Grab Your Mallet

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

I’ve been trying to explain how I feel with what’s happening in the country, and with what Doge is doing…

Beyond becoming addicted to the Doge site… which is sad and pathetic, but then you guys knew that. I mean, that I’m at severe risk of becoming addicted.

But there is a feeling behind all this, and I finally pinned it. It’s the feeling when the wall came down in Berlin.

I don’t think I can fully explain how amazing, wonderful, shocking and maybe a little scary it was to those of you born and raised after the fall of the wall. or even to those of you who were in elementary school at the end of the cold war.

For me, for my generation, particularly those of us who grew up in Europe (which includes any number of you guys who grew up in military bases) there was the overwhelming certainty at any moment the whole thing would go hot, and we’d have maybe a second to kiss our asses goodbye before being vaporized.

The idea/feel was not just that the countries behind the iron curtain were as powerful as the US (let’s not pretend Europe made any kind of contribution to this scariness) but also were secretly more powerful and better organized.

We knew they were more ruthless. We knew people died trying to climb the wall from East to west, because the communists would gun them down with no mercy: Men, women, children, babes in arms.

And then one day we woke up to images of the wall being torn down. Not by armies, not by professionals, but by members of the public who had had about enough. After all the rebellions that failed, after all the despair, common people on the street were just destroying this symbol of oppression with mallets, chisels, hammers, crow bars, and at the end of the process, bare hands.

And then they took their ladas and trabants, their piece of sh*t Eastern block cars, and they drove them as far as they could, which in many cases meant till they hit the sea in Portugal. then they abandoned to rot by the road side, and went off to be free.

And nothing happened. The nukes did not fly. The world did not end. (For that matter, the commies embedded in the institutions throughout the west didn’t change, either.)

Now I’m watching the impenetrable walls of the deep state broached and the stuff that’s coming out…. well….

It seems for decades, for perhaps all of my life, we’ve been financing the left. We, the American taxpayers.

For decades, it seemed like the left had all this money, and we assumed they were well-financed by the big figures of culture, by people like Soros, by evil dictators like Putin and Winnie the Xi. And we on the right, shut out of the cultural institutions and the well-paying gigs, had nothing to do and nowhere to go, so we grimly gritted our teeth and resigned ourselves to losing.

Only we didn’t. Despite the massive disparity, once social media became available, once blogs became a thing, even impaired, held down, we started to fight back. And we started to win.

And now here we are, and the illusion of the big perfectly financed enemy is coming apart before our eyes.

So we can sit here and run out the world’s stock of popcorn. or we can … go at the wall with mallets, with hammers, with our bare hands.

Look, each his own. My own fight is in the arts and culture. The illusion that all writers are leftist, that science fiction is inherently leftist still holds.

In the aftermath of Devon Eriksen being kicked out of a contest he hadn’t entered, because they found out he’s a vocal libertarian on X, (it didn’t go as they expected. Their other finalists dropped out in protest.) Since I’m pretty isolated and self-sufficient, and doing things backwards and sideways as I usually do, I didn’t notice till I read indie writers discussing this that many of them had joined the lefty indie writer organizations, and thought they were all alone.

That is so many levels of wrong. Of course, yes, there aren’t many organizations on the right, because the individualists, reliably fail to organize. But there are a ton of us to the right of Lenin. And we are not afraid. Or at least a lot of us are no longer afraid.

The mechanism that held us mute, the tradpub houses ability to blackmail anyone who spoke against the lefty pet causes, no longer operates. We grew wings and can fly solo.

So there is no reason to submit to the dying — and minority, without government cash — lefty culture.

Being me, I did something that’s probably backward and sideways, as usual: I dared other writers on twitter who aren’t ashamed to be seen with the freedom lovers, to come out of the shadows and send me their books to promote.

Which is why this blog is going to have a nightly promo post for at least a week, and it might be more. I have plans in the works for a dedicated site for the likes of us, with a query mechanism of “I like x, what should I read next?” That has been on the backburner because I can no longer (I was okay at it 40 years ago) program. But now Charlie is close enough to visit and talk to, maybe we can make it go. It’s worth a try. Even if it’s not going to be instant. So, you know, the mallet is on the way, but right now I have this nail-file.

That’s what I can do right now to give trouble to what The Saint (of the books) would call “the unrightenous.” Right now, it’s what occurs to me to start pulling out bits of wall. I’m sure other things will come to mind, as we go. After all, i can’t sit forever on the sofa, eating popcorn.

And you? What can you do? Is there a way you can start tearing down the wall of the left’s perceived dominance of culture — or anything else? Any other field that’s utterly controlled by the left. Signal to others they’re not alone. Help the people who don’t hate us and don’t want our country destroyed.

Where you are, is there anything you can do to signal to people to the right of Lenin that they’re not alone? The faster the rotten edifice collapses, the faster we can drive for freedom and start to recover.

I’m not you. I don’t know what you see or what you can do.

So– where you are, is there a mallet you can grab? A crowbar? An ice-pick? A nail file?

It’s time. Find a place to start hammering.

Don’t endanger yourself and others. For some of you, to keep your jobs, what you can do might be really small or really subtle. It’s still worth doing. Every piece that is scraped off the wall makes the rest easier to topple. Be creative. The promo posts are honestly win win, and yet the more people know they’re not alone, the more people know there are writers who don’t hate them, the faster the left will be denied even the power they retain.

And you see, we’re at a point a lot of little pushes might do it.

I know this wasn’t said by a good character, and yet it’s true: “Tis the eye of childhood that fears a painted devil.”

At this point the vaunted power of the left, their massive advantage are just that: a painted devil and not real.

Grab a mallet, grab a nail file, grab a plastic spoon, and start helping tear the monstrous wall down. Help set us free.

It’s time. Go.

160 thoughts on “Grab Your Mallet”

  2. Yes, it is time I picked up a chisel and a mallet.

    So, what tools do I have?

    The first is a Facebook account and a bunch of liberal relatives that are currently friends. Four sisters, 20 living first cousins plus other friends. I have not pushed back on their nonsense. and it is time to start.

    Any that are conservative need to need to know they are not alone. The liberals need to know that not everyone agrees with them. The two downsides are there will be arguments at family reunions and some relatives and friends will discover they don’t like me. The second is that I am not fond of confrontations or arguments. I can live with both.

    I am retired and my wife will tell you that I spend an inordinate amount of time reading political blogs. I have started to collect memes to post to Facebook. They are ones that I will be happy to defend in the comments. Some of my favorites are over the top and overstate the case.

    It is a chisel and light mallet, I am looking for a big prybar, but this will do for now. Hope to see a bunch of great, HUGE ideas in comments. It is time I do more than just vote.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Join up with voting integrity outfits and volunteer to poll watch in your county’s election process. True The Vote is my personal preference, but Judicial Watch has also done good work in this area. For the poll watching, you’ll probably want to talk with your local county GOP, if for no other reason than to find out how squishy they are and whether they’ll support you.

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  3. Seems to me that talk radio was the initial body blow to the liberal wall that kept those of us of a conservative nature feeling alone and fearful of expressing our views only to be mocked and ridiculed.

    Moved to Huntsville in 1984 and started listening to WVNN the local conservative station that hosted Rush Limbaugh. They also had this over the top morning bozo always spouting edgy radical conservative opinions and getting in trouble. One time on his show he announced that due to expected voter turnout to prevent crowds at the polls Republicans should show up on election day and Democrats the day after. Almost got fired and arrested over that one. His name was Sean Hannity who it would appear has done rather well since moving up from Huntspatch.

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    1. Somewhere after Trump 1.0 was in office, I decided that S.H. had far more liberals on the air than I preferred. If I was in town (where radio reception was good), I switched to an Oregon/PNW based conservative for the afternoon. (Hannity comes on at noon on the left coast.) From snippets, I gathered that Hannity was not helpful after FICUS took office.

      For about a year after Rush died, I was listening to a trio of cons who got his slot, but simply stopped listening to talk radio altogether. Living in a red county in a state dominated by the lunatic leftoids, it was hard to be optimistic. OTOH, blogs and vast rightwing news helped a lot. FWIW, $SPOUSE listens to a country talk/music show (Big D and Bubba), and you get the hint that at least one is quietly MAGA. (I don’t listen much, so not sure.)

      With a red county, there’s not much local wall for the mallet, though one of my neighbors… OTOH, maybe some money directed to non-GOPe conservative candidates might be useful. On the gripping hand, this has been an expensive winter. Who knew that 36″ of snowfall would rip the barn’s chimney-stack out by the braces when the snow/ice started sliding? (12″ of snowfall for a full winter isn’t that unusual. The 36+ has been all in February.)

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        1. Savage is one of the personalities that has a rep for playingacting the conservative stuff, basically as a character he plays because it pays.

          Never met the guy and don’t know anyone in that industry, but the grapevine says to him it’s a role.

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          1. Somebody in the SF area had a real hard on against the guy. Posted lots of “expose” crap on Usenet back in the ’90s. Didn’t seem to affect things much.

            Levin, Savage. I’d either swith to the country music station or go for my music. Right now it’s Sabaton FTW. :)

            “Brothers, Heroes, Foes!”

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            1. Yeah, he’s singing the notes from the right sheet music, and I have never heard of him trying to agent-provocateur anything, so he can “fake it till you make it” all he wants. I think he goes shouty too much too, but it takes all kinds.

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        2. I have a few hundred albums ripped onto a USB stick for the vehicles. I can’t listen to them in the morning (can’t have headphones w/music and read simultaneously any more–50 years ago, yeah, but now, no), so the all-day market trips give me time to enjoy music. Can’t get radio very well in the shop/barn, either. We have interesting terrain, much of it pretty detrimental to AM and FM radio with standard antennae.

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    4. AM radio is still the land of the Bluecollar Worker.

      It is also the land of the religious broadcaster.

      And now, some folks are trying -real- hard to get AM radios out of vehicles.

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      1. That could be conspiracy, but is more likely that AM radios pickup the vehicles noise sources so easily that it’s hard for hybrids and all electronic vehicles to have clean reception without annoying whinning noises from the electric motors strong magnetic fields. FM modulation is a lot more immune to noise.

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        1. I know FM digital radio broadcasting exists, but I don’t know if AM digital radio exists (commercial radio – Hams do all kinds of things) in real life, but the FCC web site lists AM digital radio as a thing. Analog amplitude modulated radio is just inherently noisy due to all kinds of interference, from motors and switching within the car to the sun. Digital AM should have similar range while being a lot cleaner signal, all while still being free-to-listen over-the-air broadcasting.

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          1. It does exist, and KSL radio broadcasts with it.

            Last April I was listening to KSL between Price Utah and Moab, and the signal would alternate between a very clean sounding AM and very noisy AM depending on the geography. Looking at a FFT signal scope, the digital signal is about 1/2 the power of the AM carrier, but then it uses QAM, so it has a higher noise floor than accepting really noisy fring AM reception. For what it’s worth…

            I suspect if everyone switched to digital radios the FCC would let them focus more power on Digital and the range would increase.

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        2. That’s a silly excuse. My Tesla handles AM radio just fine, on fairly far away stations. And that’s without an effective antenna — it’s part of the car body, and since I got the version with no sun roof it is somehow in the metal or maybe the rear hatch glass rather than in a glass roof. The only radio part that doesn’t work reliably is the Sirius satellite one, which apparently they have given up supporting without the glass roof.

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          1. Tesla is engineering a premium car, so they worked harder on that. But I’m aware that some models do better than others.

            In old cars the primary noise sources were the ignition system, and the Alternator. Since the early 80s most spark systems are designed with resistance to slightly shape the spark plug pulse shape and reduce AM interference. With new electrics and hybrids we add Pulse Width Modulation speed controls that work by cycling the power to the electric motor on and off hundreds of times a minute because transistors burn less energy when switching all the way on and off, but that creates audible harmonics that get into AM receivers. If the manufacturer designs in the right shielding and filters it’s not a big deal. But it isn’t free, so lots would rather just not include a radio…

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      2. In 2005, AM radio was king along I-80 between the Left coast and the midwest. (long road trip, no other audio options). Not sure in ’14, where I only had the radio on in towns and cities for road/weather reports.

        Rough guess, for small operations, FM is a lot cheaper to do. You don’t need a dedicated tower, and the transmitter can be on the 13th floor of a high enough building, along with myriad other radio services. Real estate costs killed at least one AM station in San Jose; the land was worth far more as condoville than antenna farm. I suspect the economics carry in a lot of places.

        My SWAG says that really big radio stations, like WLS for the Chicago market, don’t occupy that much more real estate than smaller stations. If the station has to get creative with its propagation pattern, it could be a lot more than WLS’s main tower and a director. (Drove by it a few times in my misspent youth. Other stations needed 4 towers (WGN-AM, and the tiny one in the ‘burbs.)

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        1. You only need multiple towers if you want directional transmission. A single tower — basically just a big metal stick sitting on an insulator — will do omnidirectional transmission.

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          1. Yeah, WLS was pretty much clear channel. They had a smaller tower acting as a director in addition to the biggie. I’m fuzzy as to what WGN had, but I thought they had 4. WCFL was competition to WLS for top-40 in the ’60s and ’70s, but since they were on a popular frequency (1000 kHz), they had to change patterns at night. They had 4 towers, all in line. WLS was 50kW, and I think WCFL was also. The last time I was driving through the Chicago area (2014), WLS was talk radio, and 1000 kHz was static.

            One of the AM stations in Flyover Falls has a single tower in the local wetlands. That land should be cheap. OTOH, it blew down in one of the more enthusiastic storms a few years ago. Took a while to redo.

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            1. KDKA Pittsburgh, on 1020khz, has an amazing footprint at night. They are also using, I believe, a full wavelength antenna. I could listen to them at night in Florida.

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            2. Wetlands are ideal locations for AM antennas. Vertical antennas want a ground plane that conducts well. If you don’t have one naturally you end up having to make one out of many long copper wires radiating out from the antenna base over the ground. A swamp is naturally conductive (even more so if salt water, of course) so you need far less if any copper.

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              1. Yeah, whoever got that location got lucky. There aren’t that many AM stations near Flyover Falls, and the one in the wetlands has a pretty good footprint. (Rather more FM stations, and they’ll pick and choose as to which mountain they can do business from. One of the FM stations had a good signal some 70+ miles from the transmitter.)

                I’ll skip the radial wires for my HF antenna. Having a lower takeoff angle doesn’t do me any good where I live. Conductivity of the soil varies depending on season.

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        2. WNAX “Your Five State Farm Station!” Also used as a not-really-using-it-really navigation beacon when ADF was a thing. Could be heard into Manitoba if conditions were right.

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  4. I remember the Wall coming down. I was thrilled but perhaps a little less surprised than many others. One reason is an amazing book I read years earlier, “The final fall” by Emmanuel Todd. Originally in French, I found a Dutch translation in a book store that specializes in overstock books. The book is subtitled “An essay on the final decomposition of the Soviet Empire”. The author is a historian, and he realized that to properly understand closed societies that lie about their reality you have to use the same tools he learned to use for studying societies of centuries ago with inadequate records. You collect what you have but don’t trust it; you read between the lines and find the bits of reality hiding among the hay piles of fake information. The result was that he could forecast the fall of the USSR, and the reasons and manner of it.

    There’s an English translation, probably not all that easy to find, entitled “The Final Fall”. If you can find it, it’s worth reading. I fully expect Red China to go the same route, hopefully in my lifetime.

    —

    As for left leaning SF, I suppose, but I can think of plenty of Libertarian authors. Heinlein of course. Our esteemed host. L. Neil Smith, James P. Hogan, Poul Anderson. Niven and Pournelle at least some of the time. Rolf Nelson. Daniel Suarez. H. Beam Piper.

    There are also those whose politics aren’t so clear but who can write well about individual self-reliance. Andy Weir comes to mind, or Anne McCaffrey. It feels to me like there are at least as many freedom-oriented SF writers as there are left ones. Maybe that’s just because I don’t read most of the others (Asimov I can stand up to a point, Arthur C. Clarke usually leaves me cold in spite of all his supposed talents).

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  5. Of course we’ve been financing the Left. You see, the Left promises all these nice things. And they do look nice, like a gift horse. Until they look in its mouth. And people don’t want to get their hands covered in horse slobber only to find out that their gift horse is only good for the glue factory, and they’ll have to pay to transport it there because it just died at their feet.

    All those neat things benefit someone, someone that was turned into a cause. Never mind that we all have to cough up our earnings for them, whether we want to or not. And the causes multiply worse than bunnies. Until damn, we need an organization to manage all those causes for the people, because they can’t keep track of them all. And those managers need to be paid the big bucks because managing those causes is so important. And they need to thank the people who gave them those jobs, so the best way is to say it with greenbacks, isn’t it?

    We knew the rot was there. We never really had support to root it out, or even identify it. Which is one reason I am so thankful that we succeeded in getting Trump back for Round Two. And I’m thankful for Elon Musk for shouldering that burden. And as long as neither of them try playing fast and loose with our tax money and Constitutional rights, they’ve got my support.

    So once they’re over the hump, let’s not go back to saying “Yes” to every shiney thing proposed by the Left, or the Right for that mattter.

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    1. There is also a whole parasitic ecosystem of ‘grant assistants’ that ‘help’ people chisel money out of the government. Years ago I remember seeing ads from an intensely annoying asshole hawking a book that promised 1,000 (or was it 5,000?) ways to get money from the government. Even then, what I most wanted was for the government to make some changes and put that asshole out of business.

      I saw a video by physicist Sabine Hossenfelder lamenting that scientists are no longer in the business of doing science, but of applying for grants. All of their research efforts go into analyzing government regulations. They investigate, not what interests them or promises scientific progress, but what will influence the Grant Fairies in their favor.

      93% of ‘climate scientists’ say what they are paid to say. The ones who won’t, you never hear from because they don’t get research grants. I’m surprised even 3% dare to dispute the dogma.

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    2. Ahhh, but it wasn’t just the people who were knowingly giving money to the left bc they promised “nice things.” It’s the fact that our TAXES were being used, without our knowledge or consent, to fund them.

      I do not think we have even begun to scratch the surface of the coming rage at how we, the taxpayers, have been abused and told to sit down and shut up and do as we are told. I think the panic we are seeing amongst the lefties is because they know VERY well what they have done, and that what DOGE has found thus far is only a tiny portion of the malfeasance…and DOGE is only digging harder and faster.

      I think…making the decision I did to get the hell out of federal employment is a good one for many, many reasons…While mine is one of the few gov departments that is nominally useful–as in, we bring in money, for one thing–I still expect there are a lot of shenanigans at higher levels that are probably gonna get exposed when DOGE finally gets down to the DOI…

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  6. Wow did this resonate and bring back memories. (I’m still in pyjams, so this is 0610 fresh and unfiltered.)

    I left West Germany, then returned about a year later for REFORGER to… Germany. At the end of the exercise we were all at Graf, having the most enormous parties in the most enormous tents. When the cover band played “No More Bricks In The Wall” it was insane the reaction. Dancing on tables. No more Fulda Gap insanity. We bought chunks of the wall to send home to family.

    This is bigger, and feels bigger and the same all at once.

    Yesterday I un-followed yet another lefty “I’m scared of the broligarchs and ‘strong men’ organization–Queenagers over in the UK. They had focused on older women finding their way in a culture that didn’t especially appreciate them. Apparently, they hate the idea of men fighting for us and restoring the world to where all women are cherished. (Mostly, I know that’s a bit utopian!) So, bye bye!

    I don’t know exactly what to do except move back home where my body and my heart will thrive. It’s WA, so heavily communist. However…. a red hat here, a camouflage jacket there (people lose their shite at camo in many parts of Western WA), and soon the skies are rolling up and it’s a new day.

    LFG!

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    1. The earth moves under my feet. And the sun breaks through.

      I was BORN HERE in western WA, back in the days of Dixie (an independent and a true eccentric). Red counties abound, the problem is the blue pesthole of Seattle (the five-hundred-pound gorilla of state politics).

      I live a few miles south of Olympia, in which I will not set foot without a good reason. But a few miles further south is a town where not only do people not freek at the sight of woodland-print clothing, but I’ve seen people open-carrying while grocery shopping. And…nothing happened. Other than groceries. No panicky behavior, no unwarranted calls to 9-1-1, nothing.

      I love this part of the state. I despise the vandals bent on turning it into North CA.

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      2. Did like Long Beach. And the Ilwaco summer markets, though that’s gone a bit downhill since Covid.

        Maybe the very progressive yarn store (they dyed fiber pale blue and pink year before

        last to “support trans rights”) is so in your face left *because* they feel like a minority.

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    2. Heh. Nazi Germany cherished non-Jewish, healthy, heterosexual women enormously. After all, they were going the bear and raise the next generation of Nazis. (At least up to the age they could be placed in Hitler Youth organizations.

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    3. When I deployed to Panama on 20 December 1989 for Operation JUST CAUSE, Romania was a communist country. By the time I jumped back into Fort Bragg on 12 January 1990, Romania was no longer a communist country. That was a better Christmas story than Die Hard.

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      2. You got to Panama a couple of days after I left to come home for Christmas. I’d been working as an aircraft mechanic on a contract at Howard AFB. Most of my coworkers got taken hostage by the PDF.

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    2. My Edge had a fit where it insisted I needed to log in, but with enough jumping around tabs, I didn’t have to.

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  8. I have a piece of the wall in front of me on my desk as I type this. For me, though, the more vivid memory was Yeltsin climbing up on a tank outside the Duma during the attempted coup. I was a work and it was on the TV — Financial TV is always on — and I asked one of my coworkers what color the shoulder boards on the troopies was — I’m color blind — being told it was green the color of the interior troops rather than the red infantry wears, I remarked that that’s that, the old Soviet u ion is dead and gone and Thank God for it. No civil war. Once they couldn’t compel the obedience of their praetorians it was game over.

    that’s the next shoe that has to drop. There has to be a visible defection from the left otherwise DOGE is just the end of the beginning.

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    1. Defection?

      RFJ Jr

      Gafford

      Many others who now want to be seen as “with” Trump, versus “against”.

      Be of good cheer!

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      1. I wouldn’t go so far as to call Maher and Stewart defectors. But both have apparently been laying into the Dems for, basically, losing touch with the regular people.

        If they weren’t who they are, I suspect there would already be calls to cancel them.

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      2. sorry, I’m an every silver lining has a cloud sort of guy. I dont discount Kennedy and Gabbard, but I’m waiting for more … umm … direct sort of reaction.

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        1. Not so much that Gabbard and Kennedy moved right, it is that they are now right of the middle because the left has move so far, much further, into insane. Plus Gabbard and Kennedy are the old style democrats that Trump used to be. Of coarse they and President Trump do not have any problems working together. The vitriol piled on opened their eyes further.

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    2. I have only one serious regret in my life. Through stupidity, I was dead broke when the Wall came down. Thus I could not afford to travel, even to take time off, to go over there and -personally- take sledge and chisel to that obscenity.

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      1. Same here – I was stationed in Spain, but if not being strapped financially, couldn’t be spared from work to go up to Germany and do my own bit.

        As for what I can do now, besides blogging, commenting, and possibly getting back onto Twitter/X – I can write in subtle pro-western, pro-Christian, pro-republic of USA things in the books that I write and loose into the wild.

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  9. Somewhere on my phone is the meme with a bunch of figures bowing down to one guy with a whip and a bullhorn.

    In the next panel one of the figures stands up, daring Bullhorn Guy to use the whip.

    Then several are standing up, and in the final panel they are all standing and Bullhorn Guy is bowing down to the people he had enslaved in the first panel.

    We are at the point where several are standing up, and Bullhorn Guy is getting scared.

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  10. Without any kind of connection to politics, I found that one of my callings for 2025 is to declutter and downsize my household … in anticipation of some unknown thing still to come. Maybe a move, or a death, or a grandchild, or … who knows … but the Himself is calling for it.

    Our nation is doing the same project. We, the nation, individually have multiple futures in mind, but no one really knows what is to come.

    Watching the results on the DOGE site and the Presidential Actions site and certain events on CSPAN gives me a sensation of exhilaration very like that I get when I take a load of boxes to the thrift shop or a gaggle of garbage to the trash bin. Lightness … release … freedom of motion … lifting up of mine eyes … renewal of energy for the next task …

    And on the theme of the bad guy not always being wrong, interpret carefully:
    Kirk: You fool, look around you! The planet’s destroying itself!

    Kruge: Yes, exhilarating, isn’t it?

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  11. For decades, people have wondered how things became as they are, and then with DOGE, it all is becoming apparent. It’s wonderful to watch the walls of deceit being smashed, and the vermin scattering. At the rate things are going, D.C. will be the Detroit of the Potomac, houses will be empty, and the city will be wondering how to raise enough revenue to pay for the corruption.

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        1. Should be fun to learn how much the owners owe Freddie and Fannie —- and what kind of generous terns they got from their lenders of all stripes.

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          1. I think it was Cernovich commenting on the residents…imagine a couple, both either “grant managers,” for a big NGO or their government counterparts. Each is making $300K. And now both of them may lose their jobs.

            No, I don’t feel sympathetic to their plight.

            And I can’t get much up for my former fellow employees, at least the ones that are complaining that they are professional experts, and, “You’ll Be SORRY When We’re Gone!”

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            1. And the *really* crazy thing?

              If they’d been smart with their money, they’d still be fine. That’s more than enough money to put some away every paycheck, and hire someone to make smart investments on your behalf. It would be annoying to lose the income. But they could probably live just fine off of the money that they had invested.

              But I suspect that most didn’t.

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              1. But you have to keep up with the In Crowd!

                I have literally seen a leftist defending all aid going through the government because otherwise other people might not give to charities when you did, and then they would get ahead of you!

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                1. Yeah, this. They all assumed that they would never have lean years because they had government jobs with guaranteed pensions. And they spent a good chunk of their cash keeping up appearances.

                  And now a lot of them might go underwater.

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            2. They are Professional Experts in…the bureaucracy. That’s all they know. How to work The System. They don’t understand, The System is what we want to get rid of. They will be Professional Experts in something that no longer exists. Boo-hoo.

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            3. Don’t ignore the GS- people who signed up for that fork-in-the-road (cue muppet movie clip) buyout – last I saw it was north of 70,000 who accepted. They have no reason to stay close to the beltway anymore. If I were one such I’d have called to list my house as soon as I pulled that trigger.

              Liked by 1 person

              2. It’s not just the beltway. I live in the Rocky Mountains (well, okay, the high steppe desert at the base of said mountains, lol) and I took the Fork. Still trying to figure out how it’s going to work–our field manager, frankly, ought to be one of the ones on the chopping block, the man purely sucks. I figure I’m going to end up straight up putting the template contract the OPM sent out onto our letterhead because no one else is gonna do it, and I do not plan to set foot in this office ONE DAY after March 7. This is a once in a lifetime offer for me–AND it allows me to put my money where my mouth is. I’ve been joking for months now that I’d accept losing my job if it meant shrinking the damn fedgov. I was wistfully joking that it’d be awfully nice if they offered a buyout and hell, I’d take it!

                And then they DID. And it’s more generous than I could have hoped for. I’m still a bit scared–after the last few years living without medical insurance scares me rather more than it used to–but. More excited than scared, and after much prayer I still feel it’s the right decision, for many reasons!

                Liked by 2 people

                  1. I think this will be the first time in my life that a.) I’m quitting a job without the instant stress of scrambling to find another, and b.) in a place to actually do something I really WANT to do, and so might not feel like I”m just, you know, running out time until retirement :D

                    Liked by 1 person

                    1. “quitting a job without the instant stress of scrambling to find another“

                      –

                      It is a nice feeling, isn’t it?

                      I’ve done that twice. First time having the baby. I knew the small firm wasn’t holding my job, if they had any jobs available. Second time when I retired.

                      Like

                  2. The last time I got fired, I absolutely wierded out the company guy who was processing the paperwork, because I was so … happy about it. Yeah, it was kind of a personal setback, but all I could think about was that I could go home and really go to town on the third chapter of the WIP that I had in progress at the time. And I was really starting to get dissatisfied with that company, anyway.

                    I picked up some more temp jobs with some agencies after that. Didn’t really mind. because I had begun thinking of myself as a writer who did admin jobs now and again … not an admin assistant who did writing on the side.

                    Liked by 1 person

                    1. took me five years to stop thinking like a trad pubbed writer who also wrote indie, and to breathe in the freedom.
                      Now I need to ransom Dan so he can retire, and write books and music, and pet Indy. (And the girls too, but Indy thinks he’s our toddler son. So….)

                      Liked by 1 person

                  3. I still resent having my “perfect” jobs ripped out from under me. Yet realistically it was the best thing that should have happened. First time forced me into a career change, eventually. That job was not a good fit for both parents to be doing it.

                    Second time, I was in a rut. Forced into keep doing the legacy systems, while the new guy got the new shiny (No! New guy was suppose to take over the legacy stuff, I got the new shiny. Stamp feet, tantrum, in silent, all that stuff. Yep. Not fair. And all the programmers out there are going “that is how it works, sister!” Yes. I know.) Then this job essentially I went a week without pay (helps with pay in lieu of notice + unemployment + severance package, covering the six months of not working) AND got a 20% pay increase to start. That ballooned into not quite 50% more, and for most of this job I made more than hubby did salary + 80 hour/month overtime (until that balloon popped, sigh). Which meant hubby declined jobs with required OT, allowing him to coach sports, and scouting.

                    Liked by 1 person

          1. I read an article over the weekend (I can’t find it now) that was showing that housing prices in Washington DC has dropped around 23% or something like $130K or so. This was due to the glut of homes that have gone on the market since January.

            Liked by 1 person

            1. Of course with a change of parties in power that always happens. But it sounds like some of the rats have seen the writing on the wall and are getting out of Dodge while the getting is good. I wonder if they haven’t delayed a bit too much not realizing that this time Trump meant it and knew where the bodies were buried.

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              1. Bodies….

                It only works in DC, but how long until Trump realizes just how much pardon power he has, over a potentially overzealous purge aficionado?

                And I wonder if he might uncover a predecessor or two who did so.

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      1. Should have put this on the end: what that means is that Elon and President Trump are now in a position to apply Al Capone’s dilemma to a whole new set of gangsters, because if they can’t account for where it came from, actual criminal charges can be filed for mis-spending funds.

        This is definitely good news.

        Like

  12. It may sound odd but my beloved, the tax preparer, is uneasy about cutting so many IRS guys…..now. Yes, maybe we’ll abolish income tax, but for now we have to deal with it and customer service already sucks. (Note he’s a flat tax, no loopholes sort, on the theory that even if you can file your tax on a postcard some folks will pay him to fill out the postcard).

    Time to first, get as many changes as possible moved from executive order to law and second, take chainsaws to 1000+ page bills. And third, prepare people, and Republican lawmakers, to not screw things up because their personal oxes are being barbecued.

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    1. Time to first, get as many changes as possible moved from executive order to law

      THIS. Which is why I don’t want the Congress to waste time impeaching judges; I want them to concentrate on passing bills and force the Democrats to use up all their delay tactics against them.

      Nicht Kleckern sondern Klotzen! Boot ’em, don’t spatter ’em!

      Gen Heinz Guderian.

      Like

      1. Impeachments would be a massive logjam – each judge would be a Senate trial, and that would hold up all other business while they did them.

        Tactically smart Dems (I know) wold be smart (I know) to egg the House Republicans on and get a bunch of these referred, then drag each one out in the Senate with all the procedural slowdowns they could throw in, just to jam up the works.

        Liked by 1 person

    2. How many of the personnel cuts are to those actually dealing with tax returns and filings, as compared to DEI compliance and other things? I’ve not seen a numbers break down, if one is available yet.

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      1. Who deals with the IRS programs and web access? Are they affected?

        We haven’t filed federal via paper in a decade or more, not since federal efiling is free, at least through TurboTax or other tax programs. Pretty sure most accountants file client tax returns electronically too. Even paper returns are a matter of data entry.

        Auditors are still needed. At least until income tax is abolished. Although these days IRS Auditors should be auditing governmental programs.

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    3. I’m curious why a tax professional would be dependent on IRS “customer service”. It’s not as if they have a reputation for service, or accuracy, or any responsibility for the correctness of any answers they may give.

      Isn’t it more effective to read law & regulations and apply the words?

      Like

  14. So… it’s a little thing but I’ve got some people I know who really don’t like Trump but are not democrat crazy and I am slowly getting them to pay attention. Example: Love him or hate him you’ve got to admit the Trump administration is entertaining! Who else would have Air Force One to a fly over at a sporting event? Better, using the Presidential Limo “the Beast” to do a Daytona 500 lap! Pure showman ship.

    When they try to go, Yeah, but… I’ll just say ah, just enjoy the fun part for now. It seems to be working. I’ll then toss in something to think about – like CBS and free speech caused the holocaust and away we go on a rational discussion. Lighting a candle is a start – so I got a spot light.

    Liked by 1 person

  15. 《This is a tale of those old fears, even of those emptied hells,
    And none but you shall understand the true thing that it tells—
    Of what colossal gods of shame could cow men and yet crash,
    Of what huge devils hid the stars, yet fell at a pistol flash.
    The doubts that were so plain to chase, so dreadful to withstand—
    Oh, who shall understand but you; yea, who shall understand?》

    https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/Poems_(Chesterton,_1915)/To_Edmund_Clerihew_Bentley

    Liked by 1 person

  16. I’m still thinking that Snow White remake may have been one of those final grains of sand on the pile.

    I want DOGE to work as fast as they can! More, please!

    In the meantime – well, draft I’m hacking out the last pieces of probably is a lot more conservative than mainstream publishing would ever take. The past didn’t have DIE when considering who’s fighting pirates – or demons….

    Liked by 2 people

  17. I wasn’t aware of the Devon Eriksen kerfluffle; that was the sort of uplifting news I can use today!

    And I really enjoyed the Daily Wire article. I have been getting ads for them; perhaps I should actually subscribe!

    Keep those puppy tails wagging!

    Liked by 1 person

  18. I was in high school and felt the world rocking under my feet when the wall came down. I knew something vast had just changed and … I was a little scared. Everything I’d grown up knowing was ending. I needed certainty in my life and that was NOT what the nightly news showed.

    Liked by 1 person

    2. I was doing a co-op job from college.

      It wasn’t the Wall going down that really struck me.

      It was reading in the newspaper that after all the East Berliners had crossed to dance in the streets and use all the phones and stay up until the wee hours — and then, to go to bed, 99% of them had gone back to their own beds. They were not afraid that the border would be closed again.

      Like

  19. I haven’t heard much talk about the actual corruption revelations that DOGE has uncovered from the left, but a lot of talk about “People losing their jerbs!” and “Think of the poor natives in Goatfockerstan, deprived of their underwater trans-operas!” (In addition to all the other low-IQ shouting points…)

    In other words, hostage-puppies. No debate on facts, no admission of guilt, just emote, emote, EMOTE!

    A friend whom works from one of the better respected agencies ,which is not currently under the microscope, was concerned they would lose good people that actual do good work. (Yes, there are a few good ones.)

    My spouse responded with, “DOGE will probably throw out a few good babies with the bath water, but how can you see the babies when the water is so dirty?”

    (Sidenote: President Clinton fired 377,000 federal workers during his first term, in order to “balance the budget”. )

    Speaking of budgets, I review the local city and school district budgets annually and the county tax district when they piss me off, which is about every four years.

    It’s cathartic to go and talk to my local “public servants” armed with evidence. I don’t have the skill level of “Big Balls”, but I can do data analysis.

    It has helped in a couple of circumstances and added a useful law about conflict of interest. (Yeah, Texas needs it’s own DOGE-like enema, between schools and RINOs, some situations suck.)

    So everyone take care of yourself, and find your piece of wall to pound.

    As for the .GOV layoffs?

    I feel for the honest people, but the many that supported the corrupt evil MFers that started wars, tried to kill everyone in the world, tried to take away all the jobs if they didn’t take a possible kill shot, then created an invasion and butchered kids while funding these deeds with stolen money.

    I’ll say a prayer for your souls, but F your bank accounts and loot. Losing your Leftisit mafia job is better than all of us dying in nuclear or a hot civil war.

    (This is me being nice. My 75% Viking heritage is screaming with extreme blood lust that only my devotion to Christ keeps at bay. Not Roman level punishment, but Genghis Khan level that affects the global climate due to the loss of so many sacks of poop.)

    Liked by 2 people

    1. Commented on X that one of my former bosses’ SOPs was not to fill vacancies when someone retired, but to hold the “slot” open and redistribute the workload (this is how I was, officially, carrying three people’s workload before I retired. The sad thing is I still wasn’t busy, just getting bitter). Then, when the PTB announced a Reduction in Force (RIF), the bosses would offer up the empty slots, so no active employee lost their job. They might get reassigned, but they kept their job.

      Like

    2. “People losing their jerbs!”

      Yes, I have seen this. I haven’t responded, but I keep thinking about all the people (known to me and out of my sphere) who have been out of work or underemployed for The Best Economy Evah™!!! and how the folk in DC actually seemed to believe it… because of the jobs like these.

      They were doing just ducky, why were people complaining?

      Liked by 1 person

    3. “I haven’t heard much talk about the actual corruption revelations that DOGE has uncovered from the left”

      AFAIK, there hasn’t really been much in the way of corruption proven so far. It’s been evidence of lots of wasteful spending, along the lines of, “Why are we spending half a million dollars to promote atheism in Nepal?”

      Now as the money is followed, corruption likely gets noted by the auditors as the money ends up going through an absurd number of hands, each of which removes a little from the whole. But that is a matter for criminal courts to review. And I suspect that DOGE is keeping quiet about that specifically –

      1.) To avoid forewarning some of their targets

      2.) To avoid tripping over the “Innocent until proven guilty” safeguards that are built into our system.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. They were entering data without indicating what it was being spent on. Any private company that tried that would already have corporate officials and accountants in jail.

        Liked by 1 person

        1. Absolutely. It would be assumed that it was covering up fraud. But further investigations would be conducted to figure out the actual fraud being performed. I think that’s the step that DOGE is on right now.

          Liked by 1 person

        2. Heck. Any county department payment, even receivable clerk, would be in jail. There isn’t a line item, be it labor, inventory, or item purchased, that does not go against a specific budget line item. User may not select the correct budget (usually tied to an different entry that auto fills the budget line item) but the cost is tied to a budget. If there is a conflict on which budget, then there is a build it hierarchy, guarantied. Dang difficult to just leave off. Counties see lots of auditors. One of the reasons why those departments who used it loved CAMS (cost accounting management system). Difference in auditors bugging them for weeks, or a day or two, max. If a client called with a question or a problem and an auditor was there? Drop what you are doing and work with client on what went wrong, why, and have a solution on the way ASAP.

          Liked by 1 person

    4. Right now they’re collecting data and identifying trouble spots for a deeper audit. The big problems are easier to deal with if you get the little stuff out of the way first.

      Pick up the junk before you rip out the carpet to gauge the hole in the floor.

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      1. What DOGE is finding is where the money went. Next steps is why the money went where it went, where the money came from (besides general “our pockets”), and were both legal? Unfortunately, stupid is not illegal.

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        1. No, but I strongly suspect that many of those blank checks went to padding pockets.

          If they track back the cashed checks they’ll get to the banks, and then to the accounts.

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        2. I don’t have the data any longer, but years ago I was doing some research and found the public information on what appeared to be a .gov retirement account.

          Interesting pattern. About 2010 (I’m going off memory here) a pattern started of reductions in the balance, which were returned to the account just before the end of the quarter. Like someone was taking loans from the account, then returning the money so it wouldn’t be noticed.

          About 2012 (?) the pattern changed. The amount started dropping to 0 just before each presidential election, then returning, again, just before the end of the quarter.

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  20. Right now I’m dealing with a deluge of the Hostage Puppy gambit. Every day, friends and family are repeating stories about how this or that person who was actually doing necessary work had gotten dismissed from their job when one or another agency was visited by DOGE.

    Of course that assumes that the people and jobs in question actually exist, and weren’t made up out of whole cloth to get a knee-jerk emotional reaction. But I can tell that none of the people sharing these stories are yet ready to consider the possibility that they might be falling for wholesale fabrications.

    So far I’ve avoided engaging, just so I don’t make the problem worse. But it’s really frustrating when I keep seeing these cherry-picked stories being presented as if the people doing this or that actually important work should be assumed to represent the vast majority of that agency’s expenditures.

    Liked by 1 person

      1. And of course the wokists are screaming about Musk saying the 60 Minutes journalists should be prosecuted . . . and omitting the reason why.

        Like

  21. Fascinating story about Devon Eriksen. It’s happening folks. The cancel culture SJWs haven’t realized their power is gone overnight. Their protests and riots are no longer funded by the US government, so they’re all pathetic. My little website that I used to write mostly anodyne stuff about history and personal things was attracting 4 or 5 hits a day until Sarah linked via Instapundit to an essay I wrote about air traffic controllers and the world’s strangest ‘questionnaire’ (test). Then I wrote a really short post on LinkedIn about leftists seeing Nazi salutes everywhere (and ignoring the same from people they like). Some nutjob shared it on his feed in order to mock it, and suddenly I was trending and got nearly 70 comments (almost all calling me various names). I wrote a post on my own website to point out how juvenile and foolish my detractors were being, ending with:

    “Folks, cancel culture is over, kaput. It’s a dead parrot. Freaking out by yelling J’accuse! on social media won’t get you anywhere anymore. To quote President Barack Obama, “I won. You lost. Elections have consequences.” Yelling about hand gestures doesn’t cut it. Accusing Musk of fascism because he wants to cut a quarter of the government’s budget and Trump of the same because he wants to remove most government regulations and decrease government control is too absurd for words. When did Hitler or Mussolini ever do that? You keep using that word. I don’t think you know what that means.”

    Sarah’s post here reinforces that point. Most of us have been ducking so long, we don’t realize that the quiet means the shelling is over. Our would-be cancellers are now spitting in the wind.

    Liked by 2 people

  22. I lived in the CEP of one naval air station (Alameda), and close to a few other possible targets (Oakland Naval Depot, Presideo, Moffett Field) and I knew that I was in the range of “bright flash, all over” for most of my childhood.

    When the wall came down…there was hope. There was the lack of fear of the bright flash on the horizon and The End.

    But I was too young to realize that the monsters of the Id that had been fearful of our retribution…weren’t anymore.

    And now we’re having to clean that mess up.

    I can only claim some responsibility for letting them loose-too young for the longest time, too much stuff to try and solve-but I’m fighting them now.

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  23. For me the amazing part is finding out just how much of the left is just AstroTurf funded by the government.

    And now the checks have stopped. It’s mindblowing.

    Like

    2. Leftists are still in denial. I have seen them argue, at length, that it takes time to organize a protest.

      When I point out how quickly protests have been organized about specific events — showing what time span — they go into denial that there ever have been such protests.

      Liked by 2 people

  24. My ex has a piece of concrete from the wall that a friend picked up for her. We were living in West Germany at the time and getting ready to return to the states. The English language news (My German never got good enough to really follow the news in German) was full of stories about close family members who were able to visit each other for the first time since the building of the wall. Some friends who had been planning to visit family in West Berlin had to cancel the trip because there was a huge traffic jam (24 hour delays were rumored) at the border and they would have their two toddlers with them. That summer there had already been a flood of East Germans who found their way to the west via Hungary and Czechoslovakia. One of these East Germans was staying with a member of the Dusseldorf Skydiving Club. He rode with us to a drop zone in Belgium one weekend. The situation was chaotic. At some point the security forces were no longer willing or able to keep the people from attacking the wall. At that point the changes came pretty fast. When a change that is being prevented by force finally happens, it can be fast and chaotic.

    Liked by 2 people

  25. Speaking of mallets, Jeff Childers’ (Coffee and Covid) post today had some very interesting data regarding Social Security being uncovered by DOGE. The graph of active accounts especially; I had no idea that there are 65M more active accounts than live in the US (398M accounts), or that there are almost 19M over the age of 100 (2 over the age of 240!!!). He’s referring to this as the Waterloo of the left.

    Good times, good times… :twisted:

    Liked by 1 person

        1. Reminds me of the story of the 108 year old Japanese man (perhaps apocryphal) who was found mummified in his bed and his daughter collecting his pension checks.

          Like

        2. DOGE and Presidential Actions are the first things I’ve been checking in the morning.

          The fact that when the lawsuits started they went from auditing records directly to auditing the publicly available records makes me laugh!

          Like

    2. ah Waterloo. Lost an ancestor there in the charge of the union brigade. He managed to lose the family money too, partly in buying a heavy cavalry commission, so it was the least he could do I suppose.

      what was it that Wellington said about the battle, “it has been a damned nice thing—the nearest run thing you ever saw.” Let’s hope Blucher arrives in time and Gneisenau’s slow walking doesn’t work.

      Like

      2. I presume there’s a table join to the PUFF exemptions list table buried in the code somewhere.

        Note that what’s been found are valid records with the “death” flag set to “FALSE” – there’s nothing public yet on cross referencing those to payments.

        Liked by 1 person

      1. I remember a short story, The Gnarly Man by de Camp…

        Check the over-200s for excessive levels of Neanderthal DNA; the numbers should probably be “200-???”

        Like

    5. I’m waiting for “prove you are alive”. Shouldn’t affect us. But mom (90) and SIL’s mom (94). But if SS does that, better make sure the offices are staffed.

      Cousin’s mom’s husband died, just after Thanksgiving 2024. When she called SS the initial phone appointment she got was for sometime in Feb 2025 (changed now because of “back to the office rules? Not that I’ve heard.) All she needs to do is file the death notice, which should auto stop her SS, but continue with his (higher) SS. This should be able to be done online. Fill out notice of death, upload death certificate. No people need be involved.

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      1. For those over 100, a simple query to the bank on file requesting the address of record, then a letter to that address asking them to provide a death cert. QR code attached to the letter cancels the account if a death cert comes in.

        No muss, no fuss, no accusations, just get the records straightened out.

        Anyone under 100 is a little more complicated, but doable. Automated phone system, is this person alive. If no, send in a death cert. If yes, can we do a welfare check?

        I am guessing that some or all of the over 100 people are simple transcription errors. 1829 typed instead of 1929, that type of thing.

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        1. But I screen my calls, and given how often scammers claim to be from social security, I’m sure I would let that call go to voicemail.

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          1. I was thinking in the other direction. You recieve a letter from SS telling you to call the phone number. Not a phone call to you.

            The details could be worked out.

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      2. I handled all her financial stuff so I know with absolute certainty that when my Mom passed away last year there was no interaction required at all – the SS benefits direct deposits just stopped. I presumed the county getting the report from the mortuary so the death certificate could be generated was the trigger.

        Liked by 1 person

  26. “ladas and trabants, their piece of sh*t Eastern block cars”
    Notice that in the first decade after WWII western transportation included Isettas made by BMW to go with their motorcycles and GoGomobiles and 3 wheel cabin motorcycles from Messerschmitt to which the Trabant compared well.

    The 5 year plans and Soviet equivalents of Mercantilism impoverishing the provinces induced paralysis and guaranteed low growth. This kept the East from making improvements while the Western production improved by leaps and bounds. When the wall fell the West was far ahead but it didn’t have to be.

    Like

  27. Some old Jazz was playing on the radio while the wife stirred the pot on the stove as her husband read his paper at the table. She looked up suddenly and realized this is the point where the killer usually stru…

    Like

  28. All those crazy conspiracy theories are turning out to be right. Who’d of thunk it? It’s going to turn out that the biggest anti-American payouts weren’t from the USSR/Russia and China, but from America itself. The Author turns out to have a really wicked sense of humor.

    And yes, I think that in ten years when we look back on what happened in the 10s and 20s we’ll be referring to them as “The Crazy Years” because everything was so bat guano crazy. Every day turns out to reveal something even weirder than yesterday. I can’t keep up, I’m feeling a little over-whelmed.

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  29. I rather think that Rush was the first pebble in the avalanche. Or maybe Bill Buckley. It’s been growing for decades and left chose to ridicule it and try to block it, but that didn’t work, did it?

    Liked by 1 person

  30. 1989 was a rollercoaster year for me. In the spring, I was finishing up junior high, and there were protests in Beijing. Then came the massacre in June, and I couldn’t stop watching. Then I began my freshman year in high school, things seemed normal, then the wall fell, then we had Romanian Christmas.

    I’ve been feeling “second ’89” coming on for a year or so. (And it’s not much reported here, but there have been widespread student protests in red China.) Everything so far has been amazing, but I still want a better outcome for the Middle Kingdom this time around.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. It is a small thing, but on C comedy my wife is watching, one character has pigtail holders…..Piglet and Winnie the Pooh.

      i honestly dont know if he really banned or shadowed banned Pooh, but it did strike me.

      Liked by 2 people

  31. WPDE

    Foreign Direct Investment [FDI) into China dropped from $400 Billion in 2021 to $4 Billion in 2024 according to official CCP statistics, so it’s probably worse. I don’t think anything like that has ever been seen before and since China has used up all its other sources of investment capital. They can’t really print money since their money is worthless and the inflation would cause even more unrest, so there’s not much out there for them.

    had they gotten the “one good push” from Trump in 2020, the outcome for the ordinary Chinese person would have been much better. unfortunately, they’re in much weaker shape than they were then and I fear the outcome will be bad, as in China bad, which makes Russian bad look minor. I’m not hopeful.

    Liked by 3 people

  32. sucks to be Chinese. Under any sort of rational government the US is largely immune to that sort of stuff. Of course, we coulda elected the Camel … shudder. China would have trouble dragging us into a war now, which would be the only way we’d participate in their disaster. Nope, I’m afraid the rhythm of Chinese history may be about to reassert itself. Don’t know exactly when, of course, but we seem to be transitioning away from slowly toward all at once.

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  33. ” I have plans in the works for a dedicated site for the likes of us, with a query mechanism of “I like x, what should I read next?””

    The original Netflix algo made recommendations based on what other “Likers” with a similar like history favored. IOW if you liked a movie it wouldn’t necessarily offer others with the same genre, actors etc. but what movies others who liked it also enjoyed.

    Don’t know how hard that’d be to implement, but it worked well.

    Like

    2. Back in the before times there was a site–Alexandria Digital Literature–in which people rated bunches of books and got recommendations based on what other people who liked those books also liked. It’s long gone. The URL now points to someone’s blog.

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