We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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Adriana & I recently returned from a two week business/fun trip to the USA which took us to initially to New Jersey for a couple days…
Samizdatista Walter Uhlman demonstrates conclusively
that things are… bigger… in America
Adriana thought she should practice a little before venturing out
And thence to Los Angeles, where we lurked in the stygian cigar fog that is Brian Linse‘s rather nice home in the Hollywood Hills. We also ventured from there into the equally pungent Cigar Club The Grand Havana Room in Beverly Hills, as this proved to be the perpetual hang-out of our illustrious host. Therein amongst its Armani’ed and Prada’ed denizens, we encountered the splendid actor Robert Davi, who had some, interesting, things to say to us which I cannot repeat 
Welcome to Los Angeles!
Your papers, please
Your papers, please
Your papers, please
Your papers, please
Your papers, please
Your papers, please
your papers, please
→ Continue reading: Odyssey across America
A hastily convened Blogger Booze Up has been called by Gavin Sheridan and Dan Gillmor
When: Friday at 6:30 pm.
Where: Red Lion, Westminster, 48 Parliament St.
Who: Whoever wants to show up.
Why: You have to ask?
Last night until late, high up in the Hollywood Hills, a veritable multiplicity of LA Bloggers swarmed into Casa Bad Dude…
Bill Whittle & Rand Simberg… Jets and Rockets
Cathy & Cecile
Matt Welch & Martin Devon
Rand Simberg & Mickey Kaus
Kate Sullivan & Emmanuelle Richard
Martin Devon, Ann Salisbury, Kevin Drum & the pseudonymous Armed Liberal
I finally got to meet Rand Simberg face to face
Sara & Moxie, who contrary to some scurrilous rumours, is most certainly not deformed!
This being Casa Bad Dude, the air was thick with cigar smoke
Update: The morning after the night before…
Brian Linse recovers slowly from last night’s festivities
As usual, it starts with a scrum of bloggers descending on the beer and chili…
Glug, glug, munch, munch
Shockingly, many of the bloggers discussed… BLOGGING!
Patrick Crozier, Natalie Solent, Stephen Pollard
Eventually numbers and the need to smoke causes the proceedings to explode out into the garden. Many curses were uttered at the people responsible for the absence of Andrew Dodge and Sasha…
My… what big eyes you have!
Much beer was consumed…
I was only resting!
It is now 02:30 in the morning and strangely, people are starting to demand more chili!
Why aren’t you people tired yet? Will it never end???
Update: Over a dozen of the hard core are still here…
The Transportblog Team: would you buy a train ticket from this lot?
Nearly 04:00 in the morning and at least one intrepid blogger has passed out in The Comfie Chair…
Don’t you people have blogs to write for?
DissidentFrogman’s face is censored to protect the guilty
Final update: The grizzled hardcore diehards finally staggered off into London’s cold morning air at the first warning glow of daylight, a few minutes past 05:00 this morning…
Another highly successful British Blogger Bash!
 Cry “Blog for Harry! England and St George!”.
(with apologies to William Shakespeare)
I hope to see many of the Samizdatistas at the St. George’s Day party tonight on the Thames. If anyone spectacularly misbehaves, or turns up looking particularly hot in a little black dress (no, not you David), I will try to get incriminating photos posted as soon as possible.
As the London based Samizdatistas are meeting for a booze up at the Black Widow Pub on Gloucester Road this evening, there may be a lack of new articles tonight.
Or more accurately, the day after the night before. Two separate parties yesterday involving a large contingent of Samizdatistas has resulted in rather meagre output today.
Proper decorum was observed at all times
Brian Linse, our pet pinko from California crashed
the party yet again and chatted up everything female
Sober discourse was the byword at this gathering as usual
Normal output will resume tomorrow…
Through a family connection, my eldest brother Toby has got himself involved in the cake business. He used to be an accountant and a management consultancy hotshot, and the widow of his late wife’s brother used to run a cake-baking operation. So when she also died, Toby was one of the people who rallied round to help. That was a few years ago, but the resulting enterprise, Columbine Cakes, is still very much in business. Everything depends on how the cakes are baked, and the cook, the human hinge of the whole enterprise, is still going strong.
Columbine gets most of its business from already satisfied customers who come back for more, and from those lucky people with whom those customers share their purchases, often on special occasions like weddings when only the best will do. Columbine also has a nice new website, which will supply you with all the details if you want to purchase any of their products or get onto their mailing list.
Toby gave me a Columbine fruit cake for Christmas. It wasn’t quite as good as the cakes our mother used to make at Christmas time, but it was the nearest thing to such a miracle that I’ve ever tasted, that you can buy in a shop or through the post. If this fruit cake was anything to go by, then any Columbine product – and there are now quite a few – would be worth a try. None of them are cheap. These are not cakes for the penny-pincher, or, I imagine, for the calorie-phobic. But if you give any of them a go, I truly believe you won’t regret it. Enjoy.
Our favourite pinko blogger, Brian Linse is in London…
Little does he know the effect of drinking out of a Samizdata.net Coffee Mug will have on his fragile political sensibilities…muuuahhhhhh!
Today I shall be leaving the wet and mouldy Albion for a snowy and frosty Mittel Europa. This means much lower temperatures but also fur coats, Christmas markets, hot mead, mulled wine, slivovica and lots of lovely, lovely traditional Christmas food. Provided I can heave myself away from all that feasting, I shall post about whatever catches my meta-contextual eye. Or may be I’ll just write about anything that still makes sense after drinking the fierce regional spirits.
I shall return to celebrate the New Year in London with the rest of the Samizdatistas.
The Samizdata.net One Year Gathering last night seemed the perfect chance to get the ‘Global Conspiracy’ moving forward again…
We had everything required for a conspiracy by sinster globalist illuminati:
Gothic setting, endless supply of Guinness & crazy camera angles
However it proved hard to keep the conspirators focused on the job at hand
Very hard, in fact
  
It did not help that there were many distractions
But we did achieve something… we proved that Andrew Dodge not only wears his leather kilt in ‘true Scottish style’, someone has autographed his posterior!
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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