Didactic Mind

HAPPY NEW YEAR, brothers and sisters! May the peace and blessings of Our Lord Jesus Christ be with you and your families and loved ones in 2023, and may we march ahead into the coming year armed with faith, hope, and above all, love. Hard times are surely ahead - but God is surely with us, and with Him on our side, nothing is impossible.

Before I get into the contents of this very first podcast of 2023, let me take a moment to acknowledge an incredible milestone:

This is the TENTH ANNIVERSARY of the day I started writing as just some random blogger on teh innarwebz.

On January 1, 2013, I started up the old Didact's Reach site on Blogger, and kept that going for more than 7 years before I switched to a shared-hosting platform to get away from Goolag's control over my content. I started writing because the only alternative was to go crazy, since I had literally no other outlet for my increasing frustration and anger with the way the world was going.

So I decided that, instead of screaming into the void, I might as well do something about it, and start writing.

I never expected anyone to read my writing, much less follow it. Yet, here we are, 10 years later, and some of you have been reading my writing since very nearly Day 1.

I also never expected to create any kind of community around my writing or my site. Yet, here we are today, with a Didactic Mind podcast on Podbean, a Telegram channel, and an independent website, plus a couple of ancillary sites (which, admittedly, need some development and new content).

It's been a decade of growth and change for me personally, and many of you have been there for the journey. I have benefited immensely from putting in the time and effort to research my ideas and arguments, refining them down from inchoate masses of thoughts to useful contributions. Along the way, I have met and made friends that I never could have expected to run into otherwise.

So, from me to you, THANK YOU for your patronage and your time. I do not do this for popularity or views, but it is gratifying indeed to know that others find value in it.

As is the usual way of things with the first real post of the year, here are the site's statistics for 2022:

• Total pageviews of 260K when you count both the old Blogger site and the current shared-hosting incarnation - down 3.6% from 2021's 270K, but not bad at all considering the lower output;

So basically, a pretty decent year in most respects, despite lower overall output, helped along substantially by a few posts which attracted thousands of views rather than the usual hundreds.

The geographic distribution of my readership was pretty interesting too - take a look:

But that is not the end of the story, because the other media platforms also come into play:

• The Didactic Mind podcast managed over 3,160 downloads across all of 2022, and hit over 6,000 downloads life-to-date on the Podbean platform;

With all the stats out of the way, let us get on to the actual podcast itself, which goes into all of the above at a high level, and then goes into what I think the year ahead holds, and how we can prepare for it.

I make some pretty incendiary statements in this podcast, and in most of my podcasts. I can only do so because I take steps to protect myself from the Big Tech companies, and preserve my identity. You need to do the same – this is no longer optional, because if you don’t, the gatekeepers WILL come for your head.

If you don’t know where to start, then I’ve got you covered right here with this post. Here are the specific steps that you can take:

• Make sure that your web traffic is safe and protected from prying eyes using a VPN – click here to get a massive 80% OFF on a 24-month subscription with Surfshark;

• Get yourself a proper domain for your site or business with Namecheap;

• Buy yourself a proper Bible;

The Didactic Mind podcast is back with a Christmas special! Happy Christmas to all of you, and may the Lord's blessings be with you, each and every one. Today I discuss the meaning of Christmas, in terms of the values of peace, joy, compassion, forgiveness, brotherhood, and love, and what it means to spread these things to others. I talk about how the Lord's birth as a humble man, born into this world in the most simple way possible, signifies God's boundless love for us, and shows us His deep desire to be close to us, part of our lives. I talk about the ways in which the coming year will prove challenging and difficult for us, and how we can mitigate those challenges by focusing on what it is that God wants from us.

Above all, I bring you a message of hope, faith, and love - the eternal love of the most mighty God. Let us all glory in His love for us, and do our best to incorporate Him into our lives, because that is what He wants from us.

I make some pretty incendiary statements in this podcast, and in most of my podcasts. I can only do so because I take steps to protect myself from the Big Tech companies, and preserve my identity. You need to do the same – this is no longer optional, because if you don’t, the gatekeepers WILL come for your head.

If you don’t know where to start, then I’ve got you covered right here with this post. Here are the specific steps that you can take:

• Make sure that your web traffic is safe and protected from prying eyes using a VPN – click here to get a massive 80% OFF on a 24-month subscription with Surfshark;

• Get yourself a proper domain for your site or business with Namecheap;

• Buy yourself a proper Bible;

This episode of Domain Query is in response to an excellent question from reader G W on my Didactic Mind Telegram channel. The question related to the possibility of an American debt default, and the consequences thereof. Essentially, I was asked: "what would be the results of a US default?"

The short answer is that it would be an unmitigated catastrophe, the likes of which we have never, ever seen before. But that does not actually explain the true scale and size of the problem. To do that, you have to look at the actual history of the US dollar, and why it is a debt-based currency. You also have to understand something about the international linkages of the global economy, and the pervasive influence and power of American Treasury bonds. Once you get some idea of just how much the world depends on US debt for all sorts of purposes, you will then understand why an American default will literally collapse the entire global economy.

I go into these subjects, and much more, in the podcast here.

I make some pretty incendiary statements in this podcast, and in most of my podcasts. I can only do so because I take steps to protect myself from the Big Tech companies, and preserve my identity. You need to do the same – this is no longer optional, because if you don’t, the gatekeepers WILL come for your head.

If you don’t know where to start, then I’ve got you covered right here with this post. Here are the specific steps that you can take:

• Make sure that your web traffic is safe and protected from prying eyes using a VPN – click here to get a massive 80% OFF on a 24-month subscription with Surfshark;

• Get yourself a proper domain for your site or business with Namecheap;

• Buy yourself a proper Bible;

Reader RT asked some very interesting follow-up questions on my Telegram channel to my latest Didactic Mind podcast, related to the issues of what money is, what it does, and why inflation is so evil. The follow-up questions have to do with how money came to be, what it is today, and a set of ancillary questions about political economy and the possiblities of European energy independence:

Weren't money established as a means to pay taxes, among other things? I guess it would be historically defendable and one way of centralizing power in the hands of state was to remove the right to coinage of local lords, at least here in Europe. It also raises the interesting question if cryptocurrency is money.

There is a political dimension to economy and I can understand Europe's desire to be independent from Russian energy supplies as much as possible (although why to be dependent on the US?). Autarky is hardly achievable goal but still… That leads to the question what domestic resources Europe has (.e. coal) and if or to what extent they could replace Russian or American gas? From this point of view even the so called green energy has a merit if it is managable. This question arises due to the fact Europe was a rich continent even before importing Russian gas and there is no guaranty that in 2 generations Russian government will still be as reasonable as it is today.

This is a wide-ranging series of questions encompassing a very large number of different questions and ideas, so the resulting podcast is quite a bit longer than my usual Domain Query responses. Essentially, my views are:

• Money evolved originally as a way of smoothing out transactions, rather than as a way to pay taxes - and indeed taxation in the ancient world depended largely on products and labour, rather than hard currency;

Here's the podcast. As noted at the beginning, be sure to join my Telegram channel if you have not already done so, as the questions you see above are an example of the kinds of intelligent discussion that you will find in that channel. (Along with the inevitable parade of tactical minutiae, pawsitivity, hot girls, and general shitposting - it is a channel by men, for men, after all.)

• The Forgotten Man by Amity Shlaes

I make some pretty incendiary statements in this podcast, and in most of my podcasts. I can only do so because I take steps to protect myself from the Big Tech companies, and preserve my identity. You need to do the same – this is no longer optional, because if you don’t, the gatekeepers WILL come for your head.

If you don’t know where to start, then I’ve got you covered right here with this post. Here are the specific steps that you can take:

• Make sure that your web traffic is safe and protected from prying eyes using a VPN – click here to get a massive 80% OFF on a 24-month subscription with Surfshark;

• Get yourself a proper domain for your site or business with Namecheap;

• Buy yourself a proper Bible;

The Didactic Mind podcast is back, finally, with a long discussion about the rather disastrous state of modern economics. Specifically, I start by defining what money IS, and how different forms of money have evolved over time. I point out that money is absolutely linked to time, which makes it a direct translation of one's life into tangible value. From there, I embark on a discussion of Keynesian economics and its views on money, and then talk about the Monetarist heresy of that very same particularly stupid way of thinking. I delve into the insanity of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), which is essentially an entire school of economics devoted to the destruction of wealth and sound money, before ending on an impassioned screed about how nations can resolve the issue of rampant inflation through sound monetary policy and the removal of SANKSHUNS!!! upon THOSE DAMNED ROOSKEES!!!

This is probably one of my "rantier" podcasts, and with good reason. There is a lot to unpack here, and honestly I only really skimmed the surface. My argument really comes down to the fact that time literally is money, and that by destroying the value of money, governments destroy the value of people's lives - which is an act of great and terrible evil.

As always, please remember to like, comment, share, and subscribe if you have not already done so.

• The Failure of the New Economics by Henry Hazlitt

I make some pretty incendiary statements in this podcast, and in most of my podcasts. I can only do so because I take steps to protect myself from the Big Tech companies, and preserve my identity. You need to do the same – this is no longer optional, because if you don’t, the gatekeepers WILL come for your head.

If you don’t know where to start, then I’ve got you covered right here with this post. Here are the specific steps that you can take:

• Make sure that your web traffic is safe and protected from prying eyes using a VPN – click here to get a massive 80% OFF on a 24-month subscription with Surfshark;

• Get yourself a proper domain for your site or business with Namecheap;

• Buy yourself a proper Bible;

The Dune series by Frank Herbert is well worth reading - the prequels written by his son and Kevin J. Anderson, not so much:

• Dune

I make some pretty incendiary statements in this podcast, and in most of my podcasts. I can only do so because I take steps to protect myself from the Big Tech companies, and preserve my identity. You need to do the same – this is no longer optional, because if you don’t, the gatekeepers WILL come for your head.

If you don’t know where to start, then I’ve got you covered right here with this post. Here are the specific steps that you can take:

• Make sure that your web traffic is safe and protected from prying eyes using a VPN – click here to get a massive 80% OFF on a 24-month subscription with Surfshark;

• Get yourself a proper domain for your site or business with Namecheap;

• Buy yourself a proper Bible;

The main Didactic Mind podcast is finally back with a new episode. In this one, I argue that we are already in a World War - whether you call it World War III or IV at this point, I don't know or care, but the fact is that we ARE dealing with a global war between at least two huge power blocs. I call out the Empire of Lies for what it is, and I straight-up argue that the USSA is now a terrorist state, after what it did with the Nord Stream project and the way that it has supported an openly and avowedly neo-Nazi regime in Ukraine. In the wake of the Kerch Bridge attack, I argue that the Russian people are no longer interested in compromise or peace with anything less than the outright destruction of Ukraine and the total defeat of NATO. I argue that the extremely weak and pathetically poor leadership of the Fake President has opened up opportunities for the Deep State factions to go to war with each other and the entire world. And I explain that the Neo-Tsar is not going to use a nuclear first strike, because that is not the Russian way or doctrine - but that he is also under tremendous pressure from his own government and people to deal with Ukraine much more harshly than he has so far.

In other words - we are staring at an extremely combustible and dangerous situation, and no one has any idea how bad things could get, or how fast.

As always, be sure to like, comment, share, and subscribe to the site and the podcast, and be sure to subscribe to my Telegram channel if you have not done so already.

I make some pretty incendiary statements in this podcast, and in most of my podcasts. I can only do so because I take steps to protect myself from the Big Tech companies, and preserve my identity. You need to do the same – this is no longer optional, because if you don’t, the gatekeepers WILL come for your head.

If you don’t know where to start, then I’ve got you covered right here with this post. Here are the specific steps that you can take:

• Make sure that your web traffic is safe and protected from prying eyes using a VPN – click here to get a massive 80% OFF on a 24-month subscription with Surfshark;

• Get yourself a proper domain for your site or business with Namecheap;

• Buy yourself a proper Bible;

The Domain Query series is finally back, after a long hiatus. This week's question comes from a reader and subscriber to my Telegram channel - be sure to subscribe if you have not done so already, it's a great community of like-minded men who banter back and forth and just generally have a lot of fun ribbing me about my awful taste in music and women. (I can't help it if my critics are all Philistines...)

Anyway, reader MK asked the following:

Dear Didact,

I make some pretty incendiary statements in this podcast, and in most of my podcasts. I can only do so because I take steps to protect myself from the Big Tech companies, and preserve my identity. You need to do the same – this is no longer optional, because if you don’t, the gatekeepers WILL come for your head.

If you don’t know where to start, then I’ve got you covered right here with this post. Here are the specific steps that you can take:

• Make sure that your web traffic is safe and protected from prying eyes using a VPN – click here to get a massive 80% OFF on a 24-month subscription with Surfshark;

• Get yourself a proper domain for your site or business with Namecheap;

• Buy yourself a proper Bible;

The Domain Query series is BACK after a little bit of a hiatus, with a long broadcast answering a set of very interesting and quite wide-ranging questions from LRFotS Randale6. This was good fun to talk through, but I think I might have pissed off Satan's butt-gremlins in the process, because my laptop (running Linux Mint 20.3, no less) blew a fuse somehow and refused to recognise input from either the mouse or keyboard. So I was rather worried that I'd lost the entire podcast, which was over an hour in length. I sure as shit didn't want to re-record the whole damned thing, but fortunately, Audacity was able to restore the cached version.

That being said, if you hear something off during the podcast, or the sound goes squirrelly, let me know, because I have no idea whether the original audio stream is intact. It SEEMS to be, but I really have no way to be sure, short of listening to the whole damn thing myself, and I don't like the sound of my own voice THAT much.

So here is the original question list:

1. Is homosexuality innate, "conditioned" or a mix of the two?

I've gone through them one after another, with varying amounts of time devoted to each answer. Be warned, this does get controversial and I do discuss some very icky subjects when answering all of this, so if you don't like listening to based commentary, well, go back to your safe space. Otherwise, listen on.

With respect to the question about Franco and Pinochet, I have to beg ignorance about their specific policies, but I would say that Pinochet, in particular, was merely a nationalist, and was assuredly not a fascist, given the market-based reforms that he pushed through in Chile. My understanding of Franco as well is that he was much more market-oriented than Hitler, Mussolini, or Tojo ever were. As I stated in the podcast, the best way to understand fascism is that it is a SUBSET of nationalism, and that nationalism in and of itself allows one to embrace either socialism or capitalism.

• The Last Closet by Moira Greyland;

I reference a lot of different sources and books in this podcast, and I can't quite remember them all, but if you have other sources to suggest, stick 'em in the comments, because this is a very broad set of questions and ideas for discussion.

I make some pretty incendiary statements in this podcast, and in most of my podcasts. I can only do so because I take steps to protect myself from the Big Tech companies, and preserve my identity. You need to do the same – this is no longer optional, because if you don’t, the gatekeepers WILL come for your head.

If you don’t know where to start, then I’ve got you covered right here with this post. Here are the specific steps that you can take:

• Make sure that your web traffic is safe and protected from prying eyes using a VPN – click here to get a massive 80% OFF on a 24-month subscription with Surfshark;

• Get yourself a proper domain for your site or business with Namecheap;

• Buy yourself a proper Bible;

The latest podcast episode is all about the evolution of a new world order, based on nation-states acting in their own interests, rather than the extraordinarily arrogant, foolish, childish, reckless, and outright stupid globalist approach taken by the collective West these days. I look back at an old article that I wrote some years ago, in which I used a HALO analogy concerning the Forerunners and compared them with the American global empire, and look at the accuracy of those claims compared with the modern day. And I note that a bit of competition in terms of ideologies is actually a VERY Good Thing, by discussing how the world will look as the American Empire fails and falls.

• The original "Globocop" article that I wrote back in October 2014;

I make some pretty incendiary statements in this podcast, and in most of my podcasts. I can only do so because I take steps to protect myself from the Big Tech companies, and preserve my identity. You need to do the same – this is no longer optional, because if you don’t, the gatekeepers WILL come for your head.

If you don’t know where to start, then I’ve got you covered right here with this post. Here are the specific steps that you can take:

• Make sure that your web traffic is safe and protected from prying eyes using a VPN – click here to get a massive 80% OFF on a 24-month subscription with Surfshark;

• Get yourself a proper domain for your site or business with Namecheap;

• Buy yourself a proper Bible;