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Reading Paper Books


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2021 Jun 27, 8:34pm   21,531 views  221 comments

by Patrick   ➕follow (55)   💰tip   ignore  

In my early retirement, I've decided to read at least an hour a night in real paper books. So far, I've read:

- my dad's old college English book (always felt I needed to improve my grammar)
- Candide by Voltaire
- Beyond Good and Evil by Nietzsche
- The Politics by Aristotle

Now I'm reading The Prince by Machiavelli, and really enjoying it. One tip: before invading, look for minorities who will help you because they resent the traditional rulers in their own country. They may in fact invite you in to help them overthrow their own country. This makes me think that the Chinese have read The Prince and are using BLM, gays, and militant feminism as allies in their fight against America.

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102   mell   2021 Sep 5, 9:41pm  

Perfectly sums up the current situation
103   GesslersHut   2021 Sep 6, 2:56am  

Hi Patrick,
In case you want to read something in German, Eugen Richter, a German politician wrote 1890 a dystopian novel. "Zukunftsbilder des Sozialismus"
a warning against state control and any kind of Socialsm. Maybe Germans should have read it instead of Mein K(r)ampf (Krampf is also a slang word for nonsense). Richter completely nailed any kind of socialistic nightmare which would happen in the 20th century, people thought he was crazy
Here is the English translation of Richters book:
https://mises-media.s3.amazonaws.com/Pictures%20of%20the%20Socialistic%20Future_Vol_2_2.pdf
104   AmericanKulak   2021 Sep 11, 6:58pm  

Reading the great book "Rubicon" by Holland.

He properly starts it with Marius vs. Sulla, most accounts start with the Cataline Conspiracy or the Triumverate. Sulla was the first revolutionary - in the sense he came to power by force rather than first a Senate nomination - Dictator.

Anyway, here's what the Romans believed was at threat during the last century of the Republic:

* Women were naturally sensual and given to pleasure first - hence their omission from all leadership.
* High Cuisine was decadent, too much luxury foods were coming to Rome.
* Dandyism was decadent. Plain dress was right and proper; too much oriental fashion was coming to Rome.
* There were too many passive, feminine males.
* There were too many "Publicans" - or Corporate Bosses and Bankers, squeezing and corrupting the system.
105   Ceffer   2021 Sep 11, 7:04pm  

MisdemeanorRebellionNoCoupForYou says
Reading the great book "Rubicon" by Holland.


LOL! Just substitute 'MKULTRA' for the lead poisoning form the utensils of the Roman elite, and you can see where things headed.
106   Patrick   2021 Sep 11, 11:03pm  

I ran across an interesting statement by Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations to the effect that the risk-adjusted returns of stock and the general interest rate must necessarily be approximately equal. If, say, there were more money to be made in stock than in lending, people would borrow to invest in stock, driving up the price of stock (and thus lowering its return in the future) and creating demand for loans, which would drive up interest rates. And this would continue until the two kinds of returns equalized.

But at the present, there is clearly much more money to be made in stock than in lending. So you would think that people would borrow to invest in the stock market.

Hmmm, maybe they are doing exactly that, but interest rates are held artificially low by the Fed's lending at extremely low rates. So the Fed is in effect subsidizing the stock market.
107   HeadSet   2021 Sep 12, 6:44am  

Patrick says
So the Fed is in effect subsidizing the stock market.

Yes, low rates subsidize both stocks and housing. Haven't you noticed that the biggest fans of the Fed keeping rates low are stock brokers and realtors?
108   AmericanKulak   2021 Sep 12, 9:51am  

Patrick says
Hmmm, maybe they are doing exactly that, but interest rates are held artificially low by the Fed's lending at extremely low rates. So the Fed is in effect subsidizing the stock market.


Yep. I had a friend who got a 0% interest Credit Card and did just that.
109   Patrick   2021 Sep 27, 1:59pm  

The government of an exclusive company of merchants is, perhaps, the worst of all governments for any country whatever.


Adam Smith
Chapter VII, Part Second, p. 619. - The Wealth of Nations (1776) - Book IV

And yet that is exactly what we have now. Corporate rule.
110   AmericanKulak   2021 Oct 1, 11:03am  

Reading Hollands' "Shadow of the Sword".

Some takeaways:

* The buffer zone east and south of Roman Occupied Judea and Syria were full of Arabs
* The Arabs - The Saracens from Arabic "Shirkat" - were not strange to the nearby inhabitants, regarded maybe as cowboys to the cityfolk in Saint Louis driving in the cattle annually.
* Ghassanid Arabs were a coalition of Arab "Foederati", paid by the Romans to patrol the frontier and save them money and manpower, just like many German tribes were.
* Lots of syncretic stuff happened between the border Arab Foederati and Rome, and especially Heretics like Monophysites and Nabateans
* There's absolutely no evidence that Mohammed was from Mecca, Mecca is not mentioned ONCE in the list of Arab Cities, despite multiple resources from Roman Governors surviving at this time, which contained lists of Oasis, Meeting Places, and Arab Tribes. Mecca first mention a century after Mohammed.
* Yet further away locations, like Himyar, are mentioned extensively in Roman records (South Yemen today) for both trade and political purposes: Roman vessels often stopped there on the way to India, there were official agreements between the Romans and Himyar Monarchs (some of whom were Jews!)
* Very little date material in the Quran.
* Heavy use of Syriac/Arab loan words FROM Latin and Greek used by Romans. For example: Qayash = Qaysar = Caesar. Mohammed may have been from a tribe aligned with the Caesars - ie Rome.

And much more.
111   Patrick   2021 Oct 1, 12:55pm  

Thanks, interesting to fill in some details.

This book also has a lot of details omitted by mainstream Muslim history:

https://archive.org/details/WhyIAmNotAMuslimIbnWarraq
112   Patrick   2021 Nov 4, 10:09pm  

I finished The Wealth of Nations and am now reading Walden by Thoreau. Great quote about housing:

If it is asserted that civilization is a real advance in the condition of man,—and I think that it is, though only the wise improve their advantages,—it must be shown that it has produced better dwellings without making them more costly; and the cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run. An average house in this neighborhood costs perhaps eight hundred dollars, and to lay up this sum will take from ten to fifteen years of the laborer’s life, even if he is not encumbered with a family;— estimating the pecuniary value of every man’s labor at one dollar a day, for if some receive more, others receive less; —so that he must have spent more than half his life commonly before his wigwam will be earned. If we suppose him to pay a rent instead, this is but a doubtful choice of evils. Would the savage have been wise to exchange his wigwam for a palace on these terms?
113   AmericanKulak   2021 Nov 4, 10:46pm  

Oh Patrick, Georgism still beats in my heart.

"No government may restrict the use of RVs or homes over 250 sq ft. on any property over 1 acre, except it be inside of an incorporated city of over 50,000 persons."

There's no health or safety reason why it shouldn't be.

We all know it's because of Developers, Realwhores, and Ladder Kickers, many of whom lived in an RV/Volkswagon Camper saving money to build a real house on their property.

Like all the boomfucks who quit and became consultants at the same place, and later executives, at 2-3x their old pay, advising companies never to hire consultants that "aren't on a special list of people we know and list entrance is a mystery".
114   richwicks   2021 Nov 5, 7:44pm  

Here's one (actually two) for you @Patrick


original link


It's a presentation of who actually runs the world. Two books are given. Both are by Carroll Quigley:

The Anglo American Establishment
Tragedy and Hope

Both are readily available in PDF format on the Internet, but I believe they are also for sale on Amazon.

Essentially, all of our institutions have been infiltrated by successive groups where one group controls a larger group, where the larger group is unaware they are controlled by a much smaller group. At the top of this pyramid is essentially a very small group of multinational elites who basically control their banking systems. These people work in concert, there is no competition between them although there is an illusion there is competition.

This group was setup by Cecil Rhodes, but was subverted and taken over by the Rockefeller. Cecil Rhodes may have been the richest man ever to have lived on this planet.

Basically, if this is true, our rules are our central banks - or at least the people that own them. People like Janet Yellen and Alan Greenspan - they are just servants.
115   RC2006   2021 Nov 28, 8:46am  

Been reading this eerily sounds like today. Group from Chicago that formed a group with bug out location in Idaho.


116   AmericanKulak   2021 Nov 28, 8:51am  

RC2006 says
Been reading this eerily sounds like today. Group from Chicago that formed a group with bug out location in Idaho.


Let me know how it is.
117   Patrick   2022 Mar 3, 3:26pm  

I finally finished The Origin of Species by Darwin. Florid and obscure Victorian language, but quite a good book overall imho. Learned lots of tidbits about evolution that I did not know, like how flowers can be the same on widely separated mountain tops (glaciation, then retreat) and that the skull is just a greatly modified vertebra.
118   RC2006   2022 Mar 3, 4:33pm  

AmericanKulak says
RC2006 says
Been reading this eerily sounds like today. Group from Chicago that formed a group with bug out location in Idaho.


Let me know how it is.


It's ok got some ideas out of it. A lot of these kind of books have ideas that I find useful but the writing at times is a little less refined. This one I was intrigued with because it takes place in Idaho.
119   NuttBoxer   2022 Mar 3, 10:08pm  

Finally finished Tesla's autobiography. One of the last inventions he details is an engine design which sounded almost like perpetual motion. At the least it seemed to guarantee an efficiency I don't think we have today. Again, patented around the turn of the 20th century. Fucking genius.
120   Ceffer   2022 Mar 3, 10:19pm  

Stolen history site outlines the lost history of Tartaria and its amazing buildings. They postulate that many of these elaborate structures were designed for free energy collection by their shapes, much as postulated by the free energy inventions of Tesla.
121   Patrick   2022 Mar 4, 3:03pm  

I've started reading United States of Fear by Mark McDonald, MD.



It's a short book and I'm halfway through already. Very good so far.

The author explicitly links feminism and the resulting weak men with anxiety among white liberal urban women, and their frankly insane over-reaction to the virus Fauci created in Wuhan.

Women are not safe with weak men as husbands and they know this at a deep level.

Other trends which contributed to the Covidian Cult:

Safety and self-esteem were elevated over accomplishment, mastery, and truth. This become law.

Liberals prefer the promise of safety to liberty.
Conservatives prefer liberty to the promise of safety.

Women were far more affected by fear of the virus than men, especially unmarried women (women without any man at all to protect them, not even a weak man).

Public officials wildly over-reacted to the small threat of the virus in order to avoid blame. There was no political benefit to being reasonable. This greatly increased women's fear.

Feminism claimed to be about freedom and opportunity, but turned out to be mostly misandry.

American men no longer play their traditional role of grounding and containing women's anxiety in a crisis. Instead, male weakness amplifies women's anxiety.
122   Patrick   2022 Mar 4, 3:34pm  

More insights:

Liberal women paradoxically demand that men be more feminized, and then strongly resent the feminized men they have helped to create.

Testosterone and grip strength have been dropping among men.

The more formal education a man has, the less likely he is to rate himself as "very masculine".

Republican men are twice as likely to rate themselves as "very masculine" than Democratic men.

3/4 of Republican men view masculinity as a good thing, but only 1/2 of Democratic men do.

"As feminism exults in its triumph over men, both sexes lose."

"The surrender of real courage by men inevitably produces fearful women, and fearful women channel their fear into controlling others."
123   HeadSet   2022 Mar 4, 4:44pm  

Patrick says
Testosterone and grip strength have been dropping among men.

Why would testosterone drop? Pot use? One's politics will not affect juice level.
124   mell   2022 Mar 4, 4:47pm  

HeadSet says
Patrick says
Testosterone and grip strength have been dropping among men.

Why would testosterone drop? Pot use? One's politics will not affect juice level.


It does. The habits, soy food, being sedentary, not hunting women,not going to the gym but hiding in the basement, netfucks and chill. not asserting yourself, all have negative effects on T. It's been declining for decades now but leftoids are speeding it up.
125   Patrick   2022 Mar 4, 8:04pm  

I have read that psychology definitely affects testosterone levels. There is a positive feedback loop where winning men produce more testosterone. And conversely.
126   Patrick   2022 Mar 7, 1:10pm  

I've started reading The Federalist Papers as my next book.

The beginning says that the goal of our Constitution is freedom from tyranny, so it's very relevant to right now in America.
127   Patrick   2022 Apr 10, 5:48pm  

Patrick says
I've started reading The Federalist Papers as my next book.

The beginning says that the goal of our Constitution is freedom from tyranny, so it's very relevant to right now in America.


Lol, just ran across this on https://patriots.win/?source=patrick.net :



128   Patrick   2022 Apr 11, 7:57pm  

Huh, just learned from The Federalist Papers that bankruptcy law in the US is largely a federal affair because the framers of the Constitution foresaw that some people would try to move property from one state to another and then declare bankruptcy in the first.
129   richwicks   2022 Apr 11, 8:01pm  

Patrick says
I finally finished The Origin of Species by Darwin.


I love that book. I've read it several times.

Read Brave New World again. As a kid I kind of saw it as a sort of paradise, as an adult, I can see it for the dystopia it is. No progress, people are just meat robots servicing the machine. A completely purposeless life.

I have an audiobook of The Gulag Archipelago and am in the process of fixing it to remove the useless tidbits of "now flip the cassette over to side B" and so on. It's a dark comedy, or would be, if it wasn't based on reality. I'll send you a link once I edit it. It's 104 audio tapes. I think I'll break it up into 3 parts.
130   Patrick   2022 Apr 13, 7:03pm  

The Constitution has this section:


Article 1, Section 10
No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility.


How are they able to not use "gold and silver Coin" in payment of their debts?
131   Patrick   2022 Apr 13, 7:39pm  

Another bit of the Constitution that seems violated:


This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.


So how is it that states like California can simply refuse to enforce federal immigration law?

Or how can California legalize marijuana when it is illegal under federal law?
132   richwicks   2022 Apr 13, 7:44pm  

Patrick says
Another bit of the Constitution that seems violated:


This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.


So how is it that states like California can simply refuse to enforce federal immigration law?

Or how can California legalize marijuana when it is illegal under federal law?


The Constitution is just a goddamned piece of paper - George W. Bush told you 20 years ago.

The United States doesn't enforce the Constitution any more than the USSR enforced THEIR constitution. If American citizens don't care, fuck 'em.
134   Patrick   2022 Apr 13, 8:04pm  

In Federalist paper number 45, Madison claims that the number of federal employees will always be far below the number of state government employees. He was wrong.


135   komputodo   2022 Apr 13, 8:18pm  

mell says
HeadSet says
Patrick says
Testosterone and grip strength have been dropping among men.

Why would testosterone drop? Pot use? One's politics will not affect juice level.


It does. The habits, soy food, being sedentary, not hunting women,not going to the gym but hiding in the basement, netfucks and chill. not asserting yourself, all have negative effects on T. It's been declining for decades now but leftoids are speeding it up.

Chronic masturbation?
136   Patrick   2022 Apr 20, 7:23pm  

Another good insight from The Federalist Papers, from number 50: it is necessary and good to have multiple political parties opposed to each other "because an extinction of parties necessarily implies either a universal alarm for the public safety, or an absolute extinction of liberty."

This does seem to be true. In the case of, say, attack by space aliens, I think people would work together and forget about which party they belong to until the danger has passed. On the other hand, in countries not under attack, a lack of multiple parties is a reliable indicator of despotism, as in North Korea.
137   Patrick   2022 May 5, 8:44pm  

Another interesting thing in The Federalist Papers is that the writers of the Constitution clearly intended the Electoral College to be independent. That is, the people are to vote for the electors in their state (one elector for each member of the House and Senate for that state). Then the electors themselves are to choose the president.

Now why doesn't it work that way now? It seems that you vote for an elector who has already declared himself or herself in favor of a particular candidate. The original idea was that the people simply pick electors of good character and let them decide on a president after that.
138   stfu   2022 May 6, 6:46am  

Patrick says

Another interesting thing in The Federalist Papers


If you enjoy that, you may enjoy this :

http://resources.utulsa.edu/law/classes/rice/Constitutional/AntiFederalist/antifed.htm?source=patrick.net
139   Patrick   2022 May 6, 7:35am  

Yes, it would be nice to hear the arguments against the Constitution as well.
140   Patrick   2022 May 6, 5:05pm  

Lol, too much!
141   richwicks   2022 May 15, 2:17am  

@Patrick

Not a paper book, but a good audio presentation of 1984.

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

I've read this book many times but I like to experience it many ways. This version is not abridged, so it's like 10 hours long.

I turned it into an MP3 if you prefer:

https://samoyed.dynu.net/~patrick/1984%20-%20audiobook.mp3

You can just download that onto a device. I'll keep it around there for a few weeks, but eventually I'll organize it. I do like to collect.

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