An anonymous person asked me what I thought of a certain Canadian catgirl with the strange name Kulak (must be Ukrainian roots) who runs the website Anarchonomicon. I went to take a look and got hooked for a week)))

The website has two large, gradually expanding sections: Truly Banned Books and The Warlord’s Library. And besides that — a blog with regular notes.

Truly Banned Books

On what principle does Kulak select books as truly banned? Texts end up there for which people are assigned real prison sentences for possessing. Texts whose authors destroyed their careers by publishing them or were even killed for it. Texts that are not reprinted despite clear demand, becoming bibliographical rarities. Texts that are not cited. These can be puritanical and pornographic, racist and anti-racist, communist and fascist, written by dissidents and presidents alike. The main unifying feature is that the authors did not write them for a resume checkbox or for profit — but out of a need to speak out, even in the face of possible sanctions. It is for this sincerity that our catgirl singles them out from the general mass of literature.

The Warlord’s Library

A very impressive selection of materials on creating an armed formation, motivating it, managing it, and conducting military operations in various aspects (among other things, there is a link to David Friedman’s “The Machinery of Freedom,” the translation of which I published relatively recently). What were the main principles guiding the author of this selection?

First, most readers likely have no idea what kind of conflict, and of what specific sort, they will suddenly be involved in. Therefore, simply training one specific skill, such as shooting, is not enough. But training all the skills that could be useful in various conflicts is unrealistic. However, mastering the literature on the subject is quite realistic. The vast majority of military conflicts are waged by non-professionals.

Second, the best book is the one you actually read. As long as it is just lying somewhere online, there is little use for it. But in the event of an approaching real conflict, you can at least go into an already prepared selection and read exactly the materials that seem relevant, if for some reason they were not mastered in advance.

Blog

Unfortunately, Kulak is somewhat shaky on technical issues related to the Ukrainian war, but when it comes to broader analysis, her thoughts are quite interesting. For example, the post on violence, dedicated to the recent murder of an insurance tycoon, is rhetorically very strong, although it does raise some questions from the perspective of the Austrian School of economics.

In short, I’ve subscribed to the cat-girl, which required me to register on Substack. There is a possibility that I might even post a copy of my own notes on this platform, but it’s not very likely: paid publications there require using the Stripe system, which, in turn, requires linking a bank card—and if it’s neither Montenegrin nor Russian, they can go to hell. And it only makes sense to build up another platform for free publications if I start, say, writing in English.