Archive for the ‘Writing’ Category

Blog Traffic Targets

As they say, what doesn’t get measured doesn’t get managed, and curiosity made me look at what my stats are compared to what the average is in the world according to a poll of some 400 or so web traffic analysts (if such a thing really exists).

Anyway, without getting into needless specifics, although I have been blogging a long time, I took the approach that since I have really only started doing so multiple times a day this year, I would accept that my blog is essentially as if born in 2023 but with some minimal street cred due to previous/other activities. I am also a one man show, while many blogs are actually fully professional sites with dedicated staff to them. That said, I am still in the baby end of the pool with occasional dips into the adult section.

So far, only February went over the 15k visitors in one month, the rest being between just over 6k and under 13k, which places me in the orange bar at the top. Breaking into the azure zone —as in, living there month-to-month— will definitely be a nice marker to hit.

I don’t really monetise my blog, aside from irregularly updating the books I have written that you can get on amazon and having a link on the left sidebar to Kurgan TV, that is about the extent of it. I have never been any good at marketing myself, nor do I really care to, but some aspect of statistics do fascinate me and for the first time ever, I have taken note of the traffic, this year, and I am curious to see where I can take it.

My original target was a modest total of 100k views for 2023, with 30k unique visitors. As long as I keep up the regular blogging, I will hit that comfortably a few months before year’s end, since I am at nearly 60k views and almost 20k unique visitors.

But, as I think the progression is not exactly linear (but not exponential either) I think it should be possible, with a bit of luck, to hit maybe even 200k views and 50k unique visitors, though it would be better if it was 100k, and it should be achievable if the rough ratio of just over 2 to 1 stays steady.

So, here are my blue-sky goals to be hit by 31st December 2023:

  • Over 15k a month visitors for at least 3 consecutive months of the year.
  • Over 200k views total.
  • 100k or more unique visitors.

Given we are at the end of May I think these are fairly ambitious and probably am unlikely to hit all of them, perhaps in fact I may hit none of them, but the geek in me enjoys the challenge.

Realistically I only have 3 months left to hit that 15k plus a month figure, and only seven months to more than double my total views and more than quadruple the number of unique visitors. Like I said, it’s a fairly tall order.

If I forget, remind me in December to let you know how it went.

    What 18-24 year olds need

    A couple of points of reference for context before I address the title of this post.

    1. Commenter Mark left the following on the previous post:

    “If we look at the Industrial Revolution etc, we see mostly low-IQ jobs getting automated… but current AIs are close to being able to automate a lot of ~100 IQ jobs, which will certainly pose more of a challenge to society (something something useless eaters something something depopulation…).

    Because AIs cannot think, however, ultimately humans will be needed to fix them. Care to guess whether our elites will realise this before it’s too late?

    Final thought: trust online will vanish when video AIs are perfected. Imagine both MSNBC & FOX swearing that THEIR version of the interview is the real one, and the other a deepfake. Or for that matter, me watching a Kurgan stream to see “you” declare yourself an atheist, whilst someone else watches the real one.”

    To which I replied:

    Yes, these issues are “REAL PROBLEMS” for people that are about 120 IQ or less. People like me understand something from two perspectives:

    1. Regression to analogue, human face to face, tribal, community systems of communication used by Cold War era spies and retrograding to not using any electronics beyond (maybe) a desktop to browse “current affairs” (current misinformation/propaganda), but in extremis even avoiding that altogether is a way of behaving that the globohomo enforcers will not know how to deal with and will ultimately fail at dealing with. You doubt it? See Vietnam. See Iraq. See Afghanistan. Or for that matter, see the Bundy Ranch when Federale turned up in 8 cars with guns and were faced with hundreds of cowboys with guns.
    Can they “git ya”? Sure. See Waco. See Ruby Ridge. BUT… anyone who has thought this through would be aware of those examples and have planned accordingly. Also, if SHTF to the point of a hot civil war, and that sort of thing going on, the defensive approach will also include offensive misdirections. Is it easy? No. Is it dangerous? Sure. But, can it work? Yes. If 90 IQ people on the other side of the planet can make it work, even 110 IQ people on this side can do so too.

    2. I have spent over 25 years in various African countries, been through at least one or two coups, massive rioting and changes of government, the collapse of Apartheid and lived in areas of extreme levels of crime that most human beings in the Western world simply can’t even imagine, never mind deal with. And guess what. The so-called super hi-tech US trained special ops people NEVER impressed me nor the people I worked with. It’s providential you posted this comment as it was going to be the next thing I address in future posts (as per my Covid Fatigue Post) and this makes a decent starting off point.

    2. This 17 minute video on Replika,

    which highlights even more starkly the current state of play in the AI business, the pit of despair of the young people it affects the most, and is primarily targeted to, and the outright greed and evil of the inventor and the people pushing it. It literally started from a ghoulish premise, launched itself into a parasitic spiral from the get go, and now is in a demonic/crushing the weak dynamic currently.

    3. The Current Zombie Apocalypse.

    I have, of course, discussed this at some length in various posts, but consider that today, the average young adult has been faced with:

    1. Constant social media upbringing, affecting their brain chemistry with dopamine and serotonin highs and lows as a result of purely manufactured artificial “content” online, which though not real, as in not in the flesh, has the same effect as if it were. And this has been by design, as various Faceborg whistle-blowers have explicitly clarified.
    2. They have been lied to on a global scale about not only all the same lies of history, both ancient and modern we GenXers were subject to, but additional super-emphasis on the absurd lies of :
    • Free Speech
    • Equality
    • Tolerance
    • Climate Change
    • Feminism
    • Girl Power
    • White Privilege
    • Endemic racism of Whites
    • There is only one race, the Human race
    • Violence is NEVER the answer (despite the fact that it has ALWAYS been the final answer throughout the entirety of human history, which is why governments try to retain a full monopoly on it)
    • Love is love
    • LGBTQ-Pedos are just like anyone else and their pedophelia is just another sexual attraction
    • LGBTQ-Pedos are born that way and this is why any who convert back to heterosexuality should be shut away and never heard from again
    • The Bible is evil and the Catholic Church is just a hive of Pedophiles (the Novus Ordo fake “Catholic Church’ is indeed, but that’s got nothing to do with actual catholicism, which has created the best conditions for human beings ever, in the entire history of mankind

    3. All of the above has been done to them with an economic situation and prospects for them that are even worse than what GenX was subjected to in our own young adult phase.

    4. Ubiquitous Pornography.

    Literally everywhere and a ridiculing of anyone even contemplating remotely the idea of marriage, children and a traditional family life. Why would you want that boring, vanilla life-style when you should be chasing Lamborghinis and a retinue of gold-digging whores right into sex-trafficking jail-time? The situation is dire in that the girls too are just as affected and many, especially in the USA will think nothing of “rainbow lipstick” parties, random hook-ups and so on. In short, the natural instinct for pair-bonding and K-selection reproduction strategy is intentionally, and quite successfully, being pivoted to r-selection version, with all the consequences of Mouse Utopia incoming at breakneck speed.

    Alright then, so WHAT do these poor young men and women need?

    I can tell you in a single sentence, but the problem is that most of them will do nothing about it. Many, if not most are functionally illiterate. Reading comes to them as calculus comes to the average Gender.

    They have very little motivation, fewer resources and they have been lied to on a scale that means they probably ignore most things regardless of who tells them what they can do to help themselves.

    So you still want it in a single sentence.

    Ok then. Here it is.

    You need:

    • To do some meaningful physical activity. Martial Arts would be top of the list for the males and Dancing (preferably of the classical variety, unfortunately the environment of such activities for girls is extremely degenerate, so a LOT of caution is required), learning how to play a musical instrument, long form writing, painting or some other artistic endeavour for girls. For Martial Arts, you can read this and apply the concepts in whatever martial arts class you can find near you. If you can’t afford to pay for classes, go ask anyway, any decent martial arts instructor will train people for free if they speak to him privately and he knows they cannot afford to pay full price. Usually he will ask some other kind of contribution, maybe you go in early to clean the dojo, or whatever. A young man who has taken this advice recently texted me the following:

    Maybe you’ll enjoy hearing this, I’ve been going over the Systema concepts again recently with the help of your book and applying it to my Brazilian jiu jitsu. Peoples takedowns if you don’t flinch/tense like a spastic are awful! I keep being able to take their back. Also keep getting asked if I do extra cardio. So I’m still an extreme beginner at Systema but it’s lending results

    • Read. And if you don’t know how to, LEARN. The best advice I can give you here is as follows: Dyslexia is largely bullshit and the result of being taught to read one word at a time instead of a single letter at a time to compose words. If you do it one letter at a time you can read anything. If you do it the other way, when you come across a word you never saw before your comprehension goes to shit for the whole page, paragraph or even chapter. One letter at a time is slower but gives you a huge advantage in comprehension. When you can read properly you can always speed up by learning how to speed read. Read a LOT of books. At age 12-19 or so I was reading on average 3-4 books a week. That’s not a lie and not an exaggeration or hyperbole. If you can’t afford to buy the books go to a library and use that. I read all sorts of stuff, from advanced physics and astronomy books to biology, to fiction, history, theology, and pretty much bunch of other topics. I will publish a list of non-fiction top books, but there is already a top list of fiction books here.
    • Interact with human beings face to face. It doesn’t matter how scared you are. It doesn’t matter if you have zero social skills. It doesn’t matter. Unlike swimming, if you try to interact with people in as normal a way as possible and fail, it will rarely get you killed, so you can try again, and again, and again, adjusting each time, learning each time, and gradually, as with anything, you will improve. It doesn’t matter how you start. If you’re an omega shut-in, start with a books club, or a martial arts class, or a yoga class, it doesn’t matter what. Go to a tango class and get really spun out. Just get some face to face time with other humans. If at all possible build friendships and have fun activities with them. I wrote a short but fun role-playing game precisely for this purpose, though most people assume it was some money-making thing. I assure you, the total revenue from selling a dozen of these books doesn’t even buy me a lunch. The cost is because it has a full colour art interior. The first module for those who don’t want to design their own adventure is not full colour interior.
    • Build up some kind of assets. Yes, the economy sucks. Yes, your savings may turn to Zimbabwean dollars from one day to the next. Nevertheless, get some kind of work and try, as best you can, to acquire some kind of property, even bare land is better than nothing. Keep in mind that you can buy run down shepherd huts with some land for under 30k Euro in various parts of Europe. I am sure the same is true in the USA and most places that are not Switzerland. Obviously, the more remote the place, the cheaper it might be, and the more difficult to build something on it down the line. But listen, when I was 26, I wrote the Face on Mars and printed it myself by using the printing machines of a printers throughout the night for a solid week. I only had a 1000 copies because that’s all I could afford to do and then I bust my ass going to sell them door to door at books hops to do signings that lasted a whole day. Carting the books and fold out tables and printing my own posters. Was it hard? Sure. But with he money from that I put a deposit down on a piece of land by the seaside in a remote place. more than 20 years later I sold it for over ten times the money I paid for it and used that money to put a deposit on the current place. And trust me, I am the absolute worst for long term asset planning. If I had given my future 10% of the attention I spent on so many other things, I would probably be comfortably retired now instead of struggling to reach month’s end every month. You can do much better than I did if you start now and keep this in mind.
    • Learn skills. Whenever possible learn a useful skill and try to get practical experience at it. Learn to weld, woodwork, do basic mechanics, basic electrical work, basic plumbing, basic building and farming. Learn to use firearms. And whatever else takes your fancy. I once had a Romanian girlfriend that had been a lingerie model who did not have a driving licence, but she had a pilot’s licence. She literally could fly a private plane, even though she did not have the legal requirements to drive a car, and had never learnt. It might be an odd thing, but she had taken the opportunity to learn when she could. That spirit is worth more than its weight in gold.
    • Learn about REAL Catholicism. Even if you are mostly illiterate, you can still pick up BELIEVE! which is a 2 hour read that has converted over 100 people. It doesn’t matter if you actually believe or not. The model is unsurpassed for creating successful communities, and frankly, also outstandingly heroic men and women that overcome absurd odds. So copy their template at the very least.

    LEARN ALL OF THESE THINGS AND BECOME GOOD AT THEM BEFORE YOU WORRY TOO MUCH ABOUT A LIFE PARTNER.

    The reason for this are multi-faceted.

    • You will prove to be far more attractive and worthwhile once you have mastered at least several of the items above. making it easier to attract and retain the person you find most suitable for you.
    • If you focus on getting a relationship when you have little to offer, even if your intent is good, the process of learning things while trying to maintain a long term relationship will add strain to it. While this can work to bring you closer faster, most women today will bail at the first difficulty.
    • Relationships are a complex minefield all its own and we will try o cover them in a later post in more detail. Besides, as you go about getting the above point into shape, you will invariably meet other people and you can begin to practice your in-person social skills there, even as you learn other things. Think more synergistically (how each skill set helps other skill sets) rather than sequentially (I must do A before B before C… etc)

    That’s it as a primer. The more comments, questions, etc I get, the more I can focus my subsequent posts to address specifics. I have received enough mail and advised enough young men to know what is required in generic terms, but I have no objection in principle to try to answer relevant specifics.

    I hope it helps, generation Zyklon. Now get to it.

      Best Fiction Titles

      Leaving this pinned for a bit as people are enjoying them. New posts are below.

      The below is the fiction titles of all time I recall and have enjoyed the most. No doubt some escape me, but overall, if you are looking for a good read, these are it. Where they are available for purchase online somewhere I have added a link.

      The Sub-Genre column needs a little explanation. For Example, my book 2 in the Overlords of Mars series says “film” because the events in it are written more as you would expect them to appear in a film. And the Hyperion series is sort of, kinda, about Christianity, in a way, but a very cool, sci-fi way. Anyway, I hope you enjoy them.

      GenreSub-GenreBook Title
      FantasyChristianityThe High Crusade
      FantasyPoetryThe Lost Books of the Odyssey
      FantasyRomanceAll My Friends Are Superheroes
      FantasyVenice MythologyThe Stress of Her Regard
      HumourCartoonsCalvin & Hobbes
      PoetryPoetryJohn Keats Complete Poems
      ReincarnationLoveCloud Atlas (See the film which is better)
      RPGFantasyThe Rules Cyclopedia – D&D or PDF
      RPGSci-FiClassic Traveller Role Playing Game (the three little black books 1, 2 and 3)
      Sci-FiAndroidsDo Androids Dream of Electric Sheep
      Sci-FiChristianityThe Hyperion Series (get the whole thing)
      Sci-FiHistoryOverlords of Mars – Inception (book 1)
      Sci-FiGraphic NovelAldebaran 
      Sci-FiGraphic NovelAntares
      Sci-FiGraphic NovelBetelgeuse 
      Sci-FiGreek MythologyIlium 
      Sci-FiFilm Overlords of Mars – Stasis (book 2) 
      Sci-FiMarsJohn Carter of Mars the film too is good
      Sci-FiPrecognitionThe Stochastic Man
      Sci-FiTelepathyThe Hollow Man

      And of course, I did forget some in the table there, so they are here:

      The continuation of the Bladerunner (the original film) but in book format (and bury that foulness from the pit that was the film Bladerunner 2049) by KW Jeter. He actually has 3 more out, I didn’t even know as I had only read the second one. Which was brilliant.

      I am sure I have forgotten many more, or perhaps I simply have outgrown some I really enjoyed when younger, like the Dragonlance Series, which I read when I was 16 and played Dungeons and Dragons quite a bit, but these above are the ones that stuck in my mind off the top of my head.

      A reader reminded me in the comments I did not include anything by gene Wolf. For which I will lash myself in penance. My personal best loved of his books is Soldier of the Mist. But the man was a genius, you can’t go wrong with any of his stuff.

        Why I will never accept a Hugo Nomination or Award

        I know, ambitious much? In the SF world of writing I am a non-entity. My non-fiction books sell much better, nevertheless, having been exposed to the disgusting process that are the Hugos and the SFWA membership currently, I can categorically state that before I would ever accept a nomination to the Hugos, the SFWA would have to purge itself of all the NAMBLA supporters like Sam Delaney, who explicitly state it would be wrong to punish an adult for having sexual relations with a six year old. I am not making it up. Go read the link, it’s his own words. So, until the SWFA purges itself throughly of child molestors and rapists like Ed Kramer, and publicly denounce and burn an effigy of the ones that are dead like Marion Zimmer Bradley, and her child-rapist convicted husband, I am not going to have anything to do with anything related to them, nor will I accept any nominations for a Hugo. Read more »

          My Prediction of the Hugos

          I am going on record with my best guess before it all comes out. This assumes no censorious SJW vast conspiracy or sudden “electrical fire” doesn’t destroy the unadulterated ballots. I don’t seriously think there is a real possibility of the voting being unfairly counted or outright faked, but… humans. You know the species. Anyway, here are my predictions: UPDATE: Chaos Horizon has the best statistical analysis of the whole Hugo mess. It’s brilliant and exposes the SJWs impartially and mercilessly, because that’s how truth works.

          Read more »

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