Category Archives: Admin

Five Years Of Blogging

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It all began on January 9, 2008.

It began, as it is now, as Da Russophile over at blogger. And I was a Russophile then, perhaps unreasonably so. That said I did do some useful work back then. I am most proud of the demographic models by which I predicted:

  1. Russia will see positive population growth starting from 2010 at the latest.
  2. Natural population increase will occur starting from 2013 at the latest.

Bullseye!

I was not nearly so accurate on the economy. The severe recession in 2009 forced me to readjust my expectations.

At the end of the year, I moved my blog to WordPress and renamed it to Sublime Oblivion. From now on I would no longer write exclusively about Russia.

Around 2009, I also started having a major ideological shift that in retrospect was regrettable and wrong. It was a weird fusion of eco-leftism, Stratforian realism, and even mysticism (remember the “belief matrices“?). Back then my ideological/political arguments were not firewalled from my Russia stuff – as they are today with the Da Russophile / AKarlin division – and as such there appeared many downright bizarre articles like this, this, and this. Despite a few gems, foremost of which was perhaps the translation of the infamous “Stalinist” textbook, this was a year best forgotten.

This pattern continued into 2010. Recall Green Communism and the Collapse Party? By the way, it’s not like I abandoned my views on Limits to Growth/unsustainability and the necessity of radical solutions. I just stopped caring about them.

I also initiated a series of interviews with leading Russia watchers back then, taking over from Andy Young of Siberian Light. But I didn’t keep it up.

2011 was a very productive year. I dropped a lot of the ideological nonsense in favor of practicalities, wrote a great series comparing the US/UK/Russia, and tilted my Russia coverage away from the unalloyed Russophilia of 2008 and the weird splashes of Spenglerian mysticism and obsession with geopolitics that marred it in 2009-10. It also marked my outbreak into mainstream journalism with me appearing on RT and starting to write op-eds for Al Jazeera.

The most interesting and critical year so far was 2012. It began ingloriously with a pharma hack of my blog. This destroyed my SEO ratings, but also presented an excellent opportunity to start over. I split the blog into Da Russophile (Russia stuff) and AKarlin aka this one (everything else).

Up to that time, my blog had enjoyed almost 800,000 visits. Since then, AKarlin.com has hosted a further 178,347 visits, and Da Russophile a further 164,745.

The Russia stuff continued on its upwards ascent. I continued with op-eds for Al Jazeera, wrote the classic 5 Types of Russian American, and started writing short pieces for the US-Russia.com Experts Panel (now regularly translated and republished at Voice of Russia).

The everything else part tilted into a sharply controversial direction. This was defined by my definitive embrace of Human Biodiversity theory with all the inevitable attendant consequences stemming from that decision (before I had avoided explicitly engaging with it by talking in terms of “human capital”). And if I’m going to openly write about HBD then I might as well openly write about game. I lost some regular readers, including a few who have since developed a visceral hatred for me, but I see that as no big loss. On the plus side I got many new ones thanks to associations with the HBDsphere. More importantly, I would not have to tiptoe around topics that I felt were important and highly relevant (by way of their explanatory power) to the world around us.

But then I had a few problems. The blog went into limbo for a few months.

This is not a permanent death and never will be if I can possibly help it. The aforementioned “problems” have now been solved, so regular blogging will return here in the near future – hopefully by the beginning of February.

As 2013 dawns on us, and I am finally free of the RL time constraints that held me back in previous years, there are five main directions to my work:

  • Continuing what I’m doing at Da Russophile.
  • Writing the book Dark Lord of the Kremlin.
  • The “Russian Inosmi” project called Russia Voices.
  • More journalism at Al Jazeera and Voice of Russia.
  • Resuming regular posting at AKarlin.com.

So please continue checking back here on this blog too. There will soon be a fun piece on my trip to Las Vegas.

Policy On Racism

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As I noted in my old post on the false dichotomy between race denial and racism, there is a regrettable degree of overlap between racism and race realism. This shouldn’t however blind us to the real distinctions between the two, which were very succinctly summarized by Half Sigma thus:

The race realist understands The g Factor, The Bell Curve, and other works of scientific research. The racist apparently thinks that because Barack Obama is half black, it’s impossible for him to have a significantly higher g than John McCain.

This applies to comments such as this one joking that only 12 or 13 US Blacks have the cognitive capacity to learn Mandarin, with Obama not among them. This is obviously false. Obama graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law on the basis of blind grading, which implies elite cognitive cognitive ability. And for that matter, I know two Blacks who speak fluent Mandarin. Are they two of the Elite 13? LOL.

That said, I will not as a general rule be censoring “racist” comments, unless they are couched in the most explicit and offensive language (for that there is Stormfront if you are so inclined). Part of the reason is that the line between racism and race realism is blurry and open to debate. For instance, arguing on the basis of statistics that apartheid wasn’t all that bad for Black South Africans probably isn’t racism. What about calling for its return? I do not know. As I said, blurry lines. I have neither the time nor wish to subject individual comments to such detailed scrutiny.

I do however urge commentators to exercise restraint and good taste. After all, the HBD-sphere is plagued by accusations of racism, and not entirely unfairly either; and this is used to stifle valid and much-needed discussion on racial differences. Let’s not give the PC brigade any more ammo if we can possibly help it.

PS. I am following with interest the discussions in the posts on Indian and Chinese IQ. I cannot participate, as I’m now writing a lengthy piece on Pussy Riot, but rest assured the comments will be read and the more interesting ones examined further.

Open Thread #1

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This Open Thread is permanently glued to the front page. Feel free to step in here to comment on current affairs or ask me stuff (unless this involves Russia in which case do it here at Da Russophile), recount interesting anecdotes, etc.

From now on all off-topic comments should be posted here, as I will no longer hesitate about deleting them from other posts.

Important Sitrep: The Future Of My Blogging

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After experiencing a period of renewed energy but lingering uncertainty over the future of my blogging – the recent trajectory of which some of you have taken exception to – things have cleared up for me in the past few days.

I decided that Da Russophile will become exclusively devoted to destroying Western misconceptions on Russia. All other stuff on Russia, including for example history, will henceforth largely figure on this blog.

As you may have noticed from the sidebar, I have massively expanded the system of Categories. They are now sufficient to explain what AKarlin is about:

The Library contains writings about world politics, the Euro crisis, aspects of history from Stalin to cliodynamics, fearless commentary on social issues of great importance such as Muslim consanguineous marriage and the catastrophic consequences of female obesity, and whatnot.

Future Now is going to contain my writings on futurism; however, as many of the key trends and factors that will determine it are already evident – human biodiversity; anthropogenic climate change; declining EROEI of energy sources, Chinese growth, the opening of the Arctic – it will also have extensive commentary on present-day issues. Hence, the “Now” part of Future Now.

AK contains cool stories from my exciting and action-packed life; original short stories, poetry, other creative work; and links to and propaganda of any books I write. (My current projects, though dormant, include a book on the future of the 21st century, and a novel about a zombie apocalypse).

Reviews contain, erm, reviews – of books, films, video games, etc.

Lifestyle Artist has must-read information on how to succeed in life. This success I summarize thus: “Get big, get rich, get hos.” (I am a man and make no apologies for writing from a man’s perspective). Information that I get and master on fitness and diet, game and gambling, skiing and surfing, learning languages and starting a muse – I will synthesize, and share with my slavering readers.

There are two further projects I will be working. The first is Arctic Progress, which will soon be restarted as a subscription-based information service on shipping, energy, and other issues in the High North.

The second project has to do with the Russian language media that will however require not insubstantial funding (which I am currently soliciting). More details will be forthcoming as the project develops.

A New Mindset, A New Direction

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One of the weak points of my blog(s) is that posts are too long. Sean Guillory once told me that 1,500 words is the magical point at which readership begins to plummet, but I frequently go well over that length. Another negative point from the POV of readership is that they are also considerably wonkier than what you’d find on average in the blogosphere if I do say so myself.

I have decided to change tack. From now on, many if not all of my posts both on here and at Da Russophile will be shorter in length, and will have greater relevance to everyday life and current affairs. An additional bonus is greater readership. After all, many of the great pundits I follow such as The Oil Drum, Joe Romm, Steve Sailer, Robert Lindsay, GNXP, Nikolay Starikov, Kononenko, etc. churn something out every day.

Much as I like them, I’m forced to admit that Facebook and Twitter have had a harmful influence on my blogging productivity. After all its much easier to surf the interwebs, find a good link, and write a 140 character commentary on it as opposed to crafting a proper blog entry on the subject. They are excellent publicity and connectivity vehicles but they also encourage and incentivize laziness. So expect to see less of me there and more of me here from now on.

Who Reads This Blog Anyway? A History Of S/O In Graphs

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As you’re all aware, on April 1st 2012, more than 3 years of blogging at http://www.sublimeoblivion.com/ (S/O) came to an end. For the majority of that period – to be precise from May 13th, 2009, to March 31st, 2013 - I had an account with Google Analytics that provided me with very detailed states about the blog: Where visitors came from, how long they stayed for, what they shared on Facebook, etc.

On some occasions, the stats are exactly what one would expect. Other times, they are unexpected and fascinating. For instance, more people from India visited the blog than from Russia, one of its main subject matters. The Kremlin Stooge was my third biggest referral source of all time, even though he only came on the scene in July 2010 (thanks Mark!). Almost ONE THIRD of all-time visitors landed on a single post!

As I’m going to lose this data as soon as I find a new use for the old domain, I decided to save it all and lay out the interesting bits in this post. I hope I’m not the only one who will find this ”meta-blogging” interesting.

Continue reading →

Welcome Back!

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Dear readers,

As you’re probably aware, the site was down for much of the past week. The lowdown is that the old blog, Sublime Oblivion, was infected by a nasty pharma hack that destroyed its SEO ratings. There was however a silver lining, in that it allowed me to carry out a reorganization that I’ve desired for quite some time.

In addition to blogging about Russia, I also wrote about a variety of other topics: China, geopolitics, sustainability, futurism, the causes of economic growth, book reviews, etc. I have separated these two divergent vectors. The Russia stuff now has its own dedicated domain at http://darussophile.com/; in a way, this is a back to the future kind of thing, as Da Russophile was the original name of my blog back in 2008. Everything else, for now, will remain here, at http://akarlin.com/. Please update your bookmarks and RSS feeds.

The old domain, and the Sublime Oblivion brand in general, I intend to reserve for my future fiction (including an eponymous fantasy series). Arctic Progress, which was also affected by the pharma hack, will get a new start and a new look in the coming months, but will remain at the same location.

None of the old material was lost. However, in my transition to WordPress.com, the image attachments to the old posts were all lost, nor is it possible to FTP them in. That is why the images have all gone. As there are 1,000 odd of them, re-attaching them all will take quite some time, but rest assured it will be done.

Blogging will resume now. Thank you all for your understanding!