Isabel of Castile and Chess

From Nobility:

Today, the Queen is the most powerful piece on the board, but it was not always this way. Nor was this piece always called “Queen.” It was the King’s “adviser,” so in the Kingdom of Bengal (India), it was called the mantri (minister); in Persia, the Vazīr (vizir); in the Arabic world, Wazīr/Firz (vizier); in Turkey, vezir; but an improvement was made when chess was brought to Catholic medieval Europe. Players began referring to this piece as the “queen,” since its initial position was right next to the king, making them the royal couple. The queen was one of the weaker pieces though. She moved just one square at a time, diagonally at that, making her less powerful than today’s bishop.

All this changed with Isabella the Catholic’s dramatic intervention in the siege of Baza, in 1489, seven years into her ten-year war of reconquest of the Muslim Kingdom of Granada.

Her husband, King Ferdinand of Aragon, was one of the best generals of his time and he had excellent generals helping him in this siege, but it all seemed “a bridge too far.” The city was too powerful, defended by a strong, 20,000-man garrison, and well provisioned to withstand the longest siege. The Catholic troops and artillery seemed woefully disproportional to the task and after six months of siege warfare, the King called his generals to a council of war, and they recommended lifting the siege and withdrawing. Before striking camp, however, Ferdinand sent a messenger to Isabella who was then at Jaen, 90 miles away. She sent back word that a retreat would demoralize all Spain. They should continue the siege and she would go herself to their assistance.

The Queen’s arrival at the camp sent the Crusaders into transports of joy and enthusiasm, while inside Baza, the Muslim garrison despaired, seeing in her arrival the fatal seal of impending doom. Three weeks later they surrendered and were given all the honors of war.

As the news of Baza’s fall was carried everywhere, the Crusaders’ enthusiasm at Isabella’s arrival at their camp reverberated throughout Spain, and among the manifestations of joy, the rules of chess were changed, with the Queen becoming a most powerful piece, sweeping and majestic in her moves. A few years later, Luis Ramírez de Lucena enshrined the new rules in Repetición de Amores y Arte de Ajedrez, the oldest printed book on chess we have today, and the new rules were here to stay. (Read more.)

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Persecution: Dems Target Christians Again

 From The Western Journal:

Roman Catholic nuns are engaged in a legal battle with New York over a state law encouraging terminally ill patients to end their lives. Becket, a law firm that tackles cases of religious freedom, filed suit last Friday. The group is asking a federal court to block the law before it goes into effect Aug. 5. Just The News said the groups represented in the suit are numerous: Carmelite Sisters for the Aged and Infirm, Little Sisters of the Poor, the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne, Missionary Sisters of St. Benedict, Diocese of Rockville Centre and its Bishop John Barres, and other orders.

The outlet noted the law in question is the New York Medical Aid in Dying Act.

A short description of the law describes it as a way for “a terminally ill, mentally capable adult with a prognosis of 6 months or less to live to have the option to request, obtain and decide to ingest medication to die peacefully in their sleep if suffering is unbearable.”

Becket said the groups it represents cannot prescribe suicide drugs in accordance with their faith, nor can they direct patients in how to obtain them or facilitate a suicide in any way. Becket argued the law will require them to do so.

“Beginning August 5, any healthcare provider who declines to prescribe suicide pills could still have to tell terminally ill patients about their ‘right’ to kill themselves, help them meet the requirements for obtaining suicide pills, and direct them to a provider willing to prescribe the lethal drugs. Refusal invites significant fines, license revocation, or even time behind bars. (Read more.)

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The Sin of Cultural Misrepresentation Does Not Apply to Western Culture

 From Chronicles:

If any proof is needed to show that the entire progressive edifice is nothing but a strategically deployed façade designed to subvert Western culture, one needn’t look very far to find it. Still, a recent article published in Variety goes out of its way to demonstrate it. 

The piece focuses on Disney’s new live-action version of the children’s story Moana. The original 2016 animated film is a classic hero’s journey—and notably, it’s one of the few modern Disney movies that didn’t give in to the prevailing trope of treating its female lead like a girl boss to demonstrate that she is, thereby, worthy of the audience’s respect. But instead of just letting a great Polynesian story remain a compelling adventure on its own terms, Disney treats the culture the original film depicted like it’s too fragile to exist in a live-action version without the intervention of DEI box-ticking commissars. 

Instead of art, we now get identitarian policing. Experts like Dr. Grant Muãgututi’a were brought in to micromanage every piece of minutiae—from the scenery, communication, and dance moves to Moana’s specific mannerisms and traditional Mãori tribal tattoos. Everything had to be vetted—in Muãgututi’a’s words—“to ensure the tradition of respect within the culture was accurately reflected.”

Now, I have no problem with minority actors being cast in roles that authentically represent their backgrounds. We’ve come a long way, and I think we can all agree that it was ridiculous—and, admittedly, pretty hilarious—it was to see Sean Connery “Japanified” in his James Bond role or Fisher Stevens affect an exaggerated Indian accent in Short Circuit. 

But for the past decade, the Western canon has been at the mercy of revisionists and ideologues who would rather shoehorn identity politics into these stories than create anything original. This has led to the relentless race-swapping of established historical and mythological characters—yet this progressive obsession with “representation” only ever seems to flow in one direction. (Read more.)

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King Vidor and 'Duel in the Sun'

 It seems Duel is based on a novel in which Laura Belle is an alcoholic. That explains a lot. My main criticism of the film is that Laura Belle does not protect Pearl from Lewt. From SteynOnline:

The film's reputation as a (doubtless unintended) camp classic led to Paul Bartel making a loose parody of it in 1985 using Vidor's film's mocking nickname as his title, with the transvestite Divine starring alongside onetime matinee idol Tab Hunter. And yet Bartel's movie never manages to be more outlandish than Vidor's original, no matter how hard it tries.

From the outside Duel in the Sun looks like a western: there are cowboys and railroads and cattle barons and saloons and six-shooters and ranches and gunfights under the blistering sun. But there's so much more going on under the hood – a Rube Goldberg contraption of genre and style built of lurid Technicolor that makes most of John Ford (My Darling Clementine was released the same year) look like Samuel Beckett. (Read more.)

My thoughts on the film are here:

Perhaps too much of Selznick's personal life, namely his affair with the leading lady, spilled over into the production, heightening the melodrama. Yes, the film was initially banned by the Catholic Church and in several Midwestern towns. However, compared to what is now shown on prime time television, commercials included, Duel in the Sun seems wholesome and almost pristine. Since it is often shown on TCM, I thought it would be worth revisiting, especially in terms of the family dysfunction which creates an atmosphere conducive to disaster. Pearl's father Scott Chavez and Lewt and Jesse's mother Laura Belle had been in love in their youth but had been unable to marry each other. It was after the War Between the States and southerners were reduced to poverty so Laura Belle had to marry money. Both Scott and Laura Belle end up in unhappy marriages but each are too gentle to stand up to spouses who were either negligent or abusive. Unable to control his slutty wife, Scott should have at least sent Pearl to be educated at a convent or a school rather than let her run about in the streets. Laura Belle married the wealthy Yankee senator Jackson McCanles, who never got over the fact that Laura Belle deep down always loved Scott. The Senator takes Laura Belle away to his ranch, where he proceeds to torment her with sneers and reproaches. It seems they worked out their relationship problems by each taking over one of the boys. While Laura Belle raised Jesse to be a gentleman, the Senator spoiled Lewt, taking pleasure in his wild ways, almost as a way to get back at Laura Belle. As the film opens, the McCanles household is a veritable tinderbox of angers, resentments and passions, just waiting for a spark like Pearl Chavez to walk in and make it explode. One aspect of the story which irks me more and more as I grow older is how Laura Belle fails to protect Pearl from Lewt. Pearl is a conflicted child, as anyone can see at first glance. She is torn between her wanton mother and her noble father; she is torn between trying to be a lady like Laura Belle and being a floozy like her mother; she is torn between love for upright Jesse and her lust for no-good Lewt. She is obviously the type of teen age girl that a mother keeps an eye on. Laura Belle should have kept Pearl right at her side rather than let her loose on the ranch. Pearl was her own cousin and had been entrusted to her care. Since predatory Lewt made it clear that he was interested in Pearl without respecting her, Laura Belle should have taken Pearl upstairs to live. Instead, Laura Belle allows Pearl to sleep downstairs with the cowboys where it is easy for Lewt to ravish her. How can any woman be so simple-minded? But to give Laura Belle some slack, she was raised not to think ill of others and, as time went on, she taught herself to ignore the ugly side of life. She tried not to see what Lewt was becoming, and would not acknowledge that he was a reprobate until blood had already been shed. Such blindness on the part of a mother can be costly indeed. (Read more.)

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House Passes Bill to Ban Congressional Stock Trading and Require Voter ID

 From Big League Politics:

The U.S. House of Representatives has passed legislation that would prohibit members of Congress and their immediate families from trading individual stocks while also requiring photo identification for voting in federal elections.

The bill passed by a vote of 232-198, with 13 Democrats joining Republicans in support.

The legislation combines two major Republican priorities: cracking down on congressional stock trading and implementing a nationwide voter ID requirement for federal elections.

The measure, known as the Stop Insider Trading Act, was introduced by Rep. Bryan Steil (R-Wis.) and seeks to prevent lawmakers from personally profiting from information obtained through their positions in Congress.

Under the bill:

• Members of Congress, their spouses, and dependent children would be prohibited from purchasing publicly traded stocks.

• Lawmakers would be required to publicly disclose planned stock sales at least seven days before they occur.

• Violations would carry penalties of $2,000 or 10% of the transaction’s value, whichever is greater, along with forfeiture of any profits earned from the trade.

Steil argued the legislation would help restore public confidence by ensuring elected officials cannot use nonpublic information for personal financial gain. (Read more.)

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Awaiting the Birth of the Silicon Antichrist

 From Chronicles:

“Technology,” we are often told, “is neither good nor bad, but merely what we make of it.” But what if technology is taking advantage of our complacency to make something of us?

What if, in fact, there really is a “ghost in the machine”? The phrase was coined by British philosopher Gilbert Ryle in 1949 as part of a critique of Cartesian dualism. While Ryle would no doubt have scoffed at the notion that our increasingly complex machines might come to embody autonomous minds, the idea has begun to proliferate in the age of AI and is frequently embraced by our Silicon Valley savants.

Already in the 1960s, media guru Marshall McLuhan popularized the idea that electronic technology was quickly becoming an extension of human consciousness, radically realigning our self-awareness and reshaping the social order. If McLuhan sometimes expressed mild reservations about the long-term implications of electronic media, the French thinker Jacques Ellul, a contemporary of McLuhan, was a trenchant critic of what he called “the technological illusion.” As Ellul wrote in The Technological Society (1954), “Technique has become autonomous, it has its own laws, its own evolution, and its own demands.”

Paul Kingsnorth’s latest book explores the implications of Ellul’s assertion, especially in light of the emergence of a world in which the internet has become the dominant political and social reality. In Kingsnorth’s analysis, the “Machine” (always capitalized) becomes an all-encompassing term describing the malign evolution of modernity under the influence of technological change. Artificial Intelligence, in his view, is simply the endgame in a development that began with the Industrial Revolution, though its roots in Western thought date back to Duns Scotus and the late Middle Ages. The era of the great revolutions, the rise of Progressivism, the emergence of the nation-state, capitalism, Marxism, feminism, the sexual revolution—Kingsnorth believes all of these and more are profoundly implicated as carriers of, or as products of, the tyranny of the Machine. In short, technology, which has been with us since the invention of the wheel, has in the modern era become what philosopher Eric Voegelin might have termed a “second reality” that threatens to devour our very humanity. (Read more.)

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French Royal Family on Porcelain

A 1788  vase with painting by Pierre-Philippe Thomire from the Château de Versailles. From left to right are Louis XVI, Louis-Charles, Duc de Normandie, Marie-Antoinette, Madame Royale, the Dauphin Louis-Joseph and probably Jean Amilcar, the African boy brought up  and educated by Marie-Antoinette. Share

The Norma Desmond Revolutionaries

 From Unlicensed Punditry:

There is something patently ridiculous about watching people (many highly privileged) in the freest, most prosperous, most tolerant country in the world wrap themselves in the ragged costumes of revolutionaries.

I happen to believe that most, if not all, self-identified and so-called “revolutionary” movements in America today are fraudulent. In an age and a country where everybody can afford to hold luxury beliefs, the people leading or people close to the people leading these movements are actually privileged dilettantes cosplaying revolutionary characters.

The recent wave of ridiculousness started with a certain Justice Democrat bartending lassie from Westchester surrounded by her gaggle of supporters from the Island of Misfit Toys. Now these “democratic socialists” have added more comedic value to the show.

America has no shortage of self-described dissidents, resisters, radicals, abolitionists, insurgents, and movement leaders who speak as if they spend their days dodging secret police and composing manifestos by candlelight in some damp cellar. They borrow the vocabulary of people who opposed absolute monarchies, communist dictatorships, military juntas, and theocracies as they invoke the moral authority of men and women who faced prison, torture, exile, and death merely for saying aloud what everyone around them knew to be true.

The problem is that most American revolutionaries face no such danger. In truth, many of them are wealthy in their own right, are children of privilege, or from a “protected class” that has been funded and/or supported by the very society and systems they oppose.

They organize publicly, raise money, and give interviews. They sell books, teach university courses, operate nonprofit organizations, collect speaking fees, post revolutionary slogans on social media, and in an absolute denial of irony, appear on cable television to explain, at length, how thoroughly they have been completely silenced. (Read more.)

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Best Picture No Longer Means Best

 From The Enterprise:

Christopher Nolan may have made The Odyssey to adapt Homer, but Universal also had to make it for the Academy’s confidential diversity, equity, and inclusion spreadsheet. Before the Academy will even consider a 2026 film for Best Picture, the studio must document compliance with it’s identity-based standards covering race, sex, and gender identity of the actors, crew members, interns and even executives. Nolan’s cast contains many excellent performers. But under the Academy’s rules, excellence alone is no longer the measure, and that changes how we should read every casting announcement coming out of Hollywood, including this one.

Start with what the rules actually say, because most moviegoers have no idea they exist. Since 2024, a film cannot compete for Best Picture unless its distributor submits a confidential Representation and Inclusion Standards Entry form, known as the RAISE form, and demonstrates compliance with 2 of 4 standards. Standard A concerns what appears on screen. It can be satisfied if at least one lead or significant supporting actor submitted for Oscar consideration belongs to an Academy-approved list of racial and ethnic groups, or if at least 30% of secondary and minor actors come from at least two categories that include women, racial minorities, LGBTQ+ people and people with disabilities, or if the story itself centers on one of those groups. Standard B counts the crew, requiring qualifying department heads, or at least six technical workers from designated racial groups, or a 30% overall crew threshold. Standard C counts paid interns and apprentices from the designated groups. Standard D counts senior marketing and distribution executives by race, sex and sexual orientation. Of course, none of standards give a picture any credit for hiring white men - they are specifically excluded.

Notice what this is. It is not a mission statement or an aspiration. It is a numerical eligibility gate, with thresholds, categories and a filing deadline. For films released between July and December of 2026, the RAISE form is due November 12, 2026 at 5 p.m. Pacific. The form is confidential. The Academy knows which demographic evidence each studio claims. You do not, and you never will. (Read more.)

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