Month: June 2025
The ZMan has Died
Probably the most eloquent and witty voice on the Dissident Right is no more. Reports on X by authoritative sources say that the ZMan passed away last night of “natural causes.”
Of course, his most skeptical fans will wonder if the cause was completely natural. But I will certainly miss his writing and podcasts. He had one of the greatest speaking voices on the conservative side of the aisle (or “great divide” as he called it). And his knowledge of political and sociological affairs was impressive.
Although I differed from him on some of the conclusions he drew from his facts I had to admit he was well versed on the mechanisms that had created the dysfunction that he reported on in his posts.
He has a legion of devoted readers who commented religiously on his site and who will be hard pressed to find a new home to replace his haven.
Rest in peace ZMan.
Update:
Comment by ArthurinCali:
Sad news, especially how sudden it was. Zman was one of the inspirations to me to try my hand at writing. His analysis and podcast will be greatly missed by many of us.
You Have to Acknowledge the Losses
I’ll be travelling Saturday and Sunday. I’ve got a meeting with the boys up in northern New England. I’m driving up Saturday morning and driving home Sunday late morning. Then I have two long days at work Monday and Tuesday. So, posts will be on a best-efforts basis.
But my life has always been (from my point of view) on a best-efforts basis. None of us has much (if any) control over the vicissitudes of life. The weather, our health, the actions of family, friends and especially enemies and total strangers intervene to make the best laid plans of mice and men playthings for the gods.
So, all that is true. But working our way through all of the twists and turns of life is infinitely compelling. Even if we have a mundane, even boring week we hear about someone’s disaster, someone’s tragedy. Someone sentenced to death, someone struck down with awful injury. And when these are good friends; good people, you’re stunned for a second, “How could that be? I just saw him. He was solid and animated; busy! How could he be dead or dying?” But very soon he’s gone. Pretty soon you struggle to remember details of recent visits. People fade out of our lives.
Well, it’s a matter of bandwidth. I can only concentrate my mind on a very few things at a time. So, the periphery has to stay there at the edge. If someone I haven’t seen in almost exactly fifty years dies, even tragically, only a moment can be spared to acknowledge the loss. You can only hope that the last fifty years were packed with significance and striving for some lasting impact on the people around him.
I guess what’s important for me is to reflect on whether I have achieved any lasting impact on those around me. I know of at least one affirmative. I have impacted Camera Girl in a lasting way. She has been irritated by me for fifty years now. That’s got to be significant to her! To a lesser extent I’ve left some impact on my children and an even more tenuous impact on their children. I’ve had friends and family in my life. That counts for something.
Well, I guess it’s the nature of life that as we age, we begin to anticipate death. How will it intersect with life? How much warning will there be? I’ve known some people who were terrified of it. I’ve known others who were serenely calm about it. I remember many years ago as a teenager I was working in a hospital and I asked a middle-aged man why he was in the hospital. He smiled at me and said, “I’ve got a touch of the C.” I looked at his chart later and he had metastatic bone cancer. He died a day later. But he took it all in stride. So, there is a continuum of human attitude toward mortality.
Recent events around me have got me thinking of such things. I used to say that the break even point in life is fifty. If you were allowed fifty years of healthy life then you couldn’t rail against fate as having played you dirty. If you didn’t dawdle fifty would allow you to raise a family and leave a mark on the world. Of course, as you get older you can see how sixty and seventy enhance the satisfaction of seeing the future come to fruition. But the fifty number still makes sense to me as a break-even point.
Okay, enough maudlin sentiment. Mortality is a fact of life. But every once in a while, something around you catches your attention and you realize that the stage is changing. Faces appear and then disappear. You have to acknowledge the losses.
27JUN2025 – Photo of the Day
27JUN2025 – Quote of the Day
It is better to learn from the mistakes of others than that others should learn from you.
Plautus
Dunwich Slips Into Permanent Dumb
Dunwich is a strange place. Although most humans here appear to be sentient, they’re not. Many of them continue to breath and move and even talk without even the tiniest shred of gray matter.
First Selectman Cthulhu called a town meeting last night and tried to explain why they should finally vote to accept the 2025/2026 budget during this third referendum. But regardless of how many citizens he ate, they would not agree to a budget. Finally after he was developing acid reflux, he asked them why they would not agree. Their spokeswoman was a vapid forty-something who stood her ground and said, “Why do we need a budget?”
Cthulhu was so flabbergasted by this lack of understanding that he dropped the six Whatleys he was about to swallow and just broke down and wept. Finally he composed himself and just walked off right through the south wall of town hall and hasn’t been seen since.
In his absence I took it upon myself to explain to this rube just how government worked. I explained that a budget allowed us a framework for stealing the public’s money and also provide a basis for increasing this theft on a yearly basis. This actually worked and she thanked me for the clarity of my explanation.
Seriously, this question was actually raised at a town meeting, “Why do we need a budget?” I think the millennials have reached that point where maintaining a viable civilization is very doubtful
26JUN2025 – Photo of the Day
26JUN2025 – Quote of the Day
No blessing lasts forever.
Plautus
Moon Mining
This article claims that enough asteroids have struck the moon over time that inevitably there are enough deposits of valuable metals to make mining the Moon worthwhile:
“There might be more than $1 trillion worth of platinum deposits on the moon, according to a paper published in the journal Planetary and Space Science. Of the 1.3 million craters on the moon with a diameter greater than one kilometer, “nearly 6,500 were made by asteroids containing commercial quantities of platinum,” said New Scientist. This “highlights the potential viability and profitability of lunar mining endeavors compared to mining asteroids in orbit,” said the paper.”
This kind of jibes with my recent post where I said a Moon base is a more realistic goal than a manned trip to Mars. And Now I see why.
My future will be as a uranium miner on the Moon. I will start out with uranium and then branch out into gold and platinum. Eventually I may be able to concentrate completely on tantalum, my favorite metal.
But seriously, I think there is a lot more likelihood of the Moon becoming economically useful to humans than Mars. The difference in distance alone makes Mars almost impossibly difficult for manned flights.
The Moon on the other hand was reached more than fifty five years ago by men whose technological capabilities were rudimentary compared to what we have at our disposal today. Imagine what improvements modern computing power and automation could do to make reaching and working on the Moon safer and easier.
But most important we must go to the Moon because Mt Rushmore is too small and crowded for this:
25JUN2025 – Quote of the Day
No guest is so welcome in a friend’s house that he will not become a nuisance after three days.
Plautus