An extraordinarily good essay / book review. The authors make a habit of doing so, and are worth subscribing to.

The same way the most energy dense fuel (uranium) did.

The perennial problem of empires. Basically the same problem as the Russians and Americans. Everyone pretends there is no problem until stuff like the battle of the Java Sea or the SMO happens. The question here is whether the Chinese military purges here are what you expect - further cementing corruption - or actually rooting out the rot. I suppose we'll find out when Taiwan finally kicks off.

Rulemaking is already braindead, so it'll be hard to tell any difference.

It will of course fail and be a massive giveaway to currency speculators, as always happens. The Japanese get to enjoy another 1/3 of their living standard being lopped off.

Hiring connected people, as is always the case with the Just Us system. Good on him. Propublica, so as you might expect it's dripping with performative cruelty towards taxpayer scum.

The fun part is that this panopticon already exists, they just poke a million little holes in it for protected interests and will not stop doing so anytime soon.

Great article from a Canadian in the COVID days, guy is clear thinking on their politics in general. If you don't see politics as the competition of rent-seeking gangs, you are just a schmuck. His point that the only way to avoid becoming a failed state is finding some way to politically integrate the underworld into the elite is the most important part. It's why Mexico and Brazil remain basket cases versus the US which chooses amnesty and looking the other way every single time. Of course in the long run every state that chooses this collapses due to rent-seeking hoods pressing the "bust out" button on the fiscus, but the state is not a fundamentally stable organization.

“We believe the suit has no merit,” a bank spokesperson said. “JPMC does not close accounts for political or religious reasons. We do close accounts because they create legal or regulatory risk for the company.”

Fish: what's water?

Stockman on the moronic agitation against Greenland. It's so obviously retarded that it is hard to conclude the whole affair is anything but smokescreen for other nefarious activity.

Striker on the Venezuela situation. The bit about the Deltas that did the op themselves being a Drug cartel tells you essentially what's actually going on.

The primary threat here is that it's been used as an excuse to sieze Russian shipping. In one case (supposedly?) doing so when actively escorted by .ru warships, which if true, is an incredible humiliation that will have unpredictable consequences.

I've been considering throwing the fucking phone in the woods for some time now, and this will be the last straw that forces me onto SIP devices fully.

Certainly the sort of diplomatic coup I would expect in the escalating trade war. The Chinese need an advanced economy to partner with, and the Japanese need cheaper goods. DC bozos are truly delusional if they didn't think this was going to happen.
UPDATE: The Japanese spurned their hand, and instead saw an opportunity to reclaim Taiwan. They have subsequently issued them a Guarantee. Seeing all this, and the hostility from DC, the Koreans called up Beijing. Good news for Korean peace, but a Third Sino-Japanese war seems to be in the cards at some point now.

Same reason the Afghan war was a scam. The only people willing to be Uncle Sam's dogs are sociopathic drug dealing warlords. Which is a good description of a lot of local PDs, so I understand the authors' concern with this particular practice coming home sooner rather than later.

Peering into Goonworld’s darkest corners has convinced me that what we are dealing with here may well be a structural flaw of networked communication itself. Is there a timeline, a regulatory environment, in which the internet does not turn into a highly efficient manufacturer of niche suicide cults? I find it hard to imagine. In the case of the gooners, one can hope—and in more cheerful moments, I do think it’s possible—that sustained overexposure to porn will dampen the medium’s effectiveness as a numbing agent.

Just like "alternative" medicine, people wouldn't pursue substitutes if the genuine article worked. Meanwhile the endless drive to turn society into a prison continues, and all we can do is smear shit on the walls of the cell.

Echoing earlier sentiments by Tone Vays and others.

Promising to drive his chainsaw through the corrupt practices supporting this type of heist, he did the opposite: he followed the heist script to the letter, but with a chainsaw as its new logo.

Just a side note here: Fuentes refers to his “groypers” as “Elite Human Capital.”

We're at the "nationalization" stage, and will most likely proceed to crippling embargoes. The spiral of coercions on the way to war continues.

"Don't be evil" nigga your whole business model is defrauding ad buyers. This, but the whole economy, in fact. Probably half our output is just deadweight loss to these scams.

Gall's law pretty much describes the situation to a T

On how Vitalism has no life in it. Probably the most important essay of the year, if not in many years. Both the right and left are falling victim to this nihilism, and Christ is the only path out of tartarus for our society.

I understand why the young are so jaded and sick of no action, and see a return to Monke as the only way to get un-stuck. Gall's Law.

They go too far. They do not realize just how hard so many of us have worked just to get to the point they can even see the rot. There exist simple systems that work which aren't a return to Hades.

Forgive them lord, they do not know what they do.

Inflation, combined with regulatory flat-out preventing the buildout of Nuclear. Things will get better if the Nuclear push by the administration works.

Is to not engage in evil behavior. The cancer eating our society alive is all downstream of bank credit expansion. Non-Recourse loans are considered immoral usury by the church, because without locking up capital for the duration it is money creation ex nihilo. Who would Jesus dilute?

So many other problems are like this. It's "why we can't have nice things". R-Selected people doing civilization defection, as they are wont to do.

The only coherent argument people ever make against advocating everyone straighten up is simply that it won't happen. That one simply opens up to exploitation by bad actors through renunciation of sin. The church generally focuses on the reward in heaven, but this is thin gruel for many. It turns out Virtue does indeed have an earthly reward, and it's a very good one.

The reality is that the best reason to roll holy is because it is a world-beater social filter. If you want to know the Amish's secret to success it's in embracing this. Contrast the Quakers, who took the opposite approach and basically do not exist in any meaningful way anymore. Jesus can Exorcise not only demons, but clowns from your life if you but let him.

Voting with your feet, your wallet and the works of your hands is the only vote that can matter. If a people can not stand apart from society as christians are called to do, it cannot glimpse paradise. Because man is fallen, you must emulate the father above and cast out those who do not repent from the garden.

I of course refer to the "Jesus Question". Which is to say, all of society's problems stem from people's personal weakness, pride and moral cowardice.

The Jewish Question and the current moment in America

Ultimately all the criticism of Jewish misbehavior are nothing particularly special. There are large subsets of Arab, Persian, Indian and African society currently reputed to engage in at least as much, if not more civilization-defecting behaviors. The hasbara line about it is essentially that people are mad that the Ashkenazim are simply better at being bad.

This of course flies in the face of evidence. The Jewish ethnic mafiosi are simply the ultimate beneficiary of the US' first wave of mafia formation thanks to early 20th century mass immigration. In the period between the NOF regime in '24 and Hart-Cellar in '65, it is not shocking that a period of mafia consolidation occurred. Lacking a hose of fresh coethnic victims, the gangsters ate each other alive and Sidney Korshak and his ilk came out on top.

This was not so much due to any particular genius on their part; gangsters are not particularly well known for their IQ. Nor was it their particular clannishness; many other ethnic groups at the time were as much if not more so. Ultimately it was an accident of history. The wrong people, in the right place at the right time.

JQ guys do have a point when they mention that this is not exactly the first time Jewish ethnic mafiosi have cordycepted a state. Unfortunately, they learn the incorrect lesson.

The reason this keeps happening is because the state itself is pretty much purpose built to corrupt people, and attract the corrupted. The ring of power does not exactly attract people who are not on some level aspiring to be Nazgul. Sure, AIPAC and its extended network of crooks are bad hombres. But if it wasn't them it would have been someone else.

History is full of many, many more examples of ethnic mafias holding outsized influence on the state and culture at large that were not Jewish. In fact it is so common as to be the default situation. Perhaps we should ask the Jurchen question? I'm sure the Han are. The state is nearly always a minority ethnic mafia coalition squatting on various other groups.

Even when it isn't, if the situation persists long enough, ethnogenesis occurs! This is essentially the whole story of how India's caste system formed in the first place. Reintegrating the Yakuza into mainstream Japan has proven nearly impossible, and they largely formed out of the shattered wreck of the prewar regime. As they say, the past is a foreign country.

Any sufficiently large group of cultural aliens will always form an ethnic mafia. Absolute depravity and all that, yanno? If you don't like religious argumentation, the "Geeks, MOPs and Sociopaths" essay from Vox Day ought to get you there.

So long as a fresh supply of coethnics is available to exploit, they will grow in power and influence. Cut off the supply and they will integrate into broader society, for both good and ill. Mafias don't become a charity overnight.

I mean sure culture and ethnicity are a spook and entirely made up. This does not change the fact that if people don't have these they hallucinate them into being every single time. We are pattern matchers, we have instincts and we gotta put shit in the bucket; this is how our minds work. Without a predictive model the organism can do no more than act randomly.

It is impossible to build a system in which being r-selected at least some of the time is not advantageous. Societal defection and all other manner of sin is inevitable. What is not inevitable is your reaction.

There is only one ideology worth holding and it is this:
Reward good behavior, Punish bad behavior.
Failing to do this (or doing the opposite) at scale is the root of our dysfunction. When you understand that this is most of the meaning of "love thy neighbor as you love thyself", you become enlightened.

All the gibbering and ocean of spilled ink is failure to pull the plank from our own eyes. We absolutely have the government and society we deserve. Demonstrated preference rules everything around me.