We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.

Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]

Samizdata quote of the day – the Canary Wharf Black: from Biafra to Deloitte

The BLM lobby is still dominated by Afro-Caribbeans. More Africans have sympathies with the Conservative Party than Afro-Caribbeans (even if they don’t necessarily vote for them) — just look at Kemi Badenoch. Now, like most Pimlico Journal readers, I have no time at all for her. However, she does have the potential to help obliterate any future prospect of reparations. All she would need to do is ask that Nigeria, Benin, Ghana, Somalia, and Saudi Arabia foot half the bill for reparations, and black solidarity would immediately dissipate. Very suddenly, the Fulani will see themselves as tanned Tuaregs; the Somali as Cushitic; and Leroy from Montego Bay will forgo his chicken shop Shahada because Moroccan poon tang just isn’t worth that sort of money. Once you distract them from the easy punching bag that is the white man, they can start fighting each other; meritocracy sorts the rest out.

Pimlico Journal

Samzidata quote of the day – get woke, go broke

Whether Jaguar’s new electric car flops as a result of all this remains to be seen. It would hardly be surprising if Jaguar’s traditional audience – the people who actually buy its cars – give up on the company in response to all this insufferable virtue-signalling. After bending the knee so readily to the trans cause, that would be the least Jaguar deserves.

Malcolm Clark

Samizdata quote of the day – macroeconomic management doesn’t work

Macroeconomic management doesn’t work because the data available to do detailed macroeconomic management is shit. Therefore let’s not try doing detailed macroeconomic management. Get the basics right, the incentives, markets, then leave be.

Of course, this then leaves a paucity of jobs for economists but then as I’m not one of them why would I give that proverbial?

Tim Worstall

Samizdata quote of the day – the meltdowns are a wonder to behold

The meltdown of the centrists is a wonder to behold. This is America’s ‘darkest dawn’, cried rhyming-slang-in-waiting, Ian Dunt. Emily Maitlis yelped on live TV that Trump is ‘batshit’, which is rich from someone who is essentially a Halloween version of Princess Diana. The Guardian put out a news notification that said, ‘Trump becomes the first convicted criminal to win the White House’. This really is all they have left, isn’t it? Sly asides to titillate depressed posh people on X? Smug jokes aimed at tempting suicidal liberals off the ledge? Utterly incapable of understanding Joe Public – both here and in the US – the Guardian opts to become the court jester of the cunterati instead.

Brendan O’Neill is in rip-roaring form 😀

Replay! SpaceX launches Starship on 5th flight

I assume many of you will have seen this but just in case you haven’t…

From the good people of VideoFromSpace. Launch is at 30:00…

Am I Racist?

This is hilarious 😀

Samizdata quote of the day – socialists always seek to destroy civil society

Leftists weaponise these so-called ‘local identities’ by trying to emphasise their supposed distance from other ‘local identities’ in England. In the process of doing this, they (if only tacitly) also try to decrease the distance of these ‘local identities’, and indeed Britain as a whole, from genuinely foreign cultures: ‘a Cockney, a Brummie, and a Pakistani; all totally unique, but all Very British in their own way.’ An alternative, though slightly different, formulation of this strategy can be found in the attempt by left-wing Welsh nationalists to completely distance ‘Welsh’ from ‘English’, while readily accepting people into ‘Welshness’, no questions asked, with zero connection — ancestral or otherwise — to the British Isles as a whole. It is telling that one of the favourite pastimes of these socialist deviants is to have ethnic minorities put on a performance for them, getting them to memorise a few words of their funny language, entertaining the Welshmen while also stroking their egos. This is quite obviously unethical behaviour, although no-one has called them out for it yet.

Pimlico Journal

Samizdata quote of the day – But this is the Islamic Reformation

This is why the Whiggish calls you used to hear that ‘Islam needs a reformation’ in response to Al Qaeda, Hamas, ISIS, Taliban etc were very misinformed.

Al Qaeda and co are the Islamic reformation.

– Commenter Martin

Samizdata quote of the day – important but not important

And yet, once the Ukrainians ask for long-range fires, all of a sudden their importance is downgraded and minimized. There was the widely-discussed piece in Foreign Affairs by Stephen Biddle which recently kick-started this argument—but it was an argument greatly amplified by Defense Secretary Austin a few days ago.

During the latest Ramstein meeting of Ukraine’s partners in Germany Austin basically said long-range fires were not that important. As it was relayed by PBS:

After the talks, Austin pushed back on the idea that long-range strikes would be a game-changer.

“I don’t believe one capability is going to be decisive and I stand by that comment,” Austin said. The Ukrainians have other means to strike long-range targets, he said.

Its hard to know what to make of that extraordinary claim. Is he saying that the US Army’s number 1 priority for modernization is not nearly that important? That would be bold of him—but more than likely he is desperately searching around for an argument because he knows just how important long-range fires are in war.

Phillips P. OBrien (£)

Samizdata quote of the day – why did Zuckerberg choose now to confess?

Consider Mark Zuckerberg’s revelation and its implications for our understanding of the last four years, and what it means for the future.

On many subjects important to public life today, vast numbers of people know the truth, and yet the official channels of information sharing are reluctant to admit it. The Fed admits no fault in inflation and neither do most members of Congress. The food companies don’t admit the harm of the mainstream American diet. The pharmaceutical companies are loath to admit any injury. Media companies deny any bias. So on it goes.

And yet everyone else does know, already and more and more so.

This is why the admission of Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg was so startling. It’s not what he admitted. We already knew what he revealed. What’s new is that he admitted it. We are simply used to living in a world swimming in lies. It rattles us when a major figure tells us what is true or even partially or slightly true. We almost cannot believe it, and we wonder what the motivation might be.

Jeffrey Tucker

Samizdata quote of the day – exhume William Shakespeare

“The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.”

Have I or have I not done anything different here? I don’t suppose they will be exhuming William Shakespeare any time soon, but what she said was no worse than this. It was words, nothing more. We are now firmly in an authoritarian police state. A substantial custodial sentence for hurty words is the kind of thing we thought was confined to the old Soviet Union, but it looks as if the ghost of that monstrosity is alive and well in modern Britain.

Longrider

Entryism Wars

In the comments of Disparu’s video responding to a journalist on the subject of the failure of the Star Wars TV series The Acolyte, commentariopolitico1014 writes:

These people act as if they purchased a famous and profitable steak house chain, show up wearing “Beef is Murder’ t-shirts, change the menu to vegan, and now are complaining that all customers are gone and leaving 1/2 stars!

Williamlitsch5506 replies:

I think that this is exactly what they are doing, on purpose. A vegan doesn’t buy a steakhouse by accident. They do it with the intent to punish and admonish steak eaters. They do it because they don’t want to build a vegan restaurant accross the street and compete for who has the best lifestyle. They want to top-down smash the competition and other lifestyles using money and power. They don’t want to compete in the marketplace of ideas. They don’t want to tolerate the existence of alternative lifestyles. They have high religiosity, belong to a powerful cult, and have no principled opposition to authoritarianism. They believe they are better than you, but know they can’t compete.

All institutions are vulnerable to this. In entertainment, at least, market forces limit it. In open source software, projects can be forked. In politics, the threat is far more subtle and difficult to defend against.