#Arkhaven INFOGALACTIC #Castalia House
While we are pleased to continue working with Amazon and selling our books there in various formats, the Book of the Week will henceforth point to the Arkhaven store.
Also, we anticipate having very good news for those of you who enjoy Castalia House audiobooks in the coming week. We also plan to have Chuck Dixon’s Avalon #1 available in digital format there very soon.
When reality interferes with the narrative, it’s reality that must make way:
A Democrat with a racist past? That fact might be too far from the mainstream line for CNN, so they labeled Virginia Governor Ralph Northam a ‘Republican’ when reporting on his apology for a past racist photo.
Northam is under pressure from both Democrats and Republicans to resign after admitting that he is one of two men that appeared in an old photograph, one in blackface and the other dressed in a KKK robe. He apologized for the photo, unearthed from a 1984 school yearbook this week, saying that it did not reflect the person he is today, and promised to work to regain the public’s trust, but did not indicate any intention to leave office.
When the story was covered on Anderson Cooper’s show on CNN Friday night, the governor’s name was labeled with the letter ‘R’ – which stands for ‘Republican’.
This sort of thing is why I don’t ever watch ABCNNBCBS Fake News. If they’re misrepresenting the most easily verified facts, what else are they lying about?
If you see a forest in Ethiopia, you know there is very likely to be a church in the middle, says Alemayehu Wassie. …
These small but fertile oases — which number around 35,000 and are dotted across the country — are some of the last remaining scraps of the tall, lush natural forests that once covered Ethiopia, and which, along with their biodiversity, have all but disappeared.
Much of the nation’s forestland has been sacrificed to agriculture to feed the country’s mushrooming population — at more than 100 million, it is the world’s 12th largest. Deforestation was particularly encouraged during the country’s period of communism, in 1974–91, when the government nationalized the land, including the large estates of the church, and distributed it to people who converted swathes to farmland. Just 5{b43a0fc0c6bef1f13a0ee688948bcd35a2a6d28785f026a3bff8ca14cb06d58e} of the country is now covered in forest, down from 45{b43a0fc0c6bef1f13a0ee688948bcd35a2a6d28785f026a3bff8ca14cb06d58e} in the early twentieth century.
Serving as an oasis is going to be our job with regards to knowledge, particularly religious and philosophical tradition in the West. Why do you think I prioritized Infogalactic over more potentially lucrative projects? Did you truly think I didn’t know there was considerably more money in clones of profitable corporate projects than in one of a non-profit?
What the Infogalactic team and the Burn Unit are doing matters, quite possibly more than anything else we are doing.
For the first time in recorded history, a Baby Boomer has expressed a lack of interest in talking about his g-g-generation:
Not-Boomer: I’d like to see another Boomer bashing thread.
Boomer: Nah, all us boomers are used to it. And it’s tiresome.
Will wonders never cease? Have the Boomers finally learned? Have they finally realized that history has passed them by, that no one thinks they’re cool, and that The Beatles are not, in fact, the pinnacle of music? Have they finally grasped how everyone else was always sick of constantly hearing them talk about themselves?
Lust for life: why sex is better in your 80s. Sexually active older people are considered a curiosity, but a new survey suggests that lovemaking is often more fulfilling for ‘sexual survivors’ than those in middle age.
Sadly, no. Apparently some people are simply incapable of change. Bash away, bash away, bash away all. It is practically a moral duty at this point, as a salutary lesson to the younger generations, because no generation in human history has ever been as collectively obnoxious or narcissistic as the Baby Boomers.
The truth is that Boomers are not at all accustomed to being bashed and it stings them more than any non-Boomer can possibly believe, because none of us have ever had our identity tied up in our generational cohort. Here they were collectively catered to their entire lives, only to finally notice, late in life, that Generation X not only didn’t admire them and look up to them, but actively held them in contempt all along.
That’s why so many of them still react like angry Pavlovian dogs to even the smallest expression of disdain for them. Most of them will die without ever having relinquished the delusion that all of human history revolved around them.
It looks like Indiegogo’s legal team still hasn’t read their own Terms of Use or Refund Policy:
Many of you will know about the Indiegogo campaign that we ran last year to build an open-source commenting platform named Comment Freely. Well, it was time for Indiegogo to pay us and rather than giving us the money they decided to refund it without even telling us why. We’ll be putting up a public blog post about this soon with more details. This is breaking news so we’re still considering our options.
Sounds like JAMS is going to have a very good 2019.
When are contributions not eligible for a refund?
Contributions cannot be refunded by Indiegogo, if any of the following are true:
- The contribution funds have already been transferred to the campaign owner
- The campaign has ended
- The perk associated with the contribution has been fulfilled (contribution is marked as fulfilled on Indiegogo by the campaigner)
- Indiegogo determines that there has been an abuse of our Terms of Use, or the refund policy.
Please note, we are unable to cancel your campaign or issue mass refunds for any campaign that has raised funds.
Kamala Harris makes it clear that the Democratic Party has NO PLACE for white men:
Kamala Harris@KamalaHarris
Leaders are called to a higher standard, and the stain of racism should have no place in the halls of government. The Governor of Virginia should step aside so the public can heal and move forward together.
Clearly Ralphie Northram should resign from the Virginia governorship. Because blackface raciss superbad. As should all the Republican consultants upon whom Ed Gillespie spent $29 million and still couldn’t find his opponent’s medical school yearbook.
As you can see, the unexpected drama with Amazon did not even cause us to break our stride. Chuck Dixon’s Avalon #3 is now available in high-resolution digital format from Arkhaven.
UPDATE: It is now available in Kindle format on Amazon as well. However, it is not available via Kindle Select.
Chuck Dixon’s Avalon #3: The Conscience of the King
While King Ace is in training with Big Simba and the Specials of the UN-SPC, his former partner-in-fighting-crime Fazer languishes in a prison designed especially for people with superhuman powers. Fazer is desperate to escape, but how can he get out when his jailors possess the technology required to block his unique abilities?
But Fazer isn’t the only one feeling trapped, as King Ace quickly comes to learn that his new team isn’t tasked with fighting crime in the city of Avalon, but rather, tracking down other people like him and Fazer. And he also discovers that signing on with the official forces of law and order means accepting restrictions on your ability to do what you think is right.
Chuck Dixon is the most prolific comic book writer in history. Set in the world of Alt★Hero, CHUCK DIXON’S AVALON is the legend’s newest creation. The CBZ file contains high-quality 2048 x 1316 images. 24 pages. DRM-free. $2.99.
The print and Kindle editions will be available soon. We are still working with Ingram on sending out the replacement Issue #2 to those who received the silent editions. As the first two issues of CHUCK DIXON’S AVALON are no longer exclusive to Kindle Select, we will make high-resolution CBZ-format editions available on the Arkhaven store this weekend.
Please note that as of issue #3, we have changed over to standard comics format for the single issues. The omnibus editions will still be 10×7.
UPDATE: If you are an Arkhaven backer, please check your email.
John Scalzi@scalzi
TFW something designed to antagonize me turns out to be a consistent and profound source of trouble for the person who made it. Karma is apparently real, y’all.
I wonder what this Karma is in response to?
OVERDOSE
Complainant: Scalzi, [REDACTED], [ADDRESS], Bradford, OH 45308
Incident Address: [ADDRESS], Bradford, OH 45308DETAILS: Report of male subject unresponsive
Perhaps Mr. Scalzi should spend less time snarking and snorting things and more time working on his next literary failure. Anyhow, if you’d like to read the book that all the fuss was about yesterday, it’s called CORROSION and you can pick up the DRM-free ebook at the Arkhaven store.
Russia Today reports that Marine Le Pen is now the President of France:
Exciting news from France: Marine le Pen is the country’s new president. After the Macron regime plunged the country into political crisis, Mrs Le Pen took the oath of office on Place de la Concorde on Friday before a small crowd of gilets jaunes (yellow vests) specially assembled – with the TV cameras – for the occasion.
Proclaiming that she was acting according to Article 7 of the Constitution of the 5th Republic, Mrs Le Pen announced that Emmanuel Macron is no longer in office. To be sure, the government and civil service, the police and the armed forces all continue to operate normally, and Mr Macron continues to work in the Elysée Palace as usual, while Mrs Le Pen is under investigation for financial irregularities. But as she has received official recognition from both Russia and China, she has now become the legitimate president of France.
Of course, this fictitious scenario is ridiculous. But it is no more ridiculous than the recognition of Juan Guaido as president of Venezuela, voted by the European Parliament on January 31, one week after the recognition of him by US President Donald Trump.
I have to admit, I have absolutely no idea what the God-Emperor is doing when it comes to Venezuala. The whole situation looks entirely inexplicable, and as the Russia Today parody makes clear, it’s not even remotely convincing to anyone, least of all the Venezuelans. All I know is that if the European Parliament is for it, it’s almost certainly a terrible idea.
Is prescribing puppet leaders to banana republics really optimal foreign policy in 2019? Do any of these people realize that the South American countries are now considerably larger and more powerful than any of the European nations?
But it wasn’t God. I’m not even remotely surprised by Jordan Peterson’s account of one of his spiritual experiences. The Fencing Bear shares an interview with the Manufactured Man:
Peterson: I can tell you one of the experiences that I had… When I was…. This would be in 1985 or thereabouts, when I was busily working on the first draft of my book Maps of Meaning, where I was outlining this idea that the path of the Hero who voluntarily confronts uncertainty and stands on the border between Chaos and Order is the appropriate target for human development. It’s an alternative to the chaos of nihilism and the totalitarianism of rigid belief. So, and that’s the bearing of responsibility for Being. I was working all of that out. It’s actually an answer to the postmodern conundrum as far as I can tell as well. But anyways, at the same time I was making this sculpture, which is about a foot thick. It’s made out of layers of what’s called foam core, which is styrofoam pressed between two pieces of paper that’s about a quarter of an inch thick and so often used for backing on prints and so on if you get them framed. I made this piece that I called “The Meaning of Music,” and it’s a mandala, so it’s a circle inscribed inside of a square, although I tried to make it multidimensional in a complex way that I can’t really describe at the moment. But what I was trying to do—and I broke it into pieces—what I was trying to do was to produce a visual object that flickered and changed when you looked at it because it was too complex to process visually. You know, like a Necker cube? That’s one of those cubes that reverses when you look at it.
Trussell: Yes.
Peterson: Well, this is like a Necker cube on steroids. Because music, of course, it stays the same across time, but also transforms across time. And it’s full of layered patterns, you know. And the patterns interact harmoniously with one another… And I was fascinated by music because it gives people the direct intimation of meaning. Even if they’re nihilistic punk rockers, they still can’t criticize the experience of meaning that they engage in when they’re listening to their favorite band. It helps them transcend the nihilism of their irrationality…. And you can’t argue with it. It’s like arguing with dance…. It’s beyond argument. And so I was making this sculpture, and I spent like four months on it. I was thinking about it a lot. And I got it mostly assembled, and then I was in my living room in Montreal, and I was listening to Mozart’s Fourth Symphony, the Jupiter Symphony, and I was really listening to it, and it’s one of these complexly, multi-leveled, patterned pieces of auditory sculpture that I believe represents Being. Because what Being is is multiple levels of patterned transformation interacting simultaneously, and music is a representation of that, which is why I think we find it meaningful. Anyways, I was listening intently to this symphony and at the same time I was concentrating on the sculpture that I had made, and all of a sudden—and everything I am about to say is a metaphor because there’s no way of encapsulating it properly in words—it was as if the heavens opened up above me. I mean, I was still in my living room, but the experience is best represented by one of those early Renaissance paintings where you see God or Christ up in the sky with an opening in the sky against the clouds and against the sun so…it was like that, even though I didn’t really see that, it felt like that, and there were some visuals that were associated with it. And then I felt something descend upon me that had a personal nature. You know, something like you were describing as a… higher consciousness that was actually a being of a sort, and it filled me from the inside out. And…it was enrapturing, let’s say. And it was an incredible feeling…. It was a divine feeling, I suppose is the right way of thinking about it. It was certainly a religious experience…. And it transformed me. And it turned me into something far more than I normally was. And maybe you can think about that as an intimation of what you could become if you worked on it for the rest of your life, which is sometimes what I think hallucinogens provide people with—an image of who they could be if they shed all of their dead wood.
Trussell: Right.
Peterson: Anyways, it was as if an offer was being made to me that I could be like that from now on permanently. And I thought, well, I don’t know how to do that. I couldn’t walk down the street in this condition, in this elevated condition. I wouldn’t belong in the world anymore. I wouldn’t know how to function. I don’t know how I could do it… So, this experience, this thing, say, that was communicating with me…accepted that as an answer, although I would say, with some sorrow, and then it receded. And then I went and talked to my wife, and I told her what had happened, and I was shaking, like, a lot…. Like, a tremendous amount. And my pupils were completely dilated.
An offer was almost certainly being made. And Peterson isn’t telling the whole truth about it. Whether or not he accepted the offer that was made to him then, he certainly accepted it, or one very much like it, later.