Opus Dei means “God’s work”, and while I don’t expect everyone to go out and join, that’s THE principle — work! Everything, no matter how small, contributes to final victory. You are the message. You are the work. Everybody, no matter how old or infirm or weak or poor or whatever, can do something. Dress well. Stand up straight. Sit down in a public park and read a book, a real physical book, not some glowing screen. If you’re walking and you see trash, pick it up. Set some great art as your computer’s background at work. Listen to some classical music. Put a quote from a Dead White Male on your email auto-signature.
Something, anything. Why? Because fuck them, that’s why. They’re ugly and stupid and base, because all those things — ugliness and stupidity and baseness — are just a degraded version of contemptus mundi, contempt for the world. That’s what nihilism IS, at bottom — fake and gay contemptus mundi. “This world is all there is; this world is awful; therefore the only thing to do is wallow in awfulness. We choose ugliness and stupidity and baseness for their own sake, because we choose to wallow.”
The world isn’t awful. It’s beautiful. Even if you don’t believe your Creator made it just for you — and He did, but you can choose not to believe that — just listen to the “Ode to Joy”. There’s at least as much beauty as ugliness in the world, however it got here and whatever its purpose. Maybe it really IS all meaningless, just atoms and void. Even so, why wallow? Choose what’s beautiful while you can enjoy it. And even if you can’t enjoy it for its own sake, choose it because the Left will hate you for it.
Stick a thumb in their eye at every opportunity. Make that your number one scruple, because seriously: Fuck them, that’s why.
Severian, “The Way Ch. 10: Scruples”, Founding Questions, 2022-07-10.
October 30, 2026
QotD: Opus Dei
October 25, 2026
QotD: Feminism as a luxury belief
However, just as most people aren’t members of Heath’s self-control aristocracy, most women do not combine high intellect with disagreeableness and conscientiousness. Some feminists have realised this — albeit in an ad hoc way — and because feminism as a wider movement was/is wedded to blank-slatism, they believed they could shift the dial on what was then called “female socialisation”. That is, they thought it would be possible to make women as a group more closely resemble the able, disagreeable women who were by the 70s and 80s entering the professions, politics, academia, lobbying outfits, and think-tanks.
Or, of course, men. Men more often combine high trait disagreeableness with high trait conscientiousness (although even among males, the combination is rare). This is despite the fact that there are more agreeable women than agreeable men, and more conscientious women than conscientious men.
No woman should be authorized to stay at home to raise her children. Society should be totally different. Women should not have that choice, precisely because if there is such a choice, too many women will make that one. It is a way of forcing women in a certain direction.
“A Dialogue with Simone de Beauvoir”, in Betty Friedan, It Changed My Life: Writings on the Women’s Movement, Random House, 1976, p. 397.
de Beauvoir’s suggestion is both authoritarian and hilarious, and represents a panicked response — not unlike the howls from Marxists when it became clear the proletariat was uninterested in revolution — to women unlike her. While it’s true (at least historically) that there were a number of strands to feminism — including a pro-motherhood one — careerist feminism finished up dominating all the others. I’m old enough to remember campaigns for wages for housework. If some old school wonks got hold of this idea, it could form part of a suite of policies directed to increasing the fertility rate.
You don’t see those feminist campaigns any more, though. They’ve been submarined. As I say, I’m old.
Women throughout the developed world — notoriously — tell pollsters they want more children than they have. Usually three is the preferred number, as opposed to two or one. The so-called “gender wage gap” exists because women have children.
Economists often decry this finding as a case of stated versus revealed preferences: what people do is more salient than what they say, something known since Roman times. Hence the Stoic quip acta non verba (“deeds not words”). However, even if fully half the “I want more kids than I have” response served up to pollsters is nothing more than windy stated preferences, that still leaves a lot of unborn but wanted children. Feminism, as Louise Perry is fond of pointing out, has simply dropped the ball on this one.
This insight is, I recognise, a genuine example of ad hominem. It suggests that people plump for ideologies that will give them a leg-up, and do so deliberately. That said, political ideology is, like conscientiousness, heritable. Henderson’s and Heath’s insight reminds us that everything social is emergent from the biological (the basis of Lorenzo Warby’s essays on this Substack). That’s why libertarianism is the way it is, and feminism is, and probably other ideologies too.
Helen Dale, “People Unlike Me”, Not On Your Team, But Always Fair, 2024-05-29.
October 24, 2026
QotD: Was Hitler stupid?
Hitler didn’t have that problem. It’s a mug’s game, trying to tie “measured IQ” to anything, much less to try to retroactively guess any given historical figure’s IQ. But it’s a useful-ish concept, so let’s call that “processor speed”. My buddy Jeremy was right at the apex of the bell curve re: processor speed. Hitler was clearly on the right hand side of that particular curve. Probably a fair ways out there, if the truth be known — no genius, Hitler, but pretty sharp nonetheless.
Unfortunately, that degree of smart makes one especially vulnerable to a certain kind of stupidity — let’s call it “the stupidity of misplaced self-esteem”. Snowflake stupid, maybe, for short. I’m sure we’ve all had the experience of being the smartest guy in the room. I mean clearly, unquestionably the sharpest knife in that particular drawer. If you have too many experiences like that, you start thinking you’re the sharpest knife in every drawer; the smartest guy in any possible room. Which means you veer out of your lane on the regular.
It’s endemic in academia, so I’m particularly sensitive to that kind of stupidity. Most profs actually are fairly bright, processor speed-wise. […] If he’d used those brains to, say, open up a mechanic shop or something, he’d fall victim to Big Man Syndrome — every babymomma’s cousin’s sister’s former roommate would start coming around, expecting him to pimp her ride for free. Since academia produces nothing useful, the homies can’t freeride on you).
Throw in the fact that you control the grade book, and it’s really, really easy to convince yourself you’re the smartest guy in any room. With no one to hold you in check, and in the absence of reality testing — which the entire ivory tower ecosystem is designed to avoid — it’s sometimes a real battle not to let your freak flag fly. Indeed you frequently come to wonder why you bother …
… and that’s the kind of stupid Hitler was. Snowflake stupidity is, obviously, situational. There were lots of legit very smart guys in the Nazi party. I doubt Hitler was ever the processor-speed smartest guy in any room, but he was up there, and in the early days he knew it — both ways. Moreover, he had charisma. What the PUAs study like crazy to learn, he just naturally knew how to do. Even the people who were constitutionally immune to his charm could see how and why so many others fell for it.
That’s the most dangerous combo. He was smart enough to be right in there in most rooms … but he could dominate any room with his charisma. Which leads to another special kind of stupidity, what you might call “messianic stupidity”. Things just kind of work out for that kind of guy; have you noticed? I’m sure everyone has known someone like that — probably not to Hitler’s degree, but I’m sure there’s someone in your life that just seems to catch every possible break, all the time, and when something does start going south for him, he can just turn on those baby blues and it all kinda just … goes away.
That kind of person — and I had a buddy like this; I saw it at close range — “knows better”. In the sense that if you gave him a situation on paper, and had him dope it out Heuer-style, he’d come up with the “correct” choice. Nothing wrong with his decision making process in a vacuum, and of course he was smarter than the average bear, too. If you went to Ross with a problem and pitched it as something that might hypothetically happen to some guy, he’d give you solid to excellent advice.
If, however, you went to him with one of your problems, in a situation involving mutual acquaintances, his advice would be terrible. For instance, he was one of those guys who don’t look like anything special, but every girl in the room starts drooling when he walks in. So you ask him “Hey, what should I do about Jane?” and though he’ll try his best to help, it really just doesn’t compute. Because while whatever he advises would work out great for him — of course it would — for you it’ll be a big mess, even if you do your very best Ross impersonation, because you don’t have that thing he has, the one the Germans call je ne sais quoi.
Hitler did. His successes were due, in large part, to doing zany, completely off-the-wall shit, the kind no rational planner would ever even bother planning against. Which can work out spectacularly well — Joan of Arc had the same gift. Lenin did, too. Combine that with the devil’s own luck (at least initially) and you get the mystique of the messianic leader. He does zany stuff, and it just kinda works out … until it doesn’t.
Combine that with ideological stupidity and you’re bound to have tears before bedtime. The Nazis had absolutely no idea what they were going to do with Grossdeutschland. Not the first clue. There’s a wonderful book on this, by Mark Mazower, called Hitler’s Empire. To say “they had no clue” is actually an understatement. His thesis, which I agree with, is that Hitler — being a 19th century guy — thought of the conquered territories in terms of Germany’s lost colonies in Africa. Really. A kind of Bismarckian Weltpolitik, except in France instead of Tanzania.
That’s just dumb. It’s not processor-speed dumb; it’s a lifetime of mental habit dumb, combined with ideological enstupidation. Add to this Adam Tooze’s The Wages of Destruction, which is buried in my to-read pile somewhere, but you can find good reviews on it with a little googling. Is that IQ-dumb? No. Is it really fucking stupid? Oh yeah.
Severian, “Friday Mailbag”, Founding Questions, 2022-08-12.
October 22, 2026
“Insurgent math”
On the social media site formerly known as Twitter, InfantryDort recalls the promotion of “insurgent math” — deterring American troops from killing enemy forces as if they were hydra heads made real:
“Afghanistan 2010 43” by david_axe is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0
Do you guys remember the “insurgent math” the generals taught us in GWOT? “If you kill an enemy, you’ll make 10 more.” Remember that? Another in a long list of points to make us practice “courageous restraint” and be reluctant to pull the trigger.
What fascinates me is how full of shit they were. Because many of those retired leaders and the politicians they back today advocate for doing the EXACT opposite within the borders of their own country.
They don’t all wish death. Some do. But the same principles apply to lawfare and harassment against people they disagree with.
So why was “insurgent math” created to give compassion to 80IQ Taliban retards but the exact opposite is given to 100IQ+ innocent Americans who are far more dangerous when they get mad enough to band together?
What even is this? Another stunning failure and hypocritical point of the War on Terror and the national lesson over the last 2 decades as a whole.
There is a large number of influential “Americans” who’d rather bow to their enemies and put the boot to their own countrymen.
They fear the wrong people. If they casually mention ruining the lives of innocent people simply because they disagree with them, then they have no fear.
When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. When the government fears the people, there is liberty.
America is the greatest result of successfully insurgency in human history. This country literally has insurgency in its blood. That’s how we started. Stunning to believe some think it’s wise to poke that bear.
The stupidity is off the charts. Truly.
Update, 23 October: Welcome, Instapundit readers! Have a look around at some of my other posts you may find of interest. I send out a daily summary of posts here through my Substack – https://substack.com/@nicholasrusson that you can subscribe to if you’d like to be informed of new posts in the future.
October 19, 2026
QotD: The “social norms” that enable society to exist
What makes these indignities so infuriating isn’t just that a few people game the system. It’s that their selfish gambits work only because the rest of us follow the rules. If every driver mobbed the freeway exit from the passing lanes, traffic would come to a halt. The student who fraudulently obtains extra test time gets a leg up only if most other students stick to the original time limit. And if every pet were designated an emotional-support animal, airplanes and restaurants would become full-time menageries. (Some airlines have begun tightening rules on support animals for just this reason.)
Thousands of norms, rules, and traditions make civilized life possible. Some, like paying taxes or not littering, are enshrined in law. Others are informal. Most of us take pride in adhering to basic standards of etiquette and fairness, to say nothing of following the law. And we have a deep emotional investment in having the people around us follow these norms as well. There’s a reason that we call selfish, disruptive, or criminal behavior “antisocial”. We know that if everyone stopped paying their taxes, or started running red lights and shoplifting, our society would be on its way to collapse.
James B. Meigs, “The Chump Effect”, City Journal, 2020-11-15.
October 18, 2026
Tiger I: A Tank Too Heavy For Hitler’s War? – Nazi Rearmament 10
World War Two
Published 17 Oct 2026The Tiger I was one of World War II’s most feared tanks. But could its powerful 88 mm gun and thick armor compensate for the demands it placed on Germany’s factories, mechanics, and supply lines?
From competing Henschel and Porsche prototypes to combat at Leningrad, Kursk, Tunisia, and Normandy, we examine the Panzerkampfwagen VI Tiger I beyond its legendary reputation. Its firepower and protection made it a formidable opponent, but manufacturing, transporting, maintaining, and recovering this 57-ton heavy tank required resources Nazi Germany could increasingly ill afford.
In this episode of Nazi Rearmament, we explore:
• The Tiger I’s armor, armament, engine, and suspension
• The development contest between Henschel and Porsche
• Production costs, industrial constraints, and forced labor
• Early mechanical failures and later battlefield performance
• Heavy tank battalions and the capture of Tiger 131
• Why tactical successes could not resolve Germany’s strategic failuresWas the Tiger the deadliest beast of WWII, or a tank too heavy for Hitler’s war? Its history reveals how an effective battlefield weapon could still fall short of the war effort that produced it.
October 8, 2026
QotD: Headlines for modern audiences
Popcorn: you’re making it wrong. This is a classic formulation that produces both anger and curiosity. It’s confrontational and contemptuous, but you think hey, once I learn the secret, I can smirk at other people who don’t know the true way.
We talked to popcorn experts. Here’s why they say you should smear butter on your chest. This style has become the norm, and appeals to people who regard themselves as the sort of people who respect the experts. They trust the popcorn science.
The FDA has banned this poison from popcorn: here’s what we know. Then you discover there’s some 1964 rule that forbids using DDT on corn.
Gut doctor begs: stop doing this with popcorn (Picture of a doctor pointing at a cadaver with its chest blown out from the inside)
Sorry. The closest I can come is this:
If you stop eating popcorn on a regular basis, an unexpected thing happens: it becomes unappetizing. It ceases to be something you consider as “food”. It’s stuff you’d put in a box of plates to keep them from chipping.
But, you say, I make absolutely delightful popcorn with butter and salt! I don’t doubt it. Everything is better with butter and salt. You could say that popcorn is just a delivery mechanism for butter and salt. Golden, rich butter, seeping into the tiny caverns of the detonated kernel, salt falling like snow on Christmas Eve –
Hold on, be right back; I really want some popcorn now.
James Lileks, “Experts say these are the most overrated headlines; number 4 is scary”, LILEKS (James), 2026-07-06.
October 5, 2026
“The fertility crisis is really the equality crisis”
On the social media site formerly known as Twitter, Devon Eriksen responds to a post about the need for middle class couples to budget excessive amounts of money before starting a family:
It’s not about the money.
Money has an effect, yes, but it’s a part of something bigger.
Women are genetically programmed to mate up. Not down. And not even across. Up. If she doesn’t regard a man as superior to her, she generally doesn’t want to have his babies.
What this means is that there is an extremely simple control dial on fertility.
More male power and status = more babies.
More female power and status = less babies.Yes, it really is that simple.
Why? Because every species has a mating ritual, and can only breed if they can carry it out. That’s why you can breed rats and chickens in cages, but not pandas. Different mating ritual.
And a critical element of the human mating ritual is “male impresses female”.
Not charms. Not bribes. Definitely not respects.
Impresses.
So, if you take power, wealth, and status away from men, and give it to women, you are just plain reaching for the controls and turning down the fertility dial.
If you let men keep power, wealth and status — you don’t have to give it to them because they’re the ones who create it — fertility goes up.
The fertility crisis is really the equality crisis.
This idea might horrify you. You might have been taught all your life that everyone is equal, or must be, and anything else is unfair.
Well, have you looked around you at universe? Unfairness is baked into the life cycle of every living organism, not mention the food chain. Evolutionary processes don’t care about fairness. They care what works.
Perhaps someday, we will be able to code DNA as easily as we code C++, and can decide what we want our instincts to be. But until that day, we are faced with a choice.
1. Stop using the political, legal, and mass media processes to force female equality, if not outright female supremacy, on the first world.
Or
2. Die out and be replaced by third world retards, who will stay on this planet fighting wars with increasingly rusty AK47s and then spears, until the next asteroid comes along.
October 4, 2026
Mark Carney’s … complicated … relationship with America
On her Substack, Melanie in Saskatchewan wonders what is going on in Mark Carney’s world whenever the United States comes up. At times, you would assume he hates the US, yet the vast majority of his personal wealth is invested there. His family members live there. It’s a paradox:
AI-generated image from Melanie in Saskatchewan
I’m starting to think Mark Carney has a passionate, personal hatred of America.
And I don’t mean Donald Trump. Plenty of people hate Donald Trump. I mean America itself, or at least the enormous role America has played in Canada’s economy for generations. Because the longer I listen to Carney talk about where he wants Canada to go, the more I wonder whether Trump caused this economic divorce at all … or whether he was simply the spectacular act of infidelity Carney needed to finally file the papers.
Maybe hate is too strong. Maybe geopolitical jealousy has stages too: irritation, resentment, righteous indignation and finally whatever stage comes after, “I’d love to go out sometime, but unfortunately I’ll be washing my hair indefinitely”. Whatever stage Carney has reached, I’m increasingly convinced this is about considerably more than Donald Trump.
Because we can document Carney publicly talking about a changing world order more than fifteen years ago. How long he had been developing those ideas before putting them into speeches, I have no idea. We don’t need to invent an origin story. The public record is interesting enough.
I can’t prove Carney hates America. Maybe he loves it. Maybe there’s a Louisville Slugger sticking out of a Davos swag bag somewhere between six conference lanyards, a King Charles commemorative tea towel and a couple of those luxury Normandy butter cups that apparently require their own travel arrangements. But if Mark Carney loves America, somebody should probably tell America the relationship is still on.
He certainly never seemed troubled by American money. His disclosed investments included hundreds of companies, many of them American. And I don’t begrudge him that. If American companies offered a good return, invest away. What makes it interesting is that while his money was quite comfortable in America, Carney had already spent years publicly describing a world becoming considerably less centred on American economic power. Donald Trump didn’t inspire that. He came crashing through the front door years later, apparently oblivious to the fact that Carney had already furnished the room.
Canadians have since been handed a wonderfully tidy explanation for everything happening now. Trump returned. Trump threatened tariffs. Trump called Canada the 51st state. Trump made governor jokes. CBC, our publicly funded national broadcaster, and a Canadian media industry operating alongside various government support programs amplified every provocation until everybody knew exactly which Trumpism could send Canada through the ceiling.
He said “51st state”. Canada erupted, so he said it again. Trump noticed. The media noticed. And I have a very hard time believing Liberal strategists somehow failed to notice the political value of an issue resonating that powerfully with Canadians.
But heaven forbid an opposition MP or ordinary Canadian asks to see where our money went. Suddenly negotiations, contracts and records disappear behind confidentiality, redactions and “national security”. Apparently telling Canadians what our own government is doing requires security clearance, but advertising precisely which Trump taunts are working required something closer to a neon sign: YES, DONALD. RIGHT THERE. THAT BUTTON!
Why not circle the red button, write DO NOT PRESS across it and explain exactly what happens when he does? Because if humanity has established anything about a big red button labelled DO NOT PRESS, it’s that nobody has ever wanted to press that bastard more.
October 3, 2026
Altered Carbon: Immortality Breaks Humans
Feral Historian
Published 29 May 2026Richard K. Morgan’s Altered Carbon builds on a simple premise, what if everyone’s consciousness was digitally transferable, regardless of class or wealth. The world he depicts has an undercurrent of dread permeating everything and hints at some even more terrifying possibilities.
00:00 Intro
03:10 Not Human Anymore
06:25 Social Disconnect
11:07 Make it Personal
15:15 The Netflix Adaptation
(more…)
October 2, 2026
Generational incomprehension
On Substack Notes, GenX Anecdotes expresses the frustration a lot of Gen X/Generation Jones folks have felt in their dealings with Millennial and Gen Z co-workers, supervisors, and managers:
Experience tells me that I need to add an eye-catching graphic to every non-video post, but finding appropriate images is sometimes difficult. I hope GenX Anecdotes won’t mind me using yet another meme instead of something more sober and appropriate to her point.
One of the things people tell you when you are young about getting old is how quickly it sneaks up on you.
What they don’t tell you, is that it’s not linear or obvious. It’s not like you have a specific moment where you think “OK. NOW I am middle aged”. It doesn’t work like that. You remain “you”.
You might change your outlook over time. You might get wiser (hopefully) and more content with who you are. You might have more serious responsibilities. More experiences and memories to draw upon. But you’re still YOU.
For me, I don’t really feel like I’m that much “older” going about my day-to-day business doing my thing. I actually still feel quite young in myself in many ways.
It’s how the world greets you that’s different. And that’s when little things will remind you. It gives you a kind of shocking “jolt”.
Being around younger people is what really brings it home. And I don’t mean kids or young teens. I mean young adults. Or even adults in their 30s who tell you they feel “old”.
I am in my mid 50s.
When someone in their late 20s or 30s tells me what year they were born it blows my mind.
When they were born in a year that I clearly remember, feels like last month to me, and when I was well into adulthood, that’s when it really hits home.
Also, it’s how younger people view you and act around you.
In my last job, most people were in their 20s and 30s.
I won’t lie. Some of them treated me like garbage. Like I didn’t exist.
I was a bit of a “cute” novelty to them. Like “aaawww bless her”.
I had the misfortune of being “trained” in one of my part-time jobs I had when my daughter was in junior school, by a 20 something. The job was a local convenient place holder during school hours.
What she was showing me was very “basic” and tedious. But if I questioned anything about it like “why can’t we just do this instead? Surely that would make more sense?”
She looked at me, not like someone who had 30 plus years experience working in different industries who might have a point. But someone “old” and passed it, who didn’t understand.
Like a silly backwards old woman who had no idea.
The amount of times I would say “Yeah. I DO get it. I am just wondering why it’s done this way? It seems a bit impractical?”
She looked at me blankly. Like I was asking her why water is wet …
I learned to just shut up and do the bloody tedious thing in the convoluted, dumb way. Because … because … that’s how it’s done.
Then I knew all those 20/30 year olds just saw me as an annoying old relic who “didn’t understand” how things worked.
I was there about a year before moving house.
I couldn’t wait to leave.
One of the HR women hauled me in at one point to give me an “appraisal”. There I was with a 20 something asking me if I was “happy at work” and going through other annoying questions on her ipad.
She obviously was irritated that I wasn’t taking the whole fake charade “seriously” enough. She wanted me to give her bullshit standard answers that she could tick a box to.
But I kept saying things that weren’t “tick box” worthy.
And that just signified further to her that “I didn’t understand” what was going on.
Oh I understood.
I just didn’t want to play along.
And just to emphasise how insane this whole scenario felt.
She still lived with her Mum and Dad and had soft toys on her desk.
That’s what getting “old” feels like.
September 28, 2026
“… if we provide no healthy path into adulthood, people will invent their own”
On the social media site formerly known as Twitter, L. Wayne Mathison discusses the need for ceremonies or rites to signify the end of childhood and the entry into adult life … things that have almost completely disappeared in western culture over the last few decades:
I think modern society made a mistake when it assumed that getting rid of sacred rites would make people purely rational.
It didn’t.
Human beings still need thresholds, tests, stories, symbols and some clear sense that childhood has ended and adulthood has begun. We may no longer send young people into the wilderness for an initiation ordeal, but the psychological need to prove yourself, belong somewhere and become someone has not disappeared.
Traditional initiation rites were often harsh, sometimes brutally so, but they carried a clear message: your childhood identity is finished. You are now expected to accept duty, restraint, courage and responsibility.
Modern society is much less clear about that transition.
You can become legally adult at 18 while remaining psychologically dependent for years. There is often no agreed moment when society says: you are responsible now. Stop waiting to be rescued. Carry your own weight. Become useful to other people.
The danger is that the need for initiation does not disappear just because formal rituals disappear.
Young people invent substitutes.
Sometimes that becomes fraternity hazing, gangs, reckless behaviour, extreme risk-taking or ideological movements that offer belonging, enemies, heroes, rituals and moral certainty. Popular culture does something similar in a safer form. Star Wars, superhero stories, horror films and countless other myths repeat the ancient pattern: leave safety, enter chaos, face the monster, sacrifice something, return changed.
We keep telling these stories because they describe something real about human development.
The part I find most useful is that modern adulthood probably has to become more voluntary.
Nobody is going to drag most of us through a ceremonial rite and announce that childhood is over.
We have to do it ourselves.
Take responsibility before you feel completely ready. Accept obligations. Learn to tolerate discomfort. Become financially and emotionally useful. Care for somebody besides yourself. Face failure without retreating into nihilism. Test your beliefs against reality. Give up childish expectations that life should always be fair, comfortable or safe.
That is initiation stripped of superstition.
You enter difficulty voluntarily and come out carrying more responsibility than you carried before.
A mature society should probably find better ways of teaching that lesson, because if we provide no healthy path into adulthood, people will invent their own.
And some of those substitutes will be far worse than the rituals we thought we had outgrown.
September 27, 2026
Gynogerontocracy in the Anglosphere
As the working world in the Anglosphere becomes ever more feminized and gynocentric, as companies disproportionally hire women over men, the working dynamics of most jobs has also shifted dramatically:
There’s many things to be exhausted about as a millennial or zoomer man, and I find that one of them really is gynogerontocracy. Everywhere you go, a profoundly alienating woman, often an older woman, is in charge, where she probably either shouldn’t be, or would be better executing tasks and responsibilities for a male executive.
In the private sphere, the corporate jobs go to girlbosses, whose neuroticism is channeled into unrealistic and dysfunctional adherence to rules, policies and procedures. There is no trust or discretion to do your own job, at the same time as management they don’t want you to ask them about anything. Every minor policy breach turns into an email, turns a passive aggressive “documented conversation” and “coaching”, as they talk down to you as a mother scolds their children.
When I think about my professional life, the only times I was ever promoted for my hard work and efforts, was under White or Asian male leadership, and that’s because they by and large are the only people who value demonstrable merit and ability. Women don’t. They value policies and procedures, they value inclusivity, and they become petty little tyrants when they’re in charge. The only female manager I’ve ever had who wasn’t like that was a 24 year old zoomer who played with a Needough in her office and posted weird alien cat gifs in the corporate chat app. She was fine, and understood my lack of enthusiasm. The rest of them act like they’re running the navy when the consensus is now that this is functionally adult female daycare.
As a generational experience and trait, I find that men and boys are collectively exhausted and resent women being in charge for what has been their entire living experience. I find myself asking how much longer this can go on.
September 26, 2026
Social media seems to be antithetical to the ability to concentrate
I took over doing the cooking in our household a couple of years ago, so I’ve been paying more attention to cooking channels on YouTube and recipe-oriented blogs than I did before. Substack‘s algorithm suggested that I might enjoy reading this post by Romilla Arber, making the case that “Mirepoix is the antithesis of Instagram, as it values what cannot be seen in the final result over what is superficial and false”:
Photo from Stirring Thoughts
This article is about mirepoix, soffritto, social media, and the secret to a happy life. A lot to cover, but as I often say, everything is interconnected.
I dislike social media, in particular Instagram. I left X many months ago, as did my business. We use Facebook for local connection and, obviously, Substack, which currently I view differently. Instagram is ridiculous. It is a waste of time to be on it, and it is populated with so many lies and misrepresentations that it is difficult to work out what is fact and what is not.
I recently read a Substack article called “Meet All The Middle Aged Women Who Don’t Exist” by Robin Levine Shobin. It exposes the accounts on Instagram supposedly belonging to women in their fifties and sixties who look fabulous but who actually do not exist: an army of AI wellness women, manufactured to make women like me feel we need what they have.
The other tranche of accounts I have noticed multiplying on Instagram, like a terrifying science-fiction virus, are those owned by “successful” entrepreneurs. Most of these are fake, and are being used to sell overpriced masterclasses and mentorships to people who lack confidence and need money. The more our brains see of the same thing, the more likely we are to believe it. This used to be called brainwashing. There is probably another techie term for it now.
These accounts don’t surprise me. But they represent one of the reasons why Instagram is a monumental waste of time.
This feeling was further compounded today when I spent a few minutes watching a video made by someone, the central thesis of which was to make the most of the precious time we have on this planet, and to value those simple experiences that we take for granted at the time. The whole premise of Instagram is to make us envious of others, the way they look and the lives they have, and by consequence not to value the lives we live. It involves endlessly scrolling through videos and images, wasting precious time.
I have also noticed that if I spend time scrolling through short-form content, I find it harder to concentrate on something that requires longer attention, like reading a book. Sad, but true. I am now retraining my brain to concentrate on reading uninterrupted for longer periods. I was surprised at how tough this would be.
This sorry state of affairs brings me to soffritto and mirepoix: the same thing really, the former being Italian and the latter French. Both are the art of chopping aromatic vegetables finely and frying them slowly, in olive oil if you are Italian and butter if you are French. These aromatic vegetables are usually onion, celery and carrot, and the ratio varies country to country. The magic is in the simplicity. They are the flavour foundation for many stocks, sauces, soups and stews all over the world. Other countries may substitute white onion for spring onion, or carrot for peppers, but the point of the process remains the same: to create beauty through time and effort.
Mirepoix is the antithesis of Instagram, as it values what cannot be seen in the final result over what is superficial and false. The preparation of the vegetables takes care and time, and it is the investment in this preparation, the foundational substance, that creates the beauty and taste of the final dish. Instagram is about superficiality. What is not obvious is worthless.
Given how late I started doing serious cooking, I doubt that I even knew what mirepoix was two years ago … but I’ve pretty much always thought of Instagram as a total waste of time among all the various social media sites people use.
Devon Eriksen stakes out the anti-Feminist position
On the social media site formerly known as Twitter, science fiction author Devon Eriksen discusses the “worst and most prolonged psychological torture you can inflict on a woman”:
The worst and most prolonged psychological torture you can inflict on a woman is to convince her she’s as good as any man.
This torture is lifelong, unendurable, and once you set up the initial conditions, the pain becomes self-inflicted.
You see, women are genetically programmed for two things. First, to raise children. Second, to select a man who is superior to her to bear those children for.
Not equal.
Certainly not lesser.
Superior.
There is no point in arguing about this. It is obviously true to anyone who looks around himself without blinders made of wishful thinking.
There is no point in becoming angry at me or anyone else about this. It is true whether I wish it to be or not, and whether you wish it to be or not.
There is no point in trying to talk women out of this. It is not a part of their culture or education. It is not an individual character flaw in them. It is part of their genetic recipe.
Therefore, if you convince a woman she is equal to most men, she will only be willing to bear children to a small percentage of exceptional men.
If you convince her that she is the equal of any man, she will be unwilling to start a family with anyone.
And she will remain genetically programmed to do so.
When I was a child, and again when I was a young man, in high school and college, I noticed that the older adults who staffed the education system seemed to think “girls’ self-esteem” was our most precious resource, perhaps because it’s good for stable nuclear fusion containment, or as a growth medium for cancer-curing fruit trees.
Well, I sure hope they’re making good progress on that nuclear fusion thing, because it sure is hard on the women they grow up into.
Perhaps they thought having a high self-esteem is the same as feeling good.
Perhaps they thought half of humanity’s potential Newtons, Einsteins, and Da Vincis were hidden among the ranks of the fair sex, waiting to be unlocked by “Project Self Esteem”, and no, I did not make that name up.
Perhaps they were retarded.
They did, after all, work for the government.
Self-esteem is not being happy. Self-esteem is not even feeling good. Self-esteem is how awesome you think you are.
And if you think you’re awesome, when you’re mediocre, then you’re miserable, because everyone around you treats you a whole lot worse than you think you deserve.
High self-esteem is great for young men. It makes them take risks. And to thrive men need to take risks, and achieve things, for many reasons, one of which is that women only mate up.
High self-esteem is not so good for young women. It doesn’t get them anything they wouldn’t have already had. It just makes them less happy with it.
Sure, there’s such a thing as self-esteem too low, but if a woman can look you in the eye, instead of in the shoes, when she talks to you, she’s pretty much good to go.
Anything more than that is superfluous at best, and at worst … well, eyeball the video for a moment and you’ll see what I mean.
But the misery isn’t just personal.
This is the fertility crisis in a nutshell. We, Western civilization, have spent the past five or six decades telling little boys that they are worthless sacks of protoplasm, and telling little girls that the sun shines out of their collective girl parts.
And look what’s happened.
The fertility crisis is stupidly simple. When you elevate the status of women by giving them a greater share of respect, and of society’s wealth, which is created by men, they refuse to have children.
You can reverse this by allowing men to keep the wealth they create, instead of giving it to women.
Then they will give it to women themselves, but the women will look up to them, and there will be children again.
During the Trump administration so far, 94% of new job went to women. This is not natural or organic. This doesn’t happen on its own. This is not happening because women are “crushing it”.
Women are the same women they have always been, risk averse, clustered around average intelligence, prone to wait for others to lead.
This is not an accident. This is spin on the ball. Women vote. And pandering is an easy way to get those votes.
But give a moderately pretty one a single email job at a Silicon Valley startup, and pretty soon she thinks that the father of her children should be a “post-economic” jet-setter with the body of a professional athlete who ticks all the boxes her therapist thinks are important.
And she thinks she can pick him off a shelf at age 35.
This is a vote, conscious or not, willing or not, for the extinction of humanity.
Throughout the genetic history of humanity, approximately 80% of women had children, as opposed to 37% of men. Those numbers don’t lie. Most men either weren’t exceptional enough to breed, or died trying to become exceptional enough to breed.
Women just had to not be in the bottom quintile. Not to be horrible, or horribly unlucky.
This bears out what we already know.
And this is why Western civilization told women they were the weaker sex, the dumber sex, the more fragile sex. Why Eve was said to made to serve Adam.
Because this preserved civilization and the species.
Women were actually happier that way, because women don’t want to win. They want a winner.
But even if it didn’t, what choice would we have?
The only nations and tribes in the world which are still breeding are the ones where women are still of low status. And if you try to replace Westerners with them, try to make them into Westerners, not only will you fail, but even if you succeed, they’ll stop breeding, too.
And we know now why there are no matriarchies. Its not because men have superior strength, and enslaved women with violence. It’s because matriarchies don’t breed.
Humans are an animal, like any other animal. Every animal has mating rituals, and if those rituals can’t be conducted, there will be no next generation. This is why some animals can be bred in zoos, and others cannot.
We know what’s wrong.
We just lack the political will to fix it.
Because it’s “not fair”.
Well, of course it’s not fair. But look around you. Look at the universe. Look at history.
Whatever made you expect that things would be fair?
Or, as someone posted in the replies to this:
