihilism and extropian ideas. The project evolved from earlier electronic experiments tied to local nightclubs like The Upper Level and The Underground, managed by impresario Gordie.[12]

Beale’s involvement stemmed from his prior experience in the cover band NoBoys, active in 1987–1988, which performed synth-pop sets including Depeche Mode and New Order tracks at Minneapolis venues. NoBoys played a notable one-hour gig at The Upper Level in summer 1988, drawing crowds before being cut short due to internal club tensions. By late 1991, Beale collaborated with Skrowaczewski on Psykosonik, writing lyrics for songs like “Silicon Jesus” and contributing conceptual vision. The lineup expanded in early 1992 with drummer Mike Reed and DJ Dan Lenzmeier, solidifying the project’s electronic sound. Beale served as lyricist until departing the music scene in 1994 to focus on technology ventures.[13][12][14]

Psykosonik’s early momentum built through club exposure rather than extensive live tours, characteristic of 1990s techno acts emphasizing studio production. The track “Sex Me Up” gained traction by late 1991 when played regularly by DJs at The Perimeter nightclub, prompting crowds to anticipate and chant along during peak hours. Subsequent demos, such as an early version of “Down to the Ground” recorded that winter, fueled local buzz but did not lead to documented full-band concerts. The project prioritized releases over stage performances, with Beale’s lyrics appearing on the 1993 self-titled debut album, though live sets remained minimal amid internal creative dynamics.[12]

There are a few errors, of course. But it’s notable that it actually got Paul Sebastian’s surname right.

  • The drummer was Mike Larson, not Mike Reed.
  • My lyrics also appear on the second album, Unlearn.

It’s remarkable that it has only one more error than the Wikipedia entry despite providing considerably more detail… but more about that anon.

It’s clear that Grokipedia offers a clear technological path forward for Infogalactic, as well as leaveing considerable room for some of the curation and user features that we’ve always planned to provide that will allow Infogalactic to complement Grokipedia in a way that it could never co-exist with Wikipedia. If you’re an AI programmer with potential interest in the next phase of the project, watch this space.

Regardless, it’s clear that Wikipedia’s monopoly has been broken by artificial intelligence and its convergence ensures its inability to perform its core function sufficiently well enough for it to compete and survive.

UPDATE: Wikipedia founder Larry Sanger has some additional thoughts, and even created a metric that found Grokipedia to be considerably less biased despite its reliance on supposedly unreliable direct sources.

According to ChatGPT 4o, which is a competent LLM that is widely perceived to lean to the left, primarily on account of its training data, the Wikipedia articles on these controversial topics, on average, had a bias somewhere between “emphasizes one side rather more heavily” and “severely biased.” By contrast, the Grokipedia articles on these topics are said to “exhibit minor imbalances” on average. On these topics, Wikipedia was never wholly neutral, while Grokipedia was entirely neutral (rating of 1) three out of ten times, and was only slightly biased (rating of 2) five other times. Meanwhile, Wikipedia’s bias was heavy, severe, or wholly one-sided (rating of 3, 4, or 5) six out of ten times.

DISCUSS ON SG

Grokipedia is Already Better

Elon Musk is correct. Even version 0.1 of Grokipedia is better than Wikipedia. It also points to the way forward for Infogalactic. Who needs editors when you’ve got AI? Here is an excerpt from its entry on Sad Puppies and Rabid Puppies:

Theodore Beale, writing under the pseudonym Vox Day and founder of Castalia House publishing, launched the Rabid Puppies campaign on February 2, 2015, as an independent but parallel effort to the Sad Puppies initiative. Beale positioned it as a response to what he viewed as an entrenched ideological clique—derisively termed “CHORFs” (cliquish Hugo-oriented right-thinking fans) and “SJWs” (social justice warriors)—that allegedly controlled Hugo nominations through low-turnout bloc voting favoring message-driven works over entertainment value. Unlike the Sad Puppies’ focus on recommending overlooked popular fiction, Beale explicitly instructed supporters to nominate his slate items “precisely as they are” to maximize disruption and demonstrate the system’s susceptibility to organized external participation, including promotion of Castalia House titles like the anthology Riding the Red Horse.

The 2015 Rabid Puppies slate overlapped significantly with the Sad Puppies recommendations, featuring works such as Jim Butcher’s Skin Game for Best Novel and Edward M. Lerner’s Slow Bullets for Best Novella, but also included Beale’s self-nominated editing credits. This coordination, combined with Rabid supporters’ higher discipline in nominating all slate items, resulted in Puppy-affiliated works occupying most finalist slots across categories, including five of five in Best Novella and Best Short Story—displacing approximately 80% of what would have been conventional nominees based on prior years’ patterns. Hugo nomination tallies, with around 2,000 nominators compared to historical averages under 1,500, underscored the campaigns’ amplification of voter turnout among previously unengaged readers.

In the July 2015 final voting phase, involving about 4,000 ballots, Rabid Puppies nominees frequently ranked below “No Award” in a backlash from established fandom, with Beale’s professional editor nominations receiving the lowest support (e.g., 165 first-place votes out of thousands). Beale framed this as a strategic success, arguing that the widespread “No Award” usage—unprecedented in scale, affecting five categories—exposed the awards’ politicization, as opponents prioritized ideological purity over merit, effectively “burning down” the Hugos rather than allowing non-conforming works to win. He continued the campaign in 2016 and 2017, adapting to rule changes like E Pluribus Hugo by nominating provocative entries such as Chuck Tingle’s satirical Space Raptor Butt Invasion, which secured a finalist spot and amplified mockery of the process, though with reduced dominance (e.g., only partial slate success in 2016). Beale’s efforts, drawing from a dedicated online following, highlighted empirical vulnerabilities in the pre-reform Hugo system, where small, cohesive groups could sway outcomes amid chronically low participation rates below 5% of World Science Fiction Society membership.

In 2016, author Kate Paulk organized Sad Puppies 4, announcing the campaign on September 3, 2015, with a focus on compiling crowd-sourced recommendation lists rather than a strict slate to promote broader participation and avoid accusations of ballot manipulation. The final list, released on March 17, 2016, included only works receiving at least two recommendations across categories, emphasizing entertainment value and fun over ideological messaging. Despite this shift, the campaign exerted limited influence on nominations, as the ballot was overwhelmingly dominated by the parallel Rabid Puppies slate led by Vox Day, which secured 64 of its 81 recommended works on the shortlist across all categories.

It’s a much more detailed, and accurate, account of what really happened. Of course, they never seem to bother mentioning what motivated me to burn down the Hugo Awards, which was the false accusations that I’d somehow “gamed” my 2014 nomination in the Best Novelette category for “Opera Vita Aeterna”. I therefore showed them what gaming a nomination actually looks like when you’re a game designer.

The real success of Sad Puppies, of course, was the inevitable reaction to it. Seriously, SF-SJWs are just reprehensibly stupid. The rules prevented us from permanently burning the whole thing down, so I had to come up with a way to provoke them into doing it themselves.

DISCUSS ON SG

Denninger Rejects Conservatism

I’m very far from the only right-wing figure to shake free of the mainstream gatekeepers of the right and reject both the title and the substance of the false political posture of being “conservative,” and for much the same reasons that Karl Denninger points out:

No, I am not a “conservative.”

Why not?

Well, what is it that “conservatives” are allegedly attempting to conserve? That is the seminal question of course, much as someone who claims to be “liberal” should be expected to answer — “What is it you are allegedly attempting to liberate?”

“Conservatives” are certainly not attempting to conserve, for example, the fundamental principle of The Rule of Law. Were they, being allegedly in power at the federal level today, every health care provider who is discriminatorily pricing (e.g. “negotiating” the amount a procedure is paid based on who the insurance firm is, a blatantly felonious act for more than 100 years under 15 USC Chapter 1) would be commercially destroyed and all their directors and officers would be under indictment and facing forfeiture of their entire corporate body of wealth along with all of the wealth each and every director and officer has amassed.

Nor does it stop with health care; under 8 USC Section 1324 every entity who has solicited, harbored or transported illegal immigrants into the United States and suborned perjury through false asylum claims would also be under indictment, subject to civil forfeiture (bye-bye Catholic Charities and dozens of others) and every single one of those people who made such a false claim and is here would be notified that they have 24 hours to get out or be prosecuted for perjury and permanently barred from the United States if, upon examination, their claim is in fact bogus.

Never mind the recent “article” discussing why car insurance is so expensive in many states — ignoring those here illegally driving with no license, insurance and often unable to speak English — and of course in some cases causing wrecks. The insurance companies love this of course because being limited on percentage of revenue by state insurance commissions they are for any set of actions that causes more wrecks or more expensive wrecks since that’s the only way for them to make more money. Since such people have neither money or insurance the only place they can get the funds to fix the car (and fix you) is from you, the law-abiding citizen.

How about Somali migrants?  There’s enough fraud already uncovered for dozens or hundreds of indictments.  Hell, even back in 2008 this was known when 80% of claimed family relations were proved false by DNA testing!  Exactly how many of these people have been expelled?  There is no right to be here if you gained entry through fraud, so why haven’t we thrown all of them out if we now have a so-called “conservative” Immigration and State Departments?

Conservatives didn’t conserve the ladies room; they didn’t even manage to conserve the distinction between a man and a woman. They’re certainly not going to conserve either the U.S. Constitution, the United States, or Great Britain. If conservatism is not rejected, they won’t conserve the European nations either. Or, most likely, humanity itself.

This is why I describe myself as a Christian Nationalist rather than a conservative. First Jesus Christ. Then family. Then the nation. But everything, literally everything, springs from the Living Word, including the Good, the Beautiful, and the True. If you don’t understand that, or refuse to accept that, you cannot possibly hope to understand very much about the world around you.

And anyone who urges you to adulterate any of those three things is speaking in obvious deceit and seeking to destroy all three, no matter what he calls himself and no matter how he justifies his falsehoods.

In answer to Mr. Denninger’s question, what liberals are seeking to liberate, whether they realize it or not, is literal Hell on Earth.

DISCUSS ON SG

The Last Bluff

Big Serge explains the real reason why the USA cannot afford to provide any Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine:

The basic pattern here is well established. The United States has done what it can to backstop Ukrainian strike capabilities, but it has held them at a level where Ukraine’s damage output falls far short of decisive levels. So long as that is the case, Russia has clearly demonstrated that it will simply eat the punches and retaliate against Ukraine. Hence, when the United States helps Ukraine target Russian oil facilities, it is Ukraine that receives the reprisal, and it is Ukraine which has its natural gas production annihilated as the winter approaches. In a sense, neither side is really trying to deter the other at all. The United States has raised the cost of this war for Russia, but not enough to create any real pressure for Moscow to end the conflict; in response, Russia punishes Ukraine, which is something the United States does not really care about. The result is a sort of geostrategic Picture of Dorian Gray, where the United States vicariously inflicts cathartic damage on Russia, but Ukraine accrues all the soul damage.

In the case of Tomahawks, the risk-reward calculus is just not there. Tomahawks are a strategically invaluable asset that the United States cannot afford to hand out like candy. Even if the launch systems could be provided (highly doubtful), the missiles could not be made available in sufficient quantities to make a difference. The range of the missiles, however, significantly raises the probability of miscalculation or uncontrolled escalation. Ukraine shooting American missiles at energy infrastructure in Belgorod or Rostov is one thing; shooting them at the Kremlin is another thing entirely.

There is, however, another aspect of this which seems to be garnering little attention. The biggest risk of sending Tomahawks is not that the Ukrainians will blow up the Kremlin and start World War Three. The bigger risk is that the Tomahawks are used, and Russia simply moves on after eating the strikes. Tomahawks are arguably one of the last – if not the last – rung in the escalation ladder for the USA. We have rapidly run through the chain of systems that can be given to the AFU, and little remains except a few strike systems like the Tomahawk or the JASSM. Ukraine has generally received everything it has asked for. In the case of Tomahawks, however, the United States is running the most serious risk of all: what if the Russians simply shoot down some of the missiles and eat the rest of the strikes? It’s immaterial whether the Tomahawks damage Russian powerplants or oil refineries. If Tomahawks are delivered and consumed without seriously jarring Russian nerves, the last escalatory card will have been played. If Russia perceives that America has reached the limits of its ability to raise the costs of the war for Russia, it undercuts the entire premise of negotiations. More simply put, Tomahawks are most valuable as an asset to threaten with.

The USA has been relentlessly bluffing, and the Russians have been relentlessly calling those bluffs, since the launch of the Special Military Operation nearly four years ago. There can be little doubt that the Russians will do the same thing if the Tomahawks are deployed against them, and then the US military will be revealed as the paper tiger it is so far outside its zone of influence.

Which, of course, is the one thing the US military cannot afford to happen in light of its global pretensions and asymmetric war with China.

DISCUSS ON SG

Six Years in the Making

The purpose of The Junior Classics is to provide, in ten volumes containing about five thousand pages, a classified collection of tales, stories, and poems, both ancient and modern, suitable for boys and girls of from six to sixteen years of age. The boy or girl who becomes familiar with the charming tales and poems in this collection will have gained a knowledge of literature and history that will be of high value in other school and home work. Here are the real elements of imaginative narration, poetry, and ethics, which should enter into the education of every child.

This collection, carefully used by parents and teachers with due reference to individual tastes and needs, will help many children enjoy good literature. It will inspire them with a love of good reading, which is the best possible result of any elementary education. The child himself should be encouraged to make his own selections from this large and varied collection, the child’s enjoyment being the object in view. A real and lasting interest in literature or in scholarship is only to be developed through the individual’s enjoyment of his mental occupations.

CHARLES ELIOT
PRESIDENT EMERITUS OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY
1918

We launched the Castalia Junior Classics on October 15, 2019. On October 26, 2025, we completed the interiors and the covers for Volumes 9 and 10. For more information, check out the Library substack.

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The Dancing Nurses of Covid-19

I never understood what purpose those stupid dancing nurse videos were supposed to serve, nor did I realize how prevalent they were since I wasn’t on Twitter, Tik-tok, or Facebook. But since I was personally acquainted with two nurses during that time, I was aware that they were nonsense and that real nurses working in real hospitals weren’t wasting their time learning choreographed dance routines and performing them for the purposes of their own morale.

Dancing nurses were never about the morale of healthcare workers or stress relief. They were a test, a sorting mechanism, revealing who would accept the contradictions and who would resist them. These videos on TikTok, which appeared simultaneously across all continents while governments declared medical emergencies, represented something unprecedented in the history of propaganda: the authorities showed that they could make populations accept two mutually exclusive realities at the same time.

What we witnessed was not traditional propaganda aimed at persuasion, but something more akin to what abuse experts recognize as gaslighting on a large scale. The psychological mechanism was elegant in its cruelty: it presented citizens with an apparent contradiction—hospitals that were both overcrowded and empty enough for choreographed routines—and then punished them socially for noticing it. Those who pointed out the inconsistency were labeled “conspiracy theorists,” while those who defended the videos unwittingly became pawns in the operation.

This essay explores how this technique fits into the broader context of psychological warfare described by researchers from Paul Linebarger to Michael Hoffman, from Peter Pomerantsev to Annalee Newitz. It examines how the “revelation of the method“ — which shows the audience the manipulation while remaining powerless to resist it — serves to discourage and fragment resistance.

The dancing-nurses were a test for the distortion of reality. Once populations accepted this initial contradiction, they were prepared for more: masks that worked, except when they didn’t, vaccines that prevented transmission until they stopped preventing it, two weeks to “flatten the curve” that ended up being two years. Each accepted absurdity weakened the public’s ability to trust their own observations.

Almost four years later, we can see how this enterprise created precedents that persist. The infrastructure of cognitive control—digital identity systems, social credit mechanisms, curation of reality through algorithmic manipulation—continues to expand…

This technique seems to draw inspiration from what Michael Hoffman calls “method disclosure“ — the practice of cryptocracy revealing its activities in plain sight, knowing that public inaction in the face of such a revelation produces a discouraging effect. The message becomes: “We can show you the contradiction between our words and our actions, and you will do nothing. You will accept both the lie and the evidence of it.” It is a form of ritual humiliation that works not through concealment, but through unabashed display.

The dancing nurses were not trying to convince anyone that the hospitals were functioning normally—they were trying to show that the authorities could make citizens accept two mutually exclusive realities at the same time. It was not simply a matter of controlling information; it was about breaking the public’s trust in their perception of reality.

The lesson of Clown World is this: if it doesn’t make sense, then it is definitely fake and probably gay.

DISCUSS ON SG

Odessa is Next

Col McGregor observes the significance of the recent Russian crossing of the Dnieper River.

The Russians have crossed the Dnieper River. They already have special operations forces and agents on the ground outside of Odessa. They’re now putting together a bridgehead on the west side of the Dnieper River. For all intents and purposes, it’s a bridge head that will be utilized to position forces to cross that river in strength. Now, why would the Russians cross the river, the South Dnieper with large forces? It would be to take Odessa.

Why would you take Odessa? Odessa, if it’s in Russian hands, would stop the flow of many, many arms, equipment, and support into Ukraine from the sea, from the Black Sea. Secondly, it would also landlock Ukraine. In other words, turn this future rump state we call Ukraine into a state with no outlet to the sea, which of course would be very harmful to the future of Ukraine. Now, everybody’s saying, “Oh, no, that will never happen.” No, absolutely. I think it’s going to happen…

So, these things take time, but I think at this point, President Putin has probably signaled to the general
staff, let’s plan on taking Odessa.

In the meantime, it’s being reported that the Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, Valery Gerasimov, has informed President Putin of the encirclement of 31 Ukrainian battalions in the Donetsk region. That implies that between 7,500 and 15,000 Ukrainian soldiers will be forced to surrender before the end of November and quite possibly much sooner.

It goes without saying that if the Kiev regime had any concerns for the fate of the Ukrainian people, it would have surrendered already. The fact that it hasn’t, and that it not likely to do so anytime soon, does not bode well for whatever is left of Ukraine in the post-war period. If Russia now feels the time is right to take Odessa, that suggests that the UFA has been weakened to the point that it will not be able to put up much in the way of resistance, given its importance to the Kiev regime.

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