Z-Man has passed away

Friday, June 27th, 2025

John Derbyshire reports that his friend the Z-man (ZMAN, @TheRealZBlog) died Wednesday night or Thursday morning, apparently of natural causes:

As well as being a fellow dissident, Chris was a keen & very helpful supporter of my own efforts. He edited and hosted Radio Derb at his website from the destruction of VDare last July to June 6th this year, when I retired. Rest in peace, Z.

Addendum: Z-Man had this blog listed in his sidebar — under “Bad Thoughts”:

Posted in Policy | 6 Comments »

Comments

Tim Gilley says:

June 27, 2025 at 10:40 am

Truly an insightful man. Sorry he has passed.
Dan Kurt says:

June 27, 2025 at 12:56 pm

Ironic as his last post was on Free Will. Terrible loss.
Another Dave says:

June 27, 2025 at 3:29 pm

I read him on a daily basis until the depth of the Covid Op, but then I started focusing on other writers and never really looked back, but its sad to hear that an unrepentant dissident has passed.
Handle says:

June 27, 2025 at 3:43 pm

Feels like the closing of an era.
Jim says:

June 28, 2025 at 3:01 am

R.I.P.

Did he stroke out?
Gaikokumaniakku says:

June 28, 2025 at 12:14 pm

I had been looking forward to more discussions like:

https://thezman.com/wordpress/?p=34415#comments

but we mortals must obey the cosmic laws of mortality. My condolences go out to his family, who must be given space to mourn.

Michael van der Riet: The most important thing I got from Judo is how to fall. I have never ever once had to use the combat skills.
T. Beholder: For example, Soviet Marshal Nikolai Ogarkov, an early advocate of a Military Technical Revolution, passionately (yet unsuccessfully) lobbied for his government to shift resources from armored forces to digital command-and-control networks and long-range precision-guided munitions. Even beside the fact that Ogarkov led the Chief Directorate for Strategic Deception… how exactly someone would have «passionately lobbied» something in USSR? for his government to shift resources from armored...
Michael van der Riet: No wonder that Putin is not playing ball with Trump when so many Russians are killed by American weapons and munitions. Without the military might of the US behind it, Ukraine would have collapsed years ago.
Freddo: And Russian counter electronic warfare would have a reconnaissance drone looking for that counter battery radar within minutes. Probably the reason why the article mentions passive acoustic detectors.
McChuck: Counter-battery radar can track back a ballistic trajectory to a 2 by 2 meter area. It had this capability 20 years ago. We used it against terrorists with mortars in Iraq.
Shadeburst: India has more than enough coal, oil and gas for its needs. But it has to import. Why, because since liberation India has always been socialist, and socialists couldn’t run a ****-up in a brothel.
Bob Sykes: India and China are natural competitors, and they will always have a touchy relationship. But both are longstanding friends of Russia, both are in BRICS and the SCO. India is also tied into the North South Transportation Corridor and BRI. China and India also share a colonial past, and they are targets for American imperialism. So, on the whole, in the long term they will be collaborators. They already are working to subvert American sanctions on Russia, because they need Russia. Pakistan is a...
T. Beholder: There are whose study is of smells, And to attentive schools rehearse How something mixed with something else Makes something worse. …and speaking of smells: https://stonetoss.com/co mic/the-swirl/ Speaking of smells and architecture, in 1960s Russian language was enriched by portmanteau of “Khruschev” and “slum”, thanks to yet another bright idea The Boar (qv Gaping Heights) picked at US South. https://duckduckgo.com/? q=???????&ia=web It refers to low-rise apartment buildings that have...
TWS: It’s a crime and a shame that we’ve lost the local dimension to communities. I pray this isn’t permanent, who wants to live in a brutalist world? Hopefully, we’ll see a return to local styling.
Bob Sykes: This was before AI tools were readily available. I imagine Sinaloa will now up their game.
T. Beholder: The further it gets, the more ridiculous misnomers become. «Gangs adopted cutting edge security measures, they conduct large scale data mining and counterintelligence operations»… «hooligans used a mortar battery», etc etc. Freddo says: Some organizations are just not very good in learning lessons. Perhaps they believe their own hype too much to assess the situation soberly.
Freddo: https://www.zdnet.com/ar ticle/it-myths-colombian -drugs-gangs-mainframe-a ssisted-assassinations/ Some organizations are just not very good in learning lessons.
T. Beholder: This is somewhat problematic, given that they share a 1,900-mile-long border. Each country fairly bristles with antagonism and nuclear weapons, so how they manage this unwanted relationship is a matter of life and death on a scale of tens of millions. Border between USSR and China in 1969-1991 was 7,500 km long, and even now is 4,209 km (per internetz). Granted, USSR had lots of old tanks to reuse in fortifications. But building of helicopters started pretty much from scratch in reaction to...
T. Beholder: …a once-robust definition of conservatism has gradually devolved into “anything that’s not ‘woke.’” What was this once-robust definition? But now, as the left has captured major institutions and inverted traditional morality, conservatism is often reduced to mere opposition. As to the substance, “Northern conservatism” was mocked as an ineffectual, decorative opposition back in ?? century. No doubt, after a few years, when women’s suffrage shall have become an accomplished fact, conservatism...
T. Beholder: Bob Sykes says:And yet, no WMD were ever found, and the modern consensus is that they never existed. Packaged with a spin as to whom to blame, yes. To cut through the inevitable mountain of bullshit, we can use plain old “motive-method-opportuni ty” approach or common sense. The former points at Saddam threatening the holy Petrodollar as a compelling motive. The latter tells us that if the circus had good evidence of anything remotely actionable, they could use it, rather than relying on...
Bruce: Looks like bad-faith RINO stuff, but it’s nice to see a reference to Kirk’s A Creature of the Twilight. A creepy clever book.
Demo: “Conservative̶ 1; became a bad word for the right, along with everything it has failed to do, all of its non-accomplishments, its association with religiosity, and its mainstream defenders. It has no place in the future because it’s a trap position for losing. Also, the only real issue worth of anything today is demographics. The country can survive years of bad management if it has its founding white population, but it will become something else the moment white people disappear....
Gaikokumaniakku: Oh, wait a minute, one of the co-authors of this was Mike Pence. That’s the guy who claimed that Trump lost the second election and there was no point investigating it for rigging. Does anyone in the present audience think that Mike Pence is a genuine conservative? Or is he a Republican in name only?
Gaikokumaniakku: “Kirk began with ancient Israel, which is not remembered primarily for military might or territorial conquest, but for its ordered moral and spiritual life. He argued that ‘until human beings are tied together by some common faith, and share certain moral principles, they prey upon one another.’” In my social circles, ancient Israel is remembered for saying “Happy is the one who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks” in Psalm 137:9. “Unlike its...
Kgaard: So many problems with this. The basic conflict within the right is that capitalism itself is a leftist ideology. It requires homogenization of human widgets in order to work. Capital has an inherently tendency toward wokeness. Then there is the problem of the $5 trillion in US tax revenues to be fought over. It’s the biggest recurring pot of gold in the world. EVERYBODY wants control of it. Which leads to endless scheming.

Isegoria

Z-Man has passed away

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