1. Came down with a bad cold this week, leaving my classes as something of a Nyquil-fueled haze.

2. Legend Haven was mostly a success and a good time. My small talk was sparsely attended and even more sparsely participated in, but I was able to get some good industry information and hopefully spark a little interest (despite being in the early stages of illness).

Incidentally, an essay version of my talk will be posted to my Substack sometime soon.

3. Progressive goals mostly seem to revolve around making HR Graphs look right. The idea that an institution may exist for a purpose never seems to occur to them.

4. Frame: No community is morally obligated to accept any particular person or group that wants to join it. Because any person from outside the community will change the community in some way, and it is the responsibility of the ruling authority of that community to decide whether or not the benefits of accepting the new members outweigh the potential harm.

Someone may cite the Church as a community that is morally obligated to accept anyone who wishes to join. That isn’t an exception, first because the purpose of the Church, as a community, is the eternal salvation of its members, which makes it different from a political community, whose purpose is primarily the temporal well-being of their members. Second, because the Church still has the authority to excommunicate harmful members.

5. Sabaton has recently come out with a new album: Legends, including songs covering some of the most legendary warriors of history, including Hannibal, Julius Caesar, Napoleon, Ghengis Khan, and Miyamoto Musashi. There’s some healthy Catholic representation as well: the Knights Templar, St. Joan of Arc, and Vlad the Impaler all getting numbers, and all of them bangers.

6. Incidentally, it’s a bit of a credit to Vlad the Impaler that he inspired perhaps the most famous figure in horror literature…and yet the real man was still scarier.

There’s apparently a story that he left a golden chalice in the town square of his capital city for common use, so that every man could drink like a king. No one dared to steal it until after his death, such was the fear of his wrath.

7. I would really like to see Sabaton taking on some more American history, particularly the Civil War. The trouble is, I fear the cultural climate is such that they couldn’t properly pay tribute to the Confederates (which is by far the more interesting side). On the other hand, they are a European group, so perhaps they’re insulated enough to overcome that. And then again, they’ve done songs celebrating the German Army, so that shouldn’t be too much of an issue.