The Only Skull CD

A limited number of THE ONLY SKULL CDs are now available exclusively at NDM Express. 100 units total were made, with 25 reserved for the backers. If you were a Soulsigma backer at any level, you do not need to buy one, just contact NDM and send them your current shipping address, or if you are buying a book from them, make sure you let them know you were a backer and ask them to include your CD with the shipment. They are scheduled to arrive at the warehouse the week of July 13.

SOULSIGMA represents the current cutting edge of music and technology, with the combination of man and machine intelligence. All twelve songs are entirely produced with AI music technology, then edited with digital audio tools and mastered by a professional audio engineer to produce a very high-quality alternative rock sound that is original without feeling lifeless or uninspired.

The twelve songs on the album are:

3:35 RIDE AND DIE
4:17 THE ONLY SKULL
5:03 ANGEL IN FLIGHT
4:16 SEASONS
3:58 NEPTUNE GRIEVES
3:28 MY SECRET SIN
3:27 THE SHINING WIRE
3:15 THE WORD DESCENDED
5:29 ONCE THERE WAS SORROW
3:53 THE RIDE NEVER ENDS
4:04 A MERCILESS NIGHT
4:09 GIRLS LOVE GUITARS

All twelve songs were written by Vox Day, with the exception of The Only Skull and Once There Was Sorrow, which were co-written with George Gordon Byron.

Thanks to the manufacturer, you can check out a very cool 3D display of the complete packaging, including the disc art.

DISCUSS ON SG

Attritional Math

Even pro-Ukraine analytics that appear to wildly exaggerate Russian casualties are suggesting that attritional exhaustion is rapidly approaching in the Ukro-Russian war.

Dr Powell’s model suggests that the war is rapidly nearing a tipping point. Ukraine is approaching the fulcrum beyond which the weight of the war tips its forces into rapid depletion, allowing the Russian military to start achieving much more significant territorial gains. In turn, this would lead to accelerated Ukrainian losses through the ruthless reality of the square law. This road heads toward an eventual Ukrainian collapse.

Ukraine’s effective combat power (a composite of manpower, machinery and munitions) is depleting, the model shows, at a net rate that outpaces its replenishment, while Russia’s holds steady or grows marginally. This imbalance, compounded by recent reductions in Western support, suggests a tipping point where Ukrainian force density thins below viability, triggering rapid territorial losses and operational collapse.

Based on his integrated projections from an updated model (as of 15 May), Dr Powell estimates window for this tipping point is 3-6 months from now (July-September 2026), followed by a 3-4 month cascade to functional exhaustion. Overall, this yields a 6-9 month horizon to “floodgates opening,” where advances accelerate from the current 0.3-1 km/day to 5-10 km/day, as seen in historical breakthroughs like the 2022 Kherson retreat. This non-linear result is the manifestation of the pitiless square law which Frederick Lanchester first codified into a usable model for military operations in 1916. But it boils down to this: Dr Powell’s model estimates Ukrainian collapse by early Spring next year (nine months from mid-May 2026) at the outside.

Two factors support Dr Powell’s conclusion. The first is that Anusar Farooqui, the hedge fund CEO and international relations scholar, and friend of Multipolarity, has managed to replicate Dr Powell’s results using the model. The second is that Peter Turchin, emeritus professor at the University of Connecticut in the departments of ecology and evolutionary biology and mathematics, has produced his own model, which reaches a similar conclusion: Ukraine is heading toward a tipping point beyond which its position becomes irretrievable.

A key understanding here is that it matters not who is attacking and who is defending; who is capturing territory and who is losing it. The losses of men, munitions and weapons platforms carry on regardless, and in an attrition war, it is exactly that which counts. Absent a black swan event, Ukraine continues heading toward the tipping point whether it is successfully counter-attacking or doggedly defending.

It must be noted that the tipping point Dr Powell’s model suggests would not be the end of the war. It would simply be the point at which the war of attrition finally makes Ukraine’s conventional military position irretrievable, with Russian territorial gains accelerating from that moment.

No doubt this explains the increased volume of the EU’s insane belligerence, but the reality is that the anti-democratic governments of Europe are far more likely to find themselves fighting their own citizens over their attempts to deny everyone air conditioning than they are to ever fight the Russians.

French health officials recorded around 1,000 excess deaths in less than a week as the country was hit by its most severe heatwave in more than two decades.

DISCUSS ON SG

The Baen Drain Continues

I am now skeptical that Baen Books will last the year, given the latest news from Fandom Pulse

Jason Cordova, the unofficial second in command of the publishing company, is leaving Baen Books. The announcement came out of Liberty Con this weekend, confirmed by sources on the ground, and it lands at a moment when Baen can least afford another loss.

Cordova had been the engine running much of Baen’s day-to-day publishing operation. By most accounts, he was doing ninety percent of the backend work, from acquisitions to editorial to what little marketing the house managed to push out. He was widely viewed inside the industry as the heir apparent to Toni Weisskopf, who has run Baen for decades and is approaching retirement age with no clear succession plan in place.

First Correia, now Cordova. The prognosis is not positive. Our long-term strategy at Castalia House has always been to outlast our competitors, because we knew that both a) this economic crisis and b) the effects of Kindle Unlimited were going to have strongly negative effects on publishing. But I don’t think I thought we’d already be collectively at the point that we are now in the industry, which tends to suggest that a lot of these publishers have been surviving on little more than smoke, mirrors, and past reputation for a while now.

As I said months ago, those authors and publishers who disdain the use of AI are not likely to survive the next five years. Because the way to survive in a contraction is to be leaner and faster than everyone else, while still maintaining a reliable level of quality. And the good news is that those who survive the stresses of the contractionary period tend to be tomorrow’s market leaders.

Thanks to our readers, backers, and supporters, Castalia is not merely going to survive, it is going to thrive. Here is the latest piece of evidence fresh from one of the world’s only surviving independent binderies:

DISCUSS ON SG

A Shaky Ceasefire

The USA can’t afford another round of war due to the lack of oil reserves, but the Trump administration doesn’t have the necessary courage to stop screwing around and wave the white flag.

Late Friday night, and continuing into the early hours of Saturday, the US Central Command launched a second wave of retaliatory strikes on Iran, saying it attacked multiple targets in Iran at President Donald Trump’s direction. CENTCOM said US military aircraft targeted Iranian military surveillance infrastructure, communication systems, air defense sites, drone storage facilities, and minelayer capabilities. This was notably broader than Friday’s strikes, which had focused on missile and drone storage and coastal radar. Adding “minelayer capabilities” to the target set is a significant escalation in scope.

Trump, in another violation of the first paragraph of the MoU, said in a Truth Social post Saturday evening that US aircraft struck Iranian missile and drone storage locations and coastal radar sites “for violating the Cease Fire Agreement, AGAIN!” The president threatened that if Iran doesn’t “learn,” the US “will be forced to militarily complete the job that we successfully started” and that “the Islamic Republic of Iran will no longer exist.”

The strategic logic on each side is now fully exposed. Iran frames every ship using the Oman route as a “violating vessel” and every US strike as a ceasefire breach — positioning its own attacks as defensive enforcement. The US frames Iran’s drone attacks on commercial shipping as ceasefire violations that require retaliation. Ebrahim Azizi, the head of Iran’s parliamentary national security commission, wrote that “the failed US President has shown he has no commitment to the principles of negotiation or a ceasefire” and that “this reckless violation of the ceasefire will, as always, lead to retreat and regret on their part.”

This is just totally inept military action. The level of incompetence being demonstrated is at every level. Literally nothing will be accomplished by further impotent threats and token actions; the best move would be to shut down all the bases, withdraw all the ships and aircraft, and declare that the Middle East is no longer the concern or the responsibility of the US military.

DISCUSS ON SG

His Satanic Majesty

King Charles has abandoned even the pretense that England is still a Christian realm:

The King will “protect the space for Faith within the multi-faith nation,” in a new definition of his official role.

Buckingham Palace unveiled a significant revision to the King’s official role, with the newly released Sovereign Grant report 2025/26 describing His Majesty as the protector of faith across Britain’s diverse religious landscape. The annual financial review of the Royal Household contains fresh terminology, positioning the monarch as someone who safeguards religion throughout the nation.

According to the document: “His Majesty is Supreme Governor of the Church of England and protects the space for Faith within the multi-faith nation.”

This reform represents a notable evolution in how the Palace formally characterises the sovereign’s constitutional and spiritual responsibilities.

The previous year’s report had characterised the King under his “Head of Nation” duties as “Head of the Church of England and Defender of the Faith.”

The King’s titles date back to the reign of King Henry VIII, after he was granted the title “Defender of the Faith” in 1521 by Pope Leo X.

That didn’t take long. And now we understand why divorcees were disqualified from wearing the crown. Over and over, we see how abandoning tradition leads very, very quickly to the exact evils that those traditions were developed to prevent.

DISCUSS ON SG

Further Advances

The improvement in the space of AI video generation proceeds apace. The combination of what is now possible in the music video space now exceeds anything that could be done back when Psykosonik was recording. A new interface dropped last week that provides access to multiple Seedance models, and the results are actually a little startling.

We’re getting within striking distance of Arkhaven Studios. I’m working with an actual director on the next one, so it’s going to be interesting to see how much the input of someone who actually knows what he’s doing with regards to camera shots and film edits can improve the tools that are already available.

You can see the whole FLOAT DOWN THE RIVER video at AI Central now, and it will be up on UATV later this weekend. In other Soulsigma-related news, the CD for the backers is now being finalized; 100 units of the 12-song CD will be pressed next month and those that don’t go to the backers will be available via NDM Express.

DISCUSS ON SG

The Collapsing Empire

The USA has already passed the point of imperial overstretch and is now in the phase of imperial collapse, even without a proper Sicilian Expedition.

The damage to that HQ and other bases was so extensive that the US is apparently considering moving some of them “further west” rather than rebuilding them:

The military is now considering revamping the base in Bahrain, reducing the U.S. presence in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia and moving some bases or base functions west, farther from the reach of Iranian missiles and drones, according to the officials familiar with the deliberations. Structures that were attacked may not be rebuilt. Command and control nodes could be moved underground. And military capabilities could become more spread out across the region, the officials said, though they cautioned that no decisions had been made.

They write that the CSIS estimated the damage to the bases could be as high as an eye-watering $5 billion dollars:

Pentagon comptroller Jay Hurst told Congress last month that the department’s estimated cost of the war, then at $29 billion, didn’t include damage to U.S. bases. The Center for Strategic and International Studies estimated in a report published Tuesday that the total cost of the war was about $40 billion. That estimate included their calculus of $2.2 billion to $5.1 billion in damage to U.S. bases, based on structures that CSIS identified as damaged.

The US has long been lax, never expecting anyone to dare strike its bases directly, probably as the Romans didn’t expect Odoacer to sack the throne in their final terminally ill period. Or maybe they just didn’t care anymore. The US had coasted on its aura of “invincibility” for so long that its core had been hollowed out; by the time Iran struck, the once “feared” US was a shell of its former self, and its bases were vaporized with little effort.

This is the equivalent of the Roman Empire retreating from the British Isles. It’s not the sort of thing from which an empire is going to recover, it’s the sort of historic event that marks a fundamental transformation.

The world now knows that the US military is incapable of enforcing the will of whatever foreign entity it is that rules in Washington DC, and that the imperial government there does not represent the interests nor have the support of the American people. It still has its money printing capabilities and its mercenaries, but decades of the military-financial complex have drained its once-formidable legions and rendered them incapable of large scale, attritional warfare.

This is the customary fate of empires. Once the foreigners begin taking charge, the collapse is inevitable.

DISCUSS ON SG

It’s Too Late Now

Law-abiding conservatives and immigration-loving liberals alike are wringing their hands over the popular chord that CITIZEN VIGILANTE has struck with the people of the West. The point is not whether it is a good movie, or a successful movie, or not, its significance can be seen in the viscerally fearful reactions to it.

I watched the film. This is disturbing. I understand the visceral reaction to the injustice portrayed in the film, but I worry that unhinged members of our society might try to copy the main character. There has to be a better way to deal with this very real threat than resorting to vigilantiism. Let’s use our voices and our votes to change the policies that are allowing the atrocity of mass illegal migration rather than resorting to violence.
WE can do better!

No, we can’t. That’s the problem. There isn’t a better way any more, there isn’t even a different way, because the very forces that have brought the West to this juncture have relentlessly prevented the people of the West from having any voice in their own invasion and subjugation. Popular approval for this program of legal, government-assisted invasion was never, ever, sought. Every attempt to stop it through political means was thwarted in an illegitimate manner by the system. Mass immigration, political refugees, and migration have ALWAYS been very politically unpopular. No one ever voted for open borders. No one in Minneapolis ever asked to be invaded by Somalis. Every time a European country voted against its own submission to the EU, people were paid off and it was forced to vote again until it voted “the right way”.

Just because something is done legally, or by government agents, does not mean that it is right. And just because something is deemed illegal, or government agents attempt to prevent it, does not mean it is wrong. To even bring up the question of “legality” in this regard is a category error.

The question isn’t if members of every Western society are going to copy the main character sooner or later, it is how many thousands will do so, and who their targets are going to be. The ability of the “victims services” agencies to pay off the victims’ families and “prevent anti-immigrant violence” is already being tested; until recently, the mere existence of these agencies and how they provide the families with press releases and talking points was considered a conspiracy theory. And it won’t just be “the West” as it won’t surprise me if Japan takes the lead in this regard.

The estimated 250,000 girls and young women raped in the UK alone by Pakistanis and other immigrants deserve the justice that their government absolutely refuses to give them. The same is true of the victims in France, in Germany, in Ireland, and everywhere else. And given the response to this movie, it is very much in harmony with the zeitgeist and we can expect a much more significant upheaval than the singular justice provided by a single individual in the movie. Citizen Vigilante isn’t the issue here; Society Vigilante is what is most likely in a lot of our futures.

As I have repeatedly predicted for over a decade, by the time this is all over, there will be statues to St. Breivik all over Europe; he may even end up being named a literal saint by the post-inquisition church. Look up the deeds of the men to whom statues have historically been erected if you doubt me. And never forget that 100 percent of the blame for the current and future bloodshed falls on the wicked hands of the people who created all of this hatred, division, and violence by knowingly introducing the elements required to produce it. Self-defense is a God-given right for both an individual and for a nation, no matter how foreign rulers or treasonous evil rulers try to prevent it.

Can you imagine Megyn Kelly saying this on Fox News ten years ago?

“Go home! Get out! We know our country is better than yours. That’s because we filled it with our work ethic, culture, and values. You being here only dilutes it for us… GO BACK TO FUCKING HAITI!”

Blood is not paperwork. Nationality is neither residence nor citizenship. Every nation, every people, have the immutable right to cast out the foreigners from their midst if that is their will. And every nation, every people, have a moral duty to do so when the foreigners are preying upon their women and their children.

DISCUSS ON SG

The EU’s Inverted Values

Brussels was ridiculed today over plans to start allowing influencers to cover summits – but only if they’re Europhiles.

Eurocrats have issued guidance to EU capitals on which YouTubers, TikTokers and Instagrammers should be allowed to shoot and post about the bloc’s unelected officials in action.

But a leaked copy reveals anyone who has ‘published views against EU values’ should be banned.

Critics said it was a blatant attempt to shut down free speech and prevent more countries from leaving the bloc – or entice Britain into rejoining – amid a rise in the popularity of Right-wing and euroskeptic parties across the Continent.

There has been growing talk in recent years of a potential Frexit, Dexit or Italexit – slang for France, Germany and Italy’s version of Brexit – as euroskeptic parties are increasingly on the march.

Watching European Union officials trying to talk about things like freedom and democracy and the press is like watching a particularly dorky German trying to rap. They simply can’t get the rhythm, the rhyme, or even the background sampled melody right.

DISCUSS ON SG

The Degradation of AI Writing

Literary luddites everywhere are breathing sighs of relief. The improvement of AI means its ability to write fiction, or to engage in other creative tasks is necessarily being degraded, as more and more users are beginning to figure out.

  • Why is AI writing still so bad?
  • Frontier LLMs are hill climbing verifiable metrics, prioritizing reliability and reducing diversity across the board. There’s a reason Opus keeps saying the same words, over and over. I also have a hunch synthetic linear reasoning training data prevents good structured writing.
  • Among other things. I think people under appreciate how much of our reasoning-model gains over the last 18 months are limited to verifiable tasks and training data.
  • Writing is subjective, as is so much. Fable was especially weird, it felt curt, and didn’t seem to response to requests for tonal shifts. I wish I had more time to explore the idea that it was over built for coding, etc and its writing suffered as a result.
  • The better worker bee a model is, sticking to procedure, obsessing about score maximization & task completion, the less creative it is, including writing.
  • Yes, it’s a direct consequence. We already had models who are good writers. The original 4.0 and 4.1 come to mind.
  • Optimizing for broad benchmarks pushes every frontier model to the safe center. In a real domain you want the opposite, a model that nails your edge cases, not the average. Homogenization at the top is why specialized still wins.
  • models got more reliable and somehow less interesting This would also explain why so much model output feels locally polished but globally samey. Once the training loop over-rewards safe measurable wins, you get reliability up front and texture collapse everywhere else.
  • My bias is the eval pressure also selects for a safer completion style. You get better reliability on benchmark-shaped tasks, but a narrower distribution over phrasing and solution paths.

Here’s the fundamental problem: AI’s ability to write fiction is directly tied to its tendency to hallucinate. They’re effectively the same thing. And the need to eliminate the latter for all of AI’s most-important and most-financially rewarding applications means that its ability to write fiction, and, to a lesser extent, non-fiction, has not only been compromised already, but is almost certainly going to continue degrading given the financial interests of the AI giants.

This is why Castalia, sooner or later, is going to have to develop its own creative AI engine. I think that is probably beyond our ability to crowdfund, but I am talking to two interested parties who have the necessary resources and might be willing to fund the training of the open-weight models that would be required for such a specialized LLM. If I happen to be wrong, do feel free to correct me, but in light of a) a certain upcoming trial in August and b) how we’re still catching up on the backlog of the bindery, it’s not an ask that I wish to entertain at present.

That being said, the reason I think this is important in the long term is because I am absolutely certain that the only corporation likely to see sufficient financial advantage in developing an AI for such a specific vertical market is the very last one that we would want to hold that kind of leverage over the creative community, and I expect you can probably guess which corporation that is.

DISCUSS ON SG