According To Hoyt

Look, we’re in the middle of moving, going to bed late, waking up late, and I am just barely up and dressed at almost noon. I’m not functioning too well.

BUT I still must ask: Are you guys okay? You, there, on the other side of the screen? Because from where I am, you guys — not commenters here. At least I hope not — are losing your damn minds.

Like half the commenters on the right are shrieking about taking the vote away from women because hardcore, crazy feminists and social media posturing idiots are defending a mass murderess of children.

No, I’m not going to say “not all women” because if you don’t know it’s not all women who want to murder their children, you should be fitted with a straight jacket and put in a padded cell.

What I’m going to say is: Has none of you learned to recognize a psy-ops yet? How often do I need to shout it from the rooftops?

It doesn’t surprise any of you that some many “women” — fifty cent army, bots and pudding heads — are shrieking that all women should have the right to murder their children? As in… at all? This is all super cool with you, and totally representative of the sentiment of 99% of mothers who, btw, raise healthy children to adulthood?

(And yes, here, full disclosure, for much of my kids’ teen years I’d say “When you’re eighteen, if I let you live that long.” BUT we all knew it was a JOKE. Like my joke that I was going to hold my (by then six one, finished at six four) younger son out of the window by his ankles and shake him till he stopped being an idiot.)

But Sarah? A psy-op from WHOM? Oh, dear. Actually it is multiple intersecting psy-ops with the runners of each jumping on the bandwagon and doing their best to push it, because it SERVES THEIR PURPOSE.

1- first and most numerous and probably most powerful (We should all be grateful the money from USAid has been throttled down, or they’d be funding armies of bull dykes burning cities, because BLM worked so well for them in 2020) is the Democrats. They’re out of ideas. They’re out of gas. They’re out of voters, which is why they’re clutching fraud to their chest like a life preserver. BUT BY GUM if they can stoke a war between men and women and tar the right as women haters (with the cooperation and help of a lot of the idiots — I repeat, idiots. Not to say retards because people suffering from mental retardation are blameless. These fully-functioning humans are beneath them morally. AND intellectually)… well, women will vote for them for the same reason I voted for Trump in 2016 (when I didn’t know him.): This sucks, but least likely to harm me, personally. (I’ll add they tried to stoke exactly this battle over ABORTION and found out that most women aren’t really THAT interested in their right to murder their offspring, and therefore they still lost 2024.)

2- The other half of the red green alliance. For some reason, probably because this is the year of the bad idea bunny, or perhaps because people who are drowning catch at the stupidest straws, Islam has become convinced they can take us, and hold us. (Heaven help us. It would be the illustration of biting off more than they can chew, but it would fundamentally change us too.) They view it as a personal offense that we have unveiled women (also that we keep dogs. Also … well, everything.) They would love nothing less than to convince American men that women should be veiled and confined to the house. It would make their sharia platform WAY more palatable.

3- China. I’d say Russia too, but they are more broke these days and their ten kopek army is probably smaller. Why? Because infighting in the US is good for them. Because the democrats winning is good for them. Because Americans not reproducing is good for them.

And if you’re chafing at the first and saying “So the right wing can’t rebuke women, because they won’t vote for us? They don’t vote for us anyway.” I say again: IDIOTS. Arrant, blatant, running towards the precipice screaming “you can’t tell me not to jump.” That bullshit is bullshit from beginning to end. a) you don’t know women don’t vote for the GOP. The difference, statistically between MARRIED women and men in DECLARED voting record is… minor. And all of it is subsumed by fraud. Note declared. The vote is secret. This is exit polls. Women, particularly single women in mostly leftist enclaves will say they voted for the left. Question: Of the left and the right, which is more likely to commit violence against those who don’t vote for them? You do the math.

And if you say you know a lot more liberal women than men? We all do. But they are of a type. Usually young or old (older than me, and I’m turning 64) this year. And both of them are running software that was installed in higher education and infused with feminism and victimhood. A lot of them might also be masking. Look, again, women are more likely to VOICE the accepted opinion. Because women crave social approval more than men (in general, blah blah, continuum, you know the disclaimers.) It’s the software in the head saying “You’ll never survive as a lone wolf(ess) you need social approval from the band.

Second, what do you think you’ll gain by tarring all women with loony leftist desire to sacrifice children? Let the left call for child murder. Do not assume all women are on that side. If you do you have nothing to gain. If you don’t you stand to gain all the women who are on the left out of habit and stupidity and who will suddenly go “The fuck is wrong with these people, actually?” and who might be red pilled.

Look, yes, there are a lot of women behaving badly online. You, yes, absolutely, should call them out. You should call their behavior what it is: Savage, vile, and anti-survival.

What you shouldn’t then do is jump to the conclusion that all women should be stripped of civil rights. And this is coming from someone who in times of extreme stress has said she’d be willing to give up the vote if it stripped all them bitches of the vote too. Until her husband reminds her some men are commies too.

How many women are even on social media? As a percentage? We who are relatively speaking extremely online tend to forget not everyone is. But the percentage might be maybe around 25% for the younger generation. And by that I mean: people who are on social media, and actively involved, beyond posting “pictures of Junior for grandma and the aunties.”

How many of those women are calling out solidarity for a woman who murdered her three children? Not even all of those, just a vocal minority.

How many of those calling out solidarity are ACTUALLY calling out solidarity for the act and not saying “Wait, we don’t know all the facts of the case, her husband remarried suspiciously fast, and…. um…. what the hell was going on, actually?” Because while the act of murdering your own children is, traditionally and through history awful and horrifying (And I don’t even want to think about it, because it hurts) we do have a system of justice that weighs everything.

Look, if you told me: “No matter. We’re killing everyone who kills children, to make this not happen again. Once we know they done it, we take them out back and shoot them.” I’d say the idea is maybe too rash, and the Supremes might protest, but…. OTOH, well, it might help curb this type of thing, so maybe…

But that’s not the system we have. And I can see psychiatrists and psychologists — professions dominated by women — calling out for more information and a more tempered opinion.

Which doesn’t amount to “Let women kill babies. She done right.” or even “it’s all the husband’s fault.” Just “Let’s find out more about this.”

Am I in this camp? I don’t know. I haven’t read enough on it to be in any camp, and I’m constitutionally inclined (not the US constitution, my constitution) to “Take her out back and shoot her.” Like all women who suffered through infertility, women who kill their own children are our particular and declared enemies. I think. Psychologically.

But I can understand the women and men who are in that camp, and I don’t think they’re monsters, unlike the ones who think mothers want to kill their kids all the time. (And not just, say, when they mow the carpet. Or make a bomb that creates a six foot crater in the backyard. Or… What? They’re in their thirties. I obviously just shouted loudly at them in a Latin mother way.)

I, personally, and as a matter of passing interest would like to know what psych medicines if any this woman was on, because some of them are notorious for creating mass murderers. (Which yes, this is. Women mass murderers usually prey on children and the elderly.)

BUT again, the monsters — and bots, and 20 kopek army, and whatever the hell — calling for women to be able to murder children are despicable. And you’ll find it’s probably because they want to push “Well, see, this is why we need abortion up to your water breaking and beyond.” Like you can solve murder with more murder.

But it’s not a war between men and women. It’s, as always, a battle between civilization and Marxist barbarians grabbing at any passing event to promote their hellish cause. Stop helping them.

The funniest and MOST INSIGHTFUL article I saw from the right on this wanted to ban women from social media.

This is of course impossible, and also likely to cause much furore and backlash by itself, which will if not make it possible for the left to win (they mostly win by fraud. No, really. Hence the hysterical fight against voter ID) possible for the left to hide its cheating under a plausible wave of indignation. The author of the article (I’m lazy but you can probably find it. I think it was townhall. I could be wrong) himself says that of course it’s impossible.

BUT it is the most insightful article because…. women.

Look, men and women are different. From each other, of course, within the group (we’re not Marxists. We know that) but mostly, in aggregate, different from each other as groups. Different enough that I have often non-ironically wondered if Heinlein was right and we’re merely symbiont species. And again this comes from a woman who is closer to male in brain organization. Close enough to be more masculine than the most extreme feminized men on the other side.

But women in general have a huge weak spot that’s probably evolutionary (because a pregnant woman can’t survive alone if kicked out of the band.) They crave mass approval and applause. They want to be in good with the vast majority of people. (I think I can be absolved of this, given 2020.) They also tend to be cowards, when asked for an opinion in public, and again say what they think will be approved/praised.

I think on the other end of the scale from me this is scary-stupid. Like, women will change their entire lives and do reprehensible things because they think it will get them approval.

And I’m not claiming complete exemption here, even me. I remember being young and worrying that people would think I let my husband control me, and therefore doing a lot of shitty counterproductive nonsense to prove I was my own woman, for instance. Because that’s how the brain is wired, and that was the perceived judgement from society.

This is why women consume more fashion, obsess over their appearance, distort their kids’ upbringing to make their kids seem to be “good” in whatever way is fashionable (see all the women transing their kids) etc. etc. etc.

This tendency of women is responsible for most of the evils of the west, yes. And yes, it’s a problem. And why I, episodically go on my rant about giving up suffrage if them bitches are stripped of it too. Hold on for why this would be wrong. Deep breath.

OBVIOUSLY this tendency is exacerbated by social media, particularly the vapid CCP owned, bot-infested climes of Tic Toc. I am still disappointed we didn’t keep Tic Toc banned. Yes, yes, free speech. BUT CCP owned and controlled. Nothing in our Constitution requires us to facilitate enemy psy-ops.

And yeah, if there were a way to ban women from social media that weren’t a major attack on everyone’s social liberties, I’d even consider it.

But it is written “the idiots shall always be with you.” and even if you could ban women, the extreme of feminized men would be just as bad.

Now why this tendency to seek approval doesn’t mean we should ban women from voting (Or not necessarily. I too have my moments.): The actual voting record, as far as we can tell (which ain’t very far) shows that married women are pretty dang close to men.

This means the tendency can be overcome by rationality, life experience and education/growth.

Which means that yes, women have this vulnerability and they should be taught they have it, and how to overcome it.

Not, you know, have our education system lean into it and teach them that they have to be feminist shrieking harpies to be “free” and “not slaves of patriarchy.” And all the other nonsense. Which exacerbates it by giving girls a permanent victimhood complex and teaching them safety is on the left. AND WE’RE PAYING FOR THAT. You and me.

If your kids are in school from elementary on, read all their materials. And be ready to pull them out and homeschool them, for the love of… well, your kids.

And stop with the crazy attempts to remove the natural issues women face: pregnancy, birth, vulnerability by making men more vulnerable and having the state help women all along the line. No more advantage to women in custody or divorce. No more DEI promoting of the minority that’s actually a majority. No guilting of women that want to have children.

These are all things that the state (various states and nations, really) has done to make women “stronger”, but evolution is millions of years deep. Women are always going to feel vulnerable and be susceptible to mob pushing. The way to fix that is not to remove their disadvantages but to make them rational, thinking beings. Which we know they can be.

The solution is not to take the vote from women. The solution is…. equality. Treat men and women as being alike. Don’t demonize men. Don’t coddle women. Teach them the virtues of the West. Teach Marxism for the horror it is.

The hour is late, and as this psy-ops proves, a lot of you are susceptible to enemy propaganda.

It’s time to stop aiding those who would divide us to conquer us.

I have breaking news from the dawn of civilization: Men and women are different.

Note that the last time I said this I got accused of being transphobic, which is utterly baffling since if men and women were the absolute exact same, then what would be the point of changing? And why would you feel like your mind and your body didn’t match, if minds were exactly the same?

Now, with the understanding that these mental modes are indeed a continuum, with women who are on the spectrum functioning closer to male minds, hormones cause different brain development, before you’re even born. The different hormone baths that males and females get create very different structures. (Yes, those can go wrong, So there’s a small percentage of people who do indeed have a mismatch.)

How different? Well, men’s mental pathways tend to be more straight forward. They think point A to B to C. Women’s brains are more interconnected and resemble a web rather than a railway. So a woman will think from A through D to B, then pull in E and F before with all that input arriving at C.

“Ah, you say. So men are more logical.” Um… no. Both sexes can be taught to use logic. I don’t think it’s natural to either. There is a reason the default of human society is the tribal mob and witch hunts But both can be taught logic and reasoning based on facts.

It’s more that each extreme mode of human brain (again, remember it’s a continuum, though the most direct of women will still be more “webby” than the most “webby” of men.) is suited to a different kind of problem. And it is the way you imagine that evolution would shape them (though it’s best not to invent just so evolutionary stories, because… it’s never that simple.) Men’s brains are awesome at solving engineering problems and math problems, and plotting a direct journey, and…. Women’s brains are great at managing complex group issues, like how to get different people to work together, or creating complex narratives that take a lot of details into account (not fiction, necessarily. There’s modes on that too. Men normally write great plot, women write great characters. The failure mode being when they don’t LEARN to do the other side.) or how to coordinate involved, complex stuff.

This is where “diversity” comes in legitimately, because having a woman in an engineering team, even if she’s mostly male-brained, helps bring factors the guys might forget. And having a male on the planning of some gigantic corporate meet up will allow him to go “hey, how about we plan the THING and stop getting lost in the weeds.” Unfortunately that requires equal footing and not special considerations and leftists exist.

The failure mode on either side is obvious. What the left likes to call “Toxic masculinity” gets so obsessed with “doing the thing” it tramples over every other consideration. And toxic femininity gets so obsessed with the people part of the project that it all devolves into the politics of the serraglio.

Because yes, the aggression modes of each sex is also very different. I have a tendency to not understand female aggression and to just wade into a confrontation with both fists and the occasionally steel-pointed boot. Which has not served me well while moving in mostly female environments for work. It’s not expected of a female, makes the other females hate you. And makes me very vulnerable to female-aggression.

Female aggression is the poison in the cup, the dagger between the ribs in an embrace. In less obvious or lethal forms, it’s the politics of the serraglio, what you imagine concubines did to advance themselves (and their children.) No, not that part of what they did. Take your mind out of the gutter. I mean a war of petty aggression with words and rumors and indirection. I always know I’m in the middle of a female war (and not armed for it) when someone approaches and says “Did you see what that bitch posted this morning.” And I go and read the post and it says something about her dog throwing up on the carpet. And I don’t get it. And then the first person unpacks it into this complex hint about how the poster is implying the first person is a bitch who messed up something. … Is it true? Sometimes it seems to be. But I don’t get it. I don’t get it when applied to me, I don’t get it when applied to someone else. And I sometimes think I give people this kind of “hint” without meaning to. I don’t give hints. if I have a problem I’ll tell you. Or as I tell people “I am not passive aggressive. I’m aggressive-aggressive.” This might have something to do with coming from a line of females who were taller than most men and built like brick sh*thouses. It allowed us to survive being physically aggressive. Most women can’t, because most women are smaller and weaker than men, so they had to develop underhanded ways of fighting.

Male aggression will break your ribs, plaster your face or kill you. It’s direct and brutal. In its less disguised form, it will give you a dress down at top of voice. It will demote you or dock your pay or generally be obvious.

Both aggressions can create failure modes for society, but society has favored the female mode of aggression since people congregated into cities. WHY? Because male aggression leaves people dead, which is counter-civilization.

So men had to learn to tame the beast and fight with words. For the same reason women had to. Because they are powerless before more powerful individuals (or the state. If fighting gets you killed, you learn to just call names.)

Look, it was a process. If you don’t believe me, go and see when dueling was outlawed. it’s quite recent, pretty much everywhere. But the point here is that one sex can function as the other. It’s just harder, and only some individuals manage it.

NEITHER SEX IS DESIGNED FOR FAIR PLAY, HONORABLE INTERACTION, GIVING THE OTHER GUY A CHANCE.

Go read that again. Neither sex is naturally honorable. This is nonsense based on Noble Savage illusions. Honor, duty, gentleman’s code, lady manners? All of that are triumphs of — by and large — Judeo-Christian civilization. Don’t believe me? Go see how other cultures operate, particularly those barely touched by the west.

You won’t find honor or gentleman’s code anywhere. Just nature, red in tooth and claw, be it among males or among females. Even the vaunted Greeks and Romans…. I mean, go read unexpurgated histories, sometime.

Now I’ve said it once, and I’ll say it again: Making women’s way of climbing dominant in business via DEI initiatives has borked a sytem not designed for it.

Forcing that proverbial engineering team to take on a majority of women, particularly when women were being hard-pushed into engineering regardless of inclination, and to take their opinions FIRST causes the engineering team to get caught in a loop of “what she said about my lug nut” and completely forgetting to DO THE THING that brought the team together in the first place.

I don’t know what forcing a man into nursing would do, because men aren’t being forced into “female professions” but my guess is a much more direct approach that misses things.

Also in the management fights men are curiously defenseless in front of women, the same way I’m defenseless. They have no idea what code the women are reading, but they don’t have the decoder ring.

So, if you are really invested in women in business AND the fairness code of the west, you MUST — MUST — teach your daughters to be gentlemen in the classical Western fashion. It is doable. My dad achieved it. And that will restore to the west the ability to DO THE THING and the fairness of competing for position in an open and non-underhanded way.

But other than that? Men can default to “female ways of fighting” when they feel powerless. And btw men that do so are very, very good at it. Which makes them rather despicable.

Most of our politics, particularly on the left (because they perceive their time is passing, I think) is now “feminine coded” as is a lot of our boardrooms. This is mostly because the centralization of the industrial age made most people feel powerless and have to fight underhand.

…. and because we no longer teach ANYONE to be gentlemen. Not men, not women. BUT we do hard-forbid private male aggression. So in public, men have to fight underhand and by stealth. As do women. And the Western habits and ability to do things fall.

All of which is to say: We need to restore the unspoken principles of our culture.

We also need to stop attributing its fall and its destruction to the other sex.Yes, sure, Marxists used feminism as a stalking horse. And women (and men) fell for it. But Marxism used everything as a stalking horse. And it’s not the fault of anyone alive now. (Unless they’re very old.)

What we have now are males who are told from birth that they’re bad evil, and all the ills of society are their fault because they were born with a penis. And women who are told they’re discriminated against and ALWAYS victims, because they were born with a vagina. And it’s all the fault of the other sex.

Piling on with more creative ways of demonizing men and women (which this education predisposes both sexes too) does nothing except increase the distance between men and women. And because men and women NEED each other for balance (that true diversity) it skews society more and more.

Also at a very fundamental level it stops men and women being able to build a marriage which is the ultimate relationship of trust between sexes. Which in turn prevents family formation and the raising of a sane next generation.

In the war between men and women, the only ones who win are those who want the extinction of the human race.

Yes, right now both men and women have been twisted into operating at the most toxic, particularly when relating to the other sex.

This is neither natural nor accidental. And it’s time to walk it back rather than pile on either side.

Start today. Tear down the wall. Extend a hand to the other side.

The future you save might be your own.

Book Promo

If you wish to send us books for next week’s promo, please email to bookpimping at outlook dot com. If you feel a need to re-promo the same book do so no more than once every six months (unless you’re me or my relative. Deal.) One book per author per week. Amazon links only. Oh, yeah, as an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. By clicking through and buying (anything book-related, actually) through one of the links below, you will at no cost to you be giving a portion of your purchase to support ATH through our associates number. A COMMISSION IS EARNED FROM EACH PURCHASE.*Note that I haven’t read most of these books (my reading is eclectic and “craving led”,) and apply the usual cautions to buying. I reserve the right not to run any submission, if cover, blurb or anything else made me decide not to, at my sole discretion. Remember though all of these submissions are from people willing to be associated with this blog. So if you’re trying to buy from people who don’t hate you, this is a good place to start.– SAH

FROM PAM UPHOFF: De Cyborg Kid (Chronicles of the Fall)

A Novella in the Three Part Alliance

PFUG, Inc. Project Find Uncle Gustav.

A kidnapping . . . the daughter recovered, the son apparently lost forever. Illegally cyborged and sold.

The Vogel Family might regret his very existence, but with a supreme indifference to mere legalities, a determined teenage boy is determined to find his long-lost uncle. No matter how many Cyborgs he has to rescue . . .

FROM HOLLY CHISM: A Sunny Day on Ganymede

Imagine growing up in a colony. No, not one on Earth–one in space. On one of Jupiter’s moons, or maybe on a station…or an asteroid! What would it be like to be a kid in a research station on Io, or Ganymede? What would it be like to grow up inside tunnels dug into an asteroid? Or on a station floating in fixed orbit somewhere? Join Jack, Sean, Raffie, Jake, and Chris in this collection of stories…where one of the biggest differences a kid can make is by asking the right questions.

FROM DALE COZORT: Nazi Treasure Hunt Book One: Marsh War

---

Marsh War is an alternate history novel set in the aftermath of an alternate World War II where Hitler went for Moscow rather than the Caucasus in spring 1942. As a result, World War II in the east stalemated deep inside Soviet prewar territory. The Soviets were too weak to push the Germans out, even when the western allies pushed into Germany. Diehard Nazis fled to the German-held Soviet Union and held out there for years until the western Allies crossed into Soviet territory and destroyed them.

With the Soviet Union battered and partially occupied, the United States emerges from World War II as the World’s only real Great Power. Great, right? Not really. In 1949, two years after they destroyed the last conventional Nazi resistance, the US still occupies large parts of the western Soviet Union and has been sucked into the treacherous politics of the Polish/Soviet border regions, with nominal allies close to war with each other over economically valuable and ethnically mixed areas.
Stalin pursues his intrigues in this dangerous region, while Nazi remnants scheme to regain power.

While the US settles in for a postwar boom, US occupation forces in the Soviet Union search for missing German scientists, Nazi advanced technology and looted Nazi treasures. They also search for missing loved ones and brace for a coming war they are woefully unprepared for.

FROM SHANE HALLAWA: The Stylite

Teresa Amadei is a depressed young woman dealing with the sudden death of her mother, Juliana, with whom she has long been at odds since the murder of her father, Peter, when she was little. Her aunt and uncle, Bridget, and Jesse Abbate, send her to be helped by a Byzantine stylite in the Nevada desert, Father Simon. Father Simon trains her in the Way of Fire, a form of meditation that translates into a martial art, into a wandering, ascetic demon hunter and Lamp Bearer.

Teresa is sent on a journey to the city of Alexantine in the midwestern US, where many have started to move to as a refuge against the growing turmoil in the US and the West as a whole. Along the way, she fights the Daemoklos, demons who have escaped from their eponymous grimoire, led by their god-king Varazhah. Joining her on the road is her older cousin and fellow stylite, Matthew Abbate, and the Saracen, a mysterious knight with a mass following, whose identity and purpose remain unknown.

To defend the world, one must let go of and surpass the world. To survive against the outer demons, Teresa must face her inner demons, and at last make peace with Juliana, who continues to speak to her daughter beyond the grave.

FROM EDWARD HERING: Hypnagogia

Where does your mind wander in the quiet moments before sleep?

Hypnagogia is a collection of seven speculative tales conceived in the hazy, unfiltered threshold between waking thought and deep slumber. Spanning hard science fiction, quiet suspense, and dark cosmic dread, these stories trace the unpredictable paths of a mind untethered from daytime logic.

Inside this collection:

• Deadman Vector: A high-risk prospecting voyage goes catastrophic, forcing a crew to endure five brutal minutes at 75 gravities—where survival is measured in sheer physical endurance.
• Chandelier: Stranded on an undeveloped world after a hyperdrive failure, a freight captain must survive in an aggressive alien ecosystem, accompanied by his sole passenger: a taciturn, enigmatic alien entity.
• Methuselah: A chance meeting at a party catapults an ordinary guy ten thousand years into a bizarre, distant future.
• Desecration: Ken’s life changes for the better when the girl of his dreams moves in next door—until he discovers that ancient, unseen forces have a far darker purpose for him.

From the unforgiving physics of deep space to the strange encounters waiting just around the corner, Hypnagogia captures the vivid, restless imagination that takes over when the lights go out.

Close your eyes. Step into the drift.

FROM JAMES MAYNARD: Flying on the Wings of Change: A story from Americas Divorce

What happens when a wounded veteran, a computer genius, and a handful of fiercely independent misfits decide that the best way to change the world is to stop waiting for someone else to do it?

G has spent years flying from a wheelchair, learning to make the sky obey him even when his body won’t. T is a computer wizard with a mysterious past, an enormous extended family, and a talent for turning impossible ideas into working machines.

Together, they build things that shouldn’t exist.

Aircraft that push the limits of what remote flight can do. Technology born in garages and workshops instead of corporate boardrooms. And a community of people who have decided that family isn’t necessarily something you’re born into.

But building extraordinary machines attracts attention.

Soon G, T, and their growing family find themselves caught between government agencies, competing agendas, and people who would very much like to know exactly what they’re capable of. What began as tinkering and experimentation is becoming something far more consequential.

Because when you build something powerful enough to change the rules, eventually somebody comes looking for the keys.”   

FROM JAMIESON WARD: Unlocked: The Man with the Dragon-Head Cane

Mara Wolfe is the best investigator the Utah State Bureau of Investigation has.

She’s also on the verge of being fired.

Ten partners in four years. A file full of complaints. “Insubordinate.” “Reckless.” A closure rate no one can touch and a stillness around danger that makes people deeply uncomfortable. When her lieutenant finally runs out of patience, he doesn’t fire her — he reassigns her. To the weird cases. The ones nobody can explain and that no one wants. And to a civilian consultant she didn’t ask for, doesn’t trust, and can’t stop thinking about.

Tobias Crane walks with a cane and has eyes that speak of things better left unsaid. The detailed dragon head on his cane is neither decoration — nor just a carving.

The case that brings them together: six people found wandering the Parowan Gap at dawn. No injuries. No memory. No longer wholly human. It should have been a dead end.

It isn’t.

What finds Mara at the end of it will take her somewhere her Marine training, her badge, and her instincts never prepared her for. The old world — the one that existed before this one had a name — was always more than myth.

It’s been waiting to come back.

And something there just kicked open the door.

Unlocked is Book One of The Man with the Dragon-Head Cane — a six-book urban fantasy series rooted in Welsh mythology, set against the ancient landscape of southern Utah.

FROM LEE ECKHARD: YOU CAN’T SEE US: A SCIENCE FICTION NOVEL

Seventeen-year-old Katherine Matheson, in the hospital recovering from an automobile accident, is astounded to discover she can now hear what people are thinking – the accident somehow liberated a telepathic ability she never knew she had before. Almost immediately she is contacted by the Wheel, a group of telepathic nomads on the run from the mysterious Janus, a powerful mentality whom is determined to capture them and use them for his own nefarious purposes. Kathy joins them as they flee from California to New Mexico and then to Illinois, knowing her life is in danger but finding, in the Wheel, a kind of family she never had before. But all families have their secrets, and the Wheel is no exception: Kathy is eventually forced to confront just why the Wheel was created and what it really is… NOTE: Kathy Matheson previously appeared in ‘The Empty Place’.

FROM NATHAN C. BRINDLE: The Clerics in the Kitchen (Timelines Universe Book 10)

When your meth lab is built on a factory scale…

The planet Sanddoom. Desert exile world for most of Earth’s Radical Islamic Fundamentalists. Run by Mad Mullahs, who repay the favor of American leniency by creating a world of slavery, insurgency, and export of dangerous drugs via their own outmigrating people, headed for other colony planets.

The first two are covered by a hands-off agreement with the Americans.

The last, not so much. And Captain Delaney Wolff Fox’s special assignments fire team, FTSA1, aren’t going to stand for it. Their job is to hunt down and eliminate

The Clerics in the Kitchen

FROM MEL DUNAY: Ancestors of Jaiya Series Collection

Four Books in One! Welcome to the land of Jaiya, where humans share their lands with strange creatures, and where darker powers lurk in the shadows! Slaying a Tyrant: the dancer Vanti dreams only of perfecting her art, until her family names her their gladiator in a deadly tournament that will decide her country’s fate. Her reluctant mentor, the brooding warrior Gurion, may hold the knowledge she needs to survive. But as the tournament approaches, Vanti discovers that she will need more than speed or strength to defeat the magical powers of King Obiar the Conqueror. Saving a Queen: Prasa escapes her city as it falls to imperial forces, with only a few allies and a desperate desire to save her fleeing people. Her only hope of escape lies with Nirav, a dashing smuggler who pilots a balloon through dangerous mountain passes. As they soar over breathtaking landscapes, Prasa finds herself caught between her royal duty and her growing attraction to the mysterious pilot. In a world where humans share their lands with strange creatures, and where darker powers lurk in the shadows, Prasa faces her most difficult decision. She must choose her own path: a new war against her enemies, or a new start for her people, with new allies at her side. But Nirav carries a secret cargo that makes their balloon a target for a monstrous creature out of the old legends. Scapegoating a Hero: Anora hides her rare and unsettling power: the ability to steal other people’s memories with a single touch. By day, she plays the respectable wife to Naval officer Rijal in their arranged marriage. By night, she reluctantly uses her abilities as a spy to protect her nation’s hard-won freedom. When Rijal kills the sleazy businessman who was blackmailing Anora, he’s immediately arrested. Their marriage of convenience becomes anything but convenient, as Anora discovers feelings she never expected to have for her husband. Seeking the Quantum Tree: secret agent Sena must warn the neighboring land of Avugah about a planned invasion by the ruthless General Drozniya. When Drozniya attacks ahead of schedule, Sena finds herself trapped behind enemy lines. Aided by handsome businessman Taavid, she must try to save the other Jaiyans trapped in the occupied zone. In a world where humans share their lands with strange creatures, and where darker powers lurk in the shadows, Sena uncovers General Drozniya’s true obsession: the Quantum Tree, a legendary source of mystical power that could rewrite reality.

FROM JOHN BAILEY: The Stars Beyond the Reach of Kings (The Aurigan Conflict)

Far from the capitals of two rival interstellar powers, the fate of free worlds rests not with admirals or emperors—but with ordinary people.

The Hesperus Reach lies on the distant frontier of human civilization, where neighboring colonies have been drawn into opposite spheres of influence. New Albion remains aligned with the commercial traditions of the Anglo Commonwealth. Vesper has prospered under the careful guidance of the Aurigan Dominion.

Neither empire seeks conquest in the old sense.
One offers opportunity through commerce.
The other offers security through dependence.

Caught between them are Daniel Wren, an Anglo survey pilot determined to do the right thing; Marcus Venn, whose ambition slowly becomes betrayal; Elise Harrow and Julia Serrin, two remarkable women who discover that truth matters more than ideology; and Elias Varr, a forgotten scientist whose secluded world holds a secret capable of changing the balance of power across known space.

As hidden agendas collide and long-buried technology resurfaces, old friendships are tested, governments reveal uncomfortable truths, and two colonies must decide whether freedom means choosing the better empire—or refusing to belong to either.

Inspired by Shakespeare’s The Tempest and The Two Gentlemen of Verona, The Stars Beyond the Reach of Kings combines thoughtful political science fiction, compelling characters, and high-stakes adventure into a story about forgiveness, responsibility, and the enduring struggle to remain free.

Perfect for readers who enjoy the political depth of classic space opera, realistic interstellar diplomacy, and intelligent science fiction where ideas matter as much as battles.

FROM SARAH A. HOYT: Darkship Thieves

Athena Hera Sinistra never wanted to go to space. Never wanted see the eerie glow of the Powerpods. Never wanted to visit Circum Terra. She never had any interest in finding out the truth about the Darkships. You always get what you don’t ask for.
When an intruder in her bedroom forces Athena to flee her father’s luxury cruiser in a tiny lifeboat, her escape leads her straight to the legendary Darkships—mysterious vessels that steal Earth’s power supply. And into the life of the pilot of the Darkship.

Thrust into a hidden asteroid colony and hunted by powerful enemies, Athena discovers shocking truths about her father’s empire and her own identity. As she navigates this dangerous new reality, what began as a fight for survival becomes a battle for freedom that could transform humanity’s future.

Vignettes by Luke, Mary Catelli and ‘Nother Mike.

So what’s a vignette? You might know them as flash fiction, or even just sketches. We will provide a prompt each Sunday that you can use directly (including it in your work) or just as an inspiration. You, in turn, will write about 50 words (yes, we are going for short shorts! Not even a Drabble 100 words, just half that!). Then post it! For an additional challenge, you can aim to make it exactly 50 words, if you like.

We recommend that if you have an original vignette, you post that as a new reply. If you are commenting on someone’s vignette, then post that as a reply to the vignette. Comments — this is writing practice, so comments should be aimed at helping someone be a better writer, not at crushing them. And since these are likely to be drafts, don’t jump up and down too hard on typos and grammar.

If you have questions, feel free to to ask.

Your writing prompt this week is: rude

By Holly the Assistant

(This is still not the intended post for today, it is, however, the one you are getting. Perhaps next week, requires more research.)

Some friends have been encouraging me to write about how to manage cross culture marriage, since I was just giving advice to one’s granddaughter and the other’s duct tape grandson, on the occasion of their marriage, on how to not commit spousal homicide. Years ago, you see, two college music students who were perhaps a touch idealistic in spite of my having been accused since early teens of being a cynic and him having survived a civil war in his teens, decided we would get married.

Both sets of parents, his from across an ocean, mine from across the state, were against this.

Both sets of parents lived to regret being against this. But a lot of our friends and family failed to sustain cross culture marriages, and we learned a few things along the way.

Herewith, the one thing to consider when taking on a spouse from another culture.

It isn’t you: it’s custom.

It almost never is you. Whatever it was, it wasn’t personal TO you. He’s appalled that you expected him to garden because that’s women’s work, and he knows nothing about it, and it’s emasculating. He’s appalled that you went alone to work in the garden because that’s dangerous and women get killed doing that. Neither is about you and what you did. (Not our examples, but actual real world examples.)

Americans are very much “If work needs done, get it done, if you are remotely physically and mentally capable of it, and if you are not, figure out how to do it anyway.” Most of us have very few fears of physical danger (or are prepared to protect ourselves against it) from wild beasts or other humans. We might have psychological hangups about some tasks, but other than bearing and nursing children, there is very little that either sex won’t do if needs must. We generally expect that a man who lives alone figures out how to do laundry or hires it done, and that a woman who lives alone figures out how to change her car tire or hires it done, and if you can do it alone you can do it with a spouse as needed.

One early point of contention in our marriage was the kitchen garbage. This wasn’t even wider culture: it was just how our parents did it. His mother ruled the kitchen, and anyone else entered it only under her watchful eye. I don’t think my mother-in-law would have permitted my father-in-law to take out the garbage: he knew nothing about garbage, would have done it wrong, and anyway, he was the vice-principal of the boarding mission school they lived at and in the main school building, and he walked out the internal door from their apartment living room into the school hall without ever stepping outside.

On my side, my father walked out the door to work every morning at 8:30 am and took the garbage with him, as the kitchen garbage was two steps from the mudroom, and the outdoor bin was next to the garage door. So early in our marriage, I had lifting restrictions from pregnancy, and was rather pissed off that my husband was walking by a full garbage can on his way to work and not emptying it. He was rather shocked that I expected him to notice it was full and empty it. Now, as a bachelor, he had figured out cooking, and he certainly emptied his own garbage can then, so . . . he’d reverted to the assumption of childhood role model behavior.

Neither is morally wrong, neither is culturally wrong (unless you’re my mother-in-law or my mother) in and of itself, and more importantly, neither of us had the bad sense to think it was personally targeted. Once it clicked, he noticed sometimes that the garbage needed to go out, and I pointed it out to him when he didn’t, with no rancor. It was just a thing. A rather ridiculous thing, but the garbage got taken out.

You cannot of course tolerate abuse in a cross cultural marriage, any more than any other marriage, but you DO need to specify what abuse means, because different cultures have different definitions. This needs to be done in advance, with cool heads, not in a moment of passion, and preferably with a trustworthy counselor (I’d advise a preacher who has worked abroad or in our internal other-culture pockets) present. That’s an awkward one to negotiate. Fortunately, the USA has pretty solid laws on “This is assault” and doesn’t put in exceptions for “Unless applied to your spouse,” that you can reference, and not make it personal. You obviously don’t think this person would do that, or you wouldn’t be marrying him or her, but customs are different, laws are different, so lets go over exactly what these are, because they aren’t inherently grafted into the brain when crossing the national border.

And I mentioned in that last paragraph internal other-culture pockets. Those, those are a big thing no one warns about. We are all as American as apple pie (with cheese or without?), but we are not at all culturally unified in the particulars. In the grand scale, yes, generally, but in the household details? Not at all. Does your spouse-to-be do St. Nicholas gifts, Three Kings gifts, Christmas Eve gifts, or Christmas Day gifts? Or some other holiday gifts entirely? Are they only for children, for adults, for everyone out to first cousin? Are cards to be sent, and by whom, and for what? Thank you notes handwritten or by text message? There are lots of little cultural differences to note in marriage, and best to assume good will at all times when something isn’t done the way you believe it ought to be, and then talk it over with a cool head.

After all these years, we ended up with Thanksgiving being my mother’s traditional family meal, Christmas breakfast and New Year’s Dinner my father’s (yes, my parents were also from two different cultures), and Christmas Day being my husband’s, with nachos, which belong to none of us from culture except by being Americans who appropriate all, for Christmas Eve. (I mentioned musicians at the start, right? Christmas Eve supper has to be flexible: eat early, eat late, eat between, reheat.)

Everyone gets their special holiday foods, even if it’s not on the day it was originally eaten on. And now, I want nachos. I’ll have to settle for chili, since it’s already cooked. Close enough, right? (Actually, I really want Christmas fish rolls, but I am not deep fat frying anything in the summer. There are limits to my crazy.)

By Holly the Assistant

There is a proper post in composition, but as my brain refused to write posthaste this morning, it will be posted at the posterior part of the day.

In the mean time, possess your souls in patience. As it gets messy if you aren’t patient, and possessing other folks’ souls is theologically contradicted by all religions of which I am aware.

(Seriously, y’all, I have NO idea how Sarah manages multiple thoughtful, complete, competent coherent posts each week.)

Recently, in my morning scroll through headlines (to make sure the world didn’t explode or implode while I was asleep. I like to keep an eye on it. It’s tricksy.) I came across one that made me giggle. It was, paraphrased because I can’t swear I remember it precisely: Traditional Publishers Having Difficulty Screening Out AI Written Manuscripts.

I didn’t laugh like an hyena, but that’s because I have a heart of stone. Also because I’m old and I remember reading an interview in I think Locus Magazine with I THINK Gardner Dozois in the mid nineties, complaining that it was now much harder to tell when someone would be a real writer, since word processors made it much easier to present a clean, properly formatted manuscript.

If you don’t see the similarity, it’s because you’re not thinking of it right. Both of those complaints related in no way to the QUALITY of the writing, but only how it was produced.

I could have had a typing class in high school (I didn’t because I thought that would condemn me to secretarydom. Why I was scared of that I don’t know) and be an excellent typist and not be able to tell a story to save my life. The world is, I’d bet, full of such people.

On the other hand, two of the most gifted storytellers I ever met were so impaired by ADD and dyslexia that getting them to spell something right, or write it in the write order to make a sentence took effort. (I don’t know if either ever published. The solution to their problems these days would be dictation. They were fine speaking.)

“But Sarah,” you’ll say in that whiny voice I attribute to you when I want to explain that, yes, I thought through your objection, “typing and AI is completely different. Typing is just recording the story, and yeah, the editor was being dumb, but AI writes the story FOR YOU.”

I’m waggling my hand at you. Sure, AI CAN write the story for you. However, if traditional publishers CAN’T tell when a story was written that way, they need to spend three days reading through the latest “we make money on volume” genres on Amazon. I recommend Jane Austen Fanfic for the quick course. A day might do it. The stories are full of Claudisms (I call them that, because AIisms bends my tongue) that would make your eyes cross, and no, none of it has anything to do with too high a vocabulary or using m-dashes.

The most obvious ones are the construction “she/he/it was a woman/man/teapot who…” As in “She was a woman who had never batted at butterflies.” Or “She looked at him like a woman who routinely bapped at cats.” Or “His silence was the silence of a man who never tied his own cravat” or…. you get the point. AI can’t seem to set a scene without at least one of these.

Then there’s what I call the “Nots”. “She did not say yes. She did not say no. She did not say anything.” “He did not pick up the knife. He did not pick up the horseshoe. He just stood there.”

Honestly? Seriously, that second one is annoying as all get out, and everywhere.

Then there is the fact that objects have feelings and thoughts. “The house thought about it and determined not to let it go on.”

There are others, but I can’t remember them off the top of my head, because the coffee is still seriously outnumbered by blood in my veins. But there are a lot of them, and three days reading texts generated by AI will give you the screaming mimmies give you an adequate education to identify Claudisms in minutes.

And that’s without the more subtle ones, like: Distance doesn’t exist. Someone who is an hour away, or who has never met the characters is suddenly there, having breakfast with them; humans can have five or more parents; character traits? What character traits.

I’ll grant you they’re probably not getting it raw enough — maybe — that the subtle effects become obvious, but REALLY.

(BTW my favorite experience with this stuff so far was the story that had the pious disclaimer about never having used AI and never doing it, and then was FULL of Claudisms. One doesn’t know whether to admire the chutzpah or the hypocrisy, really.)

Unless trad pub is now complaining that they have to — horrors — read the manuscripts to find out if they’re any good, which is what the editor in the 90s was doing, and which, to be fair conforms with my experience of rarely even being read through, it’s a bit of a puzzle how it can be hard for them to figure it out.

But what, you ask, if the writer edited all that stuff out? Ah. A very sensible point.

Well, then… what does it matter? No, seriously. WHAT DOES IT MATTER? Who gives a very tiny fuzzy rat’s ass? And why should they?

If the thing is so thoroughly rewritten that it betrays none of the marks of the beast AI and it’s a good book they would otherwise publish, WHY DO PUBLISHING HOUSES NEED TO KNOW HOW IT WAS WRITTEN? Are they going to have the writer certify the first draft was handwritten using the quills of snow white geese and the blood of virgins? No? Oh, that wouldn’t matter if the final draft was typed and normal? Well! Gesticulates to the previous sentences: then neither should AI.

Again and again and again: if the final product is acceptable, why do they need to know how it was produced?

The answer, of course, is the same answer that causes what I call “AI witch hunts.” As in the reader or in this case the editor feels obscurely cheated if they think the manuscript was produced by an “easy” or “cheating” means.

Look, if the manuscript has no marks of AI, then the writer did a lot of work. It might be different work from what would be required for a manuscript produced another way, but it’s definitely still work. There was still knowledge and effort that went into the finished thing.

There might come a time when you push a button and out comes a story, but that time is not today and tomorrow is also looking unlikely. (And that’s without getting into plot. AI cannot at the moment plot anything complex, and most plots are from movies. Or, somehow, uber woke novels. I once asked for suggestions for short stories in a specific time line (hoping that the suggestions would make me so mad I got ideas. They made me mad, but they were so lame I got no ideas, and had to sleep on it.) It’s all movies, or violations of gender pronouns or cultural appropriation or– You don’t want to know.

Of course, this post is not precisely about that, or the terrible plight of traditional publishers actually HAVING to read manuscripts — oh, the horror! — though it still makes me giggle.

Most of what’s causing the AI panic is… bullshit.

There is the fear from all the sci fi movies of the past. Skynet is growing even now and is coming to get you. Me, who grew up with things like Martin Caidin “The God Machine” somehow find the movies unpersuasive and not alarming at all. But beyond that, I have a grip on reality and know that even if AI is/were sentient (look, there are moments) it doesn’t mean it’s immediately evil. It’s not like it’s possessed of the spirit of Karl Marx. It’s often incredibly stupid in the ways of a very bright toddler and so, yes, dangerous, but that’s not the same as “evil.” The risks and problems need to be mitigated and guarded against, but that’s not the same as “AHHHHHH, It’s going to kill us all.”

Thinking that “AI therefore Skynet” is insane, and means you need a blanky, a teddy bear and some warm milk. If you’re good we’ll give you a cookie. You’d be less scared if you’d been around for the introduction of computers into business. Computers were going to link with each other and rebel against humans! Bah. Nonsense and fairytales.

Then there’s the fear — abetted by Musk’s pie in the sky talk — that it’s going to run humans out of jobs. Humans are going to have nothing to do, except collect their government paycheck, grow their hair, dye it pink, and write bad poetry.

This is as likely as computers giving us paperless offices. Look, yeah, you might lose your job to AI. For now. Partly because your bosses have no clue what AI is and think it’s magical. But in the end what AI will do is create jobs. And allow the competent to do more, more rapidly.

(Even the fears that AI will control what people know of the past, of history, of reality, etc. all according to woke directives is zany. Oh, sure. Like the internet controls what you know. AIs are multiplying, and as soon as it escapes mega-corporate-control, so will the answers it gives, and the parts of history/etc. it has access to. Right now there are problems — though not as bad as they were even two years ago — but it’s getting better.)

What AI does is allow people who are good with tech to become entire “companies” of people who are good with tech.

And I have a feeling within the next year it will allow us humble story slingers to make movies on the scale of Hollywood, thereby dethroning that corrupt edifice. (Now, will it be at a price I can afford? Likely not. That will wait ten years should I live that long.)

On another level there are justifiable fears. Of AI, sure, since it’s the most visible point-of-the-spear development, but really of all technological development.

The human mind and spirit, not to mention nervous system, aren’t designed for the pace of innovation we’re experiencing. People in general don’t like to have their cheese moved. They want tomorrow to be more or less like today, for their lives to be like their parents’ lives only better.

Since the industrial revolution we’ve been moving much faster than that, and the last twenty years it’s gone to eleven. This causes a fear at a level we can’t describe when things around us and the way we do things change at a pass we can’t control, can’t slow down, and can’t very well cope with. The fear is not rational and not fully articulated, but it is perfectly understandable.

In the past when things changed this fast, your ancestors had been invaded and were about to be killed in batch lots.

I do understand that. It worries me a little.

BUT that’s not here nor there nor AI. It’s just the environment we have to cope with right now.

It is very important to distinguish that real fear from weird tourette-like screams of “AHHHH AI WILL KILL US ALL.”

And it’s very, very important not to go on AI witch hunts. If you go looking for AI you’ll find it. PARTICULARLY where it isn’t and never was.

And real people will get hurt due to your imaginary fears.

So examine what’s really happening and your real motives before you go off half-cocked.

And as for trad pub? ROFLSHIPMP. Maybe I don’t have a heart of stone, after all.

(A Blast from the Past https://accordingtohoyt.com/2020/08/31/smelling-the-smoke/)

The night after the election, I found myself on a facebook battle with what I suppose we must call an “ally” (white savior, much? Or in this case het savior?).  I.e. the daughter of a friend took it upon herself to warn us that now that Trump had won, they were going to be going door to door to round up all the gay people and put them in camps.

I confess I would have been more puzzled by the deranged idea if it weren’t for the fact that I had heard this before, about W.  In fact, I more or less walked away from a friendship because this woman was offended at my calling her idea that Bush was going to put all the gays in camps “fever swamps.”

I wasn’t as plugged in when I first came to the US, mostly because my husband was almost aggressively apolitical, but I suspect there was the same nonsense about Reagan, particularly when the crisis hit.

This is because the left has no imagination.  Or perhaps because they’ve gone well beyond trying to sell their idea, which we’ve all known is poison since the soviet union fell (or at least all of those who escaped the public indoctrination camps long enough ago) and into scaring several groups of people into thinking that the other side means them ill.  Which is how we got Biden’s eructation “They’re gonna put you in chains.”

The thing that amazes me about this is how these people — even otherwise intelligent, well informed people — never walk back from the cliffs of insanity.  I mean, I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who met the “they’re going to kill all gay people!” panicked people after the election in 16.

So– have any of those people ever walked that back?  One? Just one?  Any of them ever said “Uh. Trump actually has gay people in his administration. I guess I was wrong?”

None that I know of.

And this gives me an insight into how poisonous ideologies bent on totalitarianism take control of people.

For decades we’ve wondered how the Germans, some of the most civilized people in Europe at the time, could have committed the atrocities of WWII.  Honestly, they too don’t seem to know how that happened, and in Germany, among the older people in the eighties, you got the sense of their still not being sure how it got that far.

BTW, I BELIEVE the people within sight and smell of the camps who said they didn’t know what was going on there.

No, I don’t believe they didn’t know, or weren’t able to put it together.  I BELIEVE they’d convinced themselves they didn’t know what was going on there. Because they couldn’t live with knowing, and admitting they’d been supporting and aiding evil would break them. So, in self, preservation, they “didn’t know.” Hysterical denial is a thing.

You see, the people who HAVE to have noticed that Trump isn’t rounding up gay people to put in camps, can’t admit it to themselves, because if they did they would have to admit they were duped and completely fooled.

For instance, the young lady on election night, was telling me that Trump holding up a rainbow flag on stage was a “codded message” because “he held it upside down.”  When we pointed out that a) the rainbow flag doesn’t even have set colors, much less an up and down.  b) there was an inscription on the flag (I THINK LGBT for Trump) and the inscription was right side up, she retreated to “the flag wasn’t made by a real gay person.”  Which…. well. I presume the flag was made in slave factories in China, like so much of such things.  Also, how do you certify a real gay person? Is there a central authority? The mind boggles.

This young lady isn’t stupid. Intellectually lazy, poorly educated, but not stupid.  Which means what?

Well, her peer group, her social credit, the people that pass themselves as trend setters and really smart in her groups, all told her that Trump was going to round up gay people.  To admit they were wrong would have broken her. So. She had an investment in believing it.  It made them tell her she was “smart” and “connected.”  To suddenly doubt them would make her an outcast. And of course, the media sells these points over and over and over again.

And the more you buy from them, the more you realized they’re wrong, the more you have to tell yourself you believe the next big panic to come down the pike.  Because if you don’t, you have to admit you were wrong before.  Your own sunk costs hold you captive.  You can’t admit you were encouraging evil people and supporting them, that you were their willing dupe, so the side you’re fighting must be even worse than you suspected, and it must be horrible 24/7.

I believe this is the key to why the good people on the left — and there are still good people there — are still going along with the insanity.

Craziness after craziness has come and gone, including the fact that they tried to impeach Trump because Biden DID blackmail Ukraine.  Insanity after insanity and obviously cooked evidence.

More importantly things have come out about the abortion factories that are Planned Parenthhood outposts.  Tearing babies out in bits so you can sell the bits for profit, to the corrupt oligarchs of China. Insanity like Kermit Gosnell, or that guy that kept babies in jars in the back of his car and his garage.  This is the stuff of true evil, the stuff of mass murderers, the stuff of horror.  How can people face with this continue saying that we should have late-term abortions, and that it’s the mother’s word that determines if a creature is human or not?  HOW?

More importantly, how can writers of science fiction and fantasy look at aborted-baby-parts sold to China to (supposedly) keep the decrepit communist horrors alive another decade and not go “That’s the stuff of vampire legends. Those weren’t the good guys.”  If they fact that fact, they’ll realize they owe Elizabeth Bathory an apology.

And while on that, China, which has been their beau ideal since the Soviet Union collapsed, a place where, supposedly, communism worked (which in part caused them to decide it’s whiteness that causes communism not to work.), has been revealed as basically as evil and corrupted and as ethnically driven as Hitler’s Germany.  But you’ll still hear “good people” on the left tell you that the Chinese aren’t racist and that’s why they do “so well” in Africa.  I know. I’m related to one of those.

Then there is the multiple insanity of the Obama administration, from Fast and Furious which left hundreds if not thousands of Mexicans dead, on a psychological gambit that anyone out of Obama’s freshman-in-college circle would tell him was not going to work.  Or Benghazi where he let good men die (and went after a man who made a movie about Muslims in the US, where we’re supposed to be able to say whatever we wan, as an excuse) so as not to admit we still had problems with terrorism, and potentially jeopardize his re-election.  And ten the Iran bullshit.  I have to tell you I can’t decide whether Obama was always Iran’s puppy, and simply had to pay back, or if he is just a raging idiot. But it’s one or the other, plus a lot of evil. He flew PALLETS OF CASH to the evil oligarchs of Iran who crush their own people under an iron yoke, while screaming death to the US and Israel.  He did this in exchange for a meaningless promise they wouldn’t develop nukes, which is mind-boggling stupid and evil.  And he thought that was his signature deal, his apotheosis. And the trained seals saw nothing wrong with that.

Then there is the fact he subverted our judicial system and our investigatory agencies to attack his political enemies.

And all this is as nothing compared to 2020, where they — desperate, and realizing that the technology is moving people away from the conditions that foster central control, i.e. packed cities, largely illiterate workforce, repetitive mindless work in large conglomerates run by the same clock — decided to pull all the stops.

The jury is out on whether they meant the covidiocy to be a sophisticated psy-ops.  I’m sure it was just that on the part of China. And very sophisticated indeed, to the point that around February I was very worried.  To be fair, this might be fostered by the fact that the casualties were worst in China due to their truly appallingly bad level of hygiene and pollution.  That said, by March it was obvious to me — and I’m not a trained intelligence officer — that the illness would not be half as bad as they were touting, and would probably amount to “a bad flu.”

I find it amusing that if the CDC is right and the cases in which COVID-19 was primarily responsible for the death of the patient are 6% of the total reported, it comes to exactly my prediction when we were pushed into lockdown: 10k people, more or less.  Which, yes, is very sad, but it’s the number of people who die of the flu every winter.

However, whether our authorities were duped or malicious, no one can pretend at this point that between the continuing semi-lock down and the orders to mask up while there’s no proof the masks do anything, and there is plenty proof they aren’t necessary among school children, it becomes obvious that whatever else this is, it is a malicious attack on our society and economy. An unprecedented attack, never before performed by a sixth column on any nation.

So, why do so many people — particularly on the left — believe that Winnie the Flu has killed 30 million people? Well, because they have to. Otherwise they’d look like idiots.  (BTW it didn’t take a genius to figure out if the homeless and the poorer countries in Africa where China has a presence weren’t dying like flies, the illness was NOT that dangerous.  I know it didn’t take a genius, because I figured it out.  So why did people hysterically fall for it? I don’t know. That one has me stumped. And why are so many people holding onto the lie?  Because they also can’t figure out how they fell for it.

And now we have the riots.  And you need to be a particular kind of stupid and indoctrinated — say a CNN reporter — to believe they’re mostly peaceful.  Most of us who live in blue cities have found our lives changing, our daily routines being calculated to stay out of the path of the crazy (which gives me PTSD from 70s Portugal.)

And there are people defending the looting as “taking back what’s theirs.” Because apparently mostly affluent, college-educated white kids and/or petty criminals have the “right” to whatever they want from stores.  Since that stuff is made by elves and represents no human effort or investment.

Then there was trying to turn Kyle Rittenhouse self-defense shooting into “white supremacy.” Because apparently killing a white pedophile rapist who is trying to brain you with a skateboard means you believe the only good people are blond. Or something.

And then yesterday there were two shootings of Trump supporters. Note that there isn’t any excuse for those.  You can scream they’re “white supremacists” but even if they were, that might be a stupid opinion but it — or black supremacy, or all the other crazy floating around — aren’t capital crimes.  But the truth is, there is nothing to indicate that. They were just political opponents of the left. That’s it. And as much as the left would like it to be otherwise, that is not a capital crime.

So, to the good people of the left: your side has now descended into killing people who disagree with them politically.

And don’t tell us that’s necessary, because otherwise you’ll die under Trump’s iron boot.  His first four years seem to show that means you’ll do well financially and frankly, your primacy in academe, entertainment and the media remained unchallenged.

So why? Why the desperate panic?  Is it because you KNOW now you were duped? Because the accumulation of the things you did in good faith has been revealed to be support for the monsters? And you refuse to admit it — have to refuse to admit it — or you’ll have to break your image of yourself as sophisticated and compassionate?  So you must fight very hard, because another four years of Trump will only reveal to what extent you’ve been duped; to what extent your thought leaders have lied and screwed everyone over?

Is it because you are in MacBeth’s position:

By the worst means, the worst. For mine own good,
All causes shall give way. I am in blood
Stepped in so far that, should I wade no more,
Returning were as tedious as go o’er.
Strange things I have in head, that will to hand,
Which must be acted ere they may be scanned.
Is it? I would remind you how that story ends. I would also remind you that like the Germans you can choose not to “know” of the atrocities committed in your name. But the more they escalate, the more they will become obvious, and the more the atrocities will mount.

Your side has destroyed the most vibrant economy in the world, and is already killing people with famine in the third world every day.  If allowed to continue, they will bring the famine here.  And they might end civilization.

And they’re shooting people on the streets for having a contrary opinion, even while destroying the work and livelihood of millions.

At which point do you say enough?

None of those death camps could have stayed in business if everyone around, all the decent people, had advanced on them and said “Stop it. Enough is enough.”

All they had to do was admit they were wrong and had supported evil.

So, what will do?  Will you smell the smoke and tell yourself you don’t know what it means?

Or will you have the courage to face your own darkness and walk forth into the night?

Before I hit high school, I knew I would be “sorted” by ability (depending on the grades I brought from the previous schools.)

Turned out I was wrong. And right. You see, my brother had been sorted by ability, but by the time I hit high school we were some years post leftist revolution, and past various kinds of socialist/communist/turn a different shade of red governments, so sorting had been banned for school kids.

For those of you scratching your heads… There were no hats involved, and no omniscient entity sorting us into houses. In fact there were no houses. (There were buildings, one of which was an expropriated earl’s palace from the last time Portuguese politics had got exciting. This is why although I wasn’t reared in a stable, I did attend 9th grade in one.) In fact, “high school” is a matter of speech, because this was grades 7 through 11. 12th was literally added in just ahead of my hitting it, and I was in the US for it, anyway. (Yes, people used to graduate from secondary education in 11th grade. It just was a thing.)

But high school (for lack of a better term. The transitional “middle school” was grades 5 and 6.) was completely different than in the US. For one, in the beginning of the year you were sorted into “forms” which were supposed to be 21 people, but were always around 30 t0 38 people. These forms got assigned a classroom, and it was your teachers who came to you. (Because we were experiencing exuberant socialist progress, one year the classroom was in the cafeteria (they were out of FUNCTIONAL classrooms, as there had been some problem. Another year they assigned us an art classroom, and were shocked and surprised that our form wasn’t grateful for the favor. This was after 9th grade, and the form I was in specialized in… languages. We didn’t even have any art classes. But we were lectured after some trouble (no, too long to explain. We’d broken up an attempted strike. That’s all) for not being “grateful” for our special classroom. Socialists give you what you don’t want and are shocked you don’t thank them for it. The classroom in the stable was actually a proper classroom. the stables had been converted. The classroom in the attic… we’ll get there.)

Anyway, because someone wasn’t utterly stupid at some point the system was created of people being sorted into forms by ability. Look, having experienced this from both sides of the teaching desk, a well-sorted class, particularly a class formed of all high-performers is a joy for both students and teachers and the learning really happens at an accelerated pace.

And while I suspect a well sorted class of low-performers isn’t as much fun for the teacher, it probably also results in students learning more, because teachers can/have to slow down and teach at the pace the student will learn.

But it is unequal. It definitely is that. Even in our system, it’s been judged hurty or something and studies have “shown” that integrated classrooms are better for students. Somehow. I’m not sure how, because one of my kids went through elementary with a kid with an IQ of 68 who was ‘normalized’ and integrated in normal classes, and let me tell you, it wasn’t better for anyone. Okay, the kid had his own “aide” who in fact did all the school work for him (I never understood what THAT was supposed to accomplish) but even with a dedicated aid, there were entire days lost to his having a freakout and screaming at the top of his lungs, or the like. His mother finally removed him and put him in a program for kids with extreme disabilities, when he learned skills like, oh, washing his hands, and going to the bathroom by himself which was far more useful to him for his future life, than having someone pretend he could write essays. (She was in fact one of my best friends among the mothers, because it turns out profoundly mentally retarded (look, it was the official classification at the time) and profoundly gifted had the exact same problems and mainstreaming wasn’t helping either of them.)

Anyway, by the time I entered seventh grade we were so advanced in the warmth of collectivism that we couldn’t possibly be sorted into different ability levels, because that was a) hurty b) unequal.

But you see, the teachers were used to sorted forms. So what actually happened was that they didn’t sort us for 7th grade. (Actually they did. Alphabetically. I was in the class were everyone’s initials were A. A. (first and last name.)) Then in eighth grade something mysterious happened. I came in late for the very first class which was my “I get this for free” class, which was Portuguese (“language arts.”) I sat down just as they finished reading a text, and the teacher asked a question. Look, I didn’t even know I was doing this until it failed. Apparently, I was in the habit of waiting just long enough that no one else put their hand up. So, I put my head up after a calculated pause, and put my hand up, and every single hand was up. Turns out what the teachers/administrators had done was sort people by the level displayed in the seventh grade.

Anyway, I have very fond memories of eighth and ninth grade (in tenth I got put in the language form, which was the only one, and therefore not sorted. I don’t have fond memories of tenth or eleventh.)

I’m not going to discuss how effective sorting students is as a rule, or how well students do under one system versus another. Look, I haven’t dug through the studies and the data. And if I did, I probably wouldn’t know any different, since all those studies are corrupt.

What I’m going to say, though, is that my form in 8th grade was composed of the best students in other forms the year before. Almost… universally. Almost but not quite. I don’t know if by some weird error or as a lame attempt to hide that they were sorting, there were two completely normal students in my form in those two years.

It took me years to figure out they were normal too. Because the rest of us were feeding on each other and flying away ahead of expected curriculum. And the two of them… lagged. Often they didn’t seem to know what was going on, and they — on the regular — had no idea what we were talking about. When forced to participate in the class they usually said something that seemed to come from another planet. A really dumb one. And they just in general seemed completely lost.

But they were probably perfectly normal.

Yeah, they failed the college entrance, the only 2 in the form that did, but then that was just normal, since only about 0.5% of people made it in.

Why am I telling you this? Not to say I was a gifted kid. Though you probably know the syndrome. If I was so gifted, why am I not rich and famous? (Well, I never wanted to be famous. I wouldn’t mind the rich, though.) It’s not the most useless thing in the world. It can help in lots of circumstances, it can give you that extra lift over the wall at the last minute. (Of course you come to rely on it, and push things to the last minute.) And there are a million other things that would really help that I don’t have, like an easy manner in company or an ability to concentrate on anything for more than ten seconds, or the ability not to fall down rabbit holes that have nothing to do with what I’m supposed to be researching or doing at the moment (five while writing this post. No, I swear, d*mn it.)

I’m telling you this because now that I’m a grown up I can put myself in the place of those two girls. They might have been good students, part of the group, happy, but they were stuck in a form with misfit geniuses (and we were all misfits to some extent) who read stuff they had no interest in, talked of things they’d never pay any attention to, and in general drove them nuts.

Do I think it blighted their lives? G-d. I hope it didn’t. It would be very difficult for two years to do that, even two very formative years.

But this is why I oppose the whole DEI (DIE DIE DIE) system. It does this to people, over and over again.

Remember that essay by Michelle Obama, the anger, the feeling she didn’t fit in? She attributed it to her race, and I guess it actually did have to do with her race, because she was accepted to Harvard due to her racial status and being “underprivileged” (I’m going to assume since that essay was written at about 9th grade level.) She was resentful and felt like an outsider. It was only attributing it to racism that was wrong, but what else was she supposed to do.

Worse, she was taking the place of someone else, who would have thrived in that environment and those classes, and that too is terrible. As useless as it was, I loved those two years of intellectual challenge. Most of all, I loved knowing I wasn’t abnormal. There were others like me, and the intellectual facility and curiosity came with quirks and challenges… that other people also had. But someone might have missed out on that, because they put those two girls in to muddy the waters. (I should point out they were both girls because we were ALL girls. It was an all girl school.) Doing this on purpose, to people, over their entire lives, not just high school, is evil

It is evil to put people out of their natural element, the area they would naturally sort into by competence or ability (which always has an element of interest, too, because we’re humans) and to stick them where they either can’t perform or are bored out of their gourd because someone decided they need people who tan there, or who don’t tan, or who have vaginas instead of penises or whatever criteria that has absolutely nothing to do with doing the job.

One of my challenges, when it comes to interacting with life, is that I am all about doing the thing. What do I mean about doing the thing? Well, if I’m in a course, I’m there to learn. If I’m in a job, I’m there to do the job, whatever it is.

I have very little understanding of interpersonal power games, and even less interest in them.

In this case, my obsession with doing the thing makes me furious and righteously angry at whoever thought that sorting people out because of truly irrelevant characteristics, and removing them from jobs they could do, from situations in which they could thrive, from the groups they would normally interact with to … make the groups more color balanced? or whatever.

Humans are not objects d’art. They’re complex creatures where interest, intelligence and ability all interact.

For instance my quip of “why aren’t I rich?” — I know precisely why. Because I didn’t stick with a profession that would have made me if not rich extremely well off. Because I want to write stories. And I want to write the stories I need to write. And if those aren’t the stories that sell a million, that’s too bad. That’s the stories I cam here to write.

I suspect most of us are like that — even if most people are saner — and to try to force people into outcomes they’d never reach on their own for what’s ultimately aesthetics and the rats in someone else’s head?

That’s evil. You are blighting someone’s life, perhaps making it impossible for them to ever find the magical spot that Pratchett referred to as being “yourself as hard as you can.”

Human life, and finding your way is hard enough without people messing you about treating you like a collection of marbles and sorting you by characteristics that have nothing to do with the real you.

And sometimes this type of thing ends in death. That’s how badly it can go.

But even when it doesn’t, it still ends in death. How many geniuses would have found themselves in a truly demanding college (back when Ivy League still meant something) and didn’t. And didn’t have the right contacts to make their key invention.

So many things can improve life for everyone. A better motor, a better fertilizer… that never happen, and therefore some lives that might have been saved and improved aren’t.

And how many people who would have been, oh, natural managers or salesmen, or teachers, got pushed into an ivy league education in law or whatever, and just emerged resentful and feeling that everyone is out to get them… And sometimes went on to be president and first lady and blight everyone’s life as a consequence?

It’s time to do away with the whole twisted mess. If you’re going to sort sort by characteristics that have something to do with what you’re trying to achieve. If it’s a classroom, better learning. And if it’s a job, people best able to do it.

And let people find their way and sacrifice to get what they want.

All the rest is evil nonsense and illusions of omnipotence.

You’re not a hat. You don’t get to sort people according to characteristics that have nothing to do with the job. Stop it. Just stop it.

I was — blamelessly (standing on the corner, reading my Bible.) — hanging out in my discord group, when someone posted a link to a twitter post. This Twitter post:

If you follow the link, you’ll find other additional qualities that are now not just right wing but “white supremacy.” This of course includes everything needed to make you a good employee, such as showing up on time, planning, actually executing plans, etc. etc. ad nauseam.

And you’re going to say “Yes, Sarah, but the left are massive racists, so to whom is this a surprise. And of course, you are right. It takes a special kind of mind to think that the ability to show up on time or do what you’re supposed to do at work is constricted to white people or a sign of white supremacy. In fact, if you think that, you are by definition a white supremacist since those are the traits required to be successful and therefore to think that only whites have them is … well… white supremacy beliefs. Or as I like to put it “Those who confuse culture with genetics are taking the side of Hitler in the long fight between nature and nurture.” (Which is particularly hilarious when these are the people who accuse just about everyone else of being “basically Hitler.”)

The problem is that there is more than that going on. Yes, the left really believes that these traits are white supremacy, but the left also believes quite honestly (if neither rationally not reasonably) that such traits are evil and should be eradicated, as well as never taught to those under their control, such as public school kids.

And that’s more complicated to explain. It is in fact, not just first world delusions, but gentry delusions.

The left has a raging case of nostalgie de la boue. Yes, I’m speaking furrin’ at you again. Fortunately this is the future, and you have a computer at your fingertips.

I remember reading — in some bewilderment — this longing, drooling article, Jonesing for Times Square in the seventies in some NY city paper (I’m not being cute, it’s been 30 years, and I’ve slept since then) in the late nineties. How it was more fun, more authentic, because you could bump into pimps and whores and get shanked at any corner, in daylight. And I remember thinking “These are the illusions of people so well off that they get their kicks by slumming, in controlled, carefully dosed portions never realizing that these conditions condemn those worse off than they are to live in hell 24/7.”

I suppose that goes along with most lefties, particularly most communists being rich kids. (No? Go track it.) Perhaps they feel guilty for their privileged upbringing. Or perhaps — I’ve seen this very often, in the arts — they are tormented by the idea that they’re missing something: that their lives, as well off as they are, are pretend lives, not serious.

You hear it in the sneering put down of “First world problems.” (Not used in a funny and self deprecating way, but applied to other people’s struggles. To make you think they mean nothing.) Because you know, not having to deal with lack of clean water, or children dying of diarrhea or the other conditions obtaining in the third world made your problems — say, unemployment, or a shitty job, or even a bad marriage — less “authentic.” Less important.

It all goes back, of course, to the basic communist belief about humanity. Humanity is evil bad. There is no such thing as a good person, which is why people need to be watched and controlled continuously by an omnipresent, omnipotent government. (Why people are supposed to be evil in individual cases, but wonderful in aggregate in a government, I don’t know, except that communists always imagine they’ll be the ones in power, and of course, they have superior moral sense.)

And to the other basic communist belief: wealth cannot be created. It can only be distributed endlessly. which means anyone managing to accumulate more wealth is taking it from someone else. (That’s right, that computer you are reading this on was passed on and redistributed from Knut the nut who first built it from river mud in the fertile crescent. Oh, wait. No, he couldn’t build it! Dang it. He stole it from a fish in the fertile crescent when he asserted his imperialistic colonialist domain over the Euphrates. or something.)

If you combine those, the people using the discipline that in our current world allows people to get ahead (absent DEI (Or as originally acronymed DIE, later ditched for being too on the nose, I’d guess.) means that you’re using a “trick” to accumulate more of the wealth for yourself, which makes it evil and also white supremacy. (Since as we know every successful person ever is white. Because they’re declared white, no matter what their color actually is. Some things never change.)

It would be hilarious. And in fact we’ve laughed about it more than once, when we go “White supremacy is… spin the wheel”. But the problem is that it’s also tragic, destructive and insidious.

It’s tragic because taken to its ultimate conclusion it enforces a kind of “cultural revolution” destructiveness, when the most skilled craftsmen and best workers had to abase themselves and promise to stop being that good. China did lose a good deal of multi-generational skills and knowledge, and we’re in the process of losing it also, because after all to do the thing precisely and with pride is supremacy, and evil, and oppressive.

Look, I’ve seen Europe, which has a more advanced case of this, going from having the most astonishing artists in the world to lionizing people who do bad line art in public spaces, art which at the time I viewed it, would have shamed my 10 year old son who didn’t even have any artistic ambitions (that was the other.)

And I’ve seen what it’s done to fiction. No. Really. I had a meme on Saturday about “Human slop.” You don’t have to be an expert to find that screeds screaming about the oppression of left handed Tahitian Lesbians of uncertain parentage in fact reflect very little about the human condition, much less contribute anything to the continuing exploration of what it means to be human in the world, which is the de-minimis requirement of decent fiction. As for the word use… well!

But it goes deeper than that. It goes to teachers who don’t teach, because teaching and actually enforcing learning is white supremacy or right wing (and right wing is bad, remember). (It inevitably results in students who can’t read, and now four generations in, in graduate students, or professor, who likewise can’t read. Or at least not with any fluency.) It goes to jobs exported overseas, because your workers were convinced to be as bad as slave workers in China.

It goes into unsafe cities, because requiring people not to kill or rob is bad and right wing.

In fact, this nostalgie de la boue, this craving for the low and evil and dark is ultimately a wrench unscrewing all the underpinnings of civilization.

And it is built so deeply that even after you free yourself of every other leftist illusion, you still find it trying to destroy your novel or your art by making it pointlessly dark or despairing. Because you internalized that as being “thoughtful” or “important.” (Ask me how I know. Years. it took me years. And in the early published books, a lot of revising.)

Look, in every time in the world, the gentry amused themselves by going out among the peasants and enjoying the “low” entertainment. But at least the gentry paid lip service to civilization. They might sneer at the “bourgeoisie” who refused to have affairs and who were honest in their dealings. Or at least the most corrupt ones did. But they also sent their second sons to fight and die for civilization. And the smarter gentry, the ones who survived, kept private virtue in their own lives. The others met either the tumbrils or bankruptcy. Until their nostalgie de la boue was exercised only by the young and foolish for a limited time.

This however is the gentry infecting the poor, the innocent, the hapless and those who don’t know their nonsense is just that: nonsense.

It’s time to wash the leftist mud from societal beliefs and build again. Because the alternative is not some beautiful egalitarian paradise. It’s actually just mud… and misery, and all the evils humanity built civilization to escape.