Are We Witnessing the Start of Britain's Civil War?

Winston Marshall asks the question



Perhaps it would be in poor taste to advocate for a civil war in someone else's country, but Marshall is all British.  And surely he has a right to ask the question.
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Chinese Dereliction and Deflection

Stay out of China

If it was up to the Chinese organizers, this driver would be dead.



This video is about a GT series race in Shanghai, China, this past weekend.  For those like me who did not know, GT racing looks very much like Formula One.  Though Gemini tells me it is not quite as fast.  But even if you are not a fan of this sport, you must watch this video.  It is about Chinese culture more than car racing.

What is so important about this race situation is that, as an international event, the Chinese cannot hide or cover-up what happened.  So it offers a real time window into Chinese shortcut culture.

You cannot even walk down a sidewalk in China without worrying that you are going to die in a sinkhole or the building facade next to you is going to collapse or they added arsenic to your food as a preservative.

Without a doubt, this is what happened at the Wuhan lab.  Just imagine their hospitals, their nuclear plants, their aviation system, railroads, etc.  The Three Gorges Dam.  Can you just imagine these clowns in a war?

If the West would just stop supporting China, the country would collapse based on its own incompetence and failed leadership.  Stop investing in the country, stop buying their products, and do not even visit the place.  If your sport holds an event in China, that would make an excellent week to take off.  If you are involved in any auto racing, why would you ever consider going to China?

If you are involved in any activity that relies on the Chinese government or other institution for safety, why would you take such a risk?  Of course this means any activity whatsoever in China.  Any transportation, any food, any safety, any healthcare, etc.  That hotel your event booked?  Might be very pretty, but it is not built to proper building code standards.  They even have a term for it, tofu-dreg construction.

No one needs China; it is China that needs us.

The whole country is a scam.

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The Delusions of the Left

Even in 2026, people believe this...

From Reddit:




I saw this on Instapundit yesterday.

This is my personal view of how such a society would look.  He leaves out all the death camps.  I guarantee that this guy votes.  Think he is a one-off?  The DSA is taking over the Democrat party.  They all believe some version of this.

I think we are watching the end of democracy.  Surely democracy requires a certain level of education and critical thinking skills.  When that no longer exists, what will be the result?  I do not believe it will be communism, these people are far too stupid.  But it will be some sort of totalitarian government.  Perhaps, as in all historical cases, it will be some dictator or junta using communism, and its useful idiots, as a mask for their own unlimited power.

I will tell you something else that democracy requires:  Sobriety.  Yet how many people today are on some psychiatric prescription drug or even multiple drugs?  Should we really be allowing these doped-up zombies to vote?  Our drug dealers, er, I mean our physicians, could say, Sure, I will prescribe you an anti-anxiety drug (can we really call them medications?), but that requires that I report you to the Board of Elections for suspension from the voter rolls, until you come off of it.

Yes I realize this is pure fantasy, but it is an excellent thought experiment.  Who are our voters today?  Uneducated, unthinking, doped-up automatons.  Ask yourself, Am I one of these voters?

I think the easiest shortcut answer is:  Did you take the Covid so-called vaccine?  That is, did you participate in the global mRNA experiment?  If so, then yes, you are in this category.  God help us; around eighty percent of us did take the jab.  If you want to be somewhat more generous, it was only around fifty percent who took the jab willingly and enthusiastically.  That is, not under duress or mandate.  God knows we all ran into these folks at the supermarket.  How do you think they vote?

Now, let's return to our communist friend above.  Do we think he got the jab?  Well, his god, the state, told him it was the thing to do.  So we know he did.  But that is not all.  His god also told him that everyone needs the jab.  So he would have been tickled to death to round up unvaccinated people like my family and me, and put us in concentration camps.  No doubt, he would have viewed these as death camps (remember, it was a pandemic of the unvaccinated).  But what he really wanted was for two big goons in leather trench coats to hold us down while some Mengele-like figure jabbed us without consent.  Because who are we to defy his god?

This uneducated, unthinking, doped-up population that we have created over the last sixty years...

Cui bono?

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The Fall of the United Kingdom

What must happen for Britain to remain Great

Here we talk about the United Kingdom.  But understand that this could be Germany, France, Belgium, Italy, Spain, or Sweden.  Most of Europe is suffering from the same problem:  Islam in the West.  Or, Islam in dar al-harb (Arabic for house of war).  Yes, the Muslims consider this war.  The most generous translation of dar al-harb is area outside of Muslim control.  Okay fine, but what are the implications of that?

The famously well-mannered British people can only take so much.  How does this not lead to war or collapse, or both?

This first thing the British people must do is overthrow their government.  Peacefully Google, of course.  But it must start here.  In the global history of democracy, have we ever seen supposedly elected officials, and really the whole of government, ignore the will of their own citizens so completely.  Government officials must pay for what they have done to the nation.  Arrest them and try them for treason.

They may be "elected," but they clearly are not representing you.

Watch the above video.  The next scheduled election in the United Kingdom is August 2029.  That is three years from now.  I cannot imagine a scenario where Labor would call for early elections that they know full well that they will lose.  No, they will cling to power until the end.  Who they install as Prime Minister is of little consequence.  Starmer, Burnham, does it matter?  And remember, the Tories were no better.

So let me ask you:  Do you want to take the chance that your daughter will not be raped before then?  You must act today.  What choice do you have?

At the same time, ninety percent of the Muslims must be returned to their native countries.  Obviously, no new arrivals should be allowed.  If you find this idea troubling, I understand.  But these people are not immigrants in any traditional or good faith sense of the term.  No, they are invaders.  The British public must wake up to this fact.

For anyone who says, well that just cannot be done.  You are wrong, you just have to decide to do it.  Once the British have the will, it can be done.  If the British people do not develop the will, their nation will perish.

Are we not now watching the nation perish before our very eyes?

This is an existential decision.

But to be realistic, I do not believe that the British people will address this at all.  Sadly, most people in the United Kingdom do not seem to understand what is happening all around them.

We can explain it to them, but we cannot understand it for them.

Therefore, I think we will see the fall of Britain in my life time.  Maybe even before the 2029 elections.  If you are a British citizen, my sincere advice to you is to emigrate to the United States as soon as possible.  There really is no other place to go.

But wait, you say:  I want to stay and fight for my country.  Peacefully, of course.  But know this, you will have to start the fight yourself.  Because your Labor and Tory supporting neighbors have their heads in the sand.  And they will nervously jail you for even making comments like I have made here.  So you, yourself, must start the revolution.

Or leave.
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Part 3 of 3

Islam in the West

How Should the West Deal with Islam?

What is to be done about Islam?

In my previous piece, regarding Islam, I asked:  What is wrong with these people?  Surely, the natural follow-up question is:  What is to be done about Islam?

We will get into that, but first, if you will indulge me, I would like to talk about communism.  I am not a fan.  In fact, if a person has a preference for communism, well, I have no use for that person.  I know how he thinks and what he wants.  And therefore, I know who and what he is.  We are what we believe.

Now, what to do with the communists?  Live and let live is one of my primary ethical principles.  But I find the ideology so repulsive, that I want to stay away from them.  As far away as possible; I view them as dangerous.  They will not be included in my personal orbit because I know that they would gladly steal everything we and our families have in order to gain and maintain their own power over others.  And many of them will happily kill you if they view you as a threat to their quest for power.  Do not deny this; history proves it.

So yes, it is fair to say that I am anti-communist.

Now, does that make me a bigot?  Am I an anti-communist bigot?  Well yes, perhaps I am.  I could live with that label.

But we tend to limit our use of the term bigot to people who discriminate against other people because of their race or religion or sexual orientation, etc.  Right?  So we never really hear the term anti-communist bigot thrown around.  We do of course use bigot to describe someone who discriminates against Islam.  Like communism, Islam is an ideology, but it is an ideology with a religious component.  Therefore, we label people who are anti-Islam, bigots.  We will come back to this.

But here's the thing.  Most people want and need religion.  It is human nature; people desperately want and need something greater than themselves to believe in.  Islam fills this need for around two billion people.  But what about communism?  Most communists are famously atheistic.  We don't need your dusty religions.  We are scientific.  And all that.

While this might work for those in power at the top of the communist food chain, it does not work for the masses.  So communist leaders must find something else, I mean other than a supernatural god, for their people to believe in.  And of course, in all communist systems we have seen, that is the state.  People, place your ultimate faith, not in some mystical god, but rather in our proven state.  Let the state be your god.  And of course this also conveniently elevates the communist leaders to god-like figures.  At least in their own minds.

Here is the point:  Let us not pretend that the ideology of communism does not have a religious component.  And this is true for, not just the far left communists, but for the whole spectrum of leftist ideologues.

So people like me are clearly anti-communist bigots.  If you listen to how the people on the left talk about and think about the people on the right, this is very clear.  They think we are evil because we do not support their communist, socialist, progressive, or otherwise leftist agenda.  They do not use the term bigot; rather they call us racists and fascists and homophobes, etc.  But simply put, what they really mean is that we are evil bigots.  But the truth is, they pronounce us evil and call us names because we threaten their path to power.

Fine, call me whatever you like.  I dislike your ideology.  I am not going to live in a communist system, like the former USSR or China today.  If I am trapped in such a place, I will attempt to leave.  Further, if I live in a single-party, leftist state like California or a city like Portland, I will leave.  I will leave you to the consequences of your own authoritarian follies, and I will go seek a more free life elsewhere.

I do not want to live in an area controlled by leftists with leftist principles affecting every aspect of my life.  No thank you.

But what if I leave Portland, move to Florida or Tennessee, and the leftists follow me there?  Where they immediately do everything they can to install a leftist agenda there.  I will fight them.  Loudly and politically, and truly in every legal way I can.  I might even work to change the laws to give me even more means and methods to fight them.  Because I have seen the shithole they left in Portland.

And of course, they will call me names.  You fascist, etc.  So be it.  Because my goal is to return them to Portland or California or China, to live in their own self-proclaimed utopias.  Or, at the very least, to get them to leave me and my fellow citizens alone.

And if I have fled them, and they have followed, and have managed to install a far left system, by whatever means, then yes, it will be time for me to take up arms, and encourage others to join me.  This is of course the last resort, but it must always remain an option for a free people.  If you do not view this as an option, sooner or later, you will lose your freedom to some authoritarian ideology.  Be it the King of England, Soviet Russia, Communist China, Theocratic Iran, or whatever is going on in Europe today.

Note also, that I have no interest in changing hearts and minds.  No, I am not responsible for your demented and irrational beliefs.  Get away from me, you freak.  But that is just me and I know others will attempt to engage with the Left.  My own thinking is that there is no point to it.  Only time and consequences will instruct leftists in the errors of their thinking.  And even that most often fails.  We just had the wrong people.  Let's do it again with me in charge.  It is never about workers or equity or whatever else they may claim; it is always about power and nothing more.

So yes, I am a proud anti-communist bigot.

But, in case you think I forgot, this is a piece on Islam.

Well the first thing we can do about Islam, is to not live in an area controlled by Muslims.  So let us not move to Saudi Arabia or Morocco or Somalia.  I do not want to live under Islam, so why would I live in an Islamic country?  And if I was born there, I would attempt to leave.  Sound familiar?

But the more interesting and relevant question is:  What do we do when the Muslims leave their own Islamic utopias and come to us?  Like leftists fleeing California and Portland, how do we handle Muslims who want to come West?

Well the first response is also the most obvious.  Do not allow them to come.  If they are coming legally, fight this politically; change the laws if you must.  If they are coming illegally, use force to repel them.  If they make it to shore, round them up immediately and send them home.  Here is a policy best practice:  All claims of asylum must be filed and adjudicated in our embassies, in foreign countries.  No exceptions.

But new arrivals are the easy case.  What about the Muslims who are already here?  Well first, all illegal residents must be sent home.  Here I am not going to get into why?  See my previous piece on Muslim misbehavior.  It is obviously easy for illegal residents, but also any legal residents who have committed any crime whatsoever, send them home.

Here it is vital that we enforce and prosecute the crime of harassment.  Maybe even extend and strengthen the meaning of the term.  Harassment of non-Muslims seems to be a favorite tactic of Muslims once they reach a certain percentage of the population.  Stop this and send them home.

What about legal residents who have not committed any crime?  Well as with communists, the goal should be to have them leave the rest of us alone.  Since Islam is a proselytizing ideology, they must be forced to assimilate.  Outlaw face coverings, end the adhan, tighten rules around religious schools.  You also must tinker with the welfare state.  Here is a best practice example:  No transfer payments of any kind will be made to anyone who has not been a naturalized citizen for at least ten years.  Or better yet:  Naturalized citizens simply do not qualify for any transfer payments, period.  So no income or rent payments.  No hotels.

We also must revisit religious accommodation.  You want to pray five times a day?  Okay fine, but you cannot work here because you cannot meet our schedule.  No sorry, you cannot pray in a public street or walkway.  Try that and you will be arrested immediately, and subject to deportation.  You want three families with eight wives and twelve children to live here?  No sorry, this apartment is only for up to four residents.  And by the way, lease fraud is a crime.  No, you may not wash your feet at the airport, nor in the restaurant men's room sink.  Do so and you will be asked to leave.  Do not leave and you will be charged with criminal trespass.  And deported.

How about this:  Your third wife is pregnant?  Well, national health insurance only pays for first wife pregnancies.  Or how about simply:  It is illegal to have more than one wife, officially registered or not.  Remember, any crime, so also subject to deportation.  And while we are on marriage, institute DNA tests in order to obtain a marriage license.  No, you may not marry your cousin.  If that is something important to you, go home.  If they marry in their home country, even if they present a marriage certificate, a DNA test will be necessary for our country to recognize the marriage.  It is easy to see how these actions could become invasive.  But if you want to live here, this is what you must do.  Or you could just go home.

I am not advocating to make it harder for Muslims to live amongst us, I only insist that they follow the same rules as the rest of us.  Or go home.  If you insist on living amongst us, fine.  But keep your seventh-century ideas to yourself.  Or again, go home.  And be sure to take all of your wives.

So why start this discussion with communism?  Here, we have two authoritarian ideologies with religious components.  One may not be widely discussed, but it is there.  Why is it okay to be anti-communist, but not anti-Islam?  Free people should treat both ideologies the same.  Do not allow either to name call you into an authoritarian society.  That is a game they both play.

They will inevitably call us Islamophobic.  So be it.  Islamophobia is a masterpiece of propaganda.  It is the same thing as when the leftists call us racist or fascist.  But it only has power if we let it have power.  So do not.

But this cannot be the end of this discussion.  Because one of the biggest problems that we in the West have is that our elites and their minions in government want open borders.  So not only do we have to resist the Muslim invaders, we also have to resist our own leaders who open the doors for the invaders and give them privileges that not even native born citizens have.  This is the subject of the next piece in this series, using the example of the United Kingdom.

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Part 2 of 3

Islam in the West

Muslim Misbehavior

What is wrong with these people?

If this is how they behave in Mecca, just imagine how they behave in your city.

Muslim culture often and famously segregates the sexes.  Yet during the Hajj, both Tawaf (circumambulation of the Kaaba) and Istilam (touching the Black Stone at the southeast corner of the Kaaba) are not segregated.  One wonders why?

And if you watch the above video, surely the question that comes to mind is:  What is wrong with these people?

Whatever the answer may be, Google is not going to like an open and honest discussion of this topic on this platform.  They already exclude this website from Google Search.  I can only hope they do not remove this present discussion completely.  The Youtuber, Harris Sultan, an ex-Muslim, now atheist, comes as close to this question as I think we are likely to get.  But let us add some observations.

If you turn a supposedly sacred religious ritual into an opportunity to grope the unknown Muslim women around you, and it is not just you, but a meaningful percentage of your fellow Muslim men, engaging in this same opportunistic behavior, what is that?  When these same men reach London and Paris and Berlin, is there any chance that they do not take the opportunity to engage in the same behavior with the non-Muslim, scantily clad, white women and girls?

In Mecca, in the Great Mosque, it is only groping because of the crowded festivities around the Kaaba; given the opportunity, these men would gleefully rape the women.  We know this because Saudi taxi drivers will take lone female passengers into the desert and rape them.  In fact, husbands are instructed to enter the taxi first, so the driver cannot simply drive off with the wife.  They do this with impunity because the women of course lack the four male witnesses that Islam so reasonably demands to prove a charge of rape.

It would be farcical if it were not reality.  These men are perverted animals; nothing more.  And they should be treated as such.  By the way, how many participants in the British so-called grooming, but really rape, gangs, were taxi drivers?

Muslim men and Islam generally suffer from a lack of confidence.  We see this lack of confidence in Islam's history, its culture, its (lack of) accomplishments, and ultimately, in its doctrine.  Only an ideology that truly lacks confidence and belief in itself would mandate death for apostasy.  Or any punishment really.  There are some American cults and minor religions, like Jehovah's Witnesses, that practice shunning.  But death is a different order entirely.  The threat of death acts to contain and deter any and all epistemic anxiety.

But I think there is an additional source of this doubt.  Muslims view Muhammad as perfect, the ultimate human model of moral and ethical conduct.  Yet Muhammad was an illiterate bedouin warlord, pedophile, and polygamist, who conquered, enslaved, and raped his way through Arabia and beyond.

My guess is, deep down, Muslims know this, and cannot reconcile their perfect man model from instinctive right and wrong.  Are we to believe that there is any man, anywhere who does not know that rape is wrong?  Even without the ridiculous four male witness requirement?  Of course not and it must eat at his soul.  Even if a man does not engage in it himself, he knows that his religion allows, tolerates, and/or excuses such behavior.  So a man can either follow his questionable perfect example, or live with the heart of an apostate.  This must really weigh on a man, and erode his belief system and his confidence in who and what he is.

Might he not ask:  Am I a man?  I wonder if he would like the answer.  It is interesting to consider a man who questions this:  Would he not feel compelled to do something to prove his manhood?  And what if he is surrounded by other men who feel similarly?  How would the group of them behave?  All trying to prove their manhood to themselves and others.

So maybe he chooses to not think about it.  But would that not erode one's confidence even more?  Because only a coward would choose to not think about it.  Intellectual honesty, even if it is only internal to a man's heart and mind, to his soul, requires bravery that is extremely rare, and basically nonexistent in the Muslim world.

So let's answer his question:  Is he a man?  Not in any meaningful sense of the word.  Islam is full of these creatures; I do not really know what to call them.  They have been intellectually castrated, but it is deeper than that.  They have castrated souls.  That does not make them soulless, rather their souls have been desecrated.  Intellectual eunuchs with desecrated souls.  I do not think there is a word for that.  But as such, they are filled with the cowardice, rage, intolerance, lust, and opportunism, that we all clearly see in Muslim men.  There must also be deeper feelings of emasculation, impotence, humiliation, shame, and fear, lurking just behind his assertive and forceful facade.  How would such a creature behave?

Regardless of what words we use to describe these broken souls, they attempt to hide behind a cultural bravado that we can all see through.  The only reason they get away with this masquerade is that too many of our self-proclaimed humanitarians indulge them as equal to us.  They are not.  In reality they are unthinking brutes, who should be separated from our civil society by fencing them within their countries of origin.  Let them deal with each other far away from the thoughtful and productive world.  We will have more on this in Part Two, which follows.

Which brings us back to Harris Sultan, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Salman Rushdie, Ibn Warraq, Wafa Sultan, Taslima Nasrin, Sarah Haider, Maryam Namazie, and other former Muslims we may encounter.  These apostates teach us that the only truly confident and intellectually free Muslims are ex-Muslims.  The remaining Muslims are unthinking cowards, some of whom will grope and rape whenever the opportunity presents, while the rest, all of the rest of them, are completely silent about it.

Anyway, these are my thoughts on the original question:  What is wrong with these people?  There may be additional issues, but this is what I see.

Such good and devout people.  Allahu akbar.

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Part 1 of 3

Islam in the West

Why Are Gay Men Losing Support?

Stop the show

The backdrop, and the backstop, for today's gay community seems to be gay marriage.  We constantly hear, Oh they want to revoke our right to be married.  So we must support this and that, etc.  But what I see is married gay men who do not seem to really want to be married.  Oh they want the right to marry, they just do not want to act the part.

Here is a question:  What percentage of married gay men are in these so-called open marriages?  It does not matter if you are straight or gay, an open marriage is not a marriage.  If you want to have sex with a random and continuous parade of other people, stop pretending to be married.  It is MINO, Marriage In Name Only.  The reported statistics and rationales are revealing; and my guess is that these escapades are severely underreported among gay men.  The boys are only playing house.

Americans grudgingly accepted gay men's redefinition of marriage.  But now they are making a mockery of it.  Fine boys; this hurts no one more than yourselves.  Surely, this alone, costs your community huge public support.  I also notice that this does not seem to be a thing among the lesbians.  We simply must acknowledge the rampant promiscuity among some unknowable, but significant percentage of gay men.  This is just a fact.

If gay men want to turn around the accelerating decline in their public support, they must separate from their more promiscuous enthusiasts, separate the LGB from the alphabet crazies, and also separate from what Amir calls the gay vibe.  I call it the gay show.  Because I do not think it is real; it is a show.  This is where and why ordinary people reach gay fatigue.  We are tired to death of the show.  You say you are normal, so act normal.  Like Amir says towards the end of his video, most people do not mind gay folks, we just want normal gays, without the show.  He worries that the show might cost him his rights as a normal gay man.  Yeah, I can see that.

Let me add something else about the show and the fatigue.  Perhaps it is only my perception, but this is what I have noticed increasingly in the last few years.  Some gay men, not all, but a noticeable number, are very proud of their newly acquired right to be their true selves.  And if other people do not like it, well, there is nothing they can do about it.

So we get:  Here I am, sharing your spaces, in all my flamboyant fabulousness.  They flaunt it for no other reason than they can; it is an entitlement.  What I think is happening is that they have this subversive desire to throw it in our faces; and so they proudly play up the show.  Oh they couch it within their inflated effeminate demeanor, but make no mistake, it is an in your face sort of attitude.

If you pay close attention, you can see it.  I have received knowing looks, even smirks, from gay men, who have noticed me observing them.  Yes perhaps, they think I am exactly the audience they want to reach with their power play show.  But I think it is more than that.  They seem to know, that I know, that it is in fact, a show.  Maybe I am reading too much into it, but watch closely and decide for yourself.

I think ordinary people, gay marriage supporting people, just hate the newly exaggerated show.  We are tired of it.  And the whole gay community will suffer for it.

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Return to Sanity with Project Gutenberg

More thoughtful and compelling than social media

Michael Hart founded Project Gutenberg in 1971.  The first document he added was The Declaration of Independence, in December of 1971.  It remains book Number One on the site.  Since then, he and his volunteers have added 79,245 additional titles (as of today).  And since the birth of the internet, the project has made all of these titles accessible to everyone.  So if you want to read John Milton's Paradise Lost, you can find it there, in full, for free.  It is book Number 20, and has been available since 1991.

It was not until 1989 that Hart had ten documents on the service.  Book Number 10 is the King James Version of the Bible.  An early novel was Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Book 11, added in 2008.  Other early additions include Moby Dick, Peter Pan, Aesop's Fables, and Thomas Hardy's Far From the Madding Crowd and Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter.

You get the idea.  Classics, and long out of copyright.  I am not sure why the book numbers do not exactly line up chronologically.  But if I had to guess I would say that early on, the book numbers were assigned before the transcription was undertaken, or finished anyway.

In any case, I guess I have known about Project Gutenberg almost as long as I have known that the internet was a thing.  But for me, it was a bit of a novelty.  I confess, I am not the biggest reader of classic literature.  But if I ever took a hankering to read Charles Dickens' Bleak House, I knew where to find it.

And this went on for many years, really until recently.  You see, I am more of a nonfiction reader, which tends to be recently-published and very much under copyright.  And thus, not available on Project Gutenberg.  On the other hand, I do enjoy a good mystery.  And what has happened over the last twenty years is that many of the early twentieth century mystery classics have fallen out of copyright and entered the public domain.  That means Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, Edgar Wallace, etc.  You can now find early works by all of these authors on Project Gutenberg.

You can also find works by P. G. Wodehouse, G. K. Chesterton, E. M. Forster, Ellery Queen, Margery Allingham, John Buchan, and Arthur Conan Doyle.

As an aside, I am struck by how many authors used their initials in the early twentieth century.  Others include H. P. Lovecraft, T. S. Eliot, C. S. Lewis, D. H. Lawrence, A. A. Milne, H. G. Wells, J. M. Barrie, L. M. Montgomery, H. L. Mencken, and A. E. Housman.  In that day, I can understand why female writers might have wished to hide their sex behind their initials.  But for the men?  I guess even creative types can fall prey to fashionable trends.  Anyway, find all of these on Project Gutenberg.

It is worth noting that just because a work has entered the public domain does not mean that it will automatically be added to Project Gutenberg.  I am not at all sure how they choose their additions, but I am pretty sure that one of their volunteers somewhere must be interested in the work enough to transcribe it.  They do not appear to use scans...as of yet.

So far there are seventeen works by Agatha Christie.  She published eighty books, so there are many to follow as they enter the public domain.  I have gone back and read a few of these, and not surprisingly, they hold up well.

Before we leave Project Gutenberg, I would like to point out the number of classic economics texts available on the site.  Works by Adam Smith, Thorstein Veblen, Charles Mackay, John Stuart Mill, John Maynard Keynes, Frédéric Bastiat, and T. R. Malthus, among many others.  There are also market classics like the Edwin Lefevre classic Reminiscences of a Stock Operator, Walter Bagehot's Lombard Street, and Henry Clews' Fifty Years in Wall Street.

Of course, these writers are in my area of interest, but I think it is fair to say that you can find the classic works in all fields on the site.  For instance, here is Fannie Farmer's Cook Book (1910 version; revised from the original 1896 version).  Still a worthy addition for any kitchen.

So if you find yourself endlessly scrolling social media, let me point you to this alternative.  I use the Apple Books app, both on my Mac and iPhone.  It is almost as easy to use as the Kindle software (I do not have a Kindle device), including, vitally, remembering where you are in any particular volume across devices.

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Tattoo Nose Ring Marketing

Have marketers been captured by their own behavior?

Vivaia is a Chinese ladies' shoe brand.  And the below image is a screenshot from a video ad I captured on Youtube.  The shoes look fine and I have no doubt they are affordable, and maybe even a good deal.

But here, could we just focus on the marketing itself.  Rather than use a beautiful young model, this is obviously meant to appear to be just an ordinary consumer talking about these shoes in her kitchen.  Right?  We see this a lot today.  So that is not very interesting.

What I do find interesting is that the company has decided to use a tatted-up lady with a nose ring.  Which to me signals that the company believes their core consumer audience are tatted-up ladies with nose rings.  Right?  Because God knows if you are trying to appeal to ladies with no tats and no nose ring, the last thing you are going to do is use a tatted-up lady with a nose ring.  Continues below....



So either the Chinese company believes this to be the right strategy because this look truly represents their audience, or the company believes this to be the right strategy because they only believe that this look represents their audience.  That is, they have either read their market correctly or they only think they have.

And look at the age of this presenter.  These shoes are clearly marketed to middle-aged ladies.  So here is my question, how many middle-aged women look like that?  And if you were to do a poll or focus group, how many would approve of the tats & nose ring mien?

Really, I am just wondering.  But what really scares me is that maybe the Chinese company is correct.  And this ad campaign is not as stupid as it looks to me.

For context, here is a wider screenshot:

Now, I would be remiss if I did not point out that if you go to the Vivaia website, there is not a tattoo in sight, much less any nose rings.  It is an absolutely beautiful site, that markets ladies' shoes with beautiful young models.  Just as one would expect.

This means, that the video ad that I have seen on at least five separate occasions across at least three different Youtube channels, is directed at a broad Youtube audience.  This would make sense if I was watching Youtube videos that appeal to tatted-up ladies with nose rings.  And I just don't think that is the case.  Quite the opposite in fact.

So if the target market does not find this appealing, why are the marketers doing this?  Could it be that the marketing people themselves are tatted-up ladies with nose rings?  And they assume this is a more common practice than reality supports?  Does it become sort of a marketer's projection or self-delusion?

But it gets worse.  In researching this piece, I visited the Vivaia website.  I found their shoes to be appealing.  The kind of thing my wife might purchase.  So the tatted-up lady with the nose ring not only misses the target market, but intentionally or not, she is actively working to reduce it.  Why are they doing this?  I need Rory Sutherland to explain it to me.

It is bewildering.

Let me just end by saying that I did find the TikTok influencer they are using for this ad.  But the how does not explain the why.

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Boghossian and Weinstein on Arday and Related Topics

Burn it all down

The irony, as these two point out, is that Jason Arday could be the singular individual who could save the academy.  Sadly, he will choose not to do so.

Boghossian has a non-profit which encourages people to stop donating to their own alma mater.  Seems long overdue.  I like Weinstein's idea:  Send ten percent of whatever you would have otherwise donated, to your alma mater, to Boghossian's National Progress Alliance.  Surely, they will make better use of it than Harvard, Stanford, Duke, Michigan, Wake Forest, UNC, and the various other religious institutions and their Bolshevik priests, formerly known as academia.  Harvard Law Professor Adrian Vermeule calls these institutions progressive seminaries.  He adds:  Does anyone not realize what they are?  Quite so.

Update, 15 August 2026

Jason Arday was found dead yesterday, Friday, 14 August 2026.  According to police, his death was unexpected, but not suspicious.  He was 41.  Reeks of suicide, and if that turns out to be true, I will blame Cambridge University and all of the academics that helped put Arday into this position.

Exit questions:  Are we to believe that Jason Arday was a one-of-a-kind phenomenon?  Or, if we were to look, would we find similar frauds all across academia?  While I am inclined to believe that no one in academia is going to look, it is worth remembering that it was a fellow academic that brought Arday's fictions to light.  Much to the chagrin of the academic establishment.  Moving forward, let's hope this becomes a cottage industry in academic quarters.

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