They abandoned Christ

And they abandoned the Word of God. It should be no surprise to learn that the people abandoned them:

America is littered with thousands upon thousands of church buildings that aren’t being used anymore. As you will see below, between 6,000 and 10,000 churches are dying in the United States every single year, and that means that more than 100 will die this week alone.  And of course thousands of others are on life support.  All over the country this weekend, small handfuls of people will gather in huge buildings which once boasted very large congregations.

Good riddance. Many, many more churches need to die. They are not Christian churches, they are Churchian organizations that have been converged and are following the lead of the world into total irrelevance and eventual extinction. When evil men like Fake Pope Francis and feckless frauds like Russell Moore are preaching the Fake News of racism, badthink, and cringing accommodation with a fallen world, there should be no surprise whatsoever when the Holy Spirit leaves the building and the congregation dies.

If your church is preaching against manufactured non-sins such as racism and sexism, it will die. If your church permits women to speak from the pulpit, it will die. If your church is preaching that Jesus requires you to welcome refugees, it will die. If your church is preaching that homosexuality is not sin, it will die. If your church preaches racial equality, it will die.

There is no room for compromise on these issues. None whatsoever. The evidence is conclusive and the science is settled.

Comic size poll

About 10 months ago, we requested from our printer the ability to print comics in the traditional size, which is 6.625 x 10.25, and is a little bit wider and just over an inch taller than the royal octavo size that we have been using. This week, our printer made the standard size available to us, the only downside is that it is a little more expensive so we cannot offer a wholesale discount and still keep the retail price at $2.99 price. We’ve decided to do that since our primary focus is on the backers and the Premium editions will be available at wholesale for the comic stores. They will also feature a heavier paper weight so the comics will be .71″ thick compared to .54″.

So, our current plan is to complete the first six Alt-Hero comics in the current size, then switch over to the standard size with issue #7. We will begin Alt-Hero Q with the standard size too; the Premium Issues and the Omnibuses will still be produced in the larger 10 x 7 size since that is considered a standard alternative size. The price of the digital editions will remain at $2.99 for both the Kindle and CBZ versions, both of which will continue to be free to the backers.

We have not made any decisions about Chuck Dixon’s Avalon or Quantum Mortis: A Man Disrupted. Right Ho, Jeeves is going to be released very soon in a 10×7 omnibus paperback.

However, we are in the process of preparing Alt-Hero #5 for print and we could still produce it at the standard size instead of the current one, as we were planning. So, if you have an opinion about whether you would rather have AH#5 in the current size or the standard one, please share it here. While we do plan to go back and offer AH issues #1-4 in standard sizes, that will not be a priority since our first job will be to produce the six-issue omnibuses for the campaign backers, which happen to be the same size as the Premium Issues.

UPDATE: Based on the initial feedback we have tentatively decided to produce the gold logo editions of #5 and #6 at the current royal octavo size, then switch to the standard size with the regular logo editions. Beginning with #7, the gold logo editions will be standard size. So, the royal octavos will be severely limited collector’s editions.

Please feel free to share your thoughts, especially if you are an Arkhaven backer, and vote in the poll at Arkhaven Comics. We expect to have the high-resolution CBZ for sale in the Arkhaven shop later this week, the print edition for sale on Arkhaven Direct next week, and to launch last 28 days of the AH:Q 2.1 campaign next week as well.

Is there nothing he can’t do?

The God-Emperor is liberating men from their ill-considered marriages to angry, batshit-crazy women:

“Shortly after the election is when I became aware of it,” says Lois Brenner, a New York–based divorce attorney. “People were thinking about splitting up their marriages because of political differences.” She’d never encountered this before, but she’s since found herself litigating two such divorces. “After people got over their shock,” she says, “they started arguing.”

By now it’s a truism to point out that the election of Donald Trump and the #MeToo movement have prompted a wholesale realignment of American politics. But it’s also sent shock waves through heterosexual romance.

Donald Trump and the Republican Party have plenty of female supporters, of course, especially among white women. But politically speaking, as evidenced by the recent midterms, there is an undeniable, and growing, gender divide in American politics: In 2018, almost 60 percent of female voters supported Democrats, compared to 47 percent of male voters — outpacing the gap in other recent elections. What can make matters unworkable for couples whose viewpoints aren’t aligned, says Stephanie Coontz, a professor of family studies at Evergreen State College, is that Americans have become increasingly contemptuous of those who hold different positions on divisive political issues — and contempt is singularly destructive for long-term relationships. “Mary Matalin and James Carville,” says Coontz. “How the hell do they make it work?”       

Many people with divergent perspectives from their partners have not been able to make it work in the Trump era. A Reuters/Ipsos poll completed in early 2017 found that in the months following Trump’s election win, 13 percent of 6,426 participants had cut ties with a friend or family member over political differences. This past summer, another survey of 1,000 people found that a third declared the same. More generally, 29 percent of respondents to a May 2017 survey said their romantic relationship had been negatively affected by Trump’s presidency. And even people ostensibly on the same side of the issues as their partner have run into challenges, with the climate exacerbating or revealing new fault lines. Herewith, two couples, and four individual women — all except the final pair using pseudonyms — talk about how conflict over politics is testing, or even ending, their relationships.

This is what software engineers describe as “a feature, not a bug.” It’s also Exhibit 47,339 in Why Female Suffrage was a Cataclysmic Mistake.

The idiocracy has arrived

It’s such a mystery as to why average IQs have been falling precipitously across the West:

A pair of researchers with the Ragnar Frisch Centre for Economic Research in Norway has found that IQ test scores have been slowly dropping over the past several decades. In their paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Bernt Bratsberg and Ole Rogeberg describe their study and the results they found. They also offer some possible explanations for their findings.

Prior studies have shown that people grew smarter over the first part of last century, as measured by the intelligence quotient—a trend that was dubbed the Flynn effect. Various theories have been proposed to explain this apparent brightening of the human mind, such as better nutrition, health care, education, etc, all factors that might help people grow into smarter adults than they would have otherwise. But, now, according to the researchers in Norway, that trend has ended. Instead of getting smarter, humans have started getting dumber.

The study by the team consisted of analyzing IQ test results from young men entering Norway’s national service (compulsory military duty) during the years 1970 to 2009. In all, 730,000 test results were accounted for. In studying the data, the researchers found that scores declined by an average of seven points per generation, a clear reversal of test results going back approximately 70 years.

There are other factors, of course, particularly the dysgenic effects of female education. One has to wonder what the point of educating women is supposed to be when the next generation of women are going to be considerably less intelligent because so few of the highly intelligent, highly educated manage to replace themselves.

But the sheer magnitude of the movement of peoples is the more significant factor. This is why the infrastructure in the USA is never going to return to the state it was in previous decades. The society simply isn’t intelligent enough on average to maintain it any longer.

Remember, that’s not just seven points, that’s seven points PER GENERATION. Idiocracy is not just a movie about the dystopian future, it’s a satire on the dystopian present. Welcome to Costco….

Neoliberal despair

David Brooks fears the post-Boomer future:

Two great belief systems are clashing here. The older liberals tend to be individualistic and meritocratic. A citizen’s job is to be activist, compassionate and egalitarian. Boomers generally think they earned their success through effort and talent. The younger militants tend to have been influenced by the cultural Marxism that is now the lingua franca in the elite academy. Group identity is what matters. Society is a clash of oppressed and oppressor groups. People who are successful usually got that way through some form of group privilege and a legacy of oppression….

The generation gap on the right is less dramatic. It’s less politically important because the young don’t influence the G.O.P. much; the old Trumpians do.

But over the long run it will matter. The boomer conservatives, raised in the era of Reagan, generally believe in universal systems — universal capitalism, universal democracy and the open movement of people and goods. Younger educated conservatives are more likely to see the dream of universal democracy as hopelessly naïve, and the system of global capitalism as a betrayal of the working class. Younger conservatives are comfortable in a demographically diverse society, but are also more likely to think in cultural terms, and to see cultural boundaries.

Whether on left or right, younger people have emerged in an era of lower social trust, less faith in institutions, a greater awareness of group identity. They live with the reality of tribal political warfare and are more formed by that warfare.

This is precisely why the Alt-Right is inevitable, and probably not the more moderate varieties either. Both white American liberalism and white American conservatism are dying, because both ideological perspectives are fundamentally dependent upon the homogeneous majority white population that existed pre-1965. Note that neither the liberal nor the conservative ideology have ever taken root anywhere outside the United States despite the USA’s global cultural influence. That’s why they will not survive post-American US politics; neither holds any appeal to Diversity.

The big difference between Generation Z and its predecessors is that their knowledge of identity politics is real and formative, whereas that of the older generations is mostly symbolic and theoretical. The Boomers, Generation Xers, and Millennials love to feel that they are helping poor unfortunate minorities through their virtue-signaling, whereas Generation Z looks around and realizes that they are in the minority themselves and they are surrounded by a Diversity that hates, envies, and fears them.

The older generations of whites simply cannot conceive of the white population not being completely in charge. The youngest generation realizes how heavily the deck is stacked against them.

Post-meritocracy

The Cancer that is Coraline is truly the Black Plague of technology. Now xit has authored a manifesto of post-meritocracy, complete with the core values and principles of xit’s philosophy of mediocrity:

  • We do not believe that our value as human beings is intrinsically tied to our value as knowledge workers. Our professions do not define us; we are more than the work we do.
  • We believe that interpersonal skills are at least as important as technical skills.
  • We can add the most value as professionals by drawing on the diversity of our identities, backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives. Homogeneity is an antipattern.
  • We can be successful while leading rich, full lives. Our success and value is not dependent on exerting all of our energy on contributing to software.
  • We have the obligation to use our positions of privilege, however tenuous, to improve the lives of others.
  • We must make room for people who are not like us to enter our field and succeed there. This means not only inviting them in, but making sure that they are supported and empowered.
  • We have an ethical responsibility to refuse to work on software that will negatively impact the well-being of other people.
  • We acknowledge the value of non-technical contributors as equal to the value of technical contributors.
  • We understand that working in our field is a privilege, not a right. The negative impact of toxic people in the workplace or the larger community is not offset by their technical contributions.
  • We are devoted to practicing compassion and not contempt. We refuse to belittle other people because of their choices of tools, techniques, or languages.
  • The field of software development embraces technical change, and is made better by also accepting social change.
  • We strive to reflect our values in everything that we do. We recognize that values that are espoused but not practiced are not values at all.

It would be amusing if technical people began imposing this manifesto of mediocrity in non-technical areas. If interpersonal skills are as important as technical skills in the tech industry, are not technical skills as important as interpersonal skills in the service industry?

And given what we now know about social media causing depression, how can any ethical person work for either Facebook or Twitter?

Go, thou, and do likewise

Instapundit deactivated his Twitter account to protest SJW censorship there:

TWITTER’S GONE CRAZY BANNING PEOPLE ON THE RIGHT, so I’ve deactivated my Twitter account.

UPDATE: People seem to want more, and although there’s nothing duller than posting a screed on why you’re quitting a platform, here’s the gist: I’ve never liked Twitter even though I’ve used it. I was a late adopter, and with good reason. It’s the crystal meth of social media — addictive and destructive, yet simultaneously unsatisfying. When I’m off it I’m happier than when I’m on it. That it’s also being run by crappy SJW types who break their promises, to users, shareholders, and the government, of free speech is just the final reason. Why should I provide free content to people I don’t like, who hate me? I’m currently working on a book on social media, and I keep coming back to the point that Twitter is far and away the most socially destructive of the various platforms. So I decided to suspend them, as they are suspending others. At least I’m giving my reasons, which is more than they’ve done usually.

I left Facebook for much the same reason, whereas I was permanently suspended by Twitter. There really isn’t any good reason for anyone to the ideological right of Jeb Bush to be on these sites anymore.

Shut up and do it already

The God-Emperor is blustering again. I don’t think he grasps that people have figured out that he much prefers talk to action:

President Trump threatened to permanently close the U.S. border with Mexico on Monday, saying he’ll take the drastic action if members of a swelling migrant caravan are not deported back to their Central American homelands.

U.S. Border Patrol fired tear gas canisters and rubber bullets at a group of migrants on Sunday, including families with young children, as hundreds tried to storm the border.

San Diego Sector Border Control chief patrol agent Rodney Scott said Monday morning on CNN that when the migrants approached border fences, they ‘immediately started throwing rocks and debris at our agents, taunting our agents.’

‘And once our agents were assaulted and the numbers started growing – you know we had two or three agents at a time facing hundreds of people at a time – they deployed tear gas to protect themselves and protect the border.’

Carla Provost, the chief of U.S. Border Patrol, told the Fox news Channel that ‘our agents were being assaulted. A large group approached the area and they were throwing rocks and bottles at my men and women, putting them in harm’s way as well as other members of the caravan.’

Napoleon understood that if you act decisively in the early stages of a conflict, you encourage others who witness the example being made to take your subsequent threats very, very seriously. Trump has the concept entirely backwards. He threatens, then threatens again, then threatens some more, but ultimately fails to act. He even backs down, at times.

That’s why his bluffs are increasingly being called by his enemies, foreign and domestic, and will soon be completely ignored if he doesn’t take action very soon pour encourager les autres.

The level of deception

In case you think I overstate my case in Jordanetics, consider how his fans are STILL reacting to their first encounters with my Jordan Peterson videos:

This guy is so far off that its almost comical. Nobody knows who this guy is so I guess by attacking JP he’s hoping to make a name for himself. I used to tell my children when they were young that people knock other people down to raise themselves up. Thats whats going on here. JP is a globalist based upon what evidence …you say he is ? Sorry but that dont fly with me nor most of those who have heard him speak. How do you come up with this stuff ? You must be over educated, this seems like a clear example. 

Well, there is this little document, in addition to his frequent statements about nationalism and group identity being deeply pathological.

All this criticism directed at  Peterson is just Ad Hominem attacks on him. You clearly miss the point of the social manifestation of the ethos through individuality. The soul is an extension of the individual and the individual has a room, and that must be in order before you can even begin to take on the challenges of life. Once you have order you can allow yourself to take on the radical Marxist progressives who serve the egalitarian divinity  at all COST’s. Clearly you are driven by malice because the criticisms presented  are weak and hollow.

It depends what you mean by Ad Hominem, bucko.

The Last Inkling

The literary world owes a tremendous debt to Christopher Tolkien, who has remained faithful to his father’s vision to the very end:

In 1975, Christopher Tolkien left his fellowship at New College, Oxford, to edit his late father’s massive legendarium. The prospect was daunting. The 50-year-old medievalist found himself confronted with 70 boxes of unpublished work. Thousands of pages of notes and fragments and poems, some dating back more than six decades, were stuffed haphazardly into the boxes. Handwritten texts were hurriedly scrawled in pencil and annotated with a jumble of notes and corrections. One early story was drafted in a high school exercise book.

A large portion of the archive concerned the history of J.R.R. Tolkien’s fictional world, Middle-earth. The notes contained a broader picture of a universe only hinted at in Tolkien’s two bestselling novels, The Hobbit (1937) and The Lord of the Rings (1954-55). Tolkien had intended to bring that picture to light in a lengthy, solemn history going back to creation itself, but he died before completing a final, coherent version.

Christopher took it upon himself to edit that book, which was published in 1977 as The Silmarillion. He then turned to another project drawn from his father’s papers, then another—ultimately publishing poetry, academic works, fiction, and a 12-volume history of the creation of Middle-earth. The Fall of Gondolin, published in August, is the 25th posthumous book Christopher Tolkien has produced from his father’s archives.

Now, after more than 40 years, at the age of 94, Christopher Tolkien has laid down his editor’s pen, having completed a great labor of quiet, scholastic commitment to his father’s vision. It is the concluding public act of a gentleman and scholar, the last member of a club that became a pivotal part of 20th-century literature: the Inklings. It is the end of an era.

I have little doubt that we will see Amazon proceed to finish the process of convergence and corruption that Peter Jackson started. But thanks to Christopher Tolkien, the original vision will survive in the one medium capable of surviving the passage of time, the written word.

UPDATE: Change that “little doubt” to “no doubt”.

Amazon’s big Middle-earth-set show based on the works of J.R.R. Tolkien is slowly moving forward. During this week’s Television Critics Association press tour, the company says that it has brought on two writers, JD Payne and Patrick McKay, to write and develop the series. The two writers are relative newcomers: both worked on the original script for Star Trek: Beyond, were part of the writer’s room for Godzilla vs. Kong, and are writing the upcoming sequel to Star Trek: Beyond.

No wonder movies are so horrifically bad these days. Remember, this is an industry so infested with Dunning-Kruger syndrome that when they had one of the greatest American writers and one of the greatest English writers at their disposal, they didn’t bother to have either of them write a screenplay. Because what did F. Scott Fitzgerald and P.G. Wodehouse know about storytelling, right?