Three months of the greatest Ukrainian offensive

The offensive seems to be turning out much as it turned out three months ago.

They have tried for a breakthrough in lots of places over a broad front, with uniformly disappointing results. The goal of counter envelopment of Bakhmut was swiftly abandoned early in the offensive. The goal of cutting through to sea of Azov, thus breaking the land bridge to Crimea was downsized to taking Tokmak, which would significantly and substantially impair the land bridge to Crimea. but not actually cut it.

In recent weeks they have abandoned all their other efforts, and thrown everything they have into an advance from their salient at Novandrivka, which they had before the offensive began, towards Tokmak.

The red arrows show how much they have gained in three months.

The red dots represent Russian fortifications. As you can see, they have made a dent, they are significantly closer to Tokmak, but it is still a long way to Tokmak. And Russian doctrine is that the fortifications start out soft, and get more and more formidable the further you go.

The American armored vehicles have proven to be little use. Their advances have come primarily by herding cannon fodder over minefields under fire. This is not a tactic that can be repeated too many times. You continually need fresh troops. And they are now running mighty short of fresh troops. At the moment the offensive is stalled, awaiting the next shipment of fresh cannon fodder. I have repeatedly been surprised by their ability to dig up more cannon fodder, and likely I will be surprised again, but they have been digging mighty hard, and will have to dig a whole lot harder.

413 Responses to “Three months of the greatest Ukrainian offensive”

  1. Hesiod says:

    1 Hour of Chad Orthodox Chants to Redeem Your Soul:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xaj8QSJZ0E

    Pavel Chesnokov’s “To Thee We Sing” is my jam, yo. Found this on a whim right before this morning’s exercise and it focused so well my contemplations once I got into a rhythm.

    “And unto man he said, Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom; and to depart from evil is understanding.” – Job 28:28

  2. FTZ says:

    As Harvard is mighty popular around here,
    be informed that they recently have won 1st prize in lying and suppressing truth – far ahead of even the 2nd best:

    https://nypost.com/2023/09/06/harvard-is-named-worst-school-for-free-speech-scoring-zero-out-of-possible-100/

  3. Robert says:

    Maybe the western leaders want all ukranian men to die so they can get a bunch of hot ukranian women on the cheap.

    • Bwana Simba says:

      That makes sense. Alas, with how crazy our modern elite is it is probably is not true.

    • Bruse says:

      [*deleted for utter ignorance of women*]

    • Karl says:

      I wish the West were led by men who are interested in hot women.

      • Pax Imperialis says:

        Emmanuel “Granny Lover” Macron
        Justin “Can’t Keep a Bitch” Trudeau
        Barack “Tweeking Gay Sex” Obama
        Joe “Loli Sniffer” Biden
        Rishi “Tranny Protector” Sunak

        • The Cominator says:

          Women did like Trudeau originally (more reason they shouldn’t vote) but he is obviously a faggot.

          • Trudeau says:

            Trudeau is not only a faggot, he is a vicious faggot, and he’s a fucking idiot apologist who wears Islamic Moon socks. Muslim people actually want to kill him.

            Democrat party would not exist if women’s suffrage never happened. Real men don’t need Democrats. Now 80% of western males are fags cucked out by various homos and women in office and on TV and in the boardrooms they used to occupy.

  4. Gringolade says:

    Cannon fodder is a very deracinated way of talking about men going full Horatio at the gate against invaders.

    • jim says:

      Horatio volunteered, and knew what he was volunteering for. The cannon fodder was dragged of the streets and sent in at gunpoint by people who do not know and do not care what they are sending them into. These men have guys behind them who will cluster shell them and machine gun them if they attempt to retreat or fail to advance.

      And the men the Ukrainians are fighting are not exactly invaders, since the Ukraine was and is terrorizing its Russian speaking and Russian Orthodox population, and Russia is attempting to regain lands that Russian speakers were driven out of.

      The men herding the terrorized and terrified cannon fodder in are no really in a position to know if where they are sending them is suicidal or not. The Ukraine has no commissioned officers on the front line. Zero. Russia has large numbers of commissioned officers on the front line, who volunteered, who are taking considerable casualties, and are leading from the front. When they tell their men to go forward, they, unlike the Ukrainians, know what they are telling them to do, because they are right there themselves advancing. Russian troops are led by commissioned officers into battle. Ukrainian troops are sent by commissioned officers twenty kilometers away who are receiving orders guidance directly from Washington, bypassing the ostensible chain of command. And it is rather obvious that Washington knows even less about what is likely to happen on the front line when those orders are followed than the Ukrainian officers to which they are providing “guidance”.

      We have a Russian drone video of a Bradley machine gunning retreating Ukrainians, and Ukrainian prisoners reporting being hit by Ukrainian cluster rounds. The Ukrainian prisoners might be telling tall tales under coercion, but if Bradley machine gun fire, cluster rounds are plausible, plus we have video of the Ukrainians blowing up Russian POW holding centers.

      • MuskFan says:

        “We have a Russian drone video of a Bradley machine gunning retreating Ukrainians“

        Does anyone have a video of this?

      • someDude says:

        Ukrainian Cannon fodder appears to be fighting remarkably well by Cannon Fodder standards.

        I just don’t understand Russia’s gameplan. Unless they are using this war as a way to give their entire Army combat experience and field test their entire tactical doctrine and as others have pointed out, as a way to drain the entire armoury of the west. But is any modern state, even Russia, that far-sighted?

        • jim says:

          If you don’t care how many you lose, because you hate goys and want all goys everywhere dead, and the other side does care, because it loves Russia and Russians, you are going to advance. Until you run out. They have, as shown in the map above, advanced a small distance over a tiny part of the front, Have a long way to go. The tiny patch of land they have taken has massively depleted their capacity to continue the war.

          If your only measure is turf gained, the Ukraine is winning. But it is a war of attrition. Turf does not matter. Tiny insignificant bits of land have been gained and lost. The relevant measure is lives, shells, and tanks. By which measure the Ukraine is doing horrifyingly and disastrously badly.

          The. Ukrainians are now conscripting old men, children, women and the sick. At the current rate of advance, going to run out of old men, children, women, and the sick, before they reach Tokmak.

          If the Ukrainians do reach Tokmak, that is going to seriously inconvenience the Russians, but won’t threaten anything that would put substantial pressure on the Russians. Supposing they take Tokmak, then they still have to reach the Azov sea. If they reach the Azov sea, then that would be disastrous for the Russians in that it would force them Russiansto give up a great deal of turf. But not such a disaster as would force the Russians to do anything they don’t want to do. It would not be a disaster that makes them halt the war. On the contrary, it would be a disaster that would result in them fully mobilising. And they simply have enormously more men than the Ukrainians. They are not mobilising everyone the way the Ukrainians are. Get to the Azov Sea, they probably will.

          And the Ukrainians cannot reach Tokmak by going three times as far as they have gone, because such a narrow wedge would be terribly vulnerable to counter encirclement. They have to broaden the area, not just the depth, so not just three times as much depth as they have so far taken, but more like nine times as much area as they have already taken.

          They have gained a short distance to Tokmak, and lost an army. And now they re going to round up another army, and advance another short distance to Tokmak.

          • someDude says:

            Any historical instances of Cannon Fodder firing back at the men shelling them if they fail to advance or try to retreat or surrender?

            How come the Ukrainians are not surrendering en masse the way Iraqis did during Desert storm? Ostensibly the Ukrainians have much less to fight for than Iraqis did. Iraqi soldiers at least owned their wives

            How come we don’t hear about Ukr frontline cannon fodder firing back at the blocking detachments to their rear?

            Surely it must be a better option for Ukr cannon fodder to surrender to the Russians. Surely, both the Cannon Fodder and the Russians can see that. What efforts is Russia making to convince cannon fodder to Surrender? It can’t be worse than the alternative in store for them. This fighting to the death business by Ukrainian cannon fodder is endlessly discouraging from a psychological perspective.

            From the psychological perspective of the individual ukrainian and a Russian nationalist, not much in this war makes sense. Why aren’t the Ukrainians surrendering en masse instead of dying in all manner of horrible ways at the hands of their co-ethnic co-religionists? Same religion, same language, same stock! Whats happening?

            • jim says:

              We have only indirect indications of casualty levels, but we have direct indications of surrender levels. Ukrainians are surrendering at about fifteen times the rate of Russians. I conjecture that what is happening is that when mass surrender is likely, those troops are pulled back, and do not appear in the fighting again. In this sense the Ukrainian army is being used up without the necessity to kill every single Ukrainian. Rather, the Ukrainian army is increasingly composed of unreliable troops that are given duties that do not expose them to the opportunity to surrender or revolt. In the current offensive towards Tokmak, battalions kept disappearing from the field of battle, replaced by fresh troops after only a fairly small proportion were killed or wounded. Advances always involve fresh troops. And after a while, not so fresh any more. The Ukrainians have lost an army not in the sense of being killed to the last man, but in the sense of the army becoming unreliable, more dangerous to its masters than the enemy.

              They are not revolting because not being forced to fight to the death. But being forced to fight until mass revolt or mass surrender becomes a substantial risk. If one man, or three men, try to revolt or surrender, they get killed. If it looks like mass revolt or mass surrender is on the cards, the Ukrainians sending the cannon fodder back off. Probably more worried about cascading mass revolt than mass surrender. Once a sufficiently large group does a successful mass revolt, the problem becomes preventing this from infecting the whole army. In Bakhmut we did see some mass revolts. Have not seen any in the attempt to take Tokmak.

              • Mister Grumpus says:

                You’re reminding me of how the American/Southern side of the Vietnam War 1970-1973 is depicted. Everyone being extra careful, gold-bricking and trying to stay alive somehow.

            • Pseudo-Chrysostom says:

              Every man wants to cross the line, but no man wants to be the first to cross the line, so no man crosses the line.

              Need coordination to trust that every other man is going to cross with you. No leadership, no communication, no action.

              • Vlad says:

                Or find a way around the line. Say a man demonstrates some ways to get penetrate undetected. Ways that other men could copy and riff on. There’s some really pissed off men. It’s really not hard to cross the line anon.
                Also as the comfort level on both sides equalizes crossing becomes less consequential

        • Zorost says:

          Russia is acting rationally, you need the background of why they invaded. Which the media doesn’t give you, almost like they are in cahoots with the regime rather than trying to accurately inform people.

          https://youtu.be/qciVozNtCDM?t=252

          same guy saying pretty much the same thing 7 years ago:

          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrMiSQAGOS4&t=142s

      • Vlad says:

        Off topic but tangential to recent post on fat reaction. I’m pretty sympathetic to the dietary ideal on the blog though I also can’t give up all carbs forever. So I sorta keto paleo fast then occasionally treat self.
        Anyway I noticed you haven’t mentioned the longevity stuff. I mean the NAD precursors the fasting etc melatonin Nr NMN. Seems odd since it ties in with the fasting you discuss. Have you dismissed it as fake? I first came across a study by accident about 5-6 years ago about mice fed an antibiotic used to turn cells pluripotent. Oxycycline I think the paper is on an old computer. Anyway this guy was reversing the mice age. Autopsies showing hardened arteries and sclerosis no more also cosmetic things like hair color restored.
        I’m sure you e read the calorie restriction and other stresses extending life and health. More recently I found the Sinclair book and thought so that old paper really was on to something. I’d meant to research it but haven’t found time ( no time to live longer jeez. ) couldn’t stomach second half of his book but first half informative and he indicated now there’s dozens or hundreds hacking our telomeres etc. so been half assed getting into it again meaning to deep dive any day now. But notice he’s on a lot of podcasts and cheesy shit and wondering if I finally fell for a health nut craze. I’m skimmed dozens of studies seems like real science but. Anyway seems odd I haven’t heard anyone here discuss this topic.

    • The Cominator says:

      Retreating Ukranians risk being shot by blocking troops.

  5. Kunning Druegger says:

    OK, trying to put all the food stuff in a diet book of sorts. Not going to post a wall of text here, but pulling from Fat Is Reactionary Issue post, attached comments, comments from here, there and everywhere. here is the rough layout:

    Uncle Jim’s Gospel of Reactionary Fooding
    with notes and contributions from the Court

    Intro [FIARI post + Carte Blance + St John + other blurbs, both technical and spiritual stuff]

    Notes on Diet Types
    -Periodic Fasting
    -Keto
    -Carnivore

    Hydration

    Distilling, Brewing, Fermentation
    -Fermenting
    -Brewing
    -Distilling

    Making Meals and Their Constituents
    -Offal Soup
    -Offal General
    -Gravy
    -Cow
    -Chicken
    -Pig
    -Game Meats
    -Fish
    -Soups & Sauces
    -Baking
    -Seasoning

    Please link any posts for review/inclusion, change suggestions, advice, or character assaults disguised as advice 😉

    The goal is to put together something useful, engaging, and entertaining in a PDF Jim can host and take credit for if he wishes. I started putting this together to give to my wife, but I think it might be useful to others too. If no interest, no worries.

    • jim says:

      I am interested. But I want to make gravy, and I don’t see it on your list. Maybe thicken meat juices with eggs and butter?

      Xanthan gum, I am told, works, and should in theory be safe, being a fermentation product, but I don’t trust it unless I get to ferment it myself. Lot of hostile enemy action going on.

      Gelatine works, but it is terribly temperature sensitive. The gravy starts out too thin, and turns to jelly. Also, dissolving gelatine in hot fluids is tricky.

      I have heard that dehydrated Okra, ground up fine in a coffee grinder, does the same thing, with similar potency, as Xanthan gum. Have not tried it, but having eaten Okra, can easily believe it.

      Trouble is that Xanthan gum, gelatine, and probably Okra, does not facilitate the most important part of gravy: Dissolving lots of animal fat and butter, in the gravy, while blonde roux (flour based) does that wonderfully. And without the fat, it looks like gravy, but just does not have the gravy flavor.

      • Vendat Tunicam says:

        Gelatine dissolves really well when shaken vigorously, not so well when stirred. I take about 60 grams of gelatin a day in my hot coffees, I add the cream in after. It stays dissolved despite the cream cooling the coffee considerably. Perhaps play around with hot water and shake it in a thermos before attempting to make gravy with it. Also the gelatin you use makes a difference. I am far from home, but when I get back tomorrow will let you know what product I use.

        • Vendat Tunicam says:

          Hearty Foods Grass-Fed Gelatin

          It is unadulterated beef gelatin in a powdered form, reasonably priced and dissolves well in coffee or when making homemade desserts.

          • jim says:

            In theory, gelatin should be totally safe, for what it is supposed to be a soup prepared from beef bones and such, which is then dehydrated and ground into powder.

            But the FDA is run by the same crowd as sent Covid patients into old people’s homes while Trump’s quarantine hospital ship sat empty in the harbor. So I am not entirely sure what is in there. Always suspect elaborately transformed food materials as being enemy action. There is a whole lot of enemy action happening against our food supply. The FDA may require adulteration to “protect” the consumer.

            So what I am going to try is preparing a sauce base of okra, onions, garlic, lemon grass, rosemary, and onion chives, because the okra is allegedly a highly effective thickener, emulsify the meat juice with egg and butter and lemon juice, then add the the sauce base to thicken it. (roux both emulsifies and thickens (gelatin does not seem to be very effective at emulsifying) Will report back on how it turned out, promote this comment to a post on paleo cookery. Preferably incorporating Kunning Druegger’s paleo cooking cheat sheat. Maybe call it “eat like an Aryan”

      • Kunning Drueger says:

        Gravy has it’s own entry, comprised of your thoughts as well as the responses your post garnered. It is listed under “Offal General” up above.

    • Mel says:

      Thank you!

    • Pseudo-Chrysostom says:

      Liquids act as a solvent for flavours and help them spread over the tongue (be they oil based or water based or both). This is why even something as simple as a dash of aioli can completely transform something from something that feels dry and tasteless to something savory and satisfying.

  6. Drone fun says:

    [*deleted. Take the shill test*]

  7. Cloudswrest says:

    Interesting Musk tweet/revelation today.

    https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1699917639043404146

    • Neurotoxin says:

      Holy crap, Musk’s tweet:

      “There was an emergency request from government authorities to activate Starlink all the way to Sevastopol.
      The obvious intent being to sink most of the Russian fleet at anchor.
      If I had agreed to their request, then SpaceX would be explicitly complicit in a major act of war and conflict escalation.”

      Dear God in Heaven. Is Musk right about Washington’s intent here? If he is, Russia would have no choice but to escalate drastically, against the US, if that had happened. What do the crazies in Washington think Russia would do? Do they think Russia would just accept that?

      Fuck. I knew the people in Washington are insane, but are they really that dogshit-eating insane?

  8. no one says:

    Danny Masterson getting 30 years in prison for “rape” is indicative of Cathedral going off the rails. I don’t watch shows anymore, but he was a decent actor, regardless of political opinions. And throwing this normie actor in prison for 30 years is absolutely nuts. The gynocracy is jumping the shark, in my view.

  9. Chad says:

    All these long winded wall of text comments from spergs who can’t get a job, can’t get a woman, and don’t have a life. People come on here and try to help you and your reply is “nuts, unresponsive, fed, and shill.” Do you realize how ignorant that is? It is worse than being liberal.

    Went to the health spa today and did 30 minutes on the stairmaster, then played squash for 30 minutes, and another 30 minutes freeweights. On my way to work, I stopped off at the hardware store and bought a heavy crowbar and a 30 pound bag of lime for a project tonight.

    • Pseudo-Chrysostom says:

      >’health spa’
      >stairmaster
      >buying a crowbar
      >not already having one
      >30 pound bag of lime
      >has never built anything in his life; no idea what what things go with what for any kind of ‘project’, just picks two random things that sound ‘contratory’
      >arbitrary times of random shit for his ‘exercise routine’; has never been a real sportsman in his life either

      They’re not sending their best.

      • Chad says:

        [*deleted again, for all the usual reasons*]

      • Kunning Druegger says:

        The faggot didn’t mention me this time, I must be falling off my game.

        St. John, do you ever do any brewing, distilling, or fermenting? Long ago you asserted that brandy and such like were the real patricians drink, and I am looking to do both a cordial and a brandy with some of our fruit. Additionally, we are considering trying to develop our own selection of Kombuchas flavored with some of the things we grow, like Toothache Plant and Mint, etc. I only ask because, as discussed below, YouTube tutorials aren’t really that helpful. If not, no worries.

        • Pseudo-Chrysostom says:

          Homebrewing alcohol no, but I do keep cultures in the box for making krauts and yogurts. Fermentation is an arcane art, and you must always be conscious of how different factors can influence the development of the ferment, of greater and lesser sources of cross-contamination, and so on. Parallel production is often necessary so you have wiggle room for the vagaries of fate, and can preferentially select more promising lines each run for iteration.

          Was never a big fan of kombucha; yeast based fermentation in general is rather execrable if you’re not doing anything to separate and remove the yeast/solids afterwards.

          Flavored moonshines have a long history of tradition behind it, can’t say it’s an area I am especially familiar with, but I do know good information about it now exists out there, and a lot of the same general principles apply.

          • Pax Imperialis says:

            KD, I’m disappointed you didn’t ask the local degenerate, most of my drunk posting is from over sampling my own stuff. Been brewing for over a decade. Home brewing has never been more accessible. Prepackaged brewing kits with step by step guides are widely available. Kombucha?

            As Pseudo-Chrysostom said, many different factors can influence the result. Ambient temperature, degree of temperature fluctuation, yeast strain, pH, aeration, biochemical heat production, SO2, etc. As a first time brewer, disregard all of that! In general you can more often than not make something decent with minimal experience.

            >sugar water
            >yeast
            >pray
            >wait 1-3 weeks
            >siphon
            >bottle
            >simple as

            Those factors are really important when scaling up and making consistent product. For personal use not a problem, and variation is often a nice aspect of home brewing. I’ve been using the homebrewtalk forum for years linked below. Great source of information.

            https://www.homebrewtalk.com/

            General brewing guidelines:

            -Start small

            -Stay away from plastic fermentation containers, glass is ok on a budget, stainless steel is the best.

            -Rinsing and cleaning with basic dish soap is generally ok for sanitation on the small scale. It’s when you scale up that the cost and risk of contamination gets too high and when people start using chemical sanitizers. I do not personally care for chemical sanitizers. Stainless steel is best because you can simply flush the system with boiling water, or depending on your fermentation system, directly boil the water inside of it.

            -Decent quality grape must (sugar water) is fairly easy to obtain, but obviously Sangiovese grape must is superior.

            -The great thing about wine is that if you mess up it’s usually because it’s turning into vinegar… which is still useful for cooking.

            -Ale/Beer is extremely consistent because you boil the sugar water before putting it in the fermentation container. Ale is better than beer though, hops in beer isn’t good for you, As I’ve written before, alternatives like spruce is great for bitter flavor. Boiling kills off other microbes that can effect the fermentation, including the wild yeast, meaning the only yeast culture is the one you add. Fruit musts often isn’t boiled and so results can vary wildly.

            -Mead will fuck you up like nothing else. Avoid if allergic to flower pollen. The hangover is like nothing else. It also has to be aged for 6 months to a year. Sometimes more. Fresh, it can taste like some kind of petrochemical if you let the fermentation eat all the sugar. Aged, it can taste wonderful.

            For USA bros.

            -Stay away from distilling, you’ll get the ATF (now the TTB) up your ass, it’s almost more illegal than meth production. If I remember correctly, every liter of untaxed liquor they find is it’s own felony… or it was something similarly absurd.

            -It’s theoretically “legal” to own a still that can coincidentally be used for alcohol production, you just can’t use it for alcohol production. It appears to be legal if it’s for “distilling water” or “home chemistry” or “fuel production.” The last one you need a license for. However, buying a still will put you on a list that is reported to the AFT/TTB who will use that to raid you when they get bored. Individual states have their own regulations with varying levels of enforcement.

            -Getting a proper license for hobbyist distilling is next to impossibly impracticable for most people to do. Home distilling is literally illegal as a separate building other than residence is required, and being licensed opens you up to warrantless “inspections.” At minimum, it will cost you 15,000 USD to be in compliance, at which point you might as well be doing it as a small business… which means more regulations and “inspections.”

            -If you really want to get into home distilling you’ll have to make your own still. It’s pretty easy. It’s just a covered pot with a tube sticking out of the top to collect and cool the vapor, and an open end to collect the condensation. Something like this ideally made out of copper, but stainless steel works fine as well. Remember that stainless fermented that can also be used as a kettle hint hint wink wink.

            Now on to actual distillation. This is going to require some chemistry and engineering knowledge/skills (you don’t need to be a either). Nearly all of which can be learned from the linked forum:

            https://homedistiller.org/forum/index.php

            If you want to post use a VPN for a New Zealand IP where home distillation is legal for personal consumption. Assume IP data is being reported.

            -Collect the condensate in segments from “heads” to “tails”, the first to boil is toxic wood alcohol/methanol. Ideally this is why you want to have a continuous fractional distillation still because it automatically separates these things out for you. You can find blueprints for said device all over the internet.

            -Flammable fumes and closed spaces do not mix. For obvious reasons, distilling outside brings up all sort of potential legal problems, so you’ll have to do this in the privacy of your own home with some damn good ventilation.

            -Do no talk about distilling, do not share what you’ve distilled, and obviously do not sell it. Women are women, they talk. Kids are kids, they talk. Chances are, if you’re not a homesteader, they will unintentionally leak. Now most home distillers are a bit of an open secret in their respective communities and they are never reported, but it only takes one bored Fed to be looking for trouble…

            • Pax Imperialis says:

              Forgot to link this

              https://homedistiller.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=52975

              Pretty much a must read for distilling introduction

            • jim says:

              > Fresh, it can taste like some kind of petrochemical if you let the fermentation eat all the sugar. Aged, it can taste wonderful.

              Yes indeed.

              • Cloudswrest says:

                I remember reading your moonshine story.

              • Pax Imperialis says:

                I was foolish enough, as a young boy, to try freeze distilling freshly made mead. Of course this was, heh, outside of America. It had already been taken to ~17%. Pushing yeast that hard results in a lot of the nastier byproducts. Freezing the water out, was able to get it up to ~35, maybe 40% abv. That didn’t remove any of the harsher fusel alcohols nor did it separate out the less desirable flavors. It was truly something else. It became apparent to me why New Englanders kept the hard cider under 10% abv before turning it into applejack.

                On a tangent about applejack and “freeze distilling,” according to TTB, making ice beer is legal. Making applejack is not. “Concentrating” beer by removing frozen ice is legal and not “distillation,” but “concentrating” cider/wine is “freeze distillation” and thus illegal. Furthermore, TTB does not have a definition of “distilling” and uses the IRS definition. Now before you get all excited about making ice beer, removing more than 0.5% of the water is not legal, and based on IRS definition removing any of the water is distilling.

                On another tangent, its been really pleasant to see a revival of rye whiskey. Corn has become a scourge that infested everything. Bulleit Rye is an exceptionally good deal.

                • Aidan says:

                  Rye is great. Whiskey uniquely makes me mean and bitter when I’m usually a pleasant drunk, and rye doesn’t have that effect.

                  Mead is meant to be between 15 and 20% alcohol. It is a strong wine, not a liquor.

  10. Cloudswrest says:

    Another fake media promoted female. No, she didn’t write all the NASA Apollo code.

    https://twitter.com/AnechoicMedia_/status/1629315139169075200

    • dave says:

      Its possible she didn’t write any of the code. May have done some bug fixing and took some time to “get the picture”, which doesn’t build confidence in her being necessary.

      The Apollo project wouldn’t have been impacted in any way without her contributions.

      • jim says:

        I have some experience with female techs. Non Asian female techs don’t write any of the code, they don’t fix any of the bugs, and they don’t get any idea of what the software is doing or supposed to do, how it does it or how it might do it. What you do with them is stick them in the art harem a couple of buildings away to keep them from fouling up what the menfolk are doing. Merely having them around results in everything breaking and staying permanently broken. Your male engineers should visit the art harem when they need art (or pussy). You have to keep the art harem from visiting your male engineers. They only visit the real engineers to make trouble and break stuff. You can feel the tension rise when the face of a chick from the art harem appears at the door. You can see people’s blood pressure go up. They are there because they want “impact”.

        Sexual dimorphism is less for the Asian brain than the white brain, so there are a few exceptions coming from EastAsia.

        • Pax Imperialis says:

          When I was a junior/senior engineering student, I helped handled lab hours for an introductory programming class. I must of spent an entire semester trying to explain the concept of a for/while loop to some of those female students. They just didn’t get the concept, forget arrays and pointers. Pointers to pointers fucked them up so badly it wasn’t even funny.

          It was obvious that they wouldn’t have passed under the older standards in which no code was provided, but the university decided that diversity was our strength and ordered more ‘girl power’ engineers. As such, I was around during the period when changes were made, such as providing all of the required code for the assignments in the lectures, providing those lectures as power point files through the class website (note taking and text book reading no longer required!), and nearly providing the solution in the labs.

          All they had to do was copy paste, change a few values, copy paste some more, add in the other basic stuff, and use the step by step guide provided to use the compiler. It was disgustingly easy, yet many of them still came close to failing, low ~70%. Some of them got ~80%, but when the class average was ~95%, not at all impressive.

          I saw what was happening and thought ‘fuck it, I’m going hardware.’ Found the most math heavy EM stuff I could find and found at the senior and graduate level there were no female students. Turns out no amount of spoon feeding can work with Maxwell equations and their applications. I bet the university has figured out how to hack that as well by now.

          I’ve never had personal experience around female tech. The engineering job I used to work at had no women other than as secretaries, but then again, I was the youngest guy there by far. Average age was something like 56. There were guys in the 70s still there. It was like a demographics time capsule from 1970’s NASA. In hindsight, I should have stayed there, but it felt like a dying culture and that it was time to jump ship.

          > May have done some bug fixing and took some time to “get the picture”

          I have a hard time believing she was involved in any bug fixing. That would require actually understanding the code, which from my experience teaching women, never happens.

          • Aryaman says:

            Your example would seem to suggest women have a lower IQ than men by a lot, which I don’t think is the case. the important differences between men and women are somewhat orthogonal to IQ.

            The way I would describe it is men are interested in being right and in correctness in a way that women aren’t, in a way that is entirely foreign to them and entirely orthogonal to mental processing power. I would wager my wife is nearly as good as me at — maybe even better than me at — a whole bunch of IQ type questions. But she totally just can’t “figure out reality” the way I can. Partly she doesn’t care about doing so, but partly she just can’t assimilate random different knowledge in a coherent way to get to the fundamental underlying truth. Probably can’t because she doesn’t care, or maybe vice-versa.

            and I don’t think this is an IQ thing. I think IQ measures somewhat different things for men and women. But she totally could get for/while loops, and a good grade in some hard-by-some-measure, serious computer science classes, because that is an IQ thing. the non-IQ thing is thinking hard about whether a particular practical solution and its schematics are right and what could make them go wrong. There is no specification or rubric or grading system in real life, so you have to care a lot about is it right and is it correct.

            but not getting loops? sounds like they were just retarded.

            • Aryaman says:

              I said:

              but not getting loops? sounds like they were just retarded.

              Come to think of it… your experience is actually totally consistent with my explanation. The retarded men were good enough at being right to avoid computer science class whereas the retarded chicks were not, despite being similarly retarded.

              that having been said, not getting loops is evidence of being retarded, not of being female.

              • Pax Imperialis says:

                >evidence of being retarded, not of being female.

                Not retarded, just average.

                You live in a bubble and don’t appreciate how low human intelligence can go. Not getting loops is painfully “average” and painfully female (I’ll explain later). The lower IQ bound of programing is supposedly 108 (other sites claim a range of 115 to 130), which is already about half a standard deviation above the average. The type of “tech jobs” average work in are things like data entry and meter reader. Repetitive action with minimal thinking. Dead average is the professional cashier (as in they could not progress any further) that may have a hard time counting out your change. Below average is the can stacker and truck packer. Retarded is… I’m not actually sure what retarded does.

                Women do not think iteratively and they have a hard time thinking in terms of the hypothetical. Loops are iterative, and deciding on when to use them, and what type to use and their boundaries also requires thinking in terms of the hypothetical. Try using hypothetical logic on a woman. Women, even smart ones, are not going to track that well. In fact, in general you’ll only piss them off.

                In order to be admitted to the college of engineering, students had to score a certain minimum on the Math SAT that roughly tracked somewhere above average. The young ladies I dealt with were not retarded, but Math SAT is not a test on abstract or hypothetical thinking. The math is completely straightforward. The questions tell you directly what you need to calculate and the section format tells you when to calculate. This is very different from programing which involves you having to figure out what to do on your own. Again, women do not excel in that.

                • Aryaman says:

                  The lower IQ bound of productively programming in a company that has to make useful products is much, much higher than the lower IQ bound of getting a B in the introductory, loop-learning 101 course of a top American university.

                • Pax Imperialis says:

                  Sure, but you would be mistaken to think B in the introductory 101 course is retarded. Being able to coherently read and write is already above average. I used to work in a job similar to say, UPS. The truck packers can barely read, yet they are still significantly smarter than the retards.

                  I think you’re around a lot of smart men in a cognitively demanding job. A lot of very smart men as well, and it has completely distorted your view on where the average is located and what women are like. They just don’t get loops. They just don’t get hypothetical.

                  Come to think about it, thanks to Mayflower Sperg bringing up chess, they don’t get chess for the same reason they don’t get loops. Chess requires people to think iteratively and hypothetically which is required for loops.

                • Aryaman says:

                  It is colloquially retarded as in retarded for computer science 101, as in has no business beyond a year or two of high school. Being able to read and write might be above average today but that is mostly due to universal education and new technology (for example, used to be to buy things you needed to deal with someone who was pretty numerate to do so efficiently).

                  The guy my wife hired to remodel the bathroom would easily have been able to learn and understand loops 101 if he were younger, and might well still be able to. Not that any guy that remodels bathrooms would be able to (this one an off white looking Latin american of some kind), but he was good at his job and back when this was a lily white, capitalist country would probably have been considered typically good at his job.

                  Of course, loops is not chess. Chess requires people to think several steps ahead over an exploding space of possibilities, prune very quickly, and do all that with good judgement. The concept of loops is a lot easier. My only point is “girls can’t do loops” isn’t the issue with women in programming or high level jobs, quite. (Or, for that matter, much more advanced stuff in the standard university CS curriculum).

            • Aryaman says:

              Because we’re not taking IQ tests all the time, and because among men being right and correct relates very well with a high IQ (modulo evil) it’s easy to forget there is another dimension to this and women have really high IQ as far as any controlled test that is not real life can reveal. Maybe not quite as high as men but not sufficiently different as to explain the vast and enormous difference in behavior and competence.

              Even the much ballyhooed “men have high standard deviation” does not explain it. Men have an impulse to be right and to pursue the truth wherever it goes, which is why great scientists and engineers have always been men. Similarly, the criminals are also acting in the right way in the sense one should naturally be a criminal thug when he is retarded and crime is rewarded.

              • Carte Blanche says:

                Even the much ballyhooed “men have high standard deviation” does not explain it

                It certainly does explain it. If you want to argue that high IQ is a “necessary but not sufficient condition” for engineering then you might have something, albeit without much strong evidence. However, any time you have a barrier to entry that requires being above average in any dimension, then the more above average one must be to participate, the stronger the selection effect for groups with either a higher group average or greater group variability.

                It so happens that men also have a slightly higher average IQ than women, but only very slightly, I think it’s 1 or 2 points. Variability is precisely the issue. Presuming for the moment that all professions are open to women (they shouldn’t be, but for the sake of argument we’ll suppose they are), then a profession that requires a half-sigma to one-sigma will be about 75% male, and two-sigma will be over 90-95% male.

                Average IQ is why these professions tilt Asian and Ashkenazi. Variability in IQ is why they tilt male. It takes some very powerful thumbs on the scale to get any women at all into software programming, and most of them are literally worse than useless at it.

                • jim says:

                  > It so happens that men also have a slightly higher average IQ than women, but only very slightly

                  The data on this has the same remarkably funny smell as the data on global warming. Pretty sure the difference is large.

                  Because women are in fact considerably better than men in some intellectual capabilities and considerably worse in others, it is possible to cook the tests to equality or near equality, but you have to stretch mighty hard.

                  If you want your test to give similar results for men and women, you just leave out a pile of abilities. Some of which are rather important.

                • Carte Blanche says:

                  Well, the original bimodal distribution graphs — which I have no idea where to find these days, but I assume we’ve all seen them — were based on data collected before the Griggs v. Duke Power case, which was back when the purveyors of IQ tests actually cared about IQ. Not SATs, MCATs, GREs or any other “analogous” metric that can and has been cooked to oblivion.

                  It’s consistent with my own observations, for what little that’s worth. I don’t find women stupid compared to men, just less rational, more frivolous and superficial, but capable of putting a great deal of thought into those frivolous and superficial pursuits. And while I practically never see genius women, even in the highly selective “inclusivity” focused organizations I’ve had the misfortune to be part of, I also almost never see completely retarded women, even when I’m just perusing the aisles at Walmart. YMMV, of course.

                • jim says:

                  Women are clearly smarter than men for activities within the traditional female sphere. Which is necessarily narrow and limited. So if you genuinely try to make a test for a single universal g factor, which obviously needs to test for a broad range of subfactors, women are going to show up as rather stupid, and their results will fall suddenly at puberty.

                  They are markedly more observant than than men, and better at predicting certain kinds of human conduct than men, but better than men at predicting irrational, absent minded, habit generated, or careless conduct. If the conduct is the result of thought and intention, markedly worse than men. They really can project themselves into someone else’s shoes emotionally and psychologically, but not intellectually – they cannot figure out differences that are the result of knowing different things or consciously intending different outcomes. They perceive other people’s actions only through the lens of what they care about – which often is obviously silly, unknown, or irrelevant to actor they are trying to model.

              • Pseudo-Chrysostom says:

                Most ‘Intelligence Quotient’ tests named as such are concatenations of multiple sub-unit tests; and most sub-unit tests of most IQ tests concern trivial factors that by design tilt the scales of the final figure; designed specifically to select for wordceldom, idiot savantry, and other forms of empty formulaicism with little world-formation capacity; which is generally selecting for the qualitative profiles of skypes, and as a by-blow also leaves a lot of low hanging fruit for female humanoids as well.

                (Para exemple, https://web.archive.org/web/20221205130516/http://thealternativehypothesis.org/index.php/2016/09/21/blacks-and-whites-with-the-same-iq-still-differ-a-lot/)

                • Aryaman says:

                  Yes and the effect is actually larger than divergent profiles of intelligence namely that if you pick a bunch of whites and blacks with some similar but very high measured IQ, the black kid is much likelier to have just had an oddly lucky day.

                  Now I don’t know what the innate individual day-to-day variance is. Probably not terribly large, and smoothed out over the course of a day of behavior or two, but quite substantive at a given point in time. (You see this a little bit in the data. Number span is something you can get lucky on. The sequence could be low entropy and some times you just so remember an extra digit or two).

            • It's About Dick says:

              [*not all women are like that deleted*]

              • jim says:

                The only known white counter example is Noether, of whom a friend said that he can testify she is a mathematician, but he cannot testify that she is a woman. Plus there are a handful of East Asian chicks.

                If you want to argue that not all women are like that, produce your unicorn. If they had any good examples, they would be on posters everywhere and we would never stop seeing them. They are still going on about Ada, who was a total fabrication.

                From the fact that they are still going on about Emmett Till, we know that not one negro was lynched who was not plausibly guilty of crimes deserving death, and from the fact that they are still going on about Ada (who merely paraphrased algorithms written by other people) we know that not one white female can accomplish certain coding tasks.

                • Mayflower Sperg says:

                  Here’s a unicorn: Judit Polgar, who at her peak was the 12th-best chess player in the world, and is the only woman ever to break into the top 100.

                  Her father and older sisters were chess prodigies, and she was solving chess puzzles they gave her at age two. She became internationally competitive before puberty.

                  It’s as if something happens at puberty that makes girls lose their aptitude for hard academic subjects, though they retain the ability to learn new languages better than men, in case they get kidnapped by a foreign tribe.

                • jim says:

                  Sounds right.

                • Zorost says:

                  Noether being jewish might account for it, as the jews seem to have much less sexual dimorphism than whites. Their women are kinda butch, and the men tend towards female strategies. There is a good argument that the reason jews do so well at controlling societies is their men have weaponized female strategies of control. Perhaps their women are slightly more able to use male methods of thinking.

                • Pseudo-Chrysostom says:

                  I don’t really rate examples like that too highly since chess itself is a rather formulaic activity where the most influential factor on success is memorization of lines before anything else.

                  The last few decades have seen a explosion of different competitive games thanks to elaboration of information technology; from first-person shooters, to real-time strategy, to button mashing fighters, all brought to mass audiences world-wide. The barrier to entry for unicorns has never been lower in history; and we still have yet to find any notable examples. The best women in the world in a given vocation are barely above average at best when competing amongst men.

                • Cloudswrest says:

                  On Noether, I gather she wasn’t very feminine.

                  I can testify that she [Emmy Noether] is a great mathematician, but that she is a woman, I cannot swear.
                  — Edmund Landau

                • Aryaman says:

                  It’s funny Emmy Noether isn’t on posters because they are too dumb to realize what she did whereas Ada Loveletter was the first programmer and actually invented computers

                • Mayflower Sperg says:

                  I don’t really rate examples like that too highly since chess itself is a rather formulaic activity where the most influential factor on success is memorization of lines before anything else.

                  Memorizing opening lines is necessary but not sufficient. In every game review, Agadmator says e.g. “…and here at move 15, we have an entirely new game on the board.” At that point even Magnus Carlson, who has memorized almost every game in the history of chess, has to pause and think.

                  For another unicorn, see the greatest scientific discovery by a woman not collaborating with her husband, the Wu experiment. No surprise that Ms. Wu came from the old pre-revolutionary Chinese upper class.

                • Pseudo-Chrysostom says:

                  I’m not here to shit on chess as a game, just pointing out that success at chess is, past a certain ceiling, only loosely related with G, and that recognition of situations is relevant at all phases of the game.

                • S says:

                  Is Go more/further g-loaded? It took longer for computers to push out humans.

                • Pseudo-Chrysostom says:

                  The possibility space is nominally larger, yes (cfr. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game-tree_complexity).

                  Chess could take a lot more imagination if the arrangement of the back-line was by player choice or randomization, like Uncle Bobby once suggested. This would synergize with variations like kriegspiel or darkchess, which introduce induction through imperfect information. Or even further still with concepts like penultima, where piece rules themselves must be discovered, or where a super-pool of rules is rolled to produce a playing pool of rules, from which piece rules are selected, whereby player choice and discovering opponent’s choice also become elements of play.

        • Aryaman says:

          Every now and then I see female names around rather impressive, usually open source, projects and am intrigued. Further review inevitably reveals trannies.

  11. notglowing says:

    Re: Fat is a reactionary issue
    Four weeks ago, I posted about my weight loss alternate day fasting schedule, which Jim deemed unsustainable (which I knew, but it wasn’t meant to go on forever) and excessive (I thought it reasonable if somewhat extreme).
    Carte Blanche argued that it wouldn’t work, and that save for doing multiple hours of exercise per day, switching to a keto diet was the only way I would realistically lose weight.
    While I still believe fasting would ultimately work regardless of some small health risks, I decided to try switching to a keto diet, because it was worth trying and there was no reason not to do it. I made the switch days after our discussion last month, so it has been exactly four weeks since the last time I ate carbs. I weigh myself every few days and use testing strips in the morning every few days as well to ensure I am in ketosis, they were always fairly deep red.
    I have lost about five kilograms in that time period, eating every day. I lost one and a half in the first week presumably due to water weight, though.

    My appetite and desire for food quickly went to an all time low. I didn’t have specific physical carb cravings nor keto flu, presumably the result of a month of fasting (and I have been fasting on and off for years).
    Compared to fasting, it doesn’t really require much willpower nor does it require scheduling anything in terms of time. I don’t feel like eating as much so I just eat and that’s it. On a day to day basis, the only difficulty is in procuring the food which is highly perishable (meat, etc). It is normal for people here to have cases of pasta and sauce in the basement which are always available when there isn’t other food but I can’t have that.
    My calorie intake has been low, perhaps too low, as one can tell from my weight loss, but my desire for food has also not been high. I have been used for years now to eat about once a day from my fasting habits; I might have a snack within a few (3-4h) after that but I refuse to eat after or have two full meals a day out of principle. I did that one time this month, though it didn’t feel good.
    Still, I end up feeling fairly hungry right before going to bed, around that time, when I’m far from the last meal (I eat my meal in the afternoon) and in the morning of course. I consider this evidence of being less hungry in general, because it’s a result of eating less during the day.

    I have a habit of making my eating a fixed ritual in terms of the preparation and the foods I eat whenever I turn to a stricter diet. So I ended up eating mostly the same thing every day.
    I’m fairly picky with meat, and I absolutely cannot stand fish or seafood of any type. So my main staple food has been ground beef. I would cook it (350-500g) in a pan with clarified butter (something I’ve been using for years, and what Jim refers to when he talks about how he prepares butter for cooking) along with many spices, salt, pepper, lemon juice, and msg.
    I would often put a few kraft slices on it, which would melt and give it more flavour. Probably the least healthy part of the meal, and highest in terms of carbs %, but it’s 2g per slice, at 4 to 5 slices it’s a small thing.
    As a side dish I take plain white yogurt (4.4% fat) mixed with shredded cucumber, salt, pepper, garlic powder and lemon juice with some msg. Sometimes the cucumber was substituted with other greens.
    As snacks I would often eat pieces of cheese or nuts.

    One might be able to tell that my fat intake is too low with this type of meal, and yes this is pretty much most of what I ate. In order to increment my fat consumption, aside from eating some more cheese, I decided to consume cream. For the Americans, “heavy cream” does not exist here. Whipping cream, which is less fat, is the only real alternative.
    It just so happens that in July, about a month before the discussion we had, I ordered a box of some kind of keto meal powder product from the US. I said in my early August post that I intended to use keto meals as a bridge between fasts to maintain ketosis, and this is what those meal powders were for. You mix them with some fat of your choice, amounts depending on the calories, and add water to dilute it somewhat. Then you have a meal that is keto and theoretically contains all you need. This package of some ~20 meals ended up arriving a week after I decided to go full keto, so it was convenient. At first I was put off by it, because I wouldn’t consider this sort of thing a real meal. However after three weeks of eating beef, cheese, and yogurt every single day it became a bit more interesting to me knowing I had not been getting enough fats or calories in general (I estimate my daily intake to be in the range of 1500 though I am not counting exactly) I started complementing my meals with some amount of whipped cream mixed with these powders, and I would also throw a raw egg or two into it. However, even without raw eggs, it appears that I don’t easily digest the amount of fats in such a meal, causing me some amount of pain.

    • jim says:

      Sounds right. I have found keto wonderfully effective, but socially difficult.

      I have no difficulty eating high fat. Cheese, yogurt, sour cream, and fry everything in butter or butter from which the water has been removed. I also like fatty meats such as sheep belly. Raw eggs I find disturbing. I like my eggs fried in clarified butter, with sizzling hot butter ladled on top of them as they cook.

      • notglowing says:

        I have no trouble with Cheese or Yogurt, which were always a significant part of my diet. However the cream seems much less digestible to me. I like eating it, but it seems to cause me pain afterwards. Perhaps it’s only a matter of getting adapted to it.

        • jim says:

          Sounds like leaky gut. If your gut leaks, casein is poisonous. Making yogurt or sour cream involves cooking the milk first, which renders the casein less toxic, and then the bacteria break up most what casein is left.

          Leaky gut is, I suspect, caused by too much indigestible fibre, for example “high fibre” foods that contain ground up seed fibre. Which is of course shaped by evolution to give creatures that eat seeds a really hard time. Fruit fibre is quite digestible. Cooked leafy greens, depends on the leaf. Seed fibre extremely harsh and seriously damaging. We don’t have good data for gut damage caused by fibre, for the same reason as we don’t have good data for the differences in mortality and morbidity for fully vaccinated children as compared to fully unvaccinated children. But it is absolutely obvious that some kinds of fibre are extremely bad for you, and others are worse. We are really only evolved to handle fruit fibre, which evolved to give creatures that eat fruit an easy time.

          • Vermillion says:

            My view of fibre, after having cut out 100% of it from my diet and also having used a zero-fibre diet to treat and completely cure intractable constipation born of neurological gut damage from autoimmune disease, is that fibre is absolutely not indicated in a proper human diet that is devoid of sugars/carbohydrates.

            HOWEVER, if one is to directly consume carbohydrates in any form, fibre, by damaging the ability of the bowel to perform its function of nutrient absorption, is protective, in the sense that it slows down absorption of an even more damaging molecule.

    • notglowing says:

      Despite all this, I am not convinced that keto is the way to go. I haven’t really had specific physical cravings, but I did find myself thinking often about whether or not I could continue doing this diet.
      My biggest issue is that I don’t consider it sustainable long term, it’s easy on a day to day basis, but *never* eating certain foods is a bleak prospect, and because I believe I wouldn’t continue that indefinitely, it also makes keto feel like living a lie, since I know I will interrupt it at some point.
      I initially intended to only do two weeks, but since I got good results and didn’t have much trouble with it, I decided to extend it to one month, now I believe it will be two months.
      It really does make social eating difficult, and not just that but also less enjoyable. Eating out at restaurants here, the options are extremely limited, and begin and end with steak essentially.
      Even so, steak often comes with carb filled side dishes, which one can just not eat I guess, and often carb and sugar filled condiments which are more of a concern, and it’s annoying and hard to always know what’s in it.
      Given I’m not even that much of a fan of steaks, it simply isn’t fun or enjoyable to eat out so I decided not to do it, I ended up always eating alone. The main option for eating with friends would be to invite them at my home and cook something here.
      While I was never one to eat fast food very frequently the thought of never eating it again is also bleak.

      Knowing this, I found myself in a constant state of cognitive dissonance regarding the diet, which I was trying to resolve. It seemed like a convenient and somewhat secure way to lose weight given I simply didn’t want to eat much, and that it was something I was successfully following very strictly, but at the same time I knew I couldn’t be consistent with it forever.

      In the end, I came to a compromise when I decided that although I couldn’t see myself not eating carbs for life, if not eating them for say, 6 months, or whatever, fixed my health issues, then that would be a relatively obvious bargain.
      However, at the same time, keto does not seem like an easy diet to “leave”.

      I’ve heard of cases where leaving a keto diet resulted in faster weight gain from carbs than before. I can compensate by simply losing more weight beforehand, perhaps.
      In any case, I resolved to take the middle road, once I stop eating keto, I will switch to a diet that is low carb on most days, and allow high carb food when eating socially or otherwise occasionally. This is far from ketogenic, given how long carbs can linger in the body, and given I would be eating them once or twice per week, but if I start gaining weight I can counteract it with fasting.
      For now, I am going to continue for another month, and see what happens.

      • Your Uncle Bob says:

        I never succeeded at true keto long term, but even my lapsed keto with some carbs keeps me at a lower stable weight than before. I don’t keep losing on it, but I haven’t regained the lost weight either.

        My first understanding of keto was you’re not supposed to do it forever anyway. Drop the weight you mean to lose, then transition to including a small amount of complex carbs.

        You mention not getting enough fat; that alone is a reason not to run it forever. Or get it nailed down if you do stay with it. Maybe bacon, and use that grease to fry vegetables. Or if you stick to hamburger only I would even filter and refrigerate that grease for frying vegetables.

        If I expect carbs at a social event I eat some steamed vegetables an hour or two beforehand, then go ahead and partake. I’m still hungry enough to eat a plate, but with something already taking up room I don’t gorge. You’re still out of ketosis, but a fast day afterwards can reset that.

    • notglowing says:

      So, as an aside, regarding the package from the US. I find receiving products from the US to always be extremely slow, very expensive, and I always get taxed to high heavens for it.
      Half of the total cost was shipping and taxes in this case. Expensive enough that I won’t buy it again unless I get it in large bulk quantities, but I might find a similar product locally before that. I am definitely glad I got a large amount.

      Many (most?) American companies I have bought products from, whether it’s ebay sellers or in this case the manufacturer directly, only seem to offer USPS for international shipping, which is comically slow and dreadfully expensive. It really took them one month which is unbelievable.

      For half the shipping price, I get items from Chinese Ebay sellers within three days consistently using DHL or FedEx. Three days from China. And they have mastered the art of dodging import duties so I rarely pay much for that anymore.
      Our import duties are not high in and of themselves, but VAT is added to it. Given VAT is 22%, I end up paying at least 30% over the original item cost plus shipping.
      This is also because of how it’s calculated.
      Take item cost, add duties (usually 7% or so, depending on the kind of item), then add shipping cost, now you calculate VAT based on item cost + duties + shipping. What’s funny about this is that VAT is paid on the duties too, so it’s a tax on a tax.
      VAT shouldn’t be paid on food items I believe but either this doesn’t fall under that umbrella or they just don’t care to make a distinction for imports.

      • Mayflower Sperg says:

        Whereas getting letters or packages shipped from the US or Europe to Russia is simply impossible, though ordering stuff from China is no problem.

    • Carte Blanche says:

      Too much here to reply to all, but a few thoughts:

      First, kudos on being willing to attempt some improvements, even if they don’t end up working out. You say you still have your reservations, opinions haven’t changed, etc., but you were at least willing to listen and see for yourself.

      I think part of the reason you are experiencing “cognitive dissonance” is that you are still guessing. What I mean is, you obviously did some reading, got the test strips, understand what “keto” means and maybe what macros to target, and so on, but when it comes to the actual meal prep it sounds like you are effectively improvising. Taking shortcuts like processed cheese (never eat that, literally any other cheese is better including low-end “deli” cheddar slices from the supermarket), powdered meal replacement, little variety, along with some things that don’t make sense like adding cooking fat to ground beef.

      Back when I was still a kid in college, with no experience in the kitchen, I did not experiment with food. I started with a few family recipes and beginner-friendly cookbooks and followed those recipes to the letter. Then I moved onto more advanced and/or precise recipes like those in The Joy of Cooking and a pastry-chef book whose name now escapes me. Only when I felt fully proficient with both the techniques and the ingredients did I start to improvise. Of course, that was many years ago and today improvised meals are fairly routine, but you cannot successfully improvise without the foundation.

      For example, “frying” ground beef in clarified butter is pointless as a method for adding either fat or flavor. Unless it is some strange super-extra-lean variant, ground beef has plenty of fat already and loses fat as you cook it. It will not absorb any of that butter, you’ll just end up with more waste fat at the end, which you can’t really collect and store for future meals because it’s a weird mixture of meat and dairy fat. With 80/20 beef you don’t really need to add any fat at all for a keto meal, but if you just want to round out the meal taste- and calorie-wise then bacon and/or cheese are the way to go, because you add them afterward. But not processed cheese, which is mostly vegetable oil and not even cheese. Simple cheddar, gouda, or provolone slices are fine; personally, I prefer blue cheese, which ought to be much easier to get in Europe than it is in America.

      More importantly, there’s a curious lack of mention of vegetables. If I recall correctly, you said you lived in Italy? I find it all rather puzzling because I’ve visited the Tuscany region and while I wouldn’t exactly call the local diet “keto” or even fully “paleo”, I saw a major emphasis on “fresh” foods, which included lots of low- to moderate-carb vegetables to balance out the main course. And yes, there was a lot of seafood, which I’m no fan of either, although oily fish is a very good source of fat. Maybe the region has been getting increasingly Americanized in recent years or maybe you are in the northern region near urban centers and they have always been like that? Anyway, there should be pretty widespread availability of good quality fresh produce in your region, and if you aren’t eating any of it then that means you aren’t targeting just keto, you’re targeting carnivore.

      Carnivore is far more of a “lifestyle” than a “diet” and requires a lot more investment to get right. You cannot just eat muscle meat. Definitely should not rely on powders of any kind. To avoid malnutrition, need to eat nose to tail, need to eat (at a minimum) livers, hearts and kidneys, and any other offal you can manage, need to spend a lot of time in the kitchen doing this. The offal is where the added cooking fat comes in, because offal is extremely rich in protein (including proteins that you cannot really find in muscle meat) but has virtually no fat. Livers, hearts, gizzards, etc., do take on frying fat, and leave behind a kind of starchlike substance that you can make into a great sauce or gravy with added butter or cream.

      These are things you’d learn very quickly if you looked up perhaps a dozen carnivore recipes on the internet and followed them. But I really do not recommend carnivore for someone who’s never even done keto seriously. You’ve already stated that the amount of time and/or effort you’re willing to put in is limited, that you crave fast food and fast carbs, and so on. Carnivore appeals to two types of people: those who want to eliminate fiber from their diets for any reason, and those who find haggis and menudo and liverwurst and deviled kidneys to be highly appetizing. I’m in the latter category myself, but let’s just say it is an acquired taste for most.

      If you don’t have a specific reason to be eating carnivore, then don’t, because you have to learn how to walk before you can run, assuming you even want to run. Keto includes vegetables, and broccoli or brussels sprouts will do a much a better job absorbing that butter or beef tallow than hamburger patties. Moreover, these meals shouldn’t be difficult to obtain at restaurants, especially steakhouses; they should all be able to give you a side of sautéed vegetables instead of mashed potatoes or whatever you normally get.

      You can eat once a day (OMAD) on keto but most people do better with twice a day. That is because breakfast is a really easy meal requiring no planning or creativity whatsoever (bacon/steak/sausage, eggs and maybe cheese), and then if you eat “dinner” 6 hours later you can still stick to an IF window and never feel the urge to snack. Do OMAD if you want, do it if it works for you, but you’re doing that thing again where you say something’s definitely totally working for you and then post a lot of points indicating how it’s not clearly working for you (i.e. being hungry before bed, that should not happen). If OMAD is too hard, then eat twice a day, late breakfast/brunch and early dinner.

      Last but not least: yes, it normally does take the gut a while to adjust from a low-fat to high-fat diet, because the microbiome required to sustain each is quite different. There are supposedly some ways to ease or speed up the transition, but I will not list them here because I have no way to verify their effectiveness. Google it, though, and I’m sure you will find the information.

      I try to avoid falling into the game of “personal advice” and instead stick to general principles that would apply to everyone, but if I were you, and doing this exclusively as a means to short term weight loss, I would start by looking up one of the more popular keto meal plans and follow it strictly, except to adjust for known allergies or intolerances, and then once weight goals are achieved, switch to a paleo diet to maintain it. Paleo is a lot more permissive and can accommodate a lot more eating out, without any substitutions or special instructions. You still shouldn’t be eating fast food every day, but back when I did “explicit” paleo I had no trouble going out to decent restaurants 2-3 times a week for dinner or Monday-Friday for lunch. Paleo is a “reduced-carb” or “low-glycemic-load” diet as opposed to “low-carb” and can include sweet potatoes, tomatoes, light breading for deep-fried foods, and so on. However, you’ll still have to lay off the pizza and pasta. Sorry.

      • jim says:

        Yes. a strict carnivore dies is unsustainable unless you are eating toe to tail, because you are going to miss nutrients, and therefore get cravings.

        • Vermillion says:

          Very long time lurker, never poster, but I feel I should chime in here.

          Been doing carnivore for 6 months now. Muscle meat only, and have not had any nutrient deficiencies to speak of. I do eat liver every now and then, perhaps on a monthly basis, and of course I eat cheese, butter, eggs, and fish, but 80% of my diet is beef muscle meat and its associated fat. I have had no issues, lost almost all my excess fat, gained muscle, increased my testosterone, and have had countless other benefits as well that I won’t list here.

          I supplement with vit D, iodine, taurine, magnesium, and potassium. (unsure of the requirements of the latter two at this point, but my initial transition included electrolyte deficiencies leading to muscle cramps, so it is a habit at this point.

          Haven’t had a vegetable or a fruit in months except during special occasions like a wedding, and I feel it when I do. I do not get cravings for them, though obviously sugar cravings exist. At this point I find it most parsimonious to model sugar as a drug than as a food, and biochemically, fructose at the very least behaves that way.

          I’m in medicine and I would say 80% of the patients I see are diabetic or pre-diabetic, full of visceral fat, and the vast majority of their symptomatology could be cured by a carnivore diet. Unfortunately, I stay silent on the topic as it would be unsafe for my license, and I am not yet practicing independently (had enough trouble with the jab).

          I suggest looking into professor Bart Kay. He’s wonderfully autistic on the subject, as if a 4chan-er got several PhD’s in nutrition science and cardiovascular pathophysiology. He’s not for everyone but seems a perfect fit for these corner of the web.

          • Vermillion says:

            Apologies, first comment and I fucked the formatting.

          • jim says:

            > I supplement with vit D, iodine, taurine, magnesium, and potassium.

            Paleo gave me muscle cramps, so I supplemented with magnesium and potassium. And, if one does not eat a lot of yoghurt and/or sour cream, need to supplement with calcium.

            I also supplement with vitamin D and so forth, but have no idea whether it is needed or does any good. I know from experience that potassium and balanced bivalent salts are needed.

            I have jar of salt that is two thirds or three quarters sodium chloride, about one third or one quarter potassium chloride, and salt everything liberally.

          • Kunning Druegger says:

            Should we just google or can you link something specific?

            Always fascinating when one of the Silent Brothers speaks up.

            • Vermillion says:

              Hey! Yeah, I don’t speak much because I just tend to agree with Prophet Jim on most accounts and don’t have too much interesting things to add that other’s already haven’t/don’t.

              Here’s a quick 101 into the current church of carno, which I only semi-ironically subscribe to:

              There’s three primary carnivore docs (MDs) on the web at the moment pushing the carno propaganda train, one PhD, and the (Forbidden One):

              1) Ken Berry: Family physician, Texan I believe. By far the most normie friendly of the three, very relatable, and as a result the largest. He has the least scientific focus and is the most casual, but a good starting point for a random person. I’d suggest him above the others if I was talking to a patient behind the scenes, which I have done in the past surreptitiously. Huge patriarch/family man with many kids is a big++ for me in terms of credibility.

              2) Shaw Baker: 260 lb 6’5 orthopedic surgeon monster of a man who was pushing it before anyone else. I believe he holds some world records in some kind of sport as well. Very short and to the point communication style, but also quite entrepreneurial as he’s starting a tele-health company at the moment. I’m considering even applying to the physician roles there but have to finish residency first. He spams 3-4minute videos on a daily basis. Does have a family I believe.

              3) Anthony Chaffee: Neurosurgeon down in Australia. The most eloquent and charismatic of the three. His talk “Plants are trying to kill you” (google it) initially was what caught my interest and got me into the rabbit hole. His videos tend to be longer form and mostly conversations with others, not monologues, and pleasant as background podcasts. He rubs me a BIT the wrong way though, in the sense he seems *too* wholesome. Either he actually IS as wholesome as he projects, or he’s trying too hard. No family, trophy super-modelesque girlfriend is a bit suspicious.

              4) Bart Kay: New Zealand. Multiple PhDs I believe: cardiovascular pathophysiology, nutrition, and statistics. Absolutely autistic, in the sense that he demands a form of linguistic precision and clarity that just does not jive with the vast majority of people’s communication styles. Was the most convincing to me, personally, but does rub a lot of people the wrong way. Rails against the concept of calories as being relevant to nutrition, and is an affirmed cholesterol-denier, amongst other things.

              5) The Forbidden One: Paul Saladino: He was one of the first. He is energetic, quick on his feet, charismatic, and just seems like an all around swell guy. Probably the most public face of the carnivore diet, if anything comes close to that, other than of course Jordan Peterson/daughter. Perhaps the sharpest in terms of IQ other than Kay. Unfortunately, he is insane:

              The first red flag should have been: he did a psychiatry residency. As someone who was originally interested in psychiatry and has done like 7+ rotations in it, don’t trust these guys. Second red flag was that he is a partial owner or something in an organ supplement company, in bed with The Liver King of all people. He absolutely pushed nose to tail and eating every single organ you can as much as you can, which Bart Kay and others speculate led to copper/vitamin A (though more likely the former) toxicity, electrolyte dysregulation, and endocrine disruption.

              He then abandoned carno to eat 300g of sugar everyday in the form of fruits/honey, and rebranded to “animal-based”, and is now firmly anti-keto. He has henceforth been excommunicated, though still holds a firm sway, and the obsession with fruit/honey/organs in some carno or carno-adjacent communities is firmly derived from him. He still has some health issues which have led to him now also practicing self-bleeding; not a good look for the old sanity meter.

              I don’t really have any specific videos I can think of, as it’s all kind of an ongoing discussion, but if anyone wanted resources, those are the major people in the area at the moment to my knowledge.

          • notglowing says:

            I’m in medicine and I would say 80% of the patients I see are diabetic or pre-diabetic, full of visceral fat, and the vast majority of their symptomatology could be cured by a carnivore diet.

            This sort of thing is what makes me doubt the necessity of strict diets in the first place, though.
            You see, while I was never at any point the fattest person I know, and I certainly am not now that I lost *most* of the excess weight I had two years ago, I was always a relative outlier in being fat at all.
            None of my friends are. A couple of my classmates in high school were, but being fat while young is not the rule.
            Maybe it is in the big cities but certainly not now.
            All my friends are thin and healthy, and they follow our normal diet, eat far worse than I do even, especially now.
            Metabolism differs in different people, for sure, but while being strict when one has issues to correct makes sense (like right now), I find it unrealistic that following a keto or carnivore or other diet like that is really necessary.
            Sure, our obesity rates have also gone up and are definitely too high, so I don’t think Italians in general are healthy, but quite a few of them are.

            • notglowing says:

              (Submitted by accident before finishing the post)
              If I was American and I saw most people around me being sick, diabetic, and overweight, I would probably think that radical changes in diet for everyone are necessary, and that everything is screwed up.

              But from my perspective it seems harder to believe.

              • Vermillion says:

                I conjecture that anyone that eats a SAD diet, past a certain age, is metabolically unhealthy almost by definition, even if they do not have visible obesity. Youth acts as a sort of buffer, but it doesn’t last for long.

                These metabolic sequelae could, but do not necessarily, include autoimmune disorders, endocrine issues (literally everyone is a low-T faggot. I know Jim suspects its mostly a social issue but I’m more 50-50), sleep issues, dermatological issues, psychiatric issues, etc.

                There’s also the whole TOFI (thin outside, fat inside) phenotype, which again I think is rampant amongst many people that most of us would deem “healthy”.

                Overall, at the end of the day, I don’t think a carno diet is necessary. I think a paleo type diet, or whatever you wanna call it, that consists of 85% animal products and the rest random plant crap you feel like eating would probably be good enough for 99% of the population in terms of maintaining excellent health. I do think its likely the most optimal though, if you’re really into min-maxing.

                • jim says:

                  > There’s also the whole TOFI (thin outside, fat inside) phenotype, which again I think is rampant amongst many people that most of us would deem “healthy”.

                  This is particularly conspicuous with vegans. And particularly vegans who are substantially Aryan descended. If you are substantially of Aryan descent, you need very little vegetables, and a whole lot of dairy products.

                • Aryaman says:

                  Having said that, I do know a couple of vegans in my life who look fantastic and are really strong (the one I have in mind is half white, and the Indian half you would have to squint to tell the difference).

                  great genetics, I guess, but it’s clearly possible. (Whereas I make it work more or less, but not as well, and with nearly a dozen eggs plenty of milk, yoghurt and paneer)

                • Vermillion says:

                  Vegans tend to avoid the randle cycle and as such can actually seem to improve in health for a while, at least when compared to SAD diet. But eventually the poverty of the diet, nutrient wise, catches up.

                  Do they really eat no animal products whatsoever? I am hesitant to believe any claims of over 5-10 years of strict veganism and still showing robust health and strength.

          • Carte Blanche says:

            Essentially I agree on all points, I simply neglected in this instance (unlike previous instances) to qualify the risk with “…unless you supplement”.

            Eggs and milk can generally cover one’s Vit-A needs if you eat a lot of them. Vit-B is more difficult to come by in muscle meat, but a single serving of liver is essentially a megadose of it, so a once-a-week or even once-a-month meal of it might be enough for many. C most people supplement anyway.

            There are a few other minor micros like riboflavin and niacin; but I presume, when you say you’re in medicine, that you have convenient access to vitamin panels and other tests. This can get quite expensive for people outside the profession, compared to e.g. the “metabolic panels” that are cheap for everyone, and without testing you generally won’t be aware of any deficiency until you’re very seriously deficient. So for those readers who aren’t in medicine, make sure you give some attention to the micros as well as the macros.

            I don’t advocate gorging constantly on organ meats; I do think they’re an essential source of vitamins and minerals when eating carnivore, but “nose to tail” implies that it’s all in proportion. When an animal yields 500 pounds of meat, and only 5-10 pounds of that are edible organs, then obviously you shouldn’t be eating livers and hearts every day. Once a week or equivalent (e.g. one heart or liver portioned out over several days) is plenty.

      • Aidan says:

        Paleo by definition excludes milk and cheese. I saw a “paleo” cookbook that forbid milk and cheese. No domesticated livestock in the Paleolithic. Rather than keto or paleo, eat an Aryan diet, a steppe diet. Mostly meat and dairy, with some fruit, root vegetables, and grains pilfered from enslaved farmers.

        • Carte Blanche says:

          That is a highly contentious point in paleo communities. Unfortunately, paleo attracted a lot of snake-oil salesmen, much like carnivore is starting to do today, and all of them advocated for the “one true [Paleo] way”.

          For every N paleo cookbooks there are N+1 sets of rules. Most of them include a lot of nonsense. The less fanatical ones are ambivalent on the subject of dairy products and essentially say “they’re fine, but don’t go crazy with them”. Much like what the Ketos and Carnies have to say about nuts and nutty legumes due to their high Omega-6.

          So let me clarify: when _I_ say paleo, and when many other people you might meet (although not all, and maybe not most) say “paleo”, we are including dairy under that umbrella. There are self-styled gurus who disagree, and I don’t care what they think. The same groups of people are trying to make the same claims on carnivore diets, and those claims are equally vacuous.

          I’m not sure what axe they have to grind against the dairy farmers, but every time I catch a whiff of their prose, I smell either a fed shill or a snake oil salesman.

          “Carnivore plus roots and fruits”, what you call Aryan, can be a good diet… for Aryans, and particularly those who are physically active and can accommodate some variability in calories and carbs. Anyone who’s not totally confident regarding micronutrients should go easy on the starchy roots and try to include some leafy greens or cruciferous vegetables. They’re not as easy on the gut as (for example) venison liver, but much easier to obtain and most people tolerate them in moderate quantities.

      • yewotm8 says:

        Unless it is some strange super-extra-lean variant, ground beef has plenty of fat already and loses fat as you cook it. It will not absorb any of that butter, you’ll just end up with more waste fat at the end, which you can’t really collect and store for future meals because it’s a weird mixture of meat and dairy fat.

        I have been thinking for a while about this. In Chemistry, reactions are classified exothermic or endothermic depending on whether their net energy balance is positive or negative. Foods (and perhaps the methods of cooking them) can likewise be considered exolipic or endolipic depending on whether you have more or less fat in the pan after cooking them respectively. You should cook an exolipic food first like ground beef or steak, then cook an endolipic food in the same pan immediately afterwards to absorb all the fat and not have it go to waste. My favourite endolipic food is eggs; I will usually cook 4-6 in the same pan after cooking steak or bacon to absorb the flavour and fat. I also find that liver is great if you cook it in a pool of leftover steak fat and butter. When I cook steak, I place it with the fat strip down for a few minutes in order to cook and render the fat before placing it down flat. It allows the meat of the steak to cook better in its own fat, and leaves plenty to be absorbed by the second food.

      • notglowing says:

        got the test strips, understand what “keto” means and maybe what macros to target

        True, although I already had those. I’ve been using the test strips while fasting to know whether or not I entered ketosis during long fasts.
        It’s obviously been far more useful now. Having direct confirmation that I am doing things correctly is important to me for motivation.
        Calorie counting never worked for me because I never really knew when I was going over or under for sure, which was frustrating.

        For example, “frying” ground beef in clarified butter is pointless as a method for adding either fat or flavor.

        Regarding the fat, I suspected as much, and I haven’t counted the fat into my total fat intake. I think some of it does stay, however when it comes to flavour it definitely tastes better fried than baked or whatever alternative one might use.
        I like using clarified butter because it tastes better. It’s only a slight hint of butter, not that major, but it makes some difference.
        It’s better than seed oils, and olive oil burns easily. It’s easier to get than most healthy alternatives anyways.

        But not processed cheese, which is mostly vegetable oil and not even cheese. Simple cheddar, gouda, or provolone slices are fine; personally, I prefer blue cheese, which ought to be much easier to get in Europe than it is in America.

        I only add those processed slices as a sort of condiment to the meat because they melt easily and taste good with it. I don’t eat it on its own, most of the cheese I eat is Gouda or french Brie, as well as Parmesan. Today I ate some pieces of Brie, for example.

        More importantly, there’s a curious lack of mention of vegetables.

        I’ve mentioned I ate shreded cucumber with the yogurt or leafy greens on most days.
        I do live in the industrialized north, although in a small town, not in a major city.
        Our local food is very heavy in things like rice, pasta, corn-flour-based stuff.
        There’s plenty of vegetables, but as part of meals that are usually carb heavy.
        I think part of the reason I end up avoiding vegetables is I only like them raw.
        Aside from potatoes or tomato juice, I find steamed vegetables like carrots or brocoli to be tasteless.
        I’d rather eat raw carrots, which I have done a few times during this period, but not really regularly.
        We do have a lot of produce, but it’s not necessarily simple to choose. Cucumbers I already eat,
        leafy greens require some kind of condiment to be edible so I usually eat them with yogurt and lemon juice now, I used dressing before,
        but I think the dressing contains some carbs. The normal way of eating green vegetables in my area is Balsamic vinegar plus olive oil.
        That’s very common. I used to like it, but Balsamic vinegar is sweet. Not a good choice. Regular vinegar isn’t, but it causes me stomach pain due to my chronic gastritis. Same reason why although I like tomatoes a lot, I can’t eat them outside of tomato sauce, which makes them less acidic.
        What do we make with tomato sauce? Pasta and pizza. I like tomato sauce enough that I’d eat it by itself, and I am also fond of tomato soup. But without the pasta as a buffer, both cause me pain. I actually still eat tomato soup occasionally regardless, I just bear with it.
        Potatoes I am very fond of, in almost all forms, but it’s obvious why they’re no good for my current diet.
        I’m not sure about beans. I didn’t have any at home and haven’t even considered them. I like beans as well, but bean soup recipes here contain pieces of pasta along with beans. Another popular dish is beans with pasta. Not to mention beans and bread.
        Or, of course, beans with corn-flour gruel. It’s not impossible to find local recipes without carbs but I feel like it’s very hard to overstate how they are in almost every normal thing we eat, and mixed with foods that don’t contain them in and of themselves.
        Very easy to avoid processed sugars. But carbs and flour?

        Due to me being fairly picky with meat, and not considering myself much of a meat eater (despite my current diet) I don’t really want to be a carnivore.
        Though perhaps I should increase my vegetable consumption. I was aware that eating purely meat requires eating many more cuts. I knew that, but I wasn’t aiming for that.

        • jim says:

          Fried mushrooms, fried in lots of regular butter. I use clarified butter on eggs, regular butter on mushrooms. Mushrooms are good with everything, and butter is good with everything.

    • Pseudo-Chrysostom says:

      Because fat is a reactionary issue, knowing how to cook comes to be a reactionary issue.

      I think the biggest impression that jumped out at me from your account was that your meal planning (or lack thereof rather) is frankly depressing; in which case one can only say no wonder you don’t see a long term journey down the course you’ve set for yourself. This is of course and unfortunately not unusual either, as most people alive today are shipwrecked survivors adrift in a sea of atomization, cut off from the lifelines of Tradition, and this includes their nominal relatives as well. To have never known ways and means of life through the kitchen to table is but one of manifold consequences of this fact.

      I won’t transcribe a whole cookbook for you in the comments section, which would be somewhat out of scope for this article, but by God you at least need to know a few basic forms, so you can know where to start experimenting.

      The number one advice I think to the gastronomically impaired is, soups and sauces. These can be dead easy to make, and can be prepared ahead of time in bulk to fill out a repast on demand. Anyone can handle a simple green soup of peas or watercress with sour cream and stock, or a chili of savories animal and vegetal, or a chunky stew of roots and meats, and so on.

      The pan reduction is the killer app of the continental culinary tradition; rendering down particular elements into a highly concentrated and digestible form fairly packed with simple aminos that explode in the mouth with flavour.

      Foolish men often think of sauces as something that is the same thing as a condiment (not that that there’s anything wrong with condiments either) – as if it is some sort of ‘trick’ that is ‘disguising’ the ‘true flavour’ of a main course. On the contrary: the essence of a sauce is *the essence of the course itself*. Not only are you not disguising the flavour, you are making the flavour *even more of itself than it could be alone*.

      Many traditional local cuisines of the New World have their roots in things people did to preserve food for long term consumption, and the utilization of such ingredients in their cooking. Eg, pickling, salting, smoking, dehydrating, et cetera.

      With vinegar and calcium chloride, you can make you own pickled vegetables, which is another excellent thing that can be made ahead of time and parceled out for repasts. Coleslaws, relishes, krauts, and more besides. I never eat raw vegetables; they need to be either cooked or pregested in some other way first. Salads with some dressing splashed on it is just a degenerate form of a proper pickle.

      Recipes for slaws usually take either ‘saur’ forms or ‘creamy’ forms. I personally like making a something of both; pickle the chopped veg overnight or however long you need it, and the day you make it take your serving size, lightly drain any excess, and toss it together with your sour cream, lime juice, and spices of choice.

      Beef can be consumed on it’s own without much effort, but many other meats (such as pork or seafood) benefit from curing to make them more comestible. Usually salting or smoking in the former case (do NOT use nitrogen salts), or marinading in the later case; though of course any of these techniques can also be used for any meat to suit your taste.

      Shanks and back ribs are cheap cuts that give meat and also bones you can use to make stocks and demi-glaces out of (a lot of sources for this, but one of the best collections in one place I’ve seen to date is ‘The Saucier’s Apprentice’, by Raymond Sokolov). If you know a local butcher (which is always a good thing to know), you can make arrangements for what you need more directly.

      Many different ‘diet communities’ each tend to have stumbled on a slice of truth in some way, which is often then mistakenly held as the whole of the truth. Low carb/keto, low grain/paleo, low pre-packaged/whole food, et cetera et cetera. Sometimes they work because of how they theorize it to work, sometimes they work because it coincidentally touches on something else that works, and sometimes it works because it overlaps with something else that is also working.

      In general I would say you don’t have to be so anal about having no ‘carbohydrates’ at all in an abstract sense, as long as you are keeping your level of calories from carbs lower than both and either of the calories you are getting from protein and fat in the long run (so usually no more than a third, and ideally around 10-20%). At the same rate, not all food is created equal, and in particular you really should avoid grain based food, whenever possible (there is a reason white rice and white flour is commonly associated with upper classes throughout history). The occasional ‘cheat days’, whether by accident of history or purposeful arrangement, can be acceptable or even useful for the insulin spikes they precipitate – only as long as you are regularly lifting heavy that is, where the insulin will have an anabolic effect on your muscle hypertrophy.

      Don’t forget your accoutrements; your salts, peppers, onions, garlic, cardamom, citrus, parsleys, cilantros, and other herbs and other spices. It really does make a big difference, and the lack of mentions of such things once again highlights how dreary the last few months you’ve described sound to me.

      Root vegetables, chopped, blended, or reduced, are a subtle way of adding subtle sweetness to many dishes without particularly exaggerating the carbohydrate content. Observe the many uses of mirepoix. Onions, carrots, and beets are amongst the most common. I’ve also experimented with more exotic choices like using radish or jicama as well.

      Domestic tomatoes are not far from their poisonous ancestors, and best results when using them generally involves removing the skin and seeds first (where the antinutrients concentrate). There are a variety of methods to do this, such a blanching, roasting, or freezing. A further step can be to puree and strain them to make passata, which in turn can be reduced to make tomato paste. Much like garlic and onions, tomato can also be used to complexify the savory notes of a dish.

      Red or yellow bell peppers are highly versatile and can be used as accoutrements in almost any dish for salutary effect – much like citrus in fact, and for similar reasons even.

      I mentioned condiments earlier, and this is another example of things that can be prepared ahead of time and easily decanted for filling out repasts on demand. Things I use most commonly are compound butters (melted and poured into the jar containing the accoutrements, cheesecloth to separate out the solids optional; lemon pepper, parsley, and garlic is an all time classic), guacamoles (creamed avocado with acid and accoutrements of choice), tapenades (minced olive with acid and accoutrements of choice), hummus (creamed split peas with acid and accoutrements of choice), lemon curd (eggs, butter, and citrus – if this sounds like hollandaise that’s not a coincidence, but the dynamics of many of these sorts of things tend to have many overlaps), and pickled vegetables (they can serve many roles).

      I won’t speak too much on specific cooking techniques, but as a general rule, lower and slower is a tendency for better results. You want things to be golden; every bit of char is a sign you’ve gone too far, and turned something edible into something carcinogenic. One particular example though, I am not a big fan of deep frying; not because it uses fat, but because it renders your fat inedible and in need of throwing out afterwards, and I don’t want to throw out my fat, I want to be able to use it as part of the meals. Consequently, I like using the layer bake technique when I need something with a ‘deep fry’ like effect, where you periodically apply fresh layers of preparation to an item as the previous layer transforms, while the interior item (meats usually, but can be other things) continues to cook. Either barbecue styles glazes or country style batters (protip: buttermilk).

      Cheeses, egg whites, and blended vegetables or nuts or other ‘gap filler’ can be used in cases where you want a durable crust for something (eg, pasties, tarts, bread bowls, et cetera), but don’t want to use starches for one reason or another. There are many methods you can look up and experiment with to figure out things that work for you.

      Those are the main things that come to mind at the moment. I will hold hope that the sad state of your household kitchen gods may have a newness of life breathed into them.

      • Cloudswrest says:

        This is all very well and good, but I have a full time job. After that there are “infinite” things around the house that need repair or replacement that absorb much of my weekends. Luckily I have a wife who cooks, but if I didn’t …

        • Pseudo-Chrysostom says:

          The need for more time to cook better is akin to the need of more money for a bureaucracy to work better.

          • Cloudswrest says:

            Indeed. By the time one is established and middle aged, all time is allotted for. If you need or want time for one thing it has to be taken from something else. Hence the seduction of easy meals, etc.

            • Pseudo-Chrysostom says:

              i was perhaps a bit too subtle. The point was no amount of money makes a bureaucracy work better because it is a bureaucracy, the calls for more money being necessary to make things work better being a jive, hence the analogy. The primary limiting factor for 90% of people isn’t time as such, but organizational ‘iq’; it is very easy for someone to fall into ways of cooking that waste lots of time.

              • Kunning Druegger says:

                I understand, but there is an intimidating “prep & practice” period before one finds their groove, I imagine… which of course would be the excuse, right? There’s nothing for it: teach your kids to cook, because they won’t have time to learn later.

        • Carte Blanche says:

          While I used to dedicate a lot more time to food, taking an interest in haute cuisine and molecular gastronomy and other esoteric branches, I have definitely felt the pull of simplicity as I get older. I can completely understand men not wanting to spend hours a day in the kitchen.

          But that kind of time investment is entirely unnecessary for good eatin’. It’s a totally false dilemma, probably encouraged by the purveyors of SAD junk. For me at least, variety consists of changing up the different animals and cuts so that they never repeat twice in a week, and although remembering to defrost ahead of time can be a pain in the neck, aside from that the average prep time per dinner meal ranges anywhere from 10-15 minutes (most common) to perhaps 30-45 minutes (rare, maybe once a week). Breakfast is consistently about 15 minutes, and since I don’t eat lunch, that means the typical day I spend no more than a half hour in the kitchen, total.

          Tastes vary, so I’m not going to try posting a whole meal plan, but it’s very achievable for just about anyone, no matter how “busy” they think they are. If you want to focus on quick prep, then do so; there are thousands of recipes out there in the sub-15 minute range, many of which either are keto/paleo/carnivore or can be adapted pretty easily. Steam, sautée and pressure-cooking are the go-to methods for speed, although if it’s more about “effort” than “time” then a decent dutch oven also works wonders — you’ll find it’s no big deal leaving the oven going for several hours as long as you don’t have to stick around and babysit.

        • alf says:

          I feel you. In between working, house maintenance, apocalypse preparations, hobbies and family affairs, there’s only so much time in a day. Which isn’t to disagree with the food experts here. I’m thankful to read and learn from the different perspectives and pass a couple of them to the wife, who is the cook of the household.

          • Pseudo-Chrysostom says:

            Yes, the ideal is for The Help to take care of it; but odds are, a man’s wife in the year of Our Lord, 2011+12, is not going to know half of this stuff, so it’s up to you to learn in the first place, so as to direct her learning.

            • Jim says:

              The number of women I know who can’t cook is downright scary.
              They either eat out all the time, or eat prepackaged “meals”… both are low quality and waste money… or live with parents or roomates who cook… probably still because not having the quality of cooking does not endear them to a man. We’re not talking four courses with dessert and a blowjob… any old homemade swill will do, but they haven’t even figured that out.

      • Cloudswrest says:

        One of the “infinite” things around the house recently was replacing a locked rotor compressor in a 30 year old 3-ton A/C condenser unit. Found a virgin replacement on Ebay for ~$300. No A/C tech would replace it for me. They all wanted to sell me a new system for thousands of dollars, and the evaporator is in the ATTIC!! Which would have involved extra complications and expense. Also, old simple, R22 units are EVIL (TM) in the government’s view. Luckily I have a big keg/vat of R22 I bought 15 years ago. I took the A/C refrigerant tech course online just to get the license so I could buy it. LOL It was a breeze. These courses are designed for morons, not someone with a graduate engineering degree.

      • notglowing says:

        I understand based on the replies I got that most users here get the impression I am not used to making food or lack much imagination for it.
        I get why, the picture I painted was relatively bleak, but I don’t believe this is true.
        I actually cook often, and have tried many different recipes, many even from far away countries, but most Italian.
        In the past, I once spent weeks eating the same dish every day, Carbonara pasta, just to learn to get it right. It’s a simple dish but very tricky to get just perfect, and it took me a lot of attempts to get right. It’s true that I tend to get into routines a bit too easily though, and that can result in me eating the same thing every day for a while.
        But I have made a lot of different foods. Of course I know how to make sauces. Everyone in Italy does, and Italians do care a lot about cooking, it tends to be a very common topic of discussion among normal people just like sports might be.
        But guess what sauces usually go on top of here? Pasta. I can make a lot of sauces, but they’re nearly all for pasta. They are sometimes tasty enough to eat in and of themselves, and I have done that with surplus sauce. But I wouldn’t make them just for that reason.
        I’ve gotten into baking in the past, as well as relatively recently, anything from cakes to bread and cookies. All of those are now excluded from my diet.
        I’ve made foreign foods, from things like Wiener Schnitzel (which we have a local variant of) to Chinese foods like sweet and sour chicken, pork buns, to Japanese foods like Tonkatsu, Japanese curry, Japanese dango and rice cakes. Teriyaki chicken based dishes.
        Most of these inherently contain carbs, and are also not quite the same without rice to complement them.
        Rice is actually one of our main staple foods here, and in terms of local recipes probably outranks pasta in numbers.
        The greatest of which is of course, Milan-style Risotto which is a saffron rice dish. I would make it on Christmas for my extended family.
        But every single rice recipe is off limits for obvious reasons.
        I actually got into cooking as a sort of hobby more partly due to me starting intermittent fasting a few years ago. The more I fasted, the less often I would eat, and so I was more motivated to make it count.
        I also used to have a hello fresh subscription for a while. While their recipes feel fairly american in character in how they mix up many dishes from different cultures together (tacos with falafel and greek yogurt inside, really?) it was a convenient way to try very different kinds of dishes every time. Some of these recipes I kept making afterwards.

        It really is hard to overstate how much of our local cuisine, and even the foreign cuisine I learned, involves carbs in some way. In many cases it’s not a huge amount, often it’s not the dominant macro nutrient, but it’s nonetheless completely incompatible with Keto. It shouldn’t be surprising why I was so resistant to it, given how I knew it would wipe out 95% of the culinary universe I was used to. Not really a matter of mainly fast food.

        Beef with spices is easy to make, and something I could make every day with not too much time or effort. I tend to get into just doing things again and again the same way, perhaps because of being on the spectrum, so I just continued. It tasted good too, though even I am sick of it after a month. I didn’t have any issue with it until last week though.
        But it is hardly a matter of me being unwilling to cook or completely inexperienced with flavours and cooking in general. If anything I made something relatively well tasting from nothing but meat plus completely non-perishable spices that I already have and don’t need to restock.
        Cutting with carbs means mostly cutting with our culinary tradition. I’m sure there would be dishes compatible with my diet that I can find which might be part of our traditional cuisine, but it’s not anything my grandmother would’ve likely made as a main dish.
        As I mentioned in my other post, even something as basic as Balsamic Vinegar, which we use a lot, is an issue because it’s sweet.

      • notglowing says:

        there is a reason white rice and white flour is commonly associated with upper classes throughout history

        A somewhat cryptic statement that deserves elaboration

        Don’t forget your accoutrements; your salts, peppers, onions, garlic, cardamom, citrus, parsleys, cilantros, and other herbs and other spices. It really does make a big difference, and the lack of mentions of such things

        Well this isn’t really true. Both the yogurt and the meat contained salt, pepper, garlic, and lemon juice.
        Not the widest variety, though I often also put onions in my food. Just not this month. I found that simply frying meat with onions didn’t give it a lot of extra flavour when it’s already spiced. Usually I would eat raw onion with meat and bread, red onions in particular since they have a stronger taste.
        But I can’t eat bread and without it, raw red onions are a bit too strong.
        One thing I got from your suggestions is that I should consider going back to soups. Soups here are pretty much exclusively a winter food, since it’s very hot in summer, so they weren’t even on my radar during our hottest month.
        However, I do like soups and some ingredients that usually go in them like beans and tomatoes.

        • Pseudo-Chrysostom says:

          >A somewhat cryptic statement that deserves elaboration

          Concerns the removal of the insoluble outer bran.

          >It really is hard to overstate how much of our local cuisine, and even the foreign cuisine I learned, involves carbs in some way.

          Don’t I know it. Hence repeat emphasis on the importance of having an experimental attitude.

          One acquaintance I know is practically helpless in this regard. If for example a recipe for something calls for lemon juice, and they don’t have lemons, but do have limes… it is simply impossible for them to use limes instead. Or if a recipe calls for using a seed oil, it is simply impossible for them to modify it by using a fruit oil instead. Very nominalistic modes of thought, in other words. The smallest of differences perceived just as significant as the greatest of differences, rather than perceiving the more or less essential dynamics they participate in.

          One needs to be able to look at different formulas and think about how they can be adapted to suit your purposes; how a wrinkle you see used in one recipe can be used in others; how the essential purpose meant to be accomplished by one aspect can be accomplished by others. (This is one reason why I actually like collecting cook books.)

          Soups are indeed both highly convenient and highly adaptable to practically any sorts of ingredients one would prefer to eat.

          Things like lentils, roots, and other chopped, julienned, or stringed plant matter make excellent bases for sauces meaty and creamy. In fact you can think of the later as the real ‘main dish’ even, and the former as vehicles for delivering it.

          Things like balsamic vinegar deliver a lot of complexity along with its sweetness; it is not like you are simply ladling in a spoonful of sugar. That is one of the reasons why I mentioned not being too anal retentive about no forms of carbohydrate at all, as long as the large majority of your intake is fat (and protein).

          Eggs are endlessly versatile and can be adapted to practically anything, as components or centers of attention. Another convenient dietary staple.

          Tangentially related – the custard-bread continuum is one of the core dynamics of bakery; that is to say, the ratio of egg/butter on one end and flour/water on the other. From custard, to pudding, to spoonbread, to bread. Someone looking to have a more aristocratic diet may of course naturally look more towards the former end of the spectrum. There are many ‘dessert’ recipes on this continuum that can be adapted into side dishes or breakfast items by obviating their use of sugar (for example, Christmas pudding, which involves a blend of dried fruits and suet, or the endless variations of custard bases to give body and consistency to various preparations, an excellent method of working in extra macronutrients to dishes).

          Pureed cauliflower is a common ‘bulk former’ in many recipes for non-grain or low-starch based dry goods, on account of its neutral colour. You can use much the same technique with many other similar things though of course.

          I find most beans to be practically inedible personally, but white and navy beans are less inedible than others (dissolving baking soda in water and soaking the beans overnight or boiling them a few minutes before helps). Most peas and lentils work just fine. Chickpeas can work fine but it’s best if the husks are removed first (these are usually labeled as split yellow peas in stores, or chana dal if using the Indian terms).

          The foregoing can also be used as bases for dry goods. Eg, flatbreads for condiment boards, trenchers for tarts, pizzas, or other ‘throw shit on top this’ recipes, if you have a serrated rolling pin you can make your own egg pasta too, et cetera et cetera.

          On a similar note, nuts can apply here as well. Macadamias, hazelnuts, cashews, and pistachios are the best, but tend to be more difficult to source. Almonds are probably the easiest to find anywhere, but make sure the skins are blanched off first. Pine nuts are good and easy to find, but also tend to be much more costly (ironic for something that originally came into cuisine by way of scavenging by the starving penurious; much like watercress as well). Chia seeds are not technically nuts but they fit into this archetype. Most others are borderline, but acceptable if needed as accoutrements.

          Some more specific examples: I am a big fan of utica greens and barbecue style greens to round out repasts. Utica greens are traditionally made with escarole, but of course you can adapt it to whatever leafy greens you prefer or have available at the time. Likewise cherry peppers are the traditional kicker, but you can experiment with other combinations of pepper as well when needed. The simple dynamic of meat, cheese, and accoutrements always works.

          For barbecue style greens, a traditional choice in the form of collards is the case, but one can once again adapt it to your preferences. This is another one of those things that straddle the borders between realms, and can easily be construed as one or another depending on how you adapt it. Lard, greens, stock, and meat – all part of a balanced breakfast. And all the familiar story beats as well; garlic and onion for developing flavor, cider vinegar or other acid for brightness, and spices for kick.

          • notglowing says:

            Don’t I know it. Hence repeat emphasis on the importance of having an experimental attitude.

            One acquaintance I know is practically helpless in this regard. If for example a recipe for something calls for lemon juice, and they don’t have lemons, but do have limes… it is simply impossible for them to use limes instead. Or if a recipe calls for using a seed oil, it is simply impossible for them to modify it by using a fruit oil instead. Very nominalistic modes of thought,

            Maybe my point came on a bit too strongly. I do modify recipes, quite often, I have to since a lot of recipes online for foreign foods are made for a North American audience and many ingredients are unavailable here.
            Limes for Lemons are a good example, I can buy limes at the supermarket at least, but they’re limited in quantity, not always stocked, while lemons are cultivated everywhere and always available in any household here, often gardens have lemon trees, etc.

            However, there are two issues, the first being that substituting carbs is usually more difficult. A Schnitzel without breading is just not a Schnitzel. I have already experimented with keto “flour” for “bread” and found it quite offensive tasting. Often the carb element is quite fundamental to the dish, hence my point.
            The biggest issue is that while I am very much used to substituting ingredients and changing recipes for the practical reason of being able to make them or make them more easily, trying to change it in order to remove carbs or replacing them with something of similar taste isn’t something I have any experience in.

            I tend to think like an engineer, and try to simplify processes over time. It’s why I like to repeat the same recipe, because I can become more efficient in the process, learn what I can do in parallel, learn exactly how much each step takes, and also I tend to gradually simplify the recipe to the parts I actually like while adding shortcuts.
            I gradually try removing ingredients that seem like they don’t contribute so much to the final result and see if it’s still good. I try to remove or replace ingredients that are difficult or impossible to procure, with something that might still be the same. Sometimes I try to replace perishable ingredients I buy in small quantities with bulk dry ingredients I only buy once in a while. It is satisfying to be able to do something in less time and have less to buy for it on a day by day basis.

            I guess I am not biased towards enriching the flavour and making the food better, at least if I try to make a recipe daily, I just try to make it more and more efficient.

            It might be unrecognizable now, but the way I prepare the meat originally came from a recipe for tacos, which actually also involved the yogurt, and lime instead of lemon juice.

            Either way, I’m not trying to argue there is nothing other than meat and yogurt to eating keto. Soups are a good idea, if an out of season one. I have bought some legumes and will try something else today. I put the ground meat in the freezer for now so I can try something different. I mostly kept eating the same thing because it tasted good, was easy, and I got extremely efficient at making it. I only had to monitor the supply of a single ingredient on a daily basis (meat) and I always had a backup plan in case I ran out of it or it went bad (cream). I can’t pretend there never was anything else, just that it was more difficult and I didn’t see a reason to look into it until I got tired.

            Above all I don’t like having to think about the logistics of supplying myself too much. I buy daily necessities that do not spoil like deodorant in large quantities, sufficient for four to six months, and some other things I get delivered at regular intervals by Amazon automatically.
            Beans can be kept for an indefinite amount of time as can pickles (though I already had pickles)

            Cured meats such as prosciutto, salame, and similar stuff can sometimes last for a long time. I have mostly treated them as occasional snacks, however they might just become a bigger part of my diet given it’s fatty meat, and quite a common dish here. The difference is they’re usually eaten with bread, or balsamic vinegar, but I can skip that.

            • jim says:

              What is your solution for low carb gravy?

              My low carb gravy is not great.

              • Pseudo-CHrysostom says:

                Okra does form a gel, much like chia.

                A decent simple brown sauce can be made with beef stock, beef concentrate (you can buy it from the store or make it yourself), and a butter and egg emulsion, with your choice in accoutrements.

                • jim says:

                  OK, next time I make gravy will try thickening it with butter and egg emulsion. My wife proposes mushroom gravy, but on researching it, it is just regular gravy with mushrooms fried in butter.

                • Fidelis says:

                  Once again suggesting beef gelatin for your thickening needs. Immensely satisfying, and I suspect what starch based gravy is trying to emulate in the first place. Its the same agent that would thicken a stew with lots of bone and tendon.

                • jim says:

                  If you already have an emulsion, gelatin will thicken it. The hard bit is getting an emulsion. Perhaps vinegar egg and butter. An emulsion is always easier if you start with an emulsion and don’t let it boil. Roux is not only a thickener, but an emulsifier.

                • Fidelis says:

                  Nevermind, I see now you mentioned trying this in another post. It is incredibly temperature sensitive, though I have never had a problem with ratio or dissolution. Personally, I am satisfied enough from the flavor and texture of a gelatin gravy to deal with it, before getting into nutrition content balancing out your amino needs. I would personally attempt a nice warm dish to hold the gravy in, before reaching for a starch. Perhaps an emulsion would help with the sensitivity to temperature as well, never felt the need to try but I also don’t tend to hold dinner parties or eat slowly that I needed to deal with this.

              • Carte Blanche says:

                If you’re not pure carnivore and are only concerned with Aidan’s “Aryan” diet, many of the root-based starches are good for gravies. Tapioca or cassava work nicely; arrowroot is a bit more temperamental but is probably the easiest to find.

                I think I mentioned guar gum in a previous post. Very effective if your gut tolerates it. As far as I know, it’s not a generally unhealthy additive in the sense that (for example) sugar alcohols are, it’s just that a lot of people are intolerant. But if you are not intolerant, great thickener.

                If your hurdle is making an emulsion in the first place, use lecithin, or drop in an egg white (if you want light and fluffy) or an egg yolk (for thick and creamy, like Hollandaise). Can also use egg white or yolk powder if you want to keep something shelf-stable and not waste fresh eggs. To further stabilize any egg-based emulsion you can add a tiny amount of SSL – Sodium Stearoyl Lactylate. If I recall correctly, the ratio should be around 0.25% – 0.5%. One caveat, I haven’t actually tried this for gravies, more for custards and other baked goods, but they are fat-heavy emulsions all the same.

                Any egg-based emulsion should also tolerate butter being added, which lightens both the color and flavor and makes it more like a sauce/gravy and less like a savory custard.

        • jim says:

          I routinely and regularly say “don’t snack. Snacking makes you fat. You should eat only at a social occasion as you should drink alcohol only at a social occasion.”,

          But some snacking is a lot worse than other snacking, and this I have failed to emphasizer.

          Goyslop is carefully designed to make you obese, depress your testosterone, and raise your estrogenic levels. It is created by people who hate you, hate males, and hate masculinity. Soy, harsh fibre, and omega six oil are known problems with goyslop. How many other problems, we do not know. Goyslop is enemy action, and likely contains hidden weapons against you.

          If you must snack, buy pig skin and cook it into pork rinds. I see a whole lot of pigskin at the supermarket, so I figure a whole lot of people are doing this. Ready made “pork rinds” (goyslop falsely labeled as pork rinds) taste completely different, and I doubt that they contain much if anything from the actual pig. Since it is obvious that very large numbers of people are making their own, why are only goyslop pork rinds available in the shops? Looks like enemy action. It is as if the only icecream available in the shops was non dairy made with high omega vegetable oil. Someone selling actual pork rinds would clean up. There is obvious demand which they refuse to supply. Looks like a political decision to deliberately poison the food supply, and keep non poison food off the market. I conjecture that anyone who tried to manufacture and distribute real pork rinds made from actual pig flesh would encounter a multitude of mysterious regulatory obstacles.

          And, come to think of it, maybe the only icecream available in stores is non dairy made from high omega six vegetable oil, for they all list vegetable oil on the ingredients, which leads me to suspect that the dairy icecream contains one drop of cream and gallon of vegetable oil, and the non dairy differs by lacking one drop of cream. The cost and complexity of processing vegetable oil to resemble cream means it makes absolutely no sense to put it in ice cream unless you are using a lot.

          • Vermillion says:

            What is the evidence for pork rinds in stores being goyslop? I regularly buy them for my fiancée, who has an autoimmune disorder and is on pure carnivore with me.

            We check the ingredients and they specifically state: Pork, salt. If this is a lie I will be quite unhappy. I have never tasted real pork rind as I am a degenerate city dweller.

            • jim says:

              Possibly I live under different regulations than you, or possibly it is a lie. Make your own pork rinds and find out. After eating the real thing, it will be completely obvious whether the ready made involve any actual pigs, or any actual animal flesh whatsoever.

              Looking at the supermarket shelves where I live, it looks like far more people are eating far more home made pork rinds than the obviously non pig ready made. I have not checked the label on the obviously non pig ready made. I should.

              I see a whole lot of icecream that lists vegetable oil as an ingredient. Which leads me to suspect old joke about horse and rabbit pie: One horse and one rabbit.

              • Aryaman says:

                I don’t know the old joke but seeing safflower oil listed on a haagen dazs pint was the last straw. I knew seed oils were garbage the second I first heard them mentioned but the fact it was in fucking ice cream was enough to convince me of a conspiracy.

                I don’t really buy globoslop pints of ice cream but I’ve been paying attention since then and at least among the usual “mass quality” brands it is not common to see seed oils. But they are there some times and brand isn’t an indicator (some haagen dazs but not others, flavor regardless).

                which is actually further evidence of a minor conspiracy. seed oil is in every easy to buy mayo because it is easy and cheap for the purpose. Similarly it is in a lot of pancake mix. (high quality old school pancake mix will direct you to add a little bit of vegetable oil. you don’t need it, but it makes things easier). Not the case with ice cream.

          • Carte Blanche says:

            Anyone want to explain the “goyslop” meme to me? I’ve heard it several times now but I don’t think I understand either the literal meaning or the memetic payload.

            Literally, it seems to be just some catch-all term for “any food we consider unhealthy”, but that’s probably oversimplifying. And memetically it’s communicating that… Jews eat better? Or are pushing this stuff on the goyim? I don’t really see the connection to people like James Ford Bell, Henry Parsons Crowell or Ancel Keys. What am I missing?

            • S says:

              The equivalency is to animal feed; cattle get low quality food to fatten them up, human cattle get low quality food which fattens them up.

            • jim says:

              The memetic payload is that people who don’t like you very much are manipulating the food supply with the intent to harm you.

              The regulations on milk and eggs seem to be particularly hostile. A lot of “cheese” appears to be vegetable oil impregnated with some kind of plastic to give it a cheese like texture.

              • Carte Blanche says:

                Indeed, processed cheese has very little cheese in it, and one must be careful even with some of the “deli” cheese at low-end supermarkets.

                Lately I’ve seen more stores carrying pastured eggs, and they are interesting; you can tell that they are different simply by cracking them open, because the yolks are a totally different color, almost amber compared to the usual pale yellow. I once cracked both side-by-side in the same bowl, just to be sure I wasn’t fooling myself; not even close to the same hue.

                All that aside, I’m still not sure I understand why “goyslop”. The millers who pushed for grains in every facet of life at the turn of the 20th century were all dyed-in-the-wool Puritans, and the conspiracy against animal fats began all the way back in the 1950s, maybe as early as the 40s.

                The payload as you describe it is broadly true, obviously true, but is the meme itself really our meme, or is it some fednat-corrupted alt-right mutation?

                • Pseudo-Chrysostom says:

                  Fednats don’t mention it at all, for similar reasons to how gaia worshippers only have a monomania about carbon and never talk about any actual contaminations of actual human living spaces; the whole territory is inherently radioactive (for them).

                  Seed oil disrespect is a pathway to many abilities some might consider… natural.

                • jim says:

                  It is a fednat friendly meme. Supposedly white leftism is just fine.

                  We really need a better meme. You are right – most of the evil done was not conspicuously Jewish – the food we are calling Goyslop was and is primarily a puritan descended creation. “The big fat surprise” identifies the key players in demonizing animal fats.

                  And “Goyslop” suggests a mixture of ignorance and contempt. I am pretty sure, looking at what is done to American milk, that active hostility and hatred, rather than profit and ease, is the major factor. If financial interest, would be regulated in favour of the produces, rather than hostility to their customers.

                  On the other hand, even though “JooJooJoo RothschildRothschild pay no attention to Soros and Zelensky” is a fednat meme, Goyslop is not.

                • Pseudo-Chrysostom says:

                  It’s like talmudvision; it gets legs because its funny, punchy, and rolls off the tongue easy. There actually are real people out there from which memes like this arise out of earnestness, like my good friend Anglin. People need to let go of this mindless contrarian reflex that anything that sounds like it is critical of certain clades of eurasian tribesmen must by definition be glowniggers (be it purposefully or by coincidence), as if noone would have any reason for letting them catch strays in memetic mutations otherwise.

                • jim says:

                  Jews are not all that central to poisoning our food supply, but we need a meme to warn people that it is poisoned, and I cannot think of a better one.

                • Your Uncle Bob says:

                  I had the impression it was a 4chan meme, not originating here. I’ll take correction if I’m wrong, but if I’m right you’re overthinking it. It made sense to someone somewhere and caught on, that’s all. And it happens to have enough truth everyone knows what you mean by it.

                • jim says:

                  > I had the impression it was a 4chan meme, not originating here.

                  It is 4Chan meme, not mine, but I endorse it for all its grievous faults (“JooJooJoo RothschildRothschildRothschild, pay no attention to Soros, Zelensky is the national leader of a nation in peril, Musk is a Jew, Putin is a Jew”)

                  And cannot come up with anything better, though I wish I could, for Kellogs cornflakes and Quaker Oats are, as Aryaman pointed out, deplorable examples of Goyslop.

                • Pseudo-Chrysostom says:

                  > I had the impression it was a 4chan meme<

                  Yes, basically.

                  Aryaman floated globoslop earlier, but I dunno, doesn’t feel as inspiring the same way. ‘Goy’ is a word for cattle and also a term of abuse for beings you look at as sub-human so on an esoteric level it’s practically a perfect fit.

                • jim says:

                  “Globohomo slop” is more accurate organisationally, but, regrettably, “Goyslop” is a better fit.

                  “Goyslop” accurately conveys their contempt for us, but fails to convey their hatred and desire to cause harm. If we could come up with a better meme (and I am not a meme magician, better at long form), it would cover the contempt, the hatred, and the desire to cause harm, the murderous malice and hatred that was unveiled in the Covid campaign, particularly in the incident where Trump’s hospital quarantine ship continued to stand empty in the harbor, while they locked down the healthy and continued shipping the sick to overcrowded old people’s homes, while the vandalized skate parks and barred people from beaches while the subway remained open. The FDA hates you, and wishes to harm you.

                • Aryaman says:

                  No it isn’t inspiring in the same way. Goyslop describes it well. The people who produce it hate you the way fednats propose the pawn shop guy hates you, and the pawn shop guy is victim to it as well.

                  The millers who pushed for grains in every facet of life at the turn of the 20th century were all dyed-in-the-wool Puritans, and the conspiracy against animal fats began all the way back in the 1950s, maybe as early as the 40s.

                  Look at the Kellogg Company for example.

                  True there is an element of it that’s profit-oriented, but if you look at Kellogg’s history you’ll see the motivation is in Seventh Day Adventist health principles and, well, “Quaker Oats” speaks for itself.

                • Aryaman says:

                  I can’t help but admire the fact all these puritans were such great businessmen, though.

                • Mayflower Sperg says:

                  The idea of “meat and animal fats bad, grains and seed oils good” became official truth around the time the federal food-stamp program began. The government could either admit to feeding poor people an inferior diet because a good diet would cost too much, or pay its scientists to do “research” proving that good food is bad for you.

                  I get that some seed oils might be unhealthy, as soybeans were not historically eaten by white people, while rape and cotton seeds were not eaten by anyone. But what about corn, sunflower, and peanut oils?

                • Aryaman says:

                  Using small amounts of peanut oil for taste and flavor is probably okay, mostly to add rather than cook with — if your diet is otherwise good I can’t imagine that being the problem. But I’ve never heard of anyone cooking with sunflower oil or corn oil.

                  To cook with, I don’t know why you need anything other than olive oil, or coconut oil, or animal fats.

  12. c4ssidy says:

    A digital signature, a hash of a file, and a timestamp, is according to my AI about 200 bytes, which seems to translate to about 20 dollars to store on a blockchain.

    Seems to be all that is needed to get people storing and uploading huge archives of content that they did not personally create and that they have no direct copyright over, yet is not public domain and not even creative commons, and yet without the provider being pirates either. Rather, the service provider can check the hashes of what it is hosting. The owner of the private key can come along at any time in the future and collect his cut (and if he never shows up, then it goes to the copyright version of salvage rights. Perhaps the provider only needs to store the cut for a few years).

    copywrite is often gay, but it helps to have an economic incentive to make and submit stuff, the problem is that the system needs the long-term fallback to be public salvage rights, otherwise too much of everything will just vanish from existence, many decades before public domain even considers kicking in

    • jim says:

      The problem is that current method is to massively duplicate everything on the blockchain, because you need to massively duplicate everything on the reliable broadcast channel, for it to be reliable.

      If we want to immutably store all the records of our civilization that matter, we need a more efficient system, and we have to make distinctions between different kinds of data stored in different ways, with only a merkle tree whose leaves are hashes stored on the (massively duplicated) public broadcast channel. You need to store as little as possible on the public broadcast channel.

      What I envisage is that for each file that you want immutably stored and forever available, you create sixteen parity files, each one eighth the size of the original. A different peer holds each parity file. Only one or two peers store the full copy. If the last peer holding a full copy goes offline, another peer gets eight of the sixteen parity files, and recreates the original, so that there is almost always at least one peer with a full copy online. If the last peer holding one of the parity files goes offline, a peer with a full copy recreates that parity file, and sends it to another peer.

      So for some data, we have limited duplication, not massive duplication. Such data will not be reliably available, but it will be mostly available most of the time, and will not get lost.

      Only the hashes of data necessary to prove the validity of transactions need to be reliably available. Every peer needs those hashes, and will keep a copy.

      • C4ssidy says:

        The stepping stone towards decentralised file storage is to first begin with purely decentralised registration of hash-author-date, which is only 200 bytes, and should be affordable on modern everything-goes blockchains. What we want is that something in a normal centralised database with a normal hash/creation-date/authorKey, the triplet of values is checked against the public ledger and produces a green or red or orange tick, confirming whether we know for sure that this file was actually produced by that author on that date

      • A2 says:

        This approach sounds almost like (Reed-Solomon) erasure coding, which is worth checking out. Saves a lot of space compared to replication. Very popular in the cloud storage business.

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erasure_code

        • jim says:

          Parity sets are what you want for bulk data. Raid5 keeps one disk as a parity set, raid6 keeps two disks.

          If you have four data disks and one parity disk, and one disk fails, you can regenerate the lost data onto a new disks from any of the remaining four.

          I was proposing eight data files and sixteen parity files, with the eight data files on a single peer, which is to say one big file eight times the size of each parity file, and therefore at risk of losing them all, but the sixteen parity files (each one eighth the size of the one big file, on sixteen different peers, so you are unlikely to have lost eight of them when the peer with the full data set goes down.

          • A2 says:

            With Reed-Solomon encoding, you break your file into, say, 10 chunks and along with, say, an additional 4 parity chunks of the same size, encode them all. You can then recover the original file from any 10 of the 14 chunks, i.e., tolerating up to 4 failures, at a size of 140% of the original file.

  13. The Cominator says:

    “They urged Ukraine to push through the vast minefields left behind by Russia in the area, even if this means losing more soldiers and equipment in the process, according to the reports.”

    they really do want to fight to the last Ukranian

    https://www.yahoo.com/news/us-growing-increasingly-frustrated-ukraines-103258911.html

    • Mister Grumpus says:

      The whole fucking thing is a genocide attempt. I can’t see it any other way.

  14. dave says:

    Based on previous discussion I cant help but think this story is about having a way of pretending the stockpile works without getting so dirty as to actually verify a real bomb can go boom. Vendors get paid, the Los Alamos (US DOE) can say they are doing their job, and no one gets embarrassed, win/win/win.

    https://www.theregister.com/2023/09/02/los_alamos_supercomputer/

    yep. “The US can’t exactly go out and check at its nuclear arsenal still works by setting one of those warheads off, so the DoE uses supercomputers to simulate the storage, maintenance, and efficacy of the weapons instead. “

    • Bomba says:

      [*shill spam that the US government has secret tech capability deleted*]

      • jim says:

        If you have evidence that tech lead Shaniqua can do this stuff, produce it. Not going to take your word for it.

        • You Idiot says:

          [*Tech claims deleted*]

          • jim says:

            You are claiming knowledge of secret ops. I don’t believe you.

            And these secret ops demonstrate that the US can do stuff it certainly would have been able to do 25 years ago. Maybe it still can. It is quite possible that it still can. But if it can, I would like to see evidence. You are making mere assertions.

  15. The Cominator says:

    Any thoughts on whatever supposed bug was unleashed at burning man… as Moldbug has pointed out burning man is actually a kind of elite party (with numerous whores in tow looking for a sugar daddy and/or drugs of course).

    Don’t know if it’s intended to be a new covid scare or someone looking to kill a lot of the rich techie types there.

    • jim says:

      If it is ebola or related, someone seeded it. But that someone could not have anticipated the rain, so likely it is just unexpected cold weather and damp rendering people vulnerable to ordinary infections. Situation unclear. We will know by and by. The partygoers tend to abandon hygiene, because hygiene is less needed in the desert. The desert has suddenly become the swamp, an environment in which a multitude of diseases suddenly become a lot more transmissible.

      Another possibility is that they have been routinely seeding ebola in lots of places lots of times, with the intent of having another go at lockdown, and failing to get results, and the sudden transition to swamp conditions has given them results. Ebola is highly infectious, but is stopped dead by routine Old Testament hygiene. Of which there is probably not a lot at Burning Man. The famous outbreak of Ebola in Africa was stopped dead in its tracks by local bigmen making everyone practice Old Testament hygiene at machete point.

      If it really is ebola or similar, probably they have been seeding it since they ran into widespread resistance to Covid 2.0. Which widespread defiance only hit a short time ago, and Burning Man just happens to be the first place they got results.

    • MuskFan says:

      Moldbug’s an idiot. Billionaire elites wouldn’t be caught dead there.

      • The Cominator says:

        True billionaires probably not… as they have to be conscious of their security and burning man is probably an enviroment where security is difficult but middling west coast elites probably do go there.

        • jim says:

          We don’t know if it is ebola yet, but if it is ebola, or, more likely, monkey ebola that has been human adapted by passing it through children kidnapped by child protective services in some distant province of the American empire, lockdown of the healthy coming in one two three, while the sick are going to be moved into crowded places like old people’s homes. A vaccine then appears in a miraculously short time, despite the fact that ebola has been around forever and no one has been able to develop a genuine vaccine over all these decades. The vaccine, alas, does not prevent you from getting sick, or transmitting it to others, but does have the effect that those vaccinated can never gain true natural immunity, and so get infected over and over and spread it over and over.

          • The Cominator says:

            Yeah probably how it will go down…

          • Mister Grumpus says:

            That little Covid19 vignette where the Navy hospital ship was docked next to Manhattan, but they drove the patients to elderly homes instead, you just can’t unsee that kind of thing.

    • Anonymous Fake says:

      Elites promote anything to do with illegal drugs because they’re the ones selling them, especially CIA. Grateful Dead and Phish were the two most notorious dope bands, not sure which ones are big now. This is also why any culture and music associated with clean healthy drinking, like thrash metal or country, is absolutely despised by the elites. Drink and drug demographics don’t mix.

      Counterculture is advertising for drugs. Sexual revolution was full retard counterculture that became a meme in itself and ate its master.

      • Bulging Thong says:

        Country music is one of the most popular genres of music in America, so I fail to see how it is despised by elites. Perhaps the older style country music is lower status now, but even then, you had Willie Nelson and Grateful Dead is technically crossover country, so I don’t see how that works for your genre specific drug promotion theory. Every man in the state of Oklahoma listens to country music and looks like he is in his third trimester, hardly what I would call “clean healthy drinking.”

        You really think that metal isn’t associated with drugs? You know who Ozzy Osbourne is right? Regardless, most of the newer metal bands are either unlistenable death metal or faggy metalcore, so degenerate and not a threat. Sometimes you get a talented based Christian like Dave Mustaine but he is part of the established big four and they still have a strong fan base as far as I can tell. I don’t think the elites have a problem with metal, so much as they would just rather everyone listen to rap because niggerization. Slutty pop divas also for obvious reasons.

        “Drink and drug demographics don’t mix” is hilariously retarded. Unfortunately, I have lived around people on drugs pretty much my whole life. Meth heads do tend to avoid alcohol and it’s not uncommon for them to replace their addiction with alcohol. But I have hardly met any pot or pill heads that didn’t also drink. I will admit that I have seen far less zoomers who only drink too much or who prefer it over other stuff.

        Your comments tell me that you have little to no contact with actual American proles. And your conspiracy theories have a Catholic tradcucktard quality to them. Reminds me of when E. Michael Jones tried to argue that Jews legalized porn in order to distract young people from increasing student loan debt.

        • jim says:

          Yes, he is absolutely out of contact with proles, mainstream republican base conservatives, white businessmen, and Christians. But he seems to genuinely think he is a Christian, to my surprise. He is resolutely isolated inside a very small leftist bubble, though he always presents himself as a rightwinger, and often says, and perhaps believes, the sort of right wing things you can say inside his progressive bubble and not get in trouble.

        • skippy says:

          Country is very popular in the US but doesn’t get exported to the rest of GAE. Some of the top selling artists in the world are totally unknown outside the US.

        • Pax Imperialis says:

          AF takes elements of truth and hijacks it with “upper middle class” fantasies.

          >“Drink and drug demographics don’t mix” is hilariously retarded.

          as you pointed out:

          “Meth heads do tend to avoid alcohol and it’s not uncommon for them to replace their addiction with alcohol.”

          It we go by a modified statement, people who exclusively drink and or smoke tobacco tend to belong to very different demographics from other drug users, is largely true. There’s a distinctly fraternal social aspect inherent to drinking and smoking tobacco (in groups) that is largely absent from most other drugs.

          Meth/cocaine heads don’t hold conversations well, they’re just too “up.” Opioid heads don’t hold conversations at all, they’re just too busy borderline OD’ing on the streets. Marijuana is too estrogenic and creates pseudo sorority rather than fraternity. Bath salts users are liable to chew your face off. People who use alcohol with other drugs usually do so to enhance the properties of the drugs rather than for social reasons… so mostly dysfunctional people. Whereas I know people who will occasionally tear through a 30 pack of Coors Banquet in one night (only in frat/USMC parties) yet are somehow among the most competent men I know. Frat drinking is good for group cohesion (not suggesting you drink anywhere close to 30 beers in a single night).

          But all that I described is sort of besides the point. You’re reading his statement literally rather than though “upper middle class” culture. What he is really saying is that vodka drinking, prescription pill popping, cosmopolitan elites don’t mix with beer drinking, under the table pill popping, working class proles. Which is also vaguely true, but heavily dated to the 1960s-1980s (maybe as late as the 1990s).

          “Every man in the state of Oklahoma listens to country music and looks like he is in his third trimester”

          Not exclusive to Oklahoma. It’s national and likely to do with diet changing. i.e from meat fats to seed and vegetable fats, that and a distinct lack of PE. Take a look at 1960s youth compared to today’s youth.

          He has a twisted point about “clean drinking” although not for the reasons he thinks.

          The state of American alcohol is very different from the early American colonial days. Americans historically drank a lot of alcohol. Hard ciders, ales (are not spiced), beers (spruce not hops), and liquors. Hops were a relatively new development for Europeans, being introduced to England as late as the 1500s and initially banned, prior to that, Europeans used other herbs for bitter flavor. So the English Americans didn’t initially have much of a hops tradition preferring ales and utilizing other herbs such as the widely abundant spruce. Hops are estrogenic and in the Cannabaceae family so not exactly “clean drinking.” Admittedly, I do enjoy Russian Imperial Stouts.

          In that sense, Americans used to be drinking cleaner alcohol and were not developing boobs along with beer gut. The more cosmopolitan elites of the 1960s-1990s preferred distilled spirits and wines while the working class enjoyed estrogenic beers, but today’s elites love the super loaded IPAs which have trickled down to the masses. Check out Walmart’s beer section. It’s like 30% IPA now.

          • Anonymous Fake says:

            [*payload deleted*]

            • jim says:

              The payload in your comment not being what you were ostensibly arguing, but that the left gets into power from the bottom up, that it competes, whether cheating or working hard, on equal terms with the right.

              • Anonymous Fake says:

                You have been saying the left has power because they had power 200 years ago when <strong>[*deleted*]

                • jim says:

                  Not what I said.

                  What I said is that before the civil war each state had its own state religion. And the Vatican of New England was Harvard, founded by priests purged by Charles the second from the English state religion for leftist heresy. After the civil war, one state religion, and its Vatican is still Harvard.

                  And only those who subscribe to our officially unofficial state religion are going to be allowed within smelling distance of power, until such time as Caesar sends the tanks into Harvard. Leftism has power because leftism had power, just as a King has power because his father had power. We are always ruled by priests or warriors, priests organize as the priesthood of a religion, warriors organize under a King. And in priesthood without a King to keep them in line priests compete with the next priest by holiness competition, which drives our state religion ever crazier and ever more evil, insane, self harming, and self destructive. Priesthoods with a hereditary priesthood, where priesthood is a lucrative property right, suffer from this problem considerably less. If you have open entry into the official priesthood, everyone is competing to be lefter than thou. No friends to the right, no enemies to the left. There is no way for conservatives to enter any organization that has power – media, churches, political parties, academia, quasi government organizations, government, boy scout leadership, except by just not being conservatives. They are locking down everthing, not matter how slight, local, and inconsequential.

                • Pax Imperialis says:

                  What would the result of exiling Harvard to Somalia be? Would their descendants redeem their ancestors to some extent?

                • Pseudo-Chrysostom says:

                  Any shit gotten together is gitted only and precisely to the extent it can get them out of their prison and precipitate successful entryism back into previous demesne, so that they can go right back to participating in the same dynamic they were before.

                • Anonymous Fake says:

                  Union soldiers thought they were fighting just to end slavery and everything else happened afterwards just by accident. Much the same happened with GI Generation WWII veterans. There’s a profound separation of what Harvard believes and what soldiers believe.

                  Hereditary rule is based and trad, but unmarried priests who take vows of poverty too are great too. Like, eunuchs on steroids. Sort of.

                  The SAT was taken more seriously in the 80’s and the cheater hypothesis made more sense back then than the holiness spiral hypothesis. The “great awokening” is much more recent, 2010’s recent.

                • Pseudo-Chrysostom says:

                  Gay.

                • Handi says:

                  Not sure with what group nutless oriental bureaucrats resonate as a favorable comparison of spiritual guidance, but it’s definitely not the readership of this blog.

                  The kind of man who would find it agreeable to swear off pussy forever in exchange for power over social consensus mechanisms, is exactly the kind of man who should be kept as far away from them as possible. By throwing him from the roof of a tall building.

                • Pax Imperialis says:

                  >Gay

                  It’s worse, he’s a Gnostic priest in training.

                  @AF

                  unmarried priests who take vows of poverty

                  They do so out of a rejection of the material world thinking it to be vulgar and evil, thinking they can reach enlightenment by rejecting earthly realities and ascend from it with pure “theory.”

                  The SAT was taken more seriously in the 80’s

                  The SAT was a more serious test in the 1980s. If cheating was a big problem, the obvious solution would be to make cheating harder. The actual course of action was to continuously decrease the intellectual rigor of the test and now we’re at the point of removing it all together. It was done entirely to get more women and blacks into college just as military fitness standards have been consistently reduced to get women and blacks into it. First the infantry, now special operations.

                  I’ve thrown all sorts of evidence at you. This is more than just intransigence in regards to being wrong about a personal pet theory. You just shrug off reality because the material world doesn’t concern you. All you care about is theory. A true Gnostic.

                  If unmarried priests who take vows of poverty are so great, I encourage you to take a vow of poverty. Live on the streets Like St. Francis of Assisi, sleep on the ground, kicked and spat upon by junkies, and homeless people, and drunks, and swear off of internet posting for it would imply electronics, one of the pinnacle achievements of anti-poverty civilization.

                  In fact, why stop there. You seem to appreciate eunuchs. Chop your dick off. I’d suggest chopping your balls off as well, but you’ve likely already have done that. At least metaphorically speaking. Go ahead, chop your material balls off as well. They don’t seem to be doing you any good.

                  Back to @Pseudo-Chrysostom, it took them over a century to escape exile in America. Entryism back into the anglosphere was done by luckily being exiled to what would become the most powerful and important Anglo nation. Had they been exiled to South Africa, they might have created a pro-apartheid Harvard. Environment does play a part in gene selection. Perhaps throwing them into the deep end of the pool might knock some sense into them if the survive the initial shock. Maybe Somali isn’t enough? What about South Sudan?

                • Mayflower Sperg says:

                  They seem to be throwing themselves into the deep end of the pool by welding the gates open at the Mexican border and inviting all of Somalia and South Sudan to come live in the Northeast megalopolis.

      • Rux says:

        The current crop of US elites have a predilection for the likes of Don Mclean, Fleetwood Mac, James Taylor and especially Neil Diamond. Their children degenerate rap/r&b or whatever garbage pop radio spews out which their parents also know all the words to. It’s remarkable in all white, mostly female environments, such as universities, where they blare degenerate highly misogynistic rap and don’t bat an eye at the lyrical content. Of course it’s not that remarkable come to think of it.

        • Kunning Druegger says:

          White female fascination with gangster rap is one of those easily digestible Jimian Redpills that seems like a mystery if you maintain the “women are pure” delusion. It is also a strong indicator that, if white males insist upon being vulgar, violent, and braggadocios, hoes would react “positively.” The low IQ response is “whites should act like niggers,” and indeed it does appear that wiggers do slightly better with female attention right? Well, no. The wigger gets the scraps his nog masters leave behind. Aping monkeys is not a good option. Aidan has laid out quite well how European Stock doesn’t need to imitate tribal forms of masculinity, as we have plenty of historical forms to inhabit. The barrier here is primarily the longhouse + crab bucket memeplexes, and the Criminal Justice System is purpose built to chastise whites and reward blacks.

          Personally, I find rap silly and boring. But artistic expression, of a variety of types, might be a very good option for waking up the violent spirit of conquest in young men.

          • jim says:

            Rap sucks. There is quite a lot of good martial religious music around, the Mongolians have their own martial faith, and their martial religious pop music is way better than what negroes do, for it celebrates collective violence and solidarity between men, while rap celebrates individual violence. I just find songs that celebrate violence in the service of God, King, and tribe more fun. Probably not what women want, which is why a society in which men have to perfom to female tastes degenerates and gets conquered by outsiders. Women rather like that outcome.

          • Adam says:

            Todays rap is more or less white music performed by blacks. Black music is awful in my opinion, but rap is produced by whites for whites, and enough of it sounds pretty good.

            Most of it is ridiculous and absurd, but that is the point. It is brainless music for the feels. And it is easy to incorporate it into your game, as females love it. It is funny and it is fun.

            • The Cominator says:

              There is plenty of great black music but modern mumble rap is not it.

            • Asher says:

              One of the more bizarre opinions tossed around by the supposed Right is defense, even with caveats, of rap. It’s unlistenable, borderline retarded garbage akin to banging away on bongo drums but with the voice rather than percussion. No individual with dignity should even entertain it

              • Aidan says:

                White rap is Hollywood Undead. It is party music for drinking with other men and raising hell on the town, not for invoking complex feelings and thoughts. Crude, but the aesthetic tastes of warriors are often simple, rough, and straightforward, and warriors in peacetime tend to enjoy rowdy debauchery.

                • Asher says:

                  Even so, there is plenty of turn-off-your-brain cock rock designed for partying (and specifically for women to strip to) which doesn’t sacrifice harmonic complexity and melody which is the hallmark of any White music. 80’s hair metal for instance. Rap rock draws from this same pool, don’t get me wrong but it’s infected from the outset bc of the nature of rap itself. The best parts of those tunes are never the rapped bits.

                • The Cominator says:

                  * Music for women to strip to
                  From a guy who likes strippers and strip clubs… the music is horrible and kept too loud.

                  Partially it’s kept too loud to make sex noises not too audible but the music is the most terrible and annoying thing about them… women can still strip no problem. I wish to God they used 80s music…

                • Hesiod says:

                  “And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil”, indeed, but a retro 70s disco/funk strip club has its allure. Say what you will about that music, but it is fun and the mix of acoustic, electric, and early analog synth instruments played by real musicians can’t be matched.

                • The Cominator says:

                  Any genre of music that isn’t modern mumble rap or crude rap talking about ass (this stuff is not even “good rap”) played extremely loud would be an improvement… well except Kesha music. I sort of know why they play it loud because they don’t want it obvious if Bambi losses control and starts cumming loudly in the lap dance booth they want deniability but there is no reason to play that horrible fucking modern rap shit. Even old rap would be 10x better…

            • Your Uncle Bob says:

              Defending rap for white men is in the same category as defending white men cheering on niggerball, or dipping into bmwf on pornhub. If you cannot cultivate virtue at least cultivate a higher quality of vice.

      • Zorost says:

        “clean healthy drinking, like thrash metal or country”

        Lots of modern country promotes weed, probably more than alcohol. Country targeted at females often promotes leaving home so you can “make your own mistakes.” Code for whoring it up.

        Old school country was often about problem drinking because that was what most old school country stars had a problem with. They mostly didn’t glorify it, but lamented that they couldn’t control themselves. See: “Choices” by George Jones.

    • Cloudswrest says:

      Speaking of Burning Man, I learned this morning, via @ShannenPill, that Burning man is currently owned by Google and Blackrock.

      https://twitter.com/ShannenPill/status/1699276611403555241

      • Cloudswrest says:

        One warning to keep in mind regarding @ShannenPill, while she herself is okay, and easy on the eyes, her account is shadowed by multitudes of bots that impersonate her, with slight variations on spelling, etc. that will follow you, and try to get you to follow back.

      • Carte Blanche says:

        Google has always had connections to Burning Man, since many years ago when Larry and Sergei (the founders) used to regularly attend. Though we have to keep in mind that both Google and Burning Man were very different entities back then.

        I know that The Cominator has a soft spot for hippy and rave culture, so he’ll probably understand; Burning Man was originally designed as an Americanized, nerdified iteration of the more traditionally European rave/nightclub culture. Parties, music, art, recreational drugs, people pushing themselves to their mental and physical limits, but outdoors in the middle of nowhere instead of densely packed into some dark tin can, and with more of an emphasis on camaraderie and community over just stroking out or dry-humping on the dance floor.

        I’m not saying it was a positive thing, exactly, but it used to be more aligned with the genuinely countercultural hippie-type “libertarian” left than the modern urbanized technocratic globohomo left, and people like Larry and Sergei went because they wanted to stay connected to that crowd. But then Burning Man, like Google itself, was coopted by Harvard and State; they mandated the progressive religion, installed their zampolit, and henceforth it became another megaphone and spreader of disease and dysfunction.

        There’s no particular moral to this story, other than “globohomo destroys everything” which we all already know, but for the majority of folks who know nothing about Burning Man, the history is kind of interesting.

        Also, I think Shannen is confused about the ownership, or you are confused about what she is presenting. At least as far as I know, Black Rock City LLC has no connection to BlackRock investments. The latter does have a major share in Google, but not directly in Burning Man. My guess is, Globohomified Google sees it as an opportunity to try out its experimental “smart cities” technologies which no actual city has been stupid enough to submit to. BlackRock does own a large share of Google but AFAIK has no interest (financial or otherwise) in Burning Man.

        • alf says:

          it used to be more aligned with the genuinely countercultural hippie-type “libertarian” left

          It’s an interesting pattern that pops up everywhere. Hippy and libertarian communities, despite being outspokenly counter-authority, keep being consumed by globohomo, because they do not have defenses in place against infiltration.

          • Mayflower Sperg says:

            Also because any time an anarchist hippy thing breaks out and becomes popular, the old simple rule of “don’t be an asshole” doesn’t work anymore. If you look at the present list of rules for Burning Man attendees, it’s like Singapore with nudity. Actually, not sure they allow nudity anymore.

            • jim says:

              “Minors must be kept under supervision at all times”

              Where I live now, unsupervised minors all over the place.

              “Prescription drugs must be transported with the prescription and kept in the bottle you received from the pharmacist at all times.”

              Pretty sure Singapore does not require this.

              “Driving with an open container”

              An intentionally overbroad rule, like the keep the prescription around rule, because what is in the container might be alcoholic.

              “Knowingly serving alcohol to minors is illegal.”

              Totally legal everywhere except America. Singapore does not allow selling alcohol to minors, because that would undermine parental control, but minors can drink in public before 10:30, and can get drunk, though since their parents presumably supplied the alcohol, the parents would generally not allow them to get drunk. If, however you drop a cigarette butt on the ground, you are in big trouble for littering.

              “No lewd or lascivious behavior in public.” Hello Dubai.

              Notice the lack of overbroad rules in Singapore. Which is closer to the one rule “don’t be an asshole”, closer to the hippy ideal than Burning Man. They don’t need overbroad rules, because they come down mighty hard on little acts of assholery, like littering. Littering and graffiti leads to the broken window effect. If little acts of assholery are tolerated, big acts follow. Public drunkeness is legal in the sense that no one is convicted of being drunk in public, they are convicted of being drunk and behaving badly. If you are drunk and looking for trouble, trouble will be supplied. Not sure if that is the law on public drunkeness as written, but that is what gets enforced. And in Singapore, they enforce the rules as written, so it probably is what is written.

  16. The Cominator says:

    While there is some normiecon bias embedded a good explanation of why the GOP at the high levels only ever wants to be controlled opposition. They don’t want power they want to grift…

    https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2023/09/03/iowa-republican-party-begins-to-make-their-move-against-maga-reminder-of-the-core-battle/

    • jim says:

      The Iowa Republican party intends to flood the caucuses with Democrats in order to get out votes for a notTrump. I suspect this plan will fail because there are very few actual Democrat voters. They have been drinking their own koolaide. They cannot ballot harvest their way in the Iowa primaries, because they are in person voting, so they must be imagining that they can get out the actual voters that the ballot harvest supposedly represents.

      Registered Democrat voters are not registered so that they can vote. They are registered so that they can be voted for.

      However, though the Democrats do not have actual voters, what they do have in abundance is actual leg breakers. People attending the Caucus should prepare for the likelihood that the Republican Party intends to use Democrat legbreakers for proxy war against the Republican base.

      Because they are unlikely to be able to bus in enough Democrat voters to put notTrump over the top, likely to bus in a pile of “fiery but mostly peaceful protesters” to intimidate the Trump vote. There is a chance that the first shootout of Civil War 2.0 begins at the Iowa caucuses. Normality bias is fading and will fade further. I don’t think it will have faded sufficiently for civil war 2.0 to start at Iowa, but it is possible.

      On the other hand, in order for the Republican Party to organize violence against the Republican base, they would have to admit to each other that they are aware of the new normal. And the Republican base is far more able to do this than Republican party. If proxy war against the Republican base, normality is definitively over.

  17. The Cominator says:

    Stealth command green economy being rolled back?

    https://www.theblaze.com/news/vangaurd-blackrock-esg-drop

    • jim says:

      They are doing a little dance, backing away from that door while sneaking it forward through other doors. But this tells us that the command economy is catching some heat. It is another straw in the wind that someone wants a Thermidor, before the Global American Empire goes down in nuclear fire.

      • The Cominator says:

        There is no Thermador without getting rid of Biden…

        • Calvin says:

          Why? He’s just a figurehead, and more to the point a senile gibbering corpse. Dispose of his current set of handlers and replace them with ones with a better script, and shuffling him off quietly shouldn’t be an issue.

          • The Cominator says:

            His handlers won’t leave willingly the best way to get rid of them is to get rid of them. They did get rid of Jesuit educated commie jew Ron Klain somehow but the rest are all still there.

  18. Mister Grumpus says:

    So where gets nuked first, do you think?

    I can’t imagine China getting nuked because that would be racist, and Taiwan will be begging to be let back into China soon enough, if only for their own safety.

    But as for GAE-vs-Russia, I don’t know what to expect.

    I can only imagine the pilot episode of the first season: GAE nukes Moscow because Russia Man Bad, so they deserve it anyway, and once they’re smoking ruins they’ll come to their senses, repent of their misdeeds, say they’re sorry, beg for forgiveness and hand over their kids for surrender ceremony rainbow butt stuff.

    But who gets nuked in return if Russia is so reprehensible as to nuke us back, like that evil racist Rittenhouse kid was felt white-entitled to defend himself from those nice pedophile Jewish boys while they righteously attempted to murder him, that heathen godless monster? NATO bases in Europe? DC and the Air Force’s places in Colorado, Wyoming and the Dakotas?

    How can you imagine this going?

    • Western Taliban says:

      If what we’ve seen in Ukraine is indicative of anything, I’d say the GAE nukes are more likely to fizzle out or straight out not work at all. I’m not particularly concerned.

      • jim says:

        Thermonuclear nukes need regular maintenance, which they have not been getting, and which if attempted probably breaks them, rather than maintains them, and are now reaching end of life, even if they had received regular and competent maintenance, neither of which they have received. But small fission only nukes, tactical nukes, built back when America was more technologically capable, are probably still working. It is going to start with small tactical nukes.

        • Western Taliban says:

          This people are so utterly retarded I’m starting to think they will fumble everything. It doesn’t matter what you expect, they always do worse.

          I’m “aghast” at how incompetent they are, every step they’ve taken for a while is L after L after L, each L getting worse. And this people are actually above us, they are the ones tormenting us!

          Look at how they’re handling everything, but they just keep doing it worse every time. Africa is going to be a yet bigger and massive L. I’m not sure if there’s a lesson to be learned there or something, it’s just unbelievable.

          Being well placed by birth and having a wide network sure is something, you can be the biggest retard to ever exist and still do well…

    • jim says:

      There are already Nato troops in the Ukraine, though Nato is pretending there are not, and “Ukrainian” naval drone attacks on Russia are already getting guidance from US air force planes. “Ukrainian” drones are already flying over Nato territory to reach the interior of Russia without being shot down. The truck bomb on the Crimean bridge was actually a British operation, and Nordstream was of course an American operation. America is seizing Russian tankers. Russia is at present using third party tankers. The BRICS alternatives to the dollar are mired in intolerable bureaucracy, and show no sign of actually becoming real and useful, but people are using UAE Dinars, which are legal, Renminbi, in ways that break poorly enforced Chinese laws designed to prevent capital flight, and bitcoin, also in ways that break non enforced Russian laws and poorly enforced Chinese laws intended to prevent capital flight.

      Nato war with Russia has already begun.

      Suppose it gets bigger, and Nato loses. Nato uses tactical nukes, possibly in Nato territory, possibly in territory that Nato regards as Ukrainian, but Russia regards as Russian. “What can Putin do. No way he can respond”. Russia responds. “What, Putin is a madman” Escalation continues. Rapidly.

      These events are repeating the start of World War I. Serbia was too incohesive to choose war or peace. Engaged, like the Global American Empire, and like the Ukraine, in both war and peace simultaneously. Austria issued a bunch of demands that the Serbian government remake itself into an entity capable of choosing war or peace, and choose peace – they demanded internal reforms in Serbia that would have amounted to the nominal government taking real power over the incohesive actual government, much as Russia demanded decommunization and denazification. Serbia did not comply, probably was incapable of complying. Everyone was connected to everyone else by Nato like mutual defense treaties. Austria invaded Serbia, and then it was on.

      Also, here is a similar scenario for China Taiwan. China takes control of the sea around Taiwan to launch an invasion, or to blockade Taiwan. US bases in the vicinity of Taiwan do something. China does something about those bases. Nukes are used at sea. And then on land.

      • Mister Grumpus says:

        I’m trying to imagine that moment where GAE nukes some Russian people (in Russia or in Ukraine) or some Chinese people (in China or in Taiwan), and the other side somehow refrains from responding right away. They just leave us to sit there and look at the fact that “we” just nuked some people. It’ll be like saying “nigger” at Thanksgiving.

      • Mister Grumpus says:

        “Everyone was connected to everyone else by Nato-like mutual defense treaties. Austria invaded Serbia, and then it was on.”

        This is extremely realistic. I can picture this easily.

        Ukrainians or GAEans or whoever bribe their ways into Estonia or Latvia and just keep on launching out cheapskate cardboard drones into Saint Petersburg, one after another, year after year, like they’re Snow Palestinians. Explosives, radioactive dirty bombs, viruses, mustard gas, Anthrax, thumb tacks, stink bombs, just whatever.

        Officially, no know knows who could be launching these drones. It’s a complete mystery. Putin’s probably doing it himself. We’ll never know for sure.

        Putin says all right fuck this, and blows up the buildings from which the provocateurs had been launching the drones, which just happens to be next door or upstairs from an orphanage, or a gay bar, or a tranny children’s mastectomy clinic, or some holy place like that.

        “Oh the humanity! So cruel and so terrible! That horrible monster Putin attacked an orphanage *and* a gay bar *and* a children’s mastectomy clinic, in a NATO country no less, FOR NO REASON, so now we have to go to war with them! Article 5! No choice! It says so right in the contract, goy!”

        My low-grade sarcasm notwithstanding, you have to admit that it makes perfect sense.

        • dave says:

          Remember the Maine!, the Lusitania, Pearl Harbor, Gulf of Tonkin, WMDs. Theres a pattern here.

          Putin so far has shown great restraint to the agents provocateurs, but they will just keep escalating.

          • Mister Grumpus says:

            Agreed. There must have been dozens of such provocations already, which he’s been too smart to fall for. This is an old school KGB guy after all.

            So they deal with drones electronically, and hunt down near-foreign saboteurs by hand with knives, etc. That has to be it. The strategy being that GAE will lose all operational capability to simple retardation before they get around to any James Bond nuclear false flag crime of the century stuff. But who knows. That Nordstream caper sure had some brains behind it.

            • Pseudo-Chrysostom says:

              Nordstream wasn’t particularly difficult to pull off; pipeline stretching across hundreds of miles underwater, practically impossible to defend if anything. Only cooperation between civilized countries keeps infrastructure like that online – and that’s obviously gone out the window a long time ago.

              • Mayflower Sperg says:

                The presence anywhere in Europe of fossil fuels, electricity, and running water is a dying relic of its Christian past. The Secular-Atheist-Vagino-Anal-MCU-Vegan-Vaccinationist-Global-Warming religion (h/t Anglin) is incapable of sustaining the social order that these services depend on.

  19. Kunning Drueger says:

    ok, I shared a relatively long video, here is a summary transcript that hopefully shows why I shared it:

    01:00-05:00 – talks about US & global banking system collapse potential

    05:00-10:00 – European financial and institutional collapse

    10:00-15:00 – the Russian Threat is the Chinese Threat; it’s a distraction from social decay in the CONUS; the Cathedral is punching outward as it cries out in pain

    15:00-20:00 – multipolar world is a reaction to the GAE, not an attack on it; migrant importation is a control mechanism for suppressing natives, they are 1st class citizens and whites are 2nd class; the managerial elite are actively destroying USA

    20:00-25:00 – the war is effectively “over,” the losses + refugee egress has killed Ukraine and the continued support erodes US institutional viability; can anyone rectify the situation? Kiev has to be cut off completely, particulars follow; NATO involvement is untenable yet possible;

    ITEM: 25 minute mark is where the shibboleths start. Other stuff is interesting, but from our perspective, this is probably where to start

    25:00-28:00 – Biden is irrelevant, USG run by an oligarchy; a bit more on UKR war ending, then hard pivot to the domestic situation in US politics

    28:00-35:00 – the system is hopelessly corrupt, failure is happening; as long as payroll & social welfare continue, Commons can ignore, elites can ignore; the systemic shocks of Covid exacerbate the long term foolishness that started with Reagan and continued; banking, immigration, morals, bureaucracy all coming home to roost; cancer has metastisized, harsh measures required

    35:00-37:00 – State of Exception concept, veiled appeal to dictatorship/monarchy; democratic system, constitutional system will not provide the solution; Marxists are calling the shots

    37:00-END – OCOC organization discussion; “God, Country, Family”, platform is a thing unto itself, but is scalable and portable, building a coalition to generate policy and vet candidates, parties have failed, system is in need of external intervention.

    here’s a link to the video:

    https://youtu.be/AMxC3Rk7heY?si=96rnX5CnbixgK7jc

  20. Encelad says:

    https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Tech/Semiconductors/Huawei-to-restart-5G-mobile-chip-output-as-early-as-this-year

    According to this article, Chinese telecomm. companies have found a way to make their own advanced chips for 5G network, therefore getting closer to Western technology.

    Meanwhile the new American semiconductor industry is struggling to find workers with the relevant skills and talk about hiring people from Taiwan. The narrative is that the Taiwanese are cheaper workers, but I suspect that they just can’t get competent people if they need to hire Americans by woke HR playbook.

    • Pseudo-Chrysostom says:

      > The narrative is that the Taiwanese are cheaper workers, but I suspect that they just can’t get competent people if they need to hire Americans by woke HR playbook.

      Which is of course obviously true; but even when it was the case that the off-shored organization was ‘merely’ cheaper to deal with, it was because of the same underlying dynamics that ultimately led to the later situation regardless.

      How could production sourced from far-flung lands with nominally much less developed infrastructure, much less security of social order, and far greater distances and transportation costs to deal with, possibly be less expensive that production right next door in your nominally advanced ‘first world’ country? Because difficulties in doing business are coming from elsewhere. They are being imposed. The rot is social, spiritual.

      In the late 60s chip production in America was both cheaper and better than anywhere else in the world. In the late 80s chip production in Asia was equivalent but cheaper. In the late 10s chip production in Asia was both cheaper and better than anywhere else in the world.

  21. Kunning Drueger says:

    https://youtu.be/AMxC3Rk7heY?si=iUEdfomq9cqM49Sk

    Jim, I know your time is at a premium, but if you can spare the minutes, I ask you to watch this video, and then give your analysis. Macgregor is saying things that have quite literally been posted here, and the response has always been those things can’t be said without Waco resulting, much less done. How is he able to say these things? Is it because there is no longer a substantial portion of the country that can actually act on it? Is he just not being noticed because of the fora he inhabits?

    Additionally, is this a sign that the outsider elites are potentially coalescing on the fringes? or is this just controlled opposition dressed up to seem like substantial opposition?

    • Carte Blanche says:

      I don’t pretend to speak for Jim, and I insincerely apologize in advance for going meta, but speaking on behalf of all people who despise “video of a man talking” as a pointlessly inefficient communication medium:

      If you do in fact respect someone’s time and know it is at a premium, and want their opinion or decision on something that is bound to be tedious and time-consuming, then summarize it. Which in the case of a YT video of a man talking usually means transcribe it. Invest some of your own time, both as a show of good faith and to reduce the effort required from those whose time is at a premium.

      Pseudo-Chrysostom did exactly that, a few posts down. There are some YT links but there are detailed summaries for those of us who don’t really want to watch videos, or who watch and scrub for 20 seconds and go “yeah, I get the gist of it”.

      This is pretty well-known in every business. If you’re fortunate enough to get 5 minutes of the CEO’s time, you don’t want to waste 4 of those minutes on irrelevant minutiae. You need to cut the fluff, and YT videos have a lot of fluff because the algorithm heavily favors videos of a particular (long-ish) length.

      But even without the fluff, the average reading speed of non-retards is about 300 words per minute, while the maximum speed of conversational, presentational or interview-style speech is about 150 wpm. It’s just not efficient. Video is not a way to absorb information, it’s a way to kill time.

      • Kunning Druegger says:

        Fair point. I was at work when I found it, I’ll go back through. But it’s about the message and the man. MacGregor drops some heavy redpills, and on paper it looks one way, but hearing him say it feels another. So I can do a transcription, and give analysis (which I do, often, and have been doing so for literal years), but it’s just going to result in “I need to see this for myself.”

        There’s more than one way to save time.

        • jim says:

          I have watched McGregor. Did not learn anything I did not already know from text.

          Among them that the Ukraine estimates four hundred thousand dead, which is not officially announced, but is a military secret that keeps leaking, and people get charged for leaking it, which is a lot more useful and interesting than McGregor just saying “four hundred thousand” without going into evidence for the claim.

          The Ukraine is suffering heavy attrition in the current offensive. In the bridgehead that they are focused on at the moment, they are trying to broaden their rather long and narrow wedge to reduce the risk of envelopment. To do this they are shipping cannon fodder along a road that is under fire, resulting in a significant portion of the vehicles being destroyed in the journey. When the vehicles arrive at their destination they dump the cannon fodder and get the hell out as fast as they can. The cannon fodder then runs across minefields under fire to the little village they are currently attacking, and then it is house to house combat. When the Russian forces withdraw from a house, they are apt to leave some little presents behind. The Russians are losing ground, and the Ukrainians are losing cannon fodder and vehicles.

          The Russians have taken significant and substantial casualties, though how many no one knows. But, given the tactics the Ukrainians are using, their casualties have to be immensely greater than the Russian casualties. The side on the offensive tends to take the worst casualties, and the Russians are milking this to the maximum.

          Defending against the offensive is costing the Russians badly also. The Ukrainian sources are not entirely blowing smoke. When it finally ends, they may well not be in good shape to launch their own offensive. Russian doctrine, however, is that you launch your offensive immediately the other guy’s offensive collapses, you launch it when your enemy is in the worst state and has not had time to recover, not when you are in your best shape, but when he is in the worst shape. We shall see what they do.

          If the Ukrainian offensive continues until the rains turn the fields to mud, the Russians will have to postpone their offensive until the mud freezes. Which will take a while.

          Since no one on the Global American Empire side thinks past next weeks power point presentation in Washington, it is likely that the Ukrainians may be continuing their offensive not with the objective of taking Tokmak, but with the objective of delaying the Russian offensive, because it would look really bad on next weeks power point presentation. In which case they will probably continue until the mud gives them an excuse to stop.

          And, when the ground freezes over and if the Greatest Ukrainian Offensive is not immediately relaunched, and the Russians follow doctrine (but a whole lot of doctrine has been scrapped in this war) we should then see some stuff that looks really bad on a Washington power point presentation.

          Whatever happens, an adversary fighting for bullet points on Washington power presentations is eventually going to be in trouble against an adversary who is planning to overthrow the Global American empire over a decade or two.

          • Yul Bornhold says:

            Take the MacGregor shill test.

            Joking. Anyway, MacGregor has launched a political organization: Our Country, Our Choice. Am not sure what this organization is supposed to do or how it is supposed to work but, obviously, from the reactionary point of view, it’s essential to have a leader worthy of following, and that is how MacGregor is portraying himself.

            Slogan from the OCOC webpage:

            “The existential threats to the American people are not thousands of miles away on some foreign battlefield. The threats are here, at home.”

            An interesting tidbit from OCOC webpage:

            “Working together we can all make a difference! Join us on our quest to drain the swamp. Please pre-register to become a member. Due to the high demand, we can only take a limited number of new members this year – and remember, your information will not be shared with anyone.”

            This suggests he will attempt to vet members, which suggests to me he or his henchmen have studied Moldbug’s (Yarvin’s) new model for a political party in the age of the apathetic bugman. He wants an organization with actual loyalty to him.

            I’d remind you that in the video KD linked, MacGregor explicitly advocates for measures analogous to the Roman Republic’s (dictatorial) state of exception, with the very sound logic that we haven’t been able to solve our problems in the current system. If I’m not reading into it, he’s attempting to build an organization that will overthrow the GAE.

            (One fun point: On the OCOC video, he states that the American military needs dedicated young men. Not “young men and women.” Young men.)

            • jim says:

              McGregor has a military background and military competence. Could work. Could be Julius Caesar.

              Of course, it was not Julius Caesar that saved the “Republic”, but Augustus. Who was a teenager who had grown up in the new reality, knowing it for what it was from the beginning.

              But one big problem. He is a namefag. In the age of drone warfare, Augustus Caesar will not be a namefag. But Julius Caesar will probably be a namefag. The age of drone warfare is dawning, but has not yet dawned.

              Another big problem. He has no military rank of position. All potential Caesars have been purged from the military. Of course Augustus Caesar had no military or governmental position either, but he was Caesar’s adoptive son, and appealed to the principle of Kingship. It is unfortunate that he then had to run away from that as fast as possible, because of the widespread Roman allergy to Kings.

              • Kunning Drueger says:

                If we’re Rome, Caesar won’t come from the military brass. But we’re not Rome, we’re Carthage. So we are actually looking for a Hannibal, and we must, at all costs keep him from crossing the Alps, and instead march on his own capital.

            • jim says:

              OK, watching it.

              First six minutes: The economy. He knows nothing. Obviously not his area of expertise, which does not stop him shooting off his mouth. There is a crisis looming, but it is a crisis of US government solvency. You go broke first slowly, then quickly, and the quickly phase is still a considerable distance off. The crisis he anticipates is not going to happen for a while. A lot of banks and financial institutions that should go bust will go bust, but only those institutions that took advantage of free money to invest irresponsibly. Which is a whole lot of them, but will have no real effect on the real economy. A whole lot of badly run financial institutions going belly up is not in itself going to have a large effect on the stock market.

              By 14 minutes, nothing that should new to anyone. Saudi Arabia attempting to leave the petrodollar, open borders, this is not news.

              Twenty three minutes. To end the war, short of the destruction of America or Russia or both, have to listen to other side. Oh what bold new idea🙃

              So far, complete waste of time.

              Which raises a problem he does not address, and does not seem to understand. That it is a thought crime to notice the existence of any voices outside the bubble. That is why shills cannot pass shill tests – they are not allowed to notice that you said what you said. You tell them men and women are different, and they hear “I hate women because women are wonderful”. Thus a precondition for ending the war is a radical change in the ruling state religion of America. You have to either ship the professoriat off to the gulag, or whack them repeatedly in the face with a rifle butt until they regain the ability to hear outside voices.

              Trump says he can make peace in a day. He could if he had dictatorial control of the military and the state department, but unless you have a state religion in your pocket, it is hard to make a state act cohesively. He could make peace, and the rest of the government will continue to make war. Not agreement capable.

              As long as the existing officially unofficial state religion remains in power, cannot make peace, because peace requires you to talk to the other guy, and the government is deaf. Peace would also be possible if we had a buffer zone between us and Russia – disband Nato and focus on the Americas – forget the empire, then deafness would no longer matter. In the end, the state religion will fall, or the empire will fall, or Russia will fall, or America will fall, or the nukes will fly.

              Retreat from Vietnam and Afghanistan was possible, because surrounded by lands we were also abandoning. A similar retreat from the Ukraine, with no peace deal, and no peace deal possible because of deafness, will require abandoning a fair bit more than Ukraine.

              Twenty nine minutes: Biden is corrupt, politicians and civil servants are becoming astonishingly rich. What else is new.

              Watching this video, I learned precisely nothing, other than that McGregor does not seem to be fully in contact with the new reality.

              So, after wasting a whole lot of time, skipped forward to 35 minutes to hear him call for dictatorship: Again, not news.

              So what is his organization going to do: “Work on the ground in various congressional districts”. Utterly out of contact with the new normal.

              America needs a dictatorship for the reasons he listed. And working on the ground in various congressional districts is also irrelevant for the reasons he listed.

              If voting had been conducted on the basis of paper ballots cast in person at the polling booth with photo ID in the 2020 election, Biden would have only gotten ten or twenty percent of the vote. This time around, considerably fewer. If Trump/Ramaswami gets elected this time, it will not be because we voted harder. It will be because the kleptocrats are horrified by the loss of empire and quietly converted to making America Great Again, provided the graft keeps flowing, and have deputized Vivek to keep the graft flowing.

              • skippy says:

                “Watching this video, I learned precisely nothing, other than that McGregor does not seem to be fully in contact with the new reality.”

                McGregor has made a lot of wrong predictions, just from the perspective that Russia is going to win rather than Russia is going to lose.

                It looks to me like Russia’s military sucks, but isn’t quite dead, but the US’s “arsenal of democracy” sucks even more, and may be dead.

      • alf says:

        Video is not a way to absorb information, it’s a way to kill time.

        Not to get in the way of your point towards KD, but disagreed on that one. Love video as a way to absorb information. Maybe even speed up to x1.5, let ‘er rip. Depends on the kind of information of course. For instance, history — little beats a good book. But a ‘how to’? Videos all the way.

        • Pseudo-Chrysostom says:

          It is practically unfeasible to express kinesthetic information through text. That is why, for example, you could fill out a whole essay talking about some wrinkle of personal combatives, when a 30 second technique clip is showing the same thing.

        • Carte Blanche says:

          True enough. For any kinds of hands-on tutorial, you can’t beat video, especially if you’re a visual learner.

          But how-to videos are a special case. Watching a video on, for example, drywall repair, isn’t going to help you one bit unless the video actually shows you the technique. If it’s just a video of a guy talking about drywall repair, then it’s still worse than a plain-text book or website, and much worse than an illustrated one.

          If the video medium is not used to demonstrate something visually, then either it is entertainment or it is a time-waster.

          • c4ssidy says:

            It all needs a trust network in the sense that someone who puts in the effort of transcribing it can put his transcript (or a hash of the transcript) permanently in humanity’s decentralised ledger, and a few other people who watched the same video can greentick the transcript, trusting the transcript with that hash on that date and time and most likely trusting the transcriber a little more and probably trusting the people who also put in the early effort of greenticking the transcript. Without it you would have your effort liable for copyright takedown requests in the near-future, and in the far-future no reliable way to verify its accuracy for future generations that read the transcript without a bulky backed up copy of the original video (which by that time could be 1:1 deep faked anyway). There is a huge problem of verifying information for the historical record, in addition to the fact that it is annoying to watch

            • Pseudo-Chrysostom says:

              Tangentially related, but copyright is gay.

              A King and his church naturally have the right to claim memetic sovereignty as the official voice of the official faith; which was already conceptually preexistent, and the further away you get from this concept, the gayer it becomes. In matter of instrumental techne or other merchant related spheres, total poop dick cum in ass homosexuality.

          • Kunning Drueger says:

            completely agree, you get a false sense of capability by watching all these how-to videos, and then when you actually try to “to” You realize that thousands of hours of video do precisely jack shit for you, And you end up basically walking through everything the video already showed you, yourself.

            But I didn’t share this video as a talking Head, nor do I see it as instructional. This is something that irked me about what you said, But I realize now that we are all very different in our experience. One thing that I have had to do, have done for a long time, is review footage for many, many hours. It has been for various reasons, but the one that is relevant here is Evidence Analysis. I prefer to read things instead of watch things, unless I am looking for evidence. I know this is laziness, but I much prefer building a case file out of visual evidence versus transcripts of interviews. I am a midwit in the academic arts, but I feel incredibly comfortable with the human arts. video recorded interrogations are a funny thing. I have had co-workers that maintain you can’t get anything valuable from it without the transcript, but that’s not how it is for me. I want to hear the voice, I want to hear the pitch and see the facial muscles pinching and releasing. so that is the lens I am looking through.

            Jim, I am hoping you read this comment too because I don’t want to clutter the comments any more than I already do. the stuff you said on what he said on Ukraine, spot on, don’t disagree at all. I thought I linked the video to start at the very end of the video, maybe that is not what happened. But the stuff I’m interested in is what he said about USG, about the domestic situation in the US, about what is required to fix it. This was the sole motivation in sharing the video, because everything he said came directly out of your playbook. like, eerily precise. I think my post history indicates that I enjoy your perspective immensely, But I am always taking a back when I see Jimianisms in the wild.

            I didn’t mean to create a ruckus by sharing this, I just think that things are starting to coalesce, and while I am not recommending everybody goes gloves off, masks off, I do think that it would behoove every true brother here to be ready, willing, and able to articulate Throne Altar Freehold to others who are uninitiated. I think the time is coming where merchants are going to be put back in their place, and warriors and priests will be at loggerheads yet again. our paladins can win, but we need more numbers.

          • alf says:

            If you aren’t at some point dry-walling along with the how-to-drywall video, you’re not learning anything.

            A good rule of thumb with political videos is, if what this person said would be transcribed into a blog post, would it be a quality blog post? On YT, almost always, the answer is no.

    • Mr.P says:

      At 20min:18sec, it’s almost a throwaway line, uttered rapid-fire as a matter of historical fact (so no need to slow down and dwell), easily missed, but actually is a truth-bomb demolishing a conventional tale: “… 400,000 dead. That’s more dead than we sustained during three years of fighting in World War II. Think about it. Most of our losses were against the Germans, an army that had no tactical air-cover and was already torn between multiple fronts trying to keep the Soviet military machine from destroying what was left of Western Civilization.”

      Wait, what, the Commies were destroying Western Civ?

      • Kunning Drueger says:

        Exactly. I think this tank driving nigger is Based. If only he could be red pilled…

      • The Cominator says:

        Im pretty sure most American Kia in ww2 were in the Pacific not Europe/North Africa.

    • Yul Bornhold says:

      In one video, MacGregor mentioned Big Serge, twitter’s military strategist. He’s watching at least that far.

  22. blind archer says:

    Why doesn’t pushing the boundaries of society help the ultra-right in the game of capturing the woman, but it does help some fun drug dealers?

    Being a “Nazi” (seeing and talking about racial differences) is a far greater crime than selling drugs in Western countries.

    • Aidan says:

      Nothing to do with “rebellion”, everything to do with strong tribe. A drug dealer has lots of men treating him with deference and respect. Zoologically signals that the dealer is big oogabooga chief. The hard right is secretive, furtive, etc. Signals weakness to women. Rightists can be beaten up in public with no repercussions. Dries up the pussy.

      • The Cominator says:

        Women like criminals who can get away with it and access to drugs at a time when an extremely high % of women are various kinds of hard drug addicts (I miss the days when it was a much smaller % and most of them just smoked) is high status and they can provide something they want.

    • jim says:

      Pushing the boundaries of what is allowed does help with chicks. But they are not terribly impressed by unthinkable and unspeakable words.

      • skippy says:

        I’ve found chicks to be impressed by RW/”illegal” statements made by a group of men on their own property. If you are in a restaurant and the waiter is scowling at you, or you are lowering your voice to avoid the waiter hearing, they are not impressed. Of course there are also public places in parts of the US where you can make such statements openly.

  23. Mister Grumpus says:

    If anyone could please point me to their best known who-what-where-when review of the Maui fire, I’d appreciate it.

    Especially about people being prohibited from getting into their cars and driving away from the fire. Seriously? How exactly? “Why”? To keep the road clear for authorities? What’s the public story on that?

    • Aidan says:

      The part of Maui that burned was an awful little slum packed to the brim with migrant labor and shiftless natives five to a room. People did not try to leave until the fire was visible from their houses, because they are niggers, and found that the only road out of the slum was closed by authorities because a power line went down on it, and the official line at the time was “the fire is contained”, because the brown native in charge of water distribution thinks using water to fight fires is white supremacy, whites stealing native water, the horror.

  24. Pseudo-Chrysostom says:

    Occasional anecdotes in cultural observation –

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K38xNqZvBJI

    In 2004, normies make jokes about women hitting the wall, trying to follow the bluepill life plan, and engaging in alpha fucks/beta bucks behavior.

    Not ten years later, every man in the video can be counted on to publicly bemoan their intolerable male privilege, and not simply disavow the past, but forget that the past ever was what it was in the past.

    There may be a vague notion of ‘before times’, that are bad, but ‘that was a long time ago’, and in any case *they* were never like that. Nekulturney thoughts emitting nekulturney mind radiation are simultaneously ubiquitous and yet also unpopular and noone ‘actually’ believes them. Isn’t the construction of social reality fantastic?

    Such are the twists in the wind of congenital solipsism, where status, validation, consensus, are the mainspring of internalized sentiment.

    ~

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXBO6q2NxzM

    Japanese girl tries goyslop. “I don’t know why, but I can’t stop eating it for some reason”, “you feel full, yet you want to keep eating more anyways”. I would not be surprised at all to find that packaged food made in the empire for infliction on the cattle were doped with chemical attractants (amongst other things). Likely with some talmudic jive to legalistically say they do not have to be listed as ‘ingredients’. Eg, that it is a component of the packaging material itself, and thus not an ‘ingredient’ of the food inside it; or that it is a ‘processing solution’ used for ‘treatment’ of the manufacturing equipment, and thus again not an ‘ingredient’ of the food itself.

    ~

    https://archive.ph/nyCyo

    Glowniggers try to recruit terminally online transsexuals to shill their latest effort to get people to fight and die for gay sex and feminism; but neither can meme.

    > A journalistic register dominates the /uhg/ sets, and a strategic-logistic register dominates the /chug/ sets.

    “You sound like a journalist”. Can anyone imagine a worse invective in The Year of Our Lord, Twenty Twenty Three?

    > /chug/ is more conscious about the community’s identity, reflected in the abundance of logos, while /uhg/ images are more evidentiary, indicating a greater emphasis on reportage and points at original journalistic endeavours[…]/uhg/ is more scrappy, having no discernable strategy in their aesthetic or storytelling. /uhg/ is reactionary, whilst /chug/ drives the story.

    Insert virgin ‘I feel bad for you’ chad ‘I dont think about you at all’ meme here. Assabiyah and memetic sovereignty are crucially intertwined.

    > it is perhaps no surprise that up to and immediately following the Russian invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022, general threads also started appearing on /pol/ to cover and discuss the unfolding events of the war. What is especially interesting pertaining to this event in particular and also, to the best of our knowledge, a unique development in /pol/’s own history, is that relatively soon after the first /uhg/-threads (Ukraine Happening General) were created, an opposing set of general threads known by their vernacular tag /chug/ (Comfy Happening in Ukraine General) started appearing as a “counter space” to /uhg/ for discussing the Ukrainian war on /pol/. The result is that there is now two opposing voices on /pol/, each with their own competing narratives, imaginaries and memes about the Ukrainian war – where, broadly speaking, /uhg/ favors a pro-Ukrainian stance, and /chug/ favors a pro-Russian stance.

    In otherwords, popping up cutouts via astroturfing.

    > Furthermore, the NATOWave memes (pro-NATO images and messages superimposed on the vaporwave aesthetic, and also associated with the far-right Fashwave style) also seem to have made a curious resurgence on /pol/ during the war, again signaling a disruption of traditional friend-enemy distinctions.

    Ham-handedly sudden and tone deaf astroturfing.

    > In contrast [to /uhg/], from the classification analysis /chug/ OPs seem much more focused on internal organization of their general threads by replicating certain performative functions, such as that users posting in /chug/ thread should denounce the Talmud and also recognize Israel’s control of NATO. Topic modelling likewise indicate that /chug/ OP text revolve less around specific actions in the war, but more on the general activities from the Russian point of view, such as troop movements, the bombardment of Ukrainian territory, the accusation of war crimes (on both sides) and sanctions imposed by the west.

    Shill organizations are leaky sieves with no definite forms of ordination, and in fact in many respects cannot be said to be actual organizations in essence at all. Which is of course by design, as any ordination is external to the shill organization and imputed into it, and any ‘natural’ form of ordination breaking out in the cut-out could interfere with these processes.

    > On the level of user posts, text analysis also revealed marked differences in the posting behavior in each general thread. Users on /uhg/ had a much more outwardly directed discourse, focusing on taunting and ridiculing the “other” side through derisions such as cum chuggers (directed at /chug/), cope cages (referring to the purported ineffectiveness of cage-style protective armor on Russian tanks meant to counter Ukrainian missiles), Russian shills, and calls for sexual violence with the words gay rape and buck broken (referring to the Buck Breaking-meme about the strategic sexual abuse of male black slaves in order to “break” them into subjugation and compliance. While historically dubious, the term and memetic adaption became popularized after the 2021 documentary by Tariq Nasheed of the same name). Similar centrifugal aggression is found in from the topic model analysis in a cluster of related words like “seethe”, “cope”, “pathetic”, “retard”, “faggot”. In contrast, findings from the classification analysis suggests that users on /chug/ are much more centripetally organized around internal communal unity, calling each other “chug bros”, reminding each other to “stay comfy”, and greeting each other with “good morning sirs” (referring to the meme of the same name). While there are overlaps of discursive content from both threads revealed by the topic model, sharing similar topics about specific 4chan vernacular and the maintenance of threads, /chug/ users also appear much more invested in in-group reinforcement, inferred by the cluster of words like “frens”, “guys”, “bros”, “chug”, “comfy”, etc.

    The eternal gnostic is typified by its chronic negativity; it sees no good in no thing, and is always on edge to lash out at anything and everything, and especially the good; in contrast to real human beings, which engage in power production processes that elevate the super-organism, them along with it.

    > During our close reading of the images and backwards tracing of the OPs associated with the posts, we made out several direct pipelines of canonical content creation, where the community of /chug/ collectively commission and pay artists to create a canonical anime universe with semi-complex relationships between the protagonists and antagonists akin of fanfiction. We also found Telegram channels that act as a twisted digital comic book, taking the interpretational authority over how the Russian invasion of Ukraine ought to be understood. These channels draw on the same anime universe as the collectively commissioned art[…]/chug/’s content is high quality in terms of both skill required to make them and in their aesthetics, diverging from the low quality artistry traditionally seen in memes. The considerable fidelity in these fanfiction memes makes it harder for outsiders or opposers of the /chug/ community to engage with, vandalize or appropriate them. Giving /chug/’s fanfiction a relative stability and agency over their own story[…]Comparing this with /uhg/, we can see much less, if any (we did not find any, but there is a chance that we have missed these processes) of these pipelines of content creation. /uhg/ appears to be more barebones, as the aesthetic of their fanfiction memes and characters is of lesser fidelity. In the close reading we saw multiple cases of vandalism of /uhg/’s fanfiction universe (presumably by /chug/ers), in which Marichka (/uhg/’s clear protagonist) is portrait as, in the mildest cases, being secretly in love with Russia, being held hostage by nazis, and in the worst cases, being exposed to forceful sexual conduct by Russian chads[…]The data driven coming shows partially how prevalent the aspect of Marichka losing control over her own narrative is. The size of the various image categories corresponds with the quantum of images that were found in them. Marichka goes from being an obvious pro-Ukrainian mascot of the war to what can be described as a contested territory thus reflecting the dynamics of the ongoing war situation. There is a considerable proliferation of images that show the subjugation of Marichka and it is often indicated that she secretly enjoys being subjugated. The pro-Ukrainian mascot soon devolves into an empty signifier which can be endlessly repurposed by /chug/ trolls and anyone else to carry meaning that was originally unintended. These leads to significant contradictions which by themselves may not make sense immediately but are valid avenues to understand the evolution of Marichka into a contested territory just like the warzones themselves. Nowhere is this contradiction and struggle for ownership as evident as in the case of Marichka being represented as a “nazi-jew”.

    The nominalist is tasteless, is a very literal sense; lacking in capability to discern any consequential distinction between things, he is relegated to a state of passive reception; or to the extent he is proactive, it is in a merely negational sense; the iconoclast tearing down all works as equally worthless, working nothing but ugliness for his own part.

    Side note: the authors dwelling on the fact that remixing content with aminu girls is popular with people on anonymous bangladeshi cave painting forums was interesting, in an entomologist sort of manner.

    Obviously there is ignorance of the historical contingencies around the endemicness of manga aesthetics in such communities, and the naturally consequent remixing of such aesthetics as such communities come to entangle with other affairs – but it also points to a lack of ‘theory of mind’ on the part of the writers; the ‘other’ that exists in their mind of course being some sort of shitlordian caricature that is/was expected to be all male figure all the time (to be naturally followed by the rote ‘speculation’ of cryptic homophilia).

    It can seem almost impossible to grasp that, for one thing, people simply like nice looking things; or that good-natured folk like to ‘ave a giggle with things, which frequently results in incomprehension on the part of people not familiar with the inside jokes, or insensitive to humor altogether – which often is itself also part of the joke with internet communities; or that in a broader sense, these figures are not all figments of their imaginations, but are all their neighbors through a mirror darkly; people who have been living through the same atomized hell they have, but who have not lost the yearnings for life welling up from their wounded spirits like they have, even if they might lack the sets of tools to articulate what they really want – to know what they really need.

    • Mayflower Sperg says:

      In 2004, normies make jokes about women hitting the wall, trying to follow the bluepill life plan, and engaging in alpha fucks/beta bucks behavior.

      Oh poor Debbie, trapped in a nice suburban house with a loving husband and two kids, taking a little me-time to shake her hot MILF body for the eternal teenagers across the street. For today’s women feminism isn’t a fantasy, it’s a cold hard reality:

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oh2LWWORoiM

      So it goes until the feminist and her cats are evicted to make room for immigrants that she voted to let into the country. Good thing she also voted to legalize euthanasia!

    • Kunning Druegger says:

      I like you just casually drop some of your characteristic mind blowing writing alongside a comprehensive 4chan data mining operation from EU that works with:

      DMI works with non-governmental organizations, activists, journalists and artists alike. Collaborators have included representatives from:
      First Draft
      Greenpeace International
      Human Rights Watch
      Amnesty International
      De Correspondent
      NRC Handelsblad
      Association for Progressive Communications
      Women on Waves
      Carbon Trade Watch
      Corporate Observatory Europe
      Fair Phone
      Open Knowledge Foundation
      Hivos
      Pauw en Witteman, VARA (Dutch talk show)
      Sacom
      DVRC

      My jealousy is overwhelming and my day is ruined.

      Great post, St. John.

  25. Kunning Druegger says:

    Picking up various signals regarding Poland. Random stuff, nothing concrete, but stuff like:

    “Did you know that Poland is a super wealthy and powerful country? Yeah, people don’t realize how good and holy and awesome Poland is, the beating heart of the Liberal Order in Europe!”

    This is how Foggy Bottom operates, they push info and funding out through a network of capillaries. The NGO/Nonprofit network is all tied back to State, and one way to track them is seeing who gets quoted for the articles. If it isn’t a State bureaucrat, scratch the surface and you’ll find an NGO that just so happens to work with or for State. But normies just see “Poland stronk” or “Poland good” or just “Poland, Poland, Poland” and a subconscious consensus forms.

    Let’s assume for a moment my gut is onto something. Coupled with the drone attack on Pskov, would it be fair to work from the assumption that the “front expansion” I and others predicted is now a question of “when” and not “if?” Bear in mind, it’s floated away from the dialogue, but the Biden Regime has been mobilizing various cadres of reserves, over and above what was being sent ever since the SMO started. Is it safe to say we are seeing a concerted buildup of the GAE war machine, distinct from the current mass transfer of weapons/supplies to UKR?

    I am hearing rumors of shake out and expansion in Iraq & Syria as well, and I wouldn’t be surprised to hear, completely coincidentally of course, that AFRICOM needs a few thousand men and their gear for, uh, “pirates… oh wait… https://archive.ph/7sToy

    This is KD prediction territory, so it may be completely retarded, but it really does feel like the War Faction is gaining power. Now add in the attempt to make Covid a thing again. It’s starting to feel like we’re approaching yet another inflection point in the incremental mask-drop of GAE as the ostensible rulers of the world.

    • Karl says:

      The attempt to make Covid a thing again doesn’t agree with the War Faction gaining power, but your idea that there is an attempt to bring Poland into the war is plausible.

      I still have some hopes that there are some reasonable Poles with enough power that this attempt might fail. Seeing what is happening in Ukraine should be a huge motivation for Poles to keep Poland out of this war or at least emigrate

      • Contaminated NEET says:

        The war faction has been losing lately with public apathy and the failed offensive, and the Covid guys look like they’re fighting hard for a comeback this fall. The war guys are trying to expand the war to Poland and the Baltics because they’re losing ground to the Covid faction. If they can present their fellow Masters of the Universe with the fait accompli of an expanded and expanding WWIII, they figure they’ll have no choice but to go all-in on war. It’s when they feel their grip slipping that they’re most likely to do something bold, dramatic, and stupid.

        • jim says:

          They want to resolve this interleft quarrel by symbols and gestures (in their mental universe, bombing Moscow and burning alive a thousand exurban white Hawiians are symbols and gestures)

          But really it needs to be resolved in the good old fashioned way that leftists always resolve their quarrels in the end. By leftists engaging in mass murder of leftists. So far this has not happened. I expected it to happen in 2020, but I was on Musk time. On the other hand, past historical precedent is that they will get to it soon enough.

        • Mister Grumpus says:

          Tucker Carlson is right out in the open now, expressing his worry about a Gulf of Tonkin fake and gay kickoff to WW3. Whether that was days after, or days before, that blatant provocateur drone attack, staged from NATO Estonia, on that next doo Russian air base, I’m not sure. But damn it was blatant. They’re not sending their best.

  26. GPG PGP backups comms says:

    Minimally the bitmessage address, and blogroll, and backups blurb
    from blog frontpage right panel should be in backups but is not.

    If people post their GPG keys, there can be backup comms method when SHTF.

    • jim says:

      Pretty sure it is.

      I will check.

      The READ_ME that contains the gpg public key is not in the backup of the blog blog.reaction.la.tar.zst

      It is in the website backup reaction.la.tar.zst

    • jim says:

      The bitmessage address, blogroll, and all that, is in the backup,

      tar -xf blog.reaction.la.tar.zst
      cd blog.reaction.la
      grep NB5cJuoF wordpress.sql

  27. Becomer Of Death says:

    [*deleted*]

  28. Mayflower Sperg says:

    In hindsight, the Battle of Bakhmut was a tactical defeat for the Ukrainians but a strategic victory. They lost the city and a big chunk of their army, but in the process they destroyed Russia’s greatest asset, Yevgeny Prigozhin.

    The surviving Wagnerites now have three options: (a) Roam the world as outlaw mercenaries, hunted by GAE and Russia alike. (b) Join the regular Russian army and be attritted away in an endless bloody stalemate. (c) March on Moscow again, overthrow the government, replace it with a Jimian warrior aristocracy, and conquer the world.

    For any MVD guys reading this, see my recent comments as to why present technology makes warrior aristocracy impossible. But this is Jim’s blog, not mine, so (c) must be on the list. All commenters are welcome to disagree with Jim’s ideas but we are not allowed to ignore them.

    • Pseudo-Chrysostom says:

      Advances in martial techne have rendered peasant armies obsolete; arguably they were already obsolete as far back as the 19th century, with the invention of high explosives and dephosphorized steel, hence the trouble every power using peasant armies ran into in the first war of wilsonian aggression.

      Advances in martial techne have also made it a lot more dangerous to be a public figure than any other time in history heretofore, which presents some thorny complications for formalist political formulas to work around – can one present a clear hierarchy to subjects without also presenting a clear firing solution to enemies?

      The interplay of these dynamics certainly look to promise interesting times ahead.

      • Aidan says:

        Fortunately modernity offers a solution. If assassination by foreigners is to be expected, the elite; for example the state-owning peers of the future neo-Lacadaemonia, can spend their lives couchsurfing between the relatively inconspicuous homes of their fellow peers; said mobility in fact a defining feature of aristocracy. Which visitation, like the mobile court of the Holy Roman Emperors, promotes the face-to-face conspiracy necessary for a cohesive elite. These peers are likely to own quite a lot of different properties and businesses, the ownership of which will have to be heavily occluded from outsiders. I know people in the tech startup world who live this sort of nomadic existence already.

        • Kunning Druegger says:

          That system would have a natural dipole of mutual benefit: the Flying elite and the grounded elite.” Flyers would be naturally, but not exclusively, younger. Grounders would be generally, but not certainly, more circumspect.

          The Network would be like a Mesh Net in terms of directionality; it wouldn’t, necessarily, be a circuit where a Flyer goes from A to B to C through n, rather the Flyer would go to the next Grounder on whimsy, or tangential necessity. There might be times when a Flyer is moving along, sometimes staying a day, other times a season, and the only other fellow they see is the current Grounder. Other times, an unplanned conference might happen to occur coinciding only with the season, the clime, and the random chance of where the Flyers happen to be. Coupled with the Distributed Digital Network, you get an old fashioned “endocrine” system where the Flyers are the lymph and the Grounders are the nodes, so certain forms and packets of information are spread by word of mouth at the speed of life, while others instantiate in a sort of “social media entanglement” that is virtually instantaneous. Flyers would most likely become Grounders over time, and they very well might agglomerate based on their preference and experience with the Grounders they encountered in their flight stage. As well, Grounder Style might develop though it is separated by geography based on the lymphatic quality, meaning some node nexii are uniform and others are diverse. Probably less often, but maybe more importantly, Grounders may take flight due to circumstances or impulses, causing network state changes at a wide scale, or hyper localized yet persistent through time.

          A final note: though it may be worded funnily, this system is pretty much already in place, it’s just informal and unconnected. It may just need a companion app, something small and ignorable by the overly attentive and professionally nosey. Some little out of the way webpage that very, very few can contribute to that just adds coordinates and one of 2 possible variables, one for GROUND and the other for NOTGROUND.

        • Mayflower Sperg says:

          I find your scenario highly plausible, but cannot imagine calling it a “warrior aristocracy”.

          • jim says:

            When elites matter in warfare more than peasant levees, those elites are apt to take power. What is that if not a warrior aristocracy?

            • Mayflower Sperg says:

              Elites like yourself, whose real names and whereabouts remain a closely guarded secret. I’d call it a “cryptocracy”.

      • i says:

        I just read this fascinating paper on the role of Ashigaru in the Sengoku Period of Japan:
        https://cupola.gettysburg.edu/ghj/vol10/iss1/3/

        It looks like in History the following functions in cycles. At first New Warrior Aristocrats emerge that first defeats the Infantry Armies.

        Infantry subsequently adapts and eventually prevails against Warrior Aristocrats due to adaptations. The Dominance of Infantry also facilitates Centralization of Power.

        High(Daimyo+Low(Ashigaru) vs Middle(Samurai). In Japan’s case. They were made into Officers and Bureaucrats. They weren’t all killed off. Unlike in China.

        Because of their Cheapness and sheer numbers. The Warrior Aristocrats are worn down out of attrition.

        In China the Charioteer Warrior Aristocrat Class become Officials instead after Charioteering became obsolete.

        In their case they were exterminated by Huang Chao and his massive Peasant Army:
        https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/307/monograph/book/61396

        As they are no longer Warrior Aristocrats like their Ancestors. They were almost all killed at the Capital.

        If at the Versailles the French Nobility who were descended from Warrior Aristocrats were exterminated in a similar fashion. Then its quite similar to how once they were deprived of their capability for Violence.

        They will also subsequently be killed not that long after.

        • i says:

          It doesn’t have to be a conscious decision on the part of the Commanders. So long as they can utilize the much greater numbers of the Lowest classes.

          The dominance of their use is inevitable(Cheap, numerous). And also the Centralization of Power that it enables. As it requires power to organize those larger numbers of troops.

        • S says:

          It isn’t a function of infantry strength- Greece had hoplite dominance for centuries which didn’t follow the dynamic. Rome had its legions and the switch to using poor people was a purely political decision.

        • i says:

          @S

          Both Greek and Roman Infantries are Heavy Infantry. This makes them more of an Aristocratic force than the Asian examples I cited.

          Greco-Roman equipment and training isn’t cheap.

          Ashigaru spearmen is very cheap:
          https://cupola.gettysburg.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1095&context=ghj

          In addition the low fertility rates and the massive plagues of the Antonine Plague and the Cyprian Plague.

          Deprived the Roman Empire of the Manpower to staff their Legions. And likely helped to drive up the prices of those Armies even more.

          • S says:

            My point is it isn’t a cycle. The Chinese example was driven by the crossbow, the Japanese by poor metal availability.

            • i says:

              @S

              And in the example that Jim brought up. Firearms driving the decline over centuries of the importance of Aristocratic Warriors.

              I don’t see why such instances wouldn’t repeat in the future cycle.

              • jim says:

                Firearms drove the decline of aristocratic warriors, because cheap, and massed fire from a horde of peasants conscripts effective.

                With automatic weapons, massed fire is now irrelevant. One machine can do massed fire better than a hundred peasants assembled into a machine.

                But still cheap, and not requiring much skill. Aristocracy flourishes when one highly trained, very good, expensively equipped warrior matters a lot more than any horde.

                This primarily manifests in shock warfare, where it is important that your guys just be better than the enemy at some critical location that you are taking, and once you have that location, his mighty horde is irrelevant. The Persian armies fell apart when the emperor had to run away. If they had been able to continue fighting cohesively, would have crushed Alexander, but Alexander and a quite small number of his men took out their command and control, rendering their enormous numbers irrelevant.

                Today, taking out command and control is easy if you can find it. Putin should have taken out that Nato meeting that Zelensky attended during the photo op.

                When real war starts, there will not be too many photo ops. The trick in future warfare is network penetration and entryism. Grinding your way through a million grunts is slow and intolerably expensive. War in the future will be network penetration.

              • S says:

                Crossbows are adopted for warfare in Europe in the 11 century; they don’t result in the decline of aristocratic warfare. Heavy calvary continued to be relevant for centuries. Its possible it is because knights had plate mail or other advanced armor, but that brings up the question of why didn’t Chinese warrior nobility adapt in such a fashion.

                It isn’t really comparable to firearms which can function as a combo of pike+archers and so displace other forms of infantry.

                • jim says:

                  Aristocracy gaining power is usually a direct result of military relevance.

                  Aristocracy losing power is complicated, and aristocracy often continues to have substantial power long after their military relevance has become assembling and commanding a crowd of grunts. Or sometimes they all just get killed.

                • i says:

                  @S

                  It did happen in China too:
                  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_crossbows

                  Crossbows reduced in relevance due to Heavy Cavalry introduced by the Steppe peoples. But by Huang Chaos rebellion the Warrior Aristocrat descendants have all become Officials themselves.

                  And so they were pretty much all killed.

                  The issue is that the Chinese constantly didn’t properly ensure the proper upkeep and maintenance of Good Horses and proper breeding into Warhorses.

                  The Mandarin Class won over the Warrior Aristocrats by the Song Dynasty.

                  Since the Song Dynasty founder was a General who overthrew the Emperor and because of the An Lushan Rebellion by a General that is too powerful during the Tang Dynasty. He pretty much kneecapped their power.

                  https://www.quora.com/How-did-Chinese-emperors-ensure-the-loyalty-of-generals-given-the-risk-of-rebellion-What-about-young-emperors

                  The Military is finally completely subjugated to the Civil by that time as a result. In times of peace. The Literati and the Song Dynasty could treat them with more contempt.

                  The Military regained its status once the Jurchens started invading. Since the Military was needed:
                  https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-chinese-history/article/military-institutions-as-a-defining-feature-of-the-song-dynasty/D020A447BD8666C3304D7A315CB65DFD

                  The last Emperor of the Song Dynasty killed Yue Fei on false charges or believed the false charges against him.

                  The Rice Farming the huge peasant population and the relative cheapness of Infantry equipment and training helped to ensure the dominance of Literati.

                  In a similar fashion to how the Ashigaru helped to consolidate the Power of the Daimyo.

                • Mayflower Sperg says:

                  The rice farming, the huge peasant population, and the relative cheapness of infantry equipment and training helped to ensure the dominance of literati.

                  China’s huge rice-farming population also meant that when their peasant conscript armies were defeated by horse-riding, meat-eating barbarians, the victors were welcomed into the palace and regaled with delicious food and beautiful Chinese concubines, thereby ensuring that their grandchildren would be 75% Chinese.
                  Most men would rather be bureaucrats than soldiers, and China gave them that choice.
                  Also, it’s much easier to breed beautiful women if you don’t care what effect their genetics have on men.

                • jim says:

                  You raise an interesting point. Those big cheap peasant armies made short work of Chinese aristocrats, but China kept being ruled by foreign aristocrats, who had made short work of those enormous peasant armies. At the time of the Opium wars, plenty of foreign aristocrats still had a whole lot of power in China, and a whole lot of military significance.

                  Perhaps military technology is largely irrelevant. What happens is social decay, that aristocrats prefer to become bureaucrats, that they are seduced, rather than defeated. That is the primary instrument by which the Sun King rendered his aristocracy decadent. He made life in the capital and in palace very nice for them.

                  The aristocrats of the court of King Louis the sixteenth would have been utterly useless in any war, no matter what the technology of the day. The aristocracy lost power in France because they would not and could not fight, but what ailed them was not gunpowder.

                  A small band of men who are brave, manly, smart, have the best weapons of their time, and have superior social cohesion, can defeat vastly larger bodies of men. Maybe the changes in military weapons and tactics are driven by the decline of aristocracy, rather than the decline of aristocracy driven by the changes in weapons.

                  The bronze age collapse shows an abrupt change from heavily armored aristocratic archers in chariots, to big bands of fast running unarmored skirmishers with javelins. So one might say, it collapsed because military technology changed. But we also see indications of massive social decay before the military technology changed. And running men with javelins are a technology older than chariots. Perhaps the reason chariots were no good any more is because the men in the chariots were no good any more.

                • Mayflower Sperg says:

                  Thus in my next career as a supervillain, my role model will not be Gene Hackman in Superman but Gene Hackman in Prime Cut, because a man who can give you a fertile, loyal, obedient wife is far more powerful than a man who can only kill you.

                • i says:

                  but China kept being ruled by foreign aristocrats, who had made short work of those enormous peasant armies.

                  Not really. They got the bulk of their army from the disaffected Military since they were poorly treated by the Ming Dynasty by its end.

                  The original Green Standard troops were the soldiers of the Ming commanders who surrendered to the Qing in 1644 and after. Their troops enlisted voluntarily and for long terms of service; they usually came from the socially disadvantaged, and remained segregated from Chinese society, partly because of the latter’s deep anti-military bias during the late Ming period, and partly because they were paid too poorly and irregularly to marry and support a family.

                  They actually didn’t do so well against during the revolt of the three Feudatories:

                  During the Revolt of the Three Feudatories Manchu Generals and Bannermen were initially put to shame by the better performance of the Han Chinese Green Standard Army, who fought better than them against the rebels and this was noted by the Kangxi Emperor, leading him to task Generals Sun Sike, Wang Jinbao, and Zhao Liangdong to lead Green Standard Soldiers to crush the rebels.[11] The Qing thought that Han Chinese were superior at battling other Han people and so used the Green Standard Army as the dominant and majority army in crushing the rebels instead of Bannermen.[12] In northwestern China against Wang Fuchen, the Qing put Bannermen in the rear as reserves while they used Han Chinese Green Standard Army soldiers and Han Chinese Generals like Zhang Liangdong, Wang Jinbao, and Zhang Yong as the primary military forces, considering Han troops as better at fighting other Han people, and these Han generals achieved victory over the rebels.[13] Sichuan and southern Shaanxi were retaken by the Han Chinese Green Standard Army under Wang Jinbao and Zhao Liangdong in 1680, with Manchus only participating in dealing with logistics and provisions.[14] 400,000 Green Standard Army soldiers and 150,000 Bannermen served on the Qing side during the war.[15] 213 Han Chinese Banner companies, and 527 companies of Mongol and Manchu Banners were mobilized by the Qing during the revolt.[16]

                  https://infogalactic.com/info/Green_Standard_Army

                  You can read the rest from the Qing Conquest of the Ming:
                  https://infogalactic.com/info/Qing_conquest_of_the_Ming

                • jim says:

                  Armies don’t surrender because of bad treatment by their masters. They surrender because the other side is better able to kill them than their commanders are. Bad treatment may make it easier to absorb former pows into your forces after they have surrendered, but the decision is military.

                  The story of the Manchus in China is consistent with the conjecture that what makes aristocrats lose power is not the military technology of the day, but decadence. China suffers decadence, gets conquered by aristocratic foreigners, the foreigners are seduced, suffer decadence.

                  Right now in the Ukraine both sides are figuring out small scale tactics that work in drone era. But small scale tactics just change possession of a few ruins, a trench, a patch of trees. When someone finally figures out large scale tactics and strategy that can change possession of substantial amounts of turf, it is likely to involve excellence of warriors, rather than hordes of grunts. We shall see what unfolds. The small scale tactics are looking remarkably knightly. Perhaps the large scale tactics will look similar.

                • Mayflower Sperg says:

                  Weather can help. Wagner seized a big chunk of Bakhmut during a blizzard, when Ukrainian drones and apartment snipers couldn’t see anything.

                • Mister Grumpus says:

                  Could one or two tactical nukes get the AFU to the Azov Sea?

                • Mayflower Sperg says:

                  No, the Russians are much too spread out for two nukes to kill a significant fraction of them. After using a tacnuke, you have to immediately rush your soldiers into an intensely radioactive area before the enemy can regroup. What then, a creeping barrage of nukes breaking up enemy fortifications just ahead of your advancing soldiers? People can survive surprisingly close to a nuke if they’re well dug in, and they’ll fight to the death knowing they’ve already received a lethal dose of radiation.

                  Which doesn’t mean the Biden regime won’t try it; they’re not our best and brightest.

                • jim says:

                  Tac nukes are useful to stop the enemy advancing, annihilating enemy troops that are advancing, or are preparing to advance.
                  also good for destroying fortifications. Nuke the Russian lines of defense, make a big hole., Attack through the hole once the radiation dies down a bit.

                • Mister Grumpus says:

                  If they try to nuke their way to the Azov Sea, it won’t be because it’ll work, but Becauae It’s The Right Thing To Do. They’ll simply have no choice. It’ll be a moral imperative.

                  The Russians are fighting back so hard that it proves the bitter clingers deserve it. They’ll come to their senses and apologize afterward. It’s for their own good.

                  It’s Kyle Rittenhouse all over again, in macrocosm. What can they do? Risk looking bad in our eyes by trying to fight back and survive? No one is that evil.

                • i says:

                  @jim

                  I think as you noted earlier. That Peasant armies are generally ineffective especially if they aren’t welded into a cohesive military machine.

                  The Ashigaru was very ineffective in the beginning too. Until their Generals drilled them and equipped them better to a certain extent with pointy sticks.

                  The subsequent development of Espirit De Corps. And of not breaking such cohesion by transferring individual soldiers between Units afterwards.

                  Marching in synchronicity also served that role to make such armies in later eras.

                  Such that Knightly Warriors who excel in individual combat is forced to face the Leviathan created by such training as a whole more than individuals by themselves.

                  And of course like Xiang Yu simply be worn down as a result no matter how good:
                  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6K6CJLuOCiU&pp=ygUaY2hpbmVzZSBmcmllbmRzaGlwIGJlIGxpa2U%3D

                  Of course battle experience also furthers the process of welding people together in a Leviathan as well.

                  When facing greater numbers it helps to funnel individual men to fight the Knightly elements. Without the benefit of the cohesive whole backing them.

                  The Spartans with their allies held off the Persians at Thermopylae until a back route was discovered that could enable them to be surrounded and killed.

                • i says:

                  @jim

                  The story of the Manchus in China is consistent with the conjecture that what makes aristocrats lose power is not the military technology of the day, but decadence. China suffers decadence, gets conquered by aristocratic foreigners, the foreigners are seduced, suffer decadence.

                  I suppose even Warrior Aristocrats will have to have restrictions on the quantity of wives they could get even in an Oriental setting. If Eunuchs must appear then its already too many.

                  Having the best woman in terms of beauty and character for life is probably best for them too. Easier to accompany their Husband than with a Harem which tends to more quickly settle him in place.

                  Centralization at the Capital and giving up the Sword is one sure way to all easily end up being killed.

                  Aidan’s solution is very pertinent to this problem:
                  https://chevauchee.substack.com/p/the-city

                  I do wonder if its possible to ensure that more Wealth is distributed throughout the rest of the Hierarchy without too much concentration at the top that would enable decadence.

                  I’d say having more Peasants being able to access “Wine and Oil” is more beneficial to the Ruling Class than to have the Ruling Class monopolize those good things for themselves.

                  But also with top of the line Military equipment and necessary needs still being met.

                • Karl says:

                  commenter “i” wrote:

                  I do wonder if its possible to ensure that more Wealth is distributed throughout the rest of the Hierarchy without too much concentration at the top that would enable decadence.

                  I know lots of people who manage to be decadent on a very small budget, e.g. consume drugs. Decadence is enabled by lack of faith.

                  Maybe wealth is a secondary factor in enabling decadence, but then the level of wealth required to be decadent is so low that even those on welfare have it.

        • Mayflower Sperg says:

          Every time a useful new technology appears, lots of people think, “How can I make this thing cheaper to manufacture and simpler to use?” Eventually, they succeed — the thing is mass-produced in Bangladesh and every child has one.

          Ever since the Industrial Revolution, it hasn’t taken long for a thousand knights with an awesome new weapon to be defeated by a million peasant conscripts with mass-produced copies of that weapon. This devalues warriors in favor of intellectual elites who use their word-smithing skills to label their enemies as evil tyrants and bamboozle the masses into waging war against them.

          • jim says:

            > it hasn’t taken long for a thousand knights with an awesome new weapon to be defeated by a million peasant conscripts with mass-produced copies of that weapon

            This works when you assemble a thousand peasants en masse and give them weapons that are easy to use. “Here is a spear. Pointy end goes into the enemy” “Here is a gun. Hold by this end, point other end at enemy” Then you march them all off towards the enemy in a densely packed crowd.

            But today, massed troops are a pile of dead bodies mighty fast. Everyone is dispersing their armies into groups of a tank and and an armoured personnel carrier, which unload four of five people, who advance not as a close group but as a spread out group each considerable distance apart. Your 89IQ conscript dragged off the street is fighting like a knight of old, in a series of solo combats with the rest of his group fighting related solo combats nearby. This is not a role in which the 89IQ conscript dragged off the street is very good.

            And the weapons he needs to use are rapidly getting mighty hard for normies to use. The Ukrainians were never able to use the Bayraktar TB2 drone the way it was designed to be used when dealing with peer adversary. It was pretty useless for them. The necessary training just did not get across the IQ and language gap. The Turks had smarties operating it, the Ukes had normies. And the normies just could not do much with it.

            Something very like a Bayraktar TB2 drone, but considerably smaller, will indeed be mass produced in Bangladesh by and by, and my grandchildren will likely be given one (explosives replaced by washable paint bombs) to play with. And will wipe the floor when paint bombing the normie kids.

            The mass army works when you turn the peasants into a mindless machine. Katsuyori drilled his horde of peasant conscripts to assemble in three ranks. The first rank fires a volley, then falls back to the rear to reload their muzzle loaders. Next rank fires a volley, then falls back. Then the next rank. And now the first rank find themselves in front again, and fire again.

            But today, actual machines can do that stuff a whole lot better. Instead of a thousand IQ89 conscripts assembled into three ranks, you have one IQ89 conscript with an AK47 engaging in solo battles, which require the judgement and ability that used to be the sole province of the officer commanding those thousand IQ89 conscripts assembled into three ranks. And now you have problems with the cognitive limitations of the IQ89 conscript dragged off the streets. Give him a Bayraktar TB2 drone, and your problems just got a whole lot bigger.

            Everyone is still using mass conscript armies of replaceable normies officered by replaceable midwits. And having problems as a result, because they are using them like the knights of old.

            Current tactics are that you pound the hell out of some village or some trenches, then occupy the ruins, then the enemy pounds the hell out of the ruins. Rinse and repeat. It is bloody, slow and terribly costly. You gain or lose tiny bits of turf at immense cost. But with information warfare and smart weapons, why are you pouring explosives into ruins? I feel that better tactics performed by better men who make effective use of today’s better information centric weapons are going to show up. And these men are going to pretty much ignore the horde of IQ89 conscripts. Better use of weapons, and better tactics by better men have not shown up yet. But there seems to be a gross mismatch between knightly solo tactics, smart weapons, and pouring tonnes of explosives into ruins. Everyone has moved to knightly tactics, but not knightly strategy. Which may be in part because they are trying to force reluctant dimwits to fight with knightly tactics, and having big problems.

            The primary weapon in this war continues to be 1910 shells used in a 1910 way. There is something very wrong with this picture. New weapons used in new ways are mattering more and more, but people have not figured out how to use them. They have been forced to disperse to avoid them. But now the Russians are using smart drones to take out individual dispersed soldiers. This just started happening about a week or two ago. Tactics have changed. Strategy is has not. It will.

            Everyone is using 1910 weapons and 1910 strategy, yet on the scale of the individual soldier, 1910 tactics have necessarily been abandoned due to new weapons.

            • Mayflower Sperg says:

              Your 89IQ conscript dragged off the street is fighting like a knight of old, in a series of solo combats with the rest of his group fighting related solo combats nearby. This is not a role in which the 89IQ conscript dragged off the street is very good.

              Such combat was highly eugenic in Medieval times, but when enemy drones buzz overhead dropping bombs and spotting artillery rounds, the IQ of your ground troops is not so important. They’re like rabbits getting randomly snatched by birds of prey, except that rabbits get to enjoy unlimited free food and sex throughout their short lives.

            • Karl says:

              In addition, conscripts dragged streets don’t really want to fight. They’ll just do what is necessary to avoid by shot by their handlers.

              Compelling a conscript is easy if the conscript is in a close packed formation. More difficult if the conscript is one four men advancing as a spread out group. If the conscript is given a drone, he is even harder to control.

              The more complex a task, the harder it is to force someone to do it.

              • Mayflower Sperg says:

                Occupying a trench and soaking up enemy artillery is not a complex task. You just have to arrange things such that any time a conscript disobeys your command, his chances of immediate death go way up.

                Of course you also need a hard core of true believers standing ready to shoot deserters on sight, but drones and cluster munitions allow them to cover a much larger area with the same manpower.

                If this makes no sense to you, read accounts of the Katyn massacre or watch videos of the Camp Speicher massacre. At every stage of the process, captives were allowed a slim hope that they’d be spared if they did as they were told.

                • Karl says:

                  Of course, this makes sense. A conscript occupying a trench is easily compelled like a conscript in a close packed formation

                  My point was simply that conscripts cannot be forced to do complex tasks. Jim argued that conscripts are too dumb to do complex tasks like operating a drone.

                • jim says:

                  > Occupying a trench and soaking up enemy artillery is not a complex task.

                  Getting to the trench, however, is non trivial. And increasingly, the Russians are focusing on forcing the Ukrainians to move around. Which may reflect the fact that they have a higher quality of conscript, and a larger proportion of volunteers. They are feeling their way to forcing the Ukrainians to perform complex tasks. There is right now a whole lot of getting to trenches under fire, and then promptly leaving those trenches again, also under fire. A new way of war is being born, though we will probably not see it clearly until the veterans of this war start organising the next.

                  Getting to the trenches was not a complex task back when you marched in a group of five hundred and got handed shovels. That was what was happening earlier in the war. It is not what is happening any more. The war is changing. To what, cannot yet be clearly seen.

                  Russian leadership and tactics are notoriously inflexible. At the beginning of every war, they are behind the current way of war, and learn slowly and at immense cost. They started with 1944 tactics and strategy, and when these failed horribly, reverted to 1918 tactics and strategy. But war is a harsh teacher. By the end of most wars, Russians are leading the way of war. They do things very differently now. They have learned something, and will learn more.

                  1914-1918 trench warfare was extremely static. You stayed in your trench for a long time. Right now we are seeing a whole lot of small scale, short distance movement. For territory to change hands at reasonable cost, that has to become longer distance movement.

            • i says:

              @jim

              Katsuyori drilled his horde of peasant conscripts to assemble in three ranks.

              I think you mean Nobunaga. He used those tactics to destroy the Samurai Horsemen of Takeda Katsuyori very effectively at Nagashino. But that wasn’t the whole story.

              But lest there be any misconception:

              In light of such a brief description, it is easy to see the temptation of writing Nagashino off as being won solely by the use of firearms. As mentioned before, an examination of the details reveals Nobunaga‘s genius in the use of combined arms tactics and his recognition of the power of infantry.

              If Nagashino had truly been a battle won by firepower mowing down cavalry, it would not have had several of the key features it did, such as its grueling length, over eight hours, or any prearranged fall back action by Nobunaga.

              Notably, much of the decisive damage from a strategic standpoint was done not by the gunners in the opening hours, but by the mounted samurai and the light-footed ashigaru during the twilight as they systematically destroyed the Takeda rearguard and large formations of panicked troops

    • jim says:

      It takes a team to operate a Bradley, but a drone is operated by one man, just as each knight fought solo even though part of a group. And any of those knights could kill the King, and any drone operator can kill the King. When it is drone operators against drone operators, and people forget about Bradleys and conscript hordes, the dynamic of armies and warfare will change, and with it the dynamic of governance. We will have small armies of elites against elites, thus an army will have greater capability for governance, rather than merely being a tool of governance.

      • Mayflower Sperg says:

        For the rest of us, daily life will be like the Book of Deuteronomy, where some fool breaks a rule or disobeys an order “and God a drone operator smote him.”

        https://www.flickr.com/photos/katiawt/983971674

        • Smote the evils before 1984 says:

          [*deleted*]

        • alf says:

          Sounds more like 1984 with drones than wandering through the desert.

          Obviously, there is merit to your argument. As weapon technology advances, life becomes cheaper.

          But the counter presented on this blog is that cooperation is hard. 1984 doesn’t work in real life because those holding it together would in real life have no incentive to hold it together. A system that goes around killing peons with impudence does not survive for long. For that same reason Machiavellianism has a hard limit to what it can achieve: no man rules alone, any man who wants to rule needs to trust others and put a system in place that rewards trust.

          The biggest lie in Game of Thrones is that its people had all the benefits of medieval civilisation, like big castles, big boats and pretty cities. In reality they’d be living in mudhuts, because much like African warlords, they keep stabbing each other in the back.

          • The Cominator says:

            Our current ruling elite should be full of individuals with every incentive to backstabbing each other in a bid for personal power… but yet the most baffling and frustrating thing is their strange and persistent solidarity.

            • jim says:

              They seem to have difficulty making difficult decisions and making hard choices. Solidarity is accomplished by putting hard decisions in the too hard basket. I expected them to start killing each other in considerable numbers not long after the 2020 election, but this has not happened yet.

              Hard decisions, however, are piling up, and in the end they are going to be made. By someone. Which may well require a considerable increase in lethality.

              • jim says:

                Right now, some elites have noticed that RussiaRussiaRussia is not going too well, and want to swerve back to Covid. Others want to swerve back to Global Warming, as illustrated by the fires they lit in Hawaii and imprisoning the exurban whites in the fire zone. Others think that the empire is falling, and a swerve back to Covid and Warmism is going to render the Global American Empire irrelevant – and there are a whole lot of elites in Washington, New York, and Massachusetts who live on the graft of empire. I conjecture these are the guys protecting Vivek Ramaswami. His career and origin story was in bed with those guys.

                Right now the empire is pursuing all three simultaneously, and all three ineffectually.

            • Western Taliban says:

              They are persistent on plundering you and the parasites unite to plunder, but there’s no solidarity. They can hardly be called a “ruling elite”, as they aren’t ruling anything, they simply move from plunder to plunder while we eat shit because we have no recourse. They don’t organize anything but the plundering, like a roving pack of niggers making plans to go from house to house stealing what they can while the victims try to get on with their lives. They don’t rule us, they subjugate and feed on us, like a wake of vultures.

              If anyone expects any of these people to somehow step up I think they will be very disappointed. Stepping up implies a lot of very difficult and hard work, and this people are increasingly retarded and extremely self-indulgent. It also implies interest on the well-being of anyone other than themselves. Even if the faction that backs up Vivek wins, there is no turning back, they are all retarded and too lazy, weak and egotistical to wear an actual crown. Just because a vulture is good at preying on others, it doesn’t mean they can build a country.

              You are not ruled, you are preyed upon. Your government is a hostile regime occupying your land. Only solution is total death. But even if there’s total death, you still won’t have a king. Here we take for granted kingship appearing by magic, I’m starting to believe this is simply European entitlement. We’ve had it so good and been so blessed for so long we think, that of course, obviously, some king must appear. But I look at the people that exist today and I feel skeptical. The immediate future looks a lot more like niggerdom, which admittedly is still a million times better than gay tranny vultures. That’s why Aidan wants to fuck off to Africa with an army, lol

              • Mayflower Sperg says:

                It takes time for the new order to emerge. After Rome’s legions abandoned Britannia, five hundred years passed before one man could legitimately call himself the King of England.

      • Zogcorp Slave says:

        My FAAMG company gives me a cloud compute instance which I use to do my job. I have full control over it in the sense that I have superuser privileges, and I have no control over it in the sense that there are a bunch of monitoring daemons running on it, and the company could revoke my ssh credentials at the touch of a button if I tried to mine bitcoin on it. Why wouldn’t drones be like this?

        • jim says:

          It in in the cloud, probably half a world away.

          A drone is going to be in the drone operator’s hands.

          • Zogcorp Slave says:

            Why? Just have separate job descriptions, separate cryptographic identities, and separate work spaces for operators and technicians. Separate the work spaces by a waist high card-activated glass turnstile.

            • jim says:

              Autonomous drones can be controlled from a pleasant office by a big bureaucratic organization, and the future of warfare is autonomous drones, but someone has to launch and maintain the drone, and upload the mission parameters. Current Russian practice appears to be to physically take the mission parameters to the drone on a laptop, and the laptop has a little chat with the computer in the drone over a short range connection, with laptop guy standing right beside the drone. You don’t want the drone physically capable of uploading mission parameters directly from the cloud, for obvious reasons.

              You are powerless operating a computer in the cloud, because the far away data center is where the computer actually is. The power is actually in the data center, and the data center makes it available to the big bureaucratic dilbertesque corporation, with various restrictions, and the big bureaucratic corporation makes it available to Dilbert’s pointy haired boss, with various additional restrictions, who makes it available to you, with even more restrictions. And in the future of warfare, the power is going to be where the drone actually is. And where the drone actually is, is itself going to get hit by drones. So, power will be where the warriors are.

              • Adam says:

                Even if drone operators become more knight like, not many will be able to manufacture bombs and such. For surveillance sure, but the strike capability will still be centralized will it not?

                • jim says:

                  The entire world, including Russia, has highly centralized state run logistics. Soldiers in the field are chafing under the centralization of logistics, in substantial part because it is giving them grief over getting the kind of drones that they want. Genuinely private alternatives are popping up all over in Russia and promoting their goodies directly to soldiers in the battlefield, and the Ministry of defense is trying to control them, assimilate them, replace them, or destroy them, as it destroyed Wagner. Eventually the warriors are going to get their way – possibly during and after a long dark age. People who get in the way are going to get blown up. Shoigu is right now at significant risk of exploding suddenly, in substantial part due to logistic issues.

                  Logistics is once again going to become camp followers.

      • Mister Grumpus says:

        And just to make sure that I’ve been understanding you all these years:

        The point of having a warrior elite of high-tech independent operators, rather than brigades and battalions of logistically interchangeable meat victims, is that the winning side will simply have to have honorable people at the top of it, because otherwise without that, they would never have worked together to win in the first place.

        And boom, honorable elite achievement unlocked, and strong men start making good times again.

        Is that right?

        • Kunning Druegger says:

          You might be glossing over some finer but no less decisive details lol.

        • jim says:

          That is how civilization gets recreated when it falls – but there is apt to be a long dark age between the fall and the recovery.

    • Karl says:

      Well, I disagree that (b) comprises an “endless bloody stalemate”. There is a war of attrition. Sure it is bloody, but it is neither endless nor a stalemate.

    • Mister Grumpus says:

      If anybody here has a story that makes some damn sense about what Prigozin’s March to Moscow could have really been about, then please, by all means hit me with it, because that was just fucking crazy.

      What I do recall is someone here pointing out that if Wagner could conquer Kiev, then next it would conquer Moscow. Maybe Prigozin did too much coke, felt a little more awesome than he actually was, and decided to skip a couple steps and just go for it. Still, I’m baffled. That nut was clever and cunning enough to pull off all that crazy S.P.E.C.T.R.E. international underworld shit, but he wasn’t clever and cunning enough to mind his business and not try something suicidal like that.

      Let me guess: Prigozin was the paw, and not the cat? The cape, and not the matador?

      • Mayflower Sperg says:

        Every man has a breaking point, and Prigozhin was pushed beyond his. The Ukrainians put up fanatical resistance in Bakhmut, which forced Wagner to move more troops into the city, turning over its flanks to the Russian army. Then Ukraine suddenly attacked the flanks, pushing Russians back from positions that many Wagnerites had died for, and threatening to encircle the city. This forced Wagner to hurry up and capture the rest of Bakhmut, losing 100 men a day and demanding far more ammunition than Russia was able to supply. Prigozhin blamed the Ministry of Defense for these failures and, likely in a state of extreme sleep deprivation, posted an enraged rant over the bodies of his fallen soldiers, then set off for Moscow.

        Whenever a general marches against his king, one of them is going to die. I was afraid it would be Putin, which would be a terrible tragedy, considering all he has done for Russia. But losing Prigozhin is also very bad.

        • Genomir says:

          The men who died in Artyomovsk were in their majority prisoners who conscripted in order to get their verdicts canceled in case that tbey survived. The real Wagnerites were acring like barrier soldiers.

          • Kunning Druegger says:

            This is NATO cope, in a certain sense. The majority of fighters were pulled from the prisoner volunteers, and 20k is a lot, but plenty of OF Wagner died, and they are all getting buried together. Pretending they just herded convicts with shovels at the noble and beautiful gay black lesbian warriors of Keeeev is a stupid lie.

        • embeveraged commuter says:

          To the extent that Wagner was charging in like that, it was a poorly thought out error on their part. It’s not as if Artemovsk is a mineral deposit Zelensky was farming with SCVs and it had to be captured before he could launch a battlecruiser.

          The SMO just needs to be dragged out while NATO sends it’s equipment over to be wasted and BRICS gets itself properly organized.

          • Mayflower Sperg says:

            Bakhmut was described here as “Verdun done right”, a trap to lure in and destroy the Ukrainian army, who would feel a sacred duty to hold the city at all cost. Wagner was out-killing the Ukrainians five-to-one, so Zelensky sent five times as many soldiers. A bit short of manpower but in no hurry to actually capture Bakhmut because that wasn’t the point, Prigozhin said to the Russian generals, “I need you guys to hold my flanks for me and maintain fire control over the enemy supply lines. You can do that, right?”

  29. i says:

    Well the West has a prison Population. And America has a huge prison population. Would be funny if MS-13 and other like Gangs ended up in the Ukraine meatgrinder.

    • Pete says:

      If anything, the communists will give the prisoners rifles and turn them loose on the red states to expropriate the farmland, as per the example of Rhodesia/SA.

      • Kunning Drueger says:

        letting the adversary deploy penal battalions would be a terribly grievous mistake. Wagner is way ahead of the curve in many things, but that tactic is one on which histories wheel will definitely turn.

        imagine a governor who builds an army of “civil servants” from incarcerated volunteers for the very necessary work of disaster response, community cleanup, and unexpected emergencies. interestingly, you could probably instantiate the whole thing using only Progressive claptrap terminology usually applied to fair and equal treatment to the temporarily non-compliant.

        Bail Reform with Reactionary Characteristics.

        • Mayflower Sperg says:

          Modern warfare is waged with cheap, disposable weapons operated by cheap, disposable men.

          Big, complex, expensive weapon systems operated by highly-trained men get disabled by drone strikes within minutes. Armored vehicles are as obsolete as knights on horseback. Ships are just as vulnerable, so travel by sea is impossible unless all states in the region agree to allow it.

          • jim says:

            Remote piloted drones can be jammed. The Bayraktar drone and the stormshadow are AI drones, hence when operating under AI, unjammable. Unfortunately cheap disposable men could not generate their mission parameters. Some of the Russian drones have autonomous capability, but the Russians are mighty closed mouthed about that.

            High tech weapons require smart, knowledgeable people. Require smart people, or else no amount of training suffices. Russian tanks have auto aiming systems. Non trivial to command the computer appropriately.

            Russia has long had a keep it simple stupid policy for its weapons systems. Which banged up hard against the realities of modern warfare with a peer adversary. Drone operators are considered precious. It appears to be considered more valuable and important to take out a drone operator than to take out a tank, though less valuable than a helicopter. They are not seen, or treated, as disposable.

            Their electronic warfare systems are sixty mmillion dollars a pop. Which seems excessive to me, but though I think the price could be enormously reduced, they are never going to become cheap disposable weapons operated by cheap disposable men.

            electronic warfare and autonomous drones are the future of warfare. These require elites, not cheap disposables.

          • Kunning Druegger says:

            This is where war is going, it isn’t there yet. And it’s not a video game where once an achievement is unlocked, everything just upgrades. Any nation that has spent substantial treasure on outdated weapons systems will bend over backwards to pretend they are relevant.

        • Fidelis says:

          There are exceptions but the majority of the prison population is dysfunctional and retarded. Not much human capital to extract.

    • MS-13 Mercenaries Salvador says:

      Didn’t Bukele say that whoever wants any of his prisoners for any reason they are free to go there.

  30. Failed From Day One says:

    West fucked up.
    Ignoring who had or does not have historical right to whatever bits of UA.
    They had one good chance.
    They should have thrown all they had into UA from day one.
    Instead they were pussies and trickled shit in over an entire year plus.
    In that time RU drove in through what was early defensible roads,
    and had free reign of air, to saturate and own vast swaths of regions.
    They could have held Putin off near the borders.
    Now they have the same size lines of defense,
    halfway back inside their fully destroyed country, lol.
    Oh well.
    It is pussies like those faggot proggie commie homo morons
    in the White House and half of Europe that lose wars.
    And they lost it.

    • jim says:

      West fucked up because they are used to controlling the tempo and scale of a war. Does not work in Eastern Europe, does not work with a peer adversary. They think they can “freeze” the conflict any time they feel like – but Latvia or Estonia, probably Latvia, has just attacked Russia. Which is insane.

      Latvia (my guess, Estonia is unlikely) attacking Russia is like Serbia starting World War I by attacking Austria.

      World War III has started, but maybe everyone can pretend it away for a long time – similarly the phony war at the start of World War III. Wars are easy to start, hard to stop. And we have far too many people willing to start World War III while everyone else dithers.

      To shut down the drift into World War III would take extremely drastic measures. No one is willing to do what is needed for peace. Basically you have to line up a hundred, perhaps a thousand, provocateurs, shoot them, and send their heads to the guys they were making war upon. Trouble is that if you allow some people on your side to take warlike acts, you are going to be in for total war sooner or later, and no one expects, prepares for, or plans for total war. Stopping the provacateurs just seems too hard, after all the, only people they are hurting are the bad guys, the other side.

      People are engaging in aggressive acts because they think it will merely result in a relatively small number of people that they do not know or care about dying. But that is normality bias. These acts, starting with the shelling of Donbass in 2014, will likely lead to hundreds of millions of people dying, unless someone gets off his ass and takes extraordinary and unthinkable action to halt the drift to total war.

      It is like being pulled out to sea in a surf rip – the further you slide out to sea, the weaker your footing to halt the drift, and the stronger the current runs. And right now, it looks like we are out of our depth and World War III has begun, but everyone hopes if they don’t believe it and don’t acknowledge it, nothing will happen. And nothing will happen for a while except that the shore rapidly gets further away.

      Extending Nato into Eastern Europe and all the way to Russian borders was a warlike act and a reckless act. There are no end of troubles lurking in that area that outsiders do not understand and could break out at any time. And it looks like one of them, one of many, has just broken out.

      In retrospect, the day they extended Nato borders to Russian borders over a region full of troubles and lurking wars, was the day that meant the nukes would fly.

      They will not fly for a while, but the current in that direction has become irreversible, unless a very great man appears to reverse it. And I doubt that a great man could reverse it without wading through quite a lot of blood.

      • Karl says:

        but Latvia or Estonia, probably Latvia, has just attacked Russia.

        What are you refering to? I just checked RT and Sputnik, but could not find any newsreport that fits.

        Not that it matters all that much. Sooner or later the situation in Kalingrad will be escalated by Poland, a Baltic state or the EU.

        A Great man in the US might be able to stop the drift to ever escalting war. A Great man in Europe might at most keep some parts of Europe out of it.

        • Kunning Druegger says:

          A swarm of drones, est. ~40, perpetrated a complex (multi-target) attack on Pskov Airport at approx. 2300 on 29.08.23. Approx. 4 IL-76 transport aircraft were disabled/destroyed. Drone type unreported. Drone attrition unreported. Linear distance of Pskov Airport from UKR: ~800km. Linear distance to Pskov Airport to Baltics: ~50km (Estonia) to ~65km (Lithuania).

          ITEM: Some pantsuit shrew at State just made a “widely” publicized statement about how in ~18 months the US (read GAE) would “field” an “attritive drone swarm numbering in the thousands.”

          ITEM: Australian donated cardboard “support” RPVs donated for “only peaceful purposes” loaded with explosives and used on airfield attack according to MSM according to UKR high command.

          ITEM: Prime Ministeress of Estonia in hot water after it comes to light that her husband’s business is still operating in Russia despite EU ban.

          ITEM: Defense of Rabotino now exceeds efforts at Asovstal in Mariupol.

          ITEM: Military leadership in Gabon has suspended the most recent election, cancelled the results, and sealed the border.

          ANALYSIS: that an attack happened seems beyond dispute. The linear distances involved are already challenging, but the complication of the RPV type as claimed by UKR HC only adds depth to the speculation. The targeting seems strange to lay persons, but the IL-76 is the backbone of the RF military logistics operations, just as the C-17 does far more than any fighter plane or helicopter. The larger framework of geostrategy may suggest that this attack has more to do with Africa than UKR front. However you look at this, it is an escalation, the only difference is in degrees and direction.

          ANALYSIS (JIMIAN): The managerial revolution and subsequent feminization of geopolitics has been a disaster for the human race. Every “shit test” escalation from the West has been unanswered or ignored by the Kremlin in the form of Putin as the “love interest.” This has created a rampant and diffuse “jilted female psychosis” in a growing number of bureaucratic frameworks of multiple liberal democracies. This means the potential for escalation and overreaction is a multi-axes concern. The latest chapter in the conflict began in 22 February when the Kremlin finally did something about a string of “shit tests” coming out of the West. The refusal to respond to previous shit tests had driven the West to an extreme place and, if the Russian response had been *commensurate or excessive* to the shit tests, things may have de-escalated or even adjusted. Instead, the shit testing continued and increased. With each ignored provocation the “West as aggrieved slut” becomes more readily willing and able to perpetrate “nuclear shit tests” like supplying HIMARS to kill children in Donbas, Nord Stream 2 attack, providing a second army to perpetuate the war, and now seeming to attempt to move the conflict into “Article 05 territory.” The “Western slattern” wants to be slapped, and hard, then ordered around, but the Cuckold Orient lacks the wherewithal to respond to the manic energy, further complicating the situation and severely limiting options for de-escalation or productive resolution.

          • Dolfz says:

            They droned a Tu-22 also.

          • Mister Grumpus says:

            The combined fact that Estonia is so close to Saint Petersburg, and a NATO member, and officially led by a woman, right now today, is just so suicidally crazy that I can’t even stand it.

    • skippy says:

      The West quickly realised that they didn’t actually have all that many of the key systems themselves, and could not build new ones very quickly, and anyway that would mean employing white men in companies run by white men. Prog tried, and is trying, very hard to win this war.

    • alf says:

      Who coulda seen that coming. It’s almost like when you put all your faith in strangers there’s a high chance they’ll let you down.

      • someDude says:

        looks like Anglin saw this coming. I feel he is being overtly harsh, but then what do I know? He was right and I was wrong 😔
        https://www.unz.com/aanglin/poor-people-are-not-important/

      • someDude says:

        I also see that you are being sarcastic 🙂

      • Fidelis says:

        The guy isn’t acting like a hicklib, he’s complaining about the inner party outer party thing. This is your median flyover american. Kinda vaguely red tribe but really just wants to grill, has no clue whats going on just feels in his bones bad things are happening and will get worse. Hes not exactly based or debased, just a normie.

        All the coverage of this guy and his being placed on top of the charts is… something. I don’t know what the goal of it was, but this feels astroturf.

  31. Archer Sterling says:

    No one cares, bro. The Ukraine is so over. The Corona is so back.

    • C4ssidy says:

      I don’t know about that. feeling ready to bust on the first maskfaggot I see this time, ready to do a few months jail for assault

      Near the end of Covid era, certain countries had entire flights and airports ignoring the masks, or entire trains, despite being told to put them on over the speaker. It was even starting to happen in the most authoritarian places (Austria) while in the Balkans it was close to 100% ignoring the rules. Maybe they are going to give it a hard try at bringing it back. I will be surprised if the common man falls for it twice. Also in a world of labour-shortage who is really motivated to enforce this stuff onto a resistant crowd?

      • jim says:

        A shark has to keep swimming or it dies. They switched abruptly to the Covid Demon, then switched abruptly from the Covid Demon to RussiaRussiaRussia. And the awesome and mighty Covid Demon conspicuously failed to take its Awesome and Mighty Vengeance. RussiaRussiaRussia is heading into difficulties. Switching abruptly back to the Covid Demon is going to run into difficulties. The Climate Change demon has been discredited by its long failure to take its awsome vengeance for conspicuous failure to provide the demanded worship. Transexualization has saturated. It is running out of room to swim.

        They want to turn off this war in the Ukraine, pivot away from RussiaRussiaRussia, but wars are easy to start, hard to end. A “Frozen Conflict, which is their exit strategy, requires two to play. What is in it for Russia?

    • Mister Grumpus says:

      It’s going to be very weird if and when the Russia-Ukraine war keeps on going, even after it’s not cool anymore. When Putin reminds us every morning that “You may be done here but we are not.”

      It wasn’t cool in 2014 so no one knew about it then, I get it. But now that’s it’s been the oh-my-God most important thing ever for a year straight? Can they really switch from Oceania to Eastasia that cleanly?

      Can the believers really drop the subject from their minds completely? Or will the grinding loss erode their faith in the previous and following Current Things?

      They could switch from Covid to RussiaRussiaRussia because Covid was a bad flu, and we’ve always had bad flus. But if they try to switch from RussiaRussiaRussia to China Mad Bad, or whatever, Russia won’t just disappear. That Army will still be in the Ukraine, doing exactly what they’re doing now.

      • Mister Grumpus says:

        More succinctly:

        Switching from RussiaRussiaRussia to something else is going to be messy and imperfect, because unlike Covid, white supremacy and climate change, Russia isn’t a social construct. The Russian Army isn’t a fashion, ready to be replaced with another fashion.

        • Pax Imperialis says:

          To the Americans, the Russian Army might as well be a fashionable social construct. It’s very much an “Over There” fantasy with a distinct lack of material American presence. Do most Americans even know where Ukraine is on a map? Is Europe even real, or is it just a figment of the American mind?

          Take note of the trend of American ideological hysteria starting in WW1/WW2 going from external to internal. From the ‘Huns’ to the ‘Appalachian Cis White Men.’ GWOT quickly became an abstract idea, the war waged with less ideological ferocity than Vietnam, a war that was waged with less ideological ferocity than Korea, a war that was waged with less ferocity than WW2/WW1. Ukraine is even more of a Gnostic abstraction of war than GWOT.

          While internal social hysterias over feminism, climate change, covid, etc continue to multiply and have ever greater and greater material costs and persistent ideological fervor.

          Nukes are unlikely to fly due to Ukraine for the same reason Balkanization of the American lead West is increasingly likely to happen.

          • jim says:

            > Nukes are unlikely to fly due to Ukraine for the same reason Balkanization of the American lead West

            The big difference is that the Global American Empire cannot control events on that front. If that front is completely detached from reality as presented to Americans and believed by all goodthinkers, US loses Europe as it lost Indochina. Nato is already directly involved in military attacks on Russia far from Ukraine. This can only escalate, and sooner or later, article seven of the Nato treaty is going to be triggered. And then either the nukes fly, or conflict becomes mythical and detached from reality, whereupon article seven goes away. And if article seven goes away, the dominoes in Europe will fall. The Global American Empire can control the narrative, which merely results in the conversation being conducted by heavy artillery.

            • Pax Imperialis says:

              The US is losing Europe. The conflict has become mythical and detached from reality for DC. The “Russian attacks” on NATO have not triggered any NATO article. Poland and Romania have immediately denounced the alleged “Russian attacks” with the quiet part being Ukraine was responsible. Because America hasn’t been able to cook up a “legitimate” reason for intervention, not so covert attacks on Russia have been conducted, but it hasn’t been effective at causing any real damage and more overt effective measures outright risks revealing NATO has no actual legitimacy and is fake. The Europeans would not stand for it. Rather than mobilizing NATO, it risks dismantling it.

              American generals are moving around Ukrainian units that only exist on paper. Russia has ramped up drone warfare to such an extent that 40% of all FVP drone strikes done by the Russians was in August alone, yet NATO is still training and arming AFU without drones in mind. The Russians have such an excess of kamikaze drones they are now being used on infantry. There simply won’t be an AFU for much longer, in which case, the war ends and cover for mysterious explosions in Russia become much harder to justify as Ukrainian action.

              I have to wonder if both Romania’s and Poland’s re-militarization have less to do with Russia and more to do with preparing for a post American Europe. The buildup began before the Ukraine problem, and the most fervent NATO countries like German, France, and UK are still busy demilitarizing by offloading equipment to Ukraine with no plan for replacement.

              The US is losing France first by proxy of the lost of French Africa. Since the Germans are dependent on the French export of energy, Germany likely goes with the French. The UK is the only real remainder post breakup.

      • jim says:

        These people believe that reality is socially constructed, and they can reconstruct it any way they like. They think that if they switch the focus to the next big thing, the Ukraine war will just stop unless they decide to switch the focus back to it. They think the Ukraine war is a theatrical backdrop, and they will roll up that backdrop, because it does not look satisfactory, and roll out some new backdrop.

        • Mister Grumpus says:

          So either nukes, or some bad ass new Avian Flu grandmacide pandemic. “This Time It’s Personal.”

          I can’t think of what else can make people eat bugs, sleep in tents, worship their negro tormentors and forget all about Covid, RussiaRussiaRussia and Trump obviously murdered in a holding cell that 25 people all forgot to lock one night.

          Navy ships sink too fast.

          “I’m hope I’m wrong, but…”

        • Exurban says:

          They think that having control of the media narrative means they can control reality itself. There is an issue of believing their own bullshit, but it’s also about the mentality of essentially living in a simulation.

          Marshall McLuhan: “The news automatically becomes the real world for the TV user and is not a substitute for reality, but is itself an immediate reality.”

          I think Jim earlier compared this to the prelude to the First World War. It’s a scary situation.

      • Gringolade says:

        [*deleted for telling us what the dissident right believes*]

  32. Kunning Druegger says:

    I know maps have a strange way of making simple things complicated, and complex things seem simple, so bear with this normie/ignorant question:

    Why hasn’t the RF carpet bombed the Hohols like the Highway of Death in the 1st Gulf War? The AFU uses IFVs to transport shock troops to the line of contact. They use massed arty to hammer the Russian positions. They rotate shock troops, again using IFVs, and if/when defensive breastworks get taken, Territorial Defense Units (TDUs) get rotated in to absorb the Russian counterattack. That is it, that’s the entire tactical operation of the AFU in the specific region under discussion in the post. Consider:

    -motor pool: all the IFVs, support fleet and installations, recovery vehicles
    -shock troops: brigades of men that are sectioned off all the way down to company size and used en masse
    -TDUs: these are the reluctant ones that get dragged off the street, or young kids, or old men
    -support infrastructure and logistics to keep all of the above fed, watered, and covered and, in the case of the TDUs, restrained from fleeing.

    There’s basically no air cover, and the sneaky frog spec ops are being used elsewhere. There is also the Blocking Units, which is over half (at least) of the gross total AFU armed might. Russia has been liquidating the AFU’s AD capacity for half a year. With a pocket that small I cannot understand why they aren’t raining death from above.

    Here’s a related but distinct other question: does the RF have ~300,000 men in reserve or not? That gets thrown out by MacGregor and others, and that makes sense, at least to have it, for the purposes of exploitation in the event of an armored breakout. But the Russian TGram sources, the ones that seem the most grounded and honest, keep saying that the whole issue is there hasn’t been a further mobilization, and all RF forces are tied either manning defenses or playing artillery/infantry cat & mouse on the southern line of contact. So which is it?

    • jim says:

      > Why hasn’t the RF carpet bombed the Hohols like the Highway of Death in the 1st Gulf War?

      No one, on either side, is using large groups of armored vehicles. They zip around in groups of one or two. Six is an unusually big group, and such big groups are furtive, use cover, and are well back from the action. Presumably if someone grouped the way the Iraqis grouped, they would wind up looking like the Iraqis.

      The area covered by the red arrows is absolutely littered with wrecked armored vehicles. I watched a video, taken by some Ukrainians, of them carrying someone out in a stretcher. They would run from one piece of cover to another. They ran past one destroyed vehicle after another. It looked pretty much like the highway of death.

      • Kunning Druegger says:

        I understand that, but does that dispersal configuration go into the rear echelon, and if so, how far? Russia can hit targets in Portugal with accuracy with the Kalibr and other platforms. They are absolutely stomping on stuff all over the country. So I wonder if the Hohols are just that good at hiding, or if RF is that bad at finding. Or maybe the UKR Air Defense is actually magically that good I guess?

        • Pax Imperialis says:

          UKR air defense is likely getting targeting (active radar/sat) from NATO territory and “neutral” earth orbit. Meaning their AA is not broadcasting location and is harder to find. NATO radar is quite ‘loud’ and easily seen, but Russia isn’t going to escalate.

    • Pax Imperialis says:

      -Command structure is based around the army and the air force isn’t allowed to operate on their own initiative.

      -The army largely sees planes as mobile artillery systems for limited tactical operations. SEAD and strategic bombing is not a part of the modern Russian air doctrine.

      -Effect of doctrine on force design meant a force centered around dispersed layered air space defense. In that regard, the Russian air force has not been missing in action.

      -Doctrine can change rapidly with war, but you’re stuck with the force design until new product rolls out of the factory.

      -There’s been bit of a leadership issue as of late.

    • jim says:

      > Here’s a related but distinct other question: does the RF have ~300,000 men in reserve or not? That gets thrown out by MacGregor and others, and that makes sense, at least to have it, for the purposes of exploitation in the event of an armored breakout

      Reserves that were earmarked for for the purposes of exploitation in the event of an armored breakout are now being sent over the minefields at the tip of those red arrows. Have all of them been sent? The offensive is now stalled. If some remain, will they get sent also?

      They are now digging into those reserves. How far have they dug? Have they hit bottom yet? If not, will they keep on digging till they hit bottom?

      • S says:

        He means the Russians; aside from partial mobilization they’ve been bulking up the armed forces with additional recruits every month. The men don’t seem to be deploying to the front so we have several hundred thousand men whose purpose and location is up in the air. Training or a reserve against NATO action are the two main explanations I’ve heard.

    • TheDividualist says:

      >Why hasn’t the RF carpet bombed the Hohols like the Highway of Death in the 1st Gulf War?

      It used to be so, that if you had airplane vs. airplane air superiority, you could do whatever you wanted, because AA was crap. E.g. Redeyes were used by both sides in the Falklands war with basically no effect.

      Today, AA is actually good.

      Stingers can tell the UV signature of an airplane exhaust from the countermeasures. Hence Russia is making Ukraine expend all their AA capability on cheap drones and missiles. Stingers are gone now, and Raytheon is desperately trying to recall the white men who know how to build things from retirement, but I would not bank on that succeeding. I think there are still some Patriots left.

      Once Ukraine runs out of AA capability, there are over a thousand Russian fifth gen figher-bombers to act as a flying artillery. I think at that point it will be very quickly over.

      • Aidan says:

        Yes, this is the correct answer. The Ukrainian Air Force does not exist anymore. It all got blown up. So Russia has “air superiority”. But air defense is pretty good, especially against a big fat plane designed to carpet bomb. Russia could send out carpet bombers, but the rate of attrition would be intolerably high. Better to waste enemy AA capability on cheap drones. Russia is still acting like it expects to have to fight Poland next, if not the U.S. Army.

  33. Calvin says:

    I feel awful for the ordinary men of Ukraine, forced to march to their deaths in the name of a gay jewish comedian and his globohomo masters. Why the hell has no one taken any shots at that fucker yet?

    • Prioritization says:

      [*deleted*]

      • jim says:

        Take the FBI shill test.

        • RealNegros says:

          Real Negros often say real shit that get them censored because the shit is too hot for lamers to post. If the realnegros from kiwi8 come here you will not post their real shit. Sometimes that is sad but real assesment. So who is gonna be realer?

          • jim says:

            Prove you are real nigger rather than a Jew or dot Indian working in a big government shilling office by saying something niggers can say, but government shills cannot say unless they are actually black.

          • jim says:

            And yet, he, and you, cannot say what an actual negro can get away with saying.

  34. Mister Grumpus says:

    I’m too far gone. Stick a fork in me. I can’t interpret the “Ukrainian” response to the SMO as anything other than a “Ukrainian” genocide attempt against Ukrainians.

    (Everyone please notice how the “Ukrainian Nazis” are enthusiastically assisting with this mass murder. Makes you think, doesn’t it?)

    Their attempt is coming to fruition. The young women have already scattered, and wherever they end up will marry and/or reproduce with non-Ukrainian locals, if only because they’ll get papers that way. Meanwhile the Y-chromosomes are being liquidated more traditionally.

    It’s the only frame through which to view this whole situation that makes Kiev look competent, efficient, skilled, well coordinated and very good and planning things.

    In like the first week, Stormer said that they evacuated all the eligible Jewish guys right away (“and that’s a good thing!”) before the Ukrainian mobilizations started. If anyone can corroborate that claim for me from any other “source”, well I really don’t want to see it, honestly, but I need to see it.

    And come to think of it, just to stay fair, since some of us (including me) have been busting on Ramasmarmy recently, someone anyone tell me a story from history about when Indians ever did anything as villainous as this.

    • Contaminated NEET says:

      Our Ancient Friends nurse intense ethnic hatreds against both the Russians and the Ukes, so even if “their” side loses, at least getting a whole lot of them killed is a consolation prize.

      • Mister Grumpus says:

        One can optimize a system for only one thing.

        • Contaminated NEET says:

          Because of diminishing returns, you can often get a major increase in performance in a secondary area for a fairly small sacrifice in a system’s primary focus.

    • Pseudo-Chrysostom says:

      Degenerate alien dot brahmins have been taking more prominent roles as whig empire hatchet men not because they are more enthusiastic about doing evil for the glory of satan than previous incumbents (khazars fairly take the cake on that front), but because many of them can claim more brown nipple privilege over skypes without being as stupid as other brown people, along with greater numbers in general.

      • Contaminated NEET says:

        I actually kind of like dot Indians, but never forget that, at least in the West, they’re the Vorta from Deep Space Nine: a race of bureaucrats, lackeys, and liars brought in to supervise the empire’s other subject peoples. They revel in their position of relative superiority, and they give their masters wholehearted loyalty in return.

        • jim says:

          > and they give their masters wholehearted loyalty in return.

          Whole hearted loyalty? They are apt to abruptly turn on their masters when they can.

          • Contaminated NEET says:

            The ones I hang around with like to talk up their boundless admiration for the system and their belief in all its various contradictory doctrines.

            Now that you mention it though, words are cheap. Maybe I’ve been dazzled by glib lies, but it feels to me like they really believe what they say, at least at the moment they say it. It’s easy to be loyal as long as the cash and prizes are flowing. I guess when times get tough and the Beast starts asking from them more than it gives, then we’ll see their true colors. I hope you’re right – it would serve all parties involved right.

          • someDude says:

            The job of their masters is to make sure that they can’t or believe they can’t. Indians are not historically known for seizing the initiative or being aggressive apart from some isolated cases here and there. They are known for their timidity and hence the deep state elite feel that they are relatively safer.

            India has not purged it’s traitors in a long long while and hence defection has built up. When the British left India, where was the purge of all those who collaborated with the British? All of them kept their positions in the newly independent India.

            • skippy says:

              The Indians chosen by the British were probably the best and truest

              • Aryaman says:

                The Indians chosen by the British colluded with fabians to destroy British rule and institute a socialist republic, though that was probably an inevitable outcome after the British Raj took over the East India Company.

                but yes given the constraints of socialism inheriting the somewhat meritocratic British civil service probably let the Indian government punch above its weight in organizing some large scale projects like the nuclear program.

                • skippy says:

                  Not a lot of ICS or Indian Army involvement in subversion. Seems more like British socialiates going to India and digging up people like them, and Indians like them going to Europe to learn law and journalism.

            • Aryaman says:

              Who collaborated with the British that should have been purged? Independence itself was a British-inspired intellectual plot to bring about a secular and socialist democracy no one in their damned minds wanted and forcing it down the throats of then reigning Indian princes, other than a bunch of peculiarly Caucasian looking Indians who went to law school in Britain and a handful of Marxist agitators

              • Aryaman says:

                Learned opinion of very intelligent Indians at the end of the 19th century was that no one in their damned mind wanted complete independence. Then that changed overnight for reasons no one ever spells out in great detail. A massacre here, a beating there, all feels like fake news and parallel construction. There was a plot.

      • The Cominator says:

        Maybe the worst jews are worse than Indians but Indians on average worse than average jews.

        • someDude says:

          We’ve got the western Christian missionary and native convert defection problem too

          • i says:

            @someDude

            I wouldn’t mind if they are actually orthodox converts. And not Leftoids.

        • Pseudo-Chrysostom says:

          The average indian is in india.

          ‘Moves away from blood and soil’ is a preselection effect; ‘moves away from blood and soil to the seat of whig empire’ is a more particular preselection efffect; ‘moves away from blood and soil to the seat of whig empire with the intention of joining the whig empire and rises through the ranks of whiggery’ is an even more particular preselection effect.

          • Aryaman says:

            Well, yes, true. But people are rational and due to Indian socialism and affirmative action quotas there was a period of 20-30 years during which you really couldn’t do much intelligent work that paid a lot outside of starting your own company. My estimate is the IQ of Indian immigrants in 1985 was about 15 points higher than the same is today.

            The problem is they come to the country and then the schools their kids go to tell them that they are as American as apple pie, in fact more American than apple pie — the American dream, really — that whites are evil and whites didn’t build their country. Notice how Dubai, which also has lots of high IQ Indian professionals, does not have this problem. No immigrant in Dubai challenges Emirati supremacy. Compounding that is fancy Indians have been adept at rising through the ranks of Anglo whiggery for more than a century at this point. It more or less worked out okay under nominal white supremacy.

            So yes there is a preselection effect today at least. The people coming are scammers and not that smart. But between 1970 and 2000 or so the people who came mostly ended up earning 100x what their parents earned and 10x what they would have earned had they stayed.

            Emiratis aren’t complaining about pajeets and there is some lesson in that. (Not to say that Indian immigrants aren’t intrinsically annoying in some regard or countersignal Comminator, but what exactly do you expect when the state religion is what it is?)

  35. Go Russia! Beat Biden!

  36. D Liddle says:

    One of my favorite hobbies is predictability modeling. You take a time scale moving off into the future, any time scale you like, and you predict an outcome, sometimes quite far-fetched. Then you assign a probability score, either as a Kp or a percentage, of how likely that outcome is to turn out.

    For instance, I am going to model the probability chances for how betrayed and how deluded and demoralized a Ukrainian soldier/veteran (that survived) will be 10 years from now when the knowledge that he was injured, his buddies died, his women fornicated in Germany with muslims, and his country was permanently hobbled and destroyed because his leadership decided to use their nation as a DNC money laundering operation. I rate his chances of feeling betrayed, deluded, and demoralized at 100%.

    See how fun that was!

    • ten says:

      Money laundering in ukraine is a controlled opposition meme. Whatever financial skullduggery is going on, goes on instrumentally or opportunistically. The game is world domination, destroying rivals, destroying russia. They talk about money laundering as a distraction.

    • Fidelis says:

      >I rate his chances of feeling betrayed, deluded, and demoralized at 100%.

      A remarkable phenomenon has people such as this hypothetical man double down on their delusions, running themselves even faster into whatever hell they can find. Instead of admitting to themselves they were tricked, made terrible decisions, and helped destroy something they loved or at least highly valued, they will pretend that any consequences were simply enemy action. Incredibly common, and incredibly saddening, and incredibly telling of human nature. Get a man to do one bad deed and set him up to do evil all his life as a psychological defense of the first act.

  37. A2 says:

    If my eyes don’t fail me it’s one line down, six to go before Tokmak. Possibly seven.

    • Archer Sterling says:

      Average IQ in the Ukraine is shockingly low: 89. They’re sending literal Slavic apes off to their deaths. The very few who survive won’t be endowed with the abstract thought to rub two of those concepts together. But I respect your optimism.

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