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Sadly, Freestartr is still unable to collect funds. We will give them until the beginning of October before we consider giving up on them. We are still hoping they will recover.
In the meantime, Freestartr patreons, you can wait, too, or send your monthly contribution through Paypay, as you wish.
To both Freestartr and Patreon folks, and those who support us directly, we are so very, very grateful for the support of all you guys !!!
On a somewhat related subject, because of carelessness by yours truly, there is no recording of this month’s live chat. John and I are going to try to make it up to Action Team Swan by recording a brainstorming period or some other conversation on book related topics between the two of us.
Expect less activity here over the next week, as I am on vacation. I have the next episode of my ever lengthening diatribe and anathema against THE LAST JEDI scheduled to publish automatically. I will interrupted my vacation, sacrificing precious hours of leisure and joy with my family, to write and post the next episode of LOST ON THE LAST CONTINENT because I love you, dear readers.
Alex Jones of Info Wars has been banned from all social platforms except for Twitter in a single afternoon, showing that the tech giants are acting in concert for what are obviously political reasons, to suppress the speech of enemies of the Left.
In the myriad discussions surrounding this, one might hear the topic framed as a First Amendment issue, or an issue of whether private property owners may use their property as they like. I humbly suggest that neither of these grasps the basic legal issue involved.
It is not a First Amendment issue because the First Amendment is a constitutional restriction barring the Federal Government (and, by the legal fiction of the Doctrine of Incorporation, state and local governments) from passing laws and regulations restricting the natural right of freedom of speech. For obvious reasons, this analysis does not apply to private companies acting in concert.
Nor is this conspiracy in restraint of trade, so Antitrust Law, which this seems at first to violate, is also beside the point. The companies acted in collusion to prevent a widely-known public speaker from reaching his audience, because they objected to his anti-Left politics, which they call hate speech.
It is collusion, by the way, but not conspiracy. Technically, conspiracy requires an agreement to commit an unlawful act. An agreement secretly to commit a lawful but dishonorable act, such as stifling a man for his politics and pretending it is because he violated a vaguely-worded community guideline on courtesy, is collusion. It is wrong, and, in this case, may rise to the level of being sinister and threatening to the rest of us, but it is not illegal.
I will be joining Zaklog the Great friends to discuss C.S. Lewis’s “The Dragon Speaks” at 9:30 Eastern. Please watch.
Here is the event link:
And there is the poem:
Once the worm-laid egg shattered in the wood. I came forth shining into the trembling world; The sun was on my scales, dew upon the grasses, The cold, sweet grasses and the sticky leaves. I loved my speckled mate. We played at druery and sucked warm milk dropping from the ewes’ teats.
Now I keep watch on the gold in my rock cave In a country of stones: old, deplorable dragon, Watching my hoard. In winter night the gold Freezes through tough scales my cold belly; Jagged crowns, cruelly twisted rings, Icy and knobb’d, are the old dragon’s bed.
Often I wish I had not eaten my wife (Though worm grows not to dragon till he eats worm). She could have helped me, watch and watch about, Guarding the gold; the gold would have been safer. I could uncoil my tired body and take Sometimes a little sleep when she was watching.
Last night under the moonset a fox barked, Startled me; then I knew I had been sleeping. Often an owl flying over the country of stones Startles me; then I think that I must have slept, Only a moment. That very moment a Man Might have come from the towns to steal my gold.
They make plots in the towns to take my gold, They whisper of me in the houses, making plans, Merciless men. Have they not ale upon the benches, Warm wives in bed, and song, and sleep the whole night? I leave my cave once only in the winter To drink at the rock pool; in summer twice.
They have no pity for the old, lugubrious dragon. Lord that made the dragon, grant me thy peace, But say not that I should give up the gold, Nor move, nor die. Others would have the gold. Kill rather, Lord, the Men and the other dragons; Then I can sleep; go when I will to drink.
A reader asked me to define the word evil. Happy to oblige:
Evil is the perversion or absence of good.
In the intellectual realm, good is honesty. In the existential realm, good is truth.
In the realm of biology, good is life and whatever forms of health and joy promote life, and, consequently, whatever virtues promotes health and joy.
In the aesthetic realm, good is beauty.
In the moral realm, good is the goal of virtue. The virtues are fortitude, prudence, justice, temperance. In the realm of the appetites, good is the proportionate satisfaction of healthy and natural pleasures.
In the emotive realm, good is love.
Hence we see that good is God and God is good: for He both is and sheds this one good of which the lesser goods are manifestations or side effects: God is truth, life, beauty, virtue, love.
Evil is the pursuit of good by illicit or unlawful means; or the pursuit of some lesser good at the expense of a greater, or in the wrong time or circumstances; or the use of lawful means to obtain illicit ends; or an act which is depraved in and of itself, regardless of means used or ends intended, such as torture, slavery, aborticide.
Old school Space Opera! Action, romance, giant robot combat, adventure on a stellar scope and scale!
Has Star Wars let you down? Not feeling it out of the big New York or London publishers? Has Japan failed to scratch your itch for something new out of Space Opera? What if you could get an independent novel series that satisfied those cravings? Action! Adventure! Romance! GIANT ROBOT COMBAT! Space battles! Knights with laser swords that are actually men of valor! Heroines who are actual women full of grace and beauty, inspiring and uplifting their men! Star Knight Saga has all that. Back it.
In this exciting episode, Colonel Lost learns he is doomed.
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Sorry about the late posting, true believers. It was a busy day at the Wright House, but your faithful servant stayed up until after midnight, burning the candle at both ends and chewing fretfully on quill nibs, to write and post my latest offering.
Sadly, this is one of those talky-talky episodes where dire secrets and dread fates are revealed, and who cares about that? Fighting, bloodshed, and mayhem next time for sure. Or more details about neolithic canoe building and bowyering, which is what fascinates me.