This weekend, I found that the truckers who have had enough of Little Castro’s Justin Trudeau’s insanity, enough to drive to the capital in convoy and who appear to be supported by a majority of Canadians are “really” Russian agents dressed like truckers.

My first reaction to this was to laugh so hard my son, who had just come into my office, thought I was having a stroke or heart attack or something. BTW this morning he tells me that now the NYT is running with the idea that everyone who is against mandates is “really” a Russian agent.

It’s all SO FAMILIAR. So deja vu. So full of repeat. So where have I heard that before.

Frankly, I almost titled this post “All the Truckers are Russian Agents, or How I became a White Mormon Male.” which would be a very accurate title, and also way too long, and would give whiplash to anyone who hasn’t been around for a few years.

Also, not completely accurate, because as well as a white Mormon male, I was also racist, sexist and homophobic (which is probably making some of you laugh till you hiccup) and and one time — briefly — a robot and a Russian robot. (I don’t know is Sad Robot Puppies is still active on Twitter (I never go there) but it was started by one of you adorable maniacs when that accusation came out.)

For those not around at the time, a lot of crap happened around and between, and if you guys feel you need clarification, ask someone in comments. Other people can explain. I woke up very late, and we were dealing with business taxes which makes me too cranky for words.

The 100 mile overview is that a number of us got very tired of the things that sf/f awards went to. Look, I’m semi-literary in reading tastes half the time, and I don’t even mind a lot of the more involuted stuff, but a few years ago, it went silly. No, really silly. To me, the foam at the mouth moment was “If you were a dinosaur my love” which did not take place in this world (at all. Our working class doesn’t drink gin) and was written at a level of cringe that would make 13 year old me hide if I had written it. Anyway, so Larry Correia said the award stuff made puppies cry (you know it wasn’t me, because it would be kittens) and we decided to do lists of stuff for people to read and consider voting on. And you know other people — including Locus — had been doing this for years, but suddenly what we’d done was create a slate, and we were evil racists and fascists, and we were against women (!) gays (!!) and people of color(!!!!) writing science fiction. In fact, we were denying them awards so they’d give up in discouragement. We were “Gatekeepers” and did I mention white supremacists. It all went very bad, and 2015 left a bunch of us with significant scars that still affect us. The attacks on us were as nonsensical as they were epic. People who’d never given a d*mn about science fiction or science fiction awards were suddenly running exposes and naming me as part of this evil cabal. My kids, in online gaming, had to defend me from total strangers.

This is what I thought of when I read the accusation that the Freedom Truckers (Truck off, Trudeau) were “Russian Agents.”

First of all, what’s with Russia! Russia! Russia? I mean even Putin said he backed Biden. (For good and sufficient reason. The last thing he wants is a functional USA.) Second I know how it started. Once you hang around the progs for a while, you realize they’re really simple creatures, kind of like those flatworms. They know pain and no pain and that’s about it. Anyway, their decision to accuse Trump of Russian collusion is because they are simple — stupid — creatures, who think we are the same.

They never understood our opposition to communism, so the fact we were suspicious and leery of the USSR must be because we hated RUSSIANS. Personally, you know? So, if they told us Trump collaborated with the Russians, we’d hate him too.

It didn’t work. But of course they might not know it didn’t work, since they convinced themselves that they won legitimately (Snort, giggle) so they are now trying to turn us against anyone who champions freedom by claiming they’re Russian. Because we hate Russians, see. Face>palm. Octopus face>palm, because it needs more hands.

At the same time there is the usual “racist, sexist homophobic.”

Look, the problem we have here is that the left today is a religion. It’s a religion that buys into a system that explains EVERYTHING and promises glory to those who embrace it.

There’s only one small problem: it has no contact whatsoever with reality. As a religion, it’s at the level of the People’s Temple: a scam run by corrupt paranoiacs on the vulnerable.

But it made itself a positional good by commanding the heights of culture: universities, media, entertainment. Only people who mouthed the platitudes were allowed in, and the more absurd the platitudes, the more you were required to mouth them LOUDLY.

This, as an article I read this weekend and can’t now find said, creates a form of self-hypnotism. The more you hear yourself lie to others, the more you believe the lie yourself.

So we have people walking around who whole heartedly believe in the arrow of history which points to perfect communism (Now apparently called the great reset, where you’ll own nothing and love it — while the tireless civil services roll in piles of gold, I suppose.) They believe that everyone — of course — wants this. And that this is rational and sane — look at all the studies, from respectable universities!

And they’ve been told that the only ones opposing this are “white males” who were “all powerful” and don’t want to give up their power.

Which is how I became a white Mormon male. I have to be. Or else, how could I object to a beloved genre becoming a blah pulpit for stupid ideas?

The truth is far more complicated. Of course it is. It involves humans.

It starts with the Marxist solutions have never worked ever, and there was never their original paradise where humans didn’t own property. Hell, our studies lead us to believe even apes have private property, for a given definition of it.

Trade and the free market and money have emerged over and over in human history, everywhere on the world. There is only one, exclusively European, colonialist imposition on the rest of the world, as far as philosophy goes, and that’s Marxism.

It goes on to I’m now almost sixty, and in my entire life, in the US, white males have had absolutely NO advantage. My husband is mostly white (as much as any human being can be. But he well…. he doesn’t tan.) and time and again he was held back by this fact alone. Jobs and promotions went to women or “people of color” (EVER so much more sensitive than “Colored people” innit?) or preferably both, regardless of ability to perform. Because the federal government was only interested in the numbers, and not the fact this wasn’t good for anyone, including the supposedly “favored.”

In science fiction and fantasy, specifically, I grew up reading women. And again, I am almost sixty now. And in trucking, 20 years ago, a friend told me most of the young truckers were “ethnically diverse.” (It ain’t a great job. It’s brutal and dangerous. But it does pay.)

A friend recently said that the erasure of women and ethnically diverse people that have gone before is so thorough he expects next wave of lefty idiots will claim to be the first WOMEN. There were no women before they were born. …. I wish I could say that’s unbelievable.

However, what we have to understand that for the other side this is reality. They have auto-hypnotized to the point they can’t see reality. They have no clue HOW anyone could disagree with their perfect, seamless theory. They have no contact with the real world.

And so the opposition must be Russians, or white supremacists. Or sexists. Or homophobes. Or white Mormon males.

And they’re honking us off. So, I’m glad the truckers are returning the favor.

But internally this feels like the sort of thing that can’t go on. They are effectively erasing us, refusing to believe that opposing points of view can even exist.

It’s funny, if you have a very dark sense of humor.

But it’s also a psychological break, a point of no return. And we too have reached the point we can’t back down.

We can walk away from awards, from games, from needle arts. But now they’re coming for the life blood of our economy: they’re messing with food production, with energy, with transport, all while screaming that there’s no supply issues or inflation.

There is no backing down. We can’t. Not if we want to survive.

It’s going to get very rough from here on out, and I want you to know that. Prepare, prepare, prepare, and gird your loins.

Just remember in the end we win, they lose.

Be not afraid, but don’t be rash.

Keep your clothes and weapons where you can find them in the dark.

IMPORTANT NOTICE: IF YOU SEND ME A BOOK TO PROMO, AND I DON’T USE IT, MY EMAIL USUALLY DID SOMETHING FUNNY AND/OR I THOUGHT I’D ALREADY PUT IT IN THE WEEK BEFORE. FEEL FREE TO SEND AGAIN.

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, by clicking through and buying (anything, 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. That helps defray my time cost of about 2 hours a day on the blog, time probably better spent on fiction. ;)*

FROM KAREN MAYERS: The Ways of Winter – A Virginian in Elfland (The Hounds of Annwn Book 2)

TRAPPED BEHIND ENEMY LINES, CAN HE FIND THE STRENGTH TO DEFEND ALL THAT HE VALUES MOST, OR EVEN JUST TO SURVIVE?

It’s the dead of winter and George Talbot Traherne, the new human huntsman for the Wild Hunt, is in trouble. The damage in Gwyn ap Nudd’s domain reveals the deadly powers of a dangerous foe who has mastered an unstoppable weapon and threatens the fae dominions in both the new and the old worlds.

Secure in his unbreachable stronghold, the enemy holds hostages and has no compunction about using them in deadly experiments with newly discovered way-technology. Only George has a chance to reach him in time to prevent the loss of thousands of lives, even if it costs him everything.

Welcome to the portrait of a paladin in-the-making, Can he carry out a rescue without the deaths of all involved? Will his patron, the antlered god Cernunnos, help him, or just write him off as a dead loss? He has a family to protect and a world to save, and little time to do it in.

FROM MELISSA MCSHANE: Skies Will Burn

THE THRILLING CONCLUSION TO THE DRAGONS OF MOTHER STONE

A new year brings new purpose to Lamprophyre and Rokshan as they continue in their quest to find and defeat their mysterious enemy, the ancient dragon Sardonyx. But when a prophecy commands the ecclesiasts of Tanajital to climb dragons’ most sacred mountain, Lamprophyre must discover the truth behind the god Jiwanyil’s intent—an intent that may mean the destruction of humans and dragons alike.

With animosity between dragons and ecclesiasts rising, and Sardonyx’s threat looming, Lamprophyre and Rokshan will need every advantage to defend against the day when an ancient evil wakes.

FROM MAGGIE HOGARTH: Marda Quincesinger, Postulant (Coracle Book 1)

When the Adversary shattered the world, the Savior and her Companions kept the remaining pieces from falling into the void. The school they established trains young boys and girls to continue their work, healing the cracks, facing wrongbeasts, and reversing the aims of the Adversary wherever they can.

And all of this is work for heroes, as far as Marda Quincesinger is concerned. She’s more interested in the cake her mother’s baking her for her fourteenth birthday than in taking on the daunting work of an Outremer. But faced with the chance to help her family, she decides to see if she has what it takes to join the Outremers’ ranks.

Full half the hopefuls who arrive for their first year don’t return. Will Marda be one of them? Or will she find the hero in herself?

A gentle story in the tradition of the Chronicles of Narnia, Anne of Green Gables, and Harry Potter.

FROM C. J. CARELLA: Queen of Blood and Shadows: A LitRPG Adventure (The Godkiller Chronicles Book 2)

A Dangerous Woman

The thrilling tale that began with Godkiller Mode continues!

Stranded in a dying city by a treacherous Sphinx, Caitlin Strange and her friends will face Chaos Knights, the minions of Tiamat, armies of monsters and deadly Blood Cultists as she seeks to level up and gain some control over her new life. In the Realms, game-like rules are as real as the laws of physics – and just as deadly.

Follow Caitlin’s story in this action-packed LitRPG tale featuring character advancement, God Cores, and plenty of adventure.

Note: This novel contains Episodes 1-53 of the Vella serial of the same name. The story continues there, starting on Episode 54. Future novels will include those episodes.

She is coming. And the skies will burn.

FROM TIMOTHY SCOTT ROACH: Momma, May I Have the Moon?

“Momma, may I have the moon?”“Oh, my dear no! It would never fit in your room.”On the surface, this book is about unobtainable dreams and fanciful things, but if you look a little deeper you will see it is something else. A problem is presented and the reader is challenged to use his or her imagination to come up with a solution. This is engineering at its purest level — a level as accessible to children as it is to adults. Children naturally think outside the box, because for them there is no box. See what ideas your child can come up with to reach the moon and then draw and submit them for a chance to be in future editions of the book.

FROM BLAKE SMITH: In Pursuit of Justice: A Novel of The Garia Cycle

Garia and the East Morlans have been on increasingly rocky terms for years, and when Téo and Zara ran away together, they touched off the powder keg of war between their kingdoms. Now they have to fight for their lives while learning to live in a foreign land.

In the Morlans, Hanri and Alia are facing their own sets of problems. He must control and divert the single-minded vengeance of his father King Reynard, and she must sort the gold of information from the dross of gossip in a palace swarming with rumors. It could mean the difference between life and death for all of them.

FROM DEX QUIRE: Crocodile Words

Crocodile tears are fake tears, can crocodile words be fake words?
Joffrey Simpson O’Day moves from the dry badlands of Eastern Washington State to the lush greenscapes of Western Washington to a Seattle-like city called Sunbreak City. Hayseed, Joffrey attempts to turn himself into a big-city sophisticate but he commits the ultimate faux pas—he insults a book held sacred by millions. He draws upon his head the wrath of everybody. Crocodile words come at him from all quarters. Will he survive?

FROM CHRISTOPHER WOERNER: Rococo Coffee

A collection of all the jokes used in my published books. Every little bit of humor helps these days, more than Rococo Coffee ever helps. Then again, if you’re helped by imaginary coffee, you can still enjoy this book.

The B-side is longer pieces of humor, most notably “The Caped Avenger in If Fate Be My Destiny.”

FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: The Space Race Trilogy Omnibus: Time Slips, The Secret of Pad 34, Beach House on the Moon, Plus two exclusive new essays

All three books of the Space Race Trilogy, now together with two exclusive new essays.

Time Slips

What if our most treasured verities were in fact wrong?

To be selected for Project Mercury and be one of America’s first astronauts was a dream come true for test pilot Deke Slayton. But fellow Mercury astronaut Al Shepard kept telling old stories from his native New England, tales of monstrous entities like Cthulhu and Yog Sothoth. Earlier generations had viewed them as demons, but might they in fact be aliens, here long before humanity?

Soon Deke discovers evidence that something is watching the US space program. Something that begrudges humanity the stars and would put a ceiling on human attainment. Something that can manipulate time itself.

HP Lovecraft wrote that we dwell on a placid island of ignorance amidst the dark ocean of infinity, and that we were not meant to travel far.

What might the US space program have looked like in a cosmos filled with hostile eldritch entities? Would they notice us as playthings? Or as a nuisance to be dealt with?

The Secret of Pad 34

Who would put a ceiling on humanity’s expansion into space?

That’s what Gus Grissom wants to know. While fishing offshore from Cape Canaveral, he glimpses a mysterious undersea city of unearthly geometries, marked with a strange three-armed cross symbol.

His efforts to research it bring him veiled threats from strangers at his door. Trouble blights an exemplary career. However, Gus refuses to be cowed into silence, and pursues every lead he can find.

HP Lovecraft wrote that we live on a placid island of ignorance and were not meant to travel far. This is the Space Race in a world where the Soviet Union is not our only adversary.

Beach House on the Moon

The Moon is a dead world, airless and desolate. Emmaline Waite has known this fact since childhood, when she watched the Apollo landings.

But here she sits on the shores of the Sea of Tranquillity, looking up at the gibbous Earth as the waves roll in. What madness can this be?

She gets no time to contemplate that question, for she is not alone. She is about to enter a realm of love and fear, of mind-bending secrets that change her understanding of human history, and of self-sacrifice.

Her life will never be the same.

Miskatonic University in the Cold War and Contemporary Era

How would H.P. Lovecraft’s famous fictional institution of higher education have developed through the second half of the Twentieth Century and into the Twenty-first?

Space: Gernsbeck vs. Lovecraft

A look at the fundamental worldviews underlying the approaches of Hugo Gernsbeck and H.P. Lovecraft to the portrayal of outer space, aliens, and space travel.

BOOK BLURB CHALLENGE

For reasons known only to the internet hamsters (TM) I never got the word challenge for the vignettes, so I’m putting in a pretty picture as your prompt. (It’s from Pixabay.)
Normally what I say for picture prompts is: Write me the book blurb (back cover text) for which this could be the cover. Go!

The picture above came from a search at Pexels for “jungle cat” so, in case you wonder the day dawned just as insane as the last few thousands of days.

I’m more or less — at long last — alive today. Which means the generic cold seems to finally be gone. And I was investigating redoing the covers for the shifters series when I should be working, of course, because well…. because. And yes, I actually know this is work too, it’s just…. not as?

I’m taking the day off from politics, lest #teamheadsonpikes starts making pointed arguments that make sense.

I’m hoping to spend some time with husband and son, while we still have son with us.

Oh, and if anyone really wants to give me a “jungle cat” that looks like the one above, well…. Havey probably could use a friend. (He prefers boys, for some reason. Probably because he misses Greebo.)

And now I’ll go do something that at least resembles work.

The time has come to have the most serious talk in a hundred years, a talk that is overdue by at least a hundred years. It needs to be discussed, history needs to be known, and we need to change course as fast as possible.

I don’t know at this point whether we can — or should. More on that later — avoid the butcher’s bill. But I know the sooner we have this talk and change course, the smaller that bill will be. And the less time will be lost. And, hey, perhaps we can avoid, at least for a time, the reiteration of a murderous cycle that has already swallowed a century of history.

First let’s talk about levels. And getting off level. First of all, if I don’t use a level, everything I do tilts to the right (stop laughing) since I had major concussion. I don’t realize it, until I see the results later on. Then there’s the time I had a massive “silent” ear infection. I’m known for them, and won’t realize sometimes for weeks. One of the things it messes with is my balance. I start tilting slowly, until I’m walking almost sideways, still convinced everything is normal. (This is usually when husband corrals me and drags me to the doctor.)

What I mean here is that it’s easy for humans, individually or collectively, to get out of plumb and while thinking they are still completely normal tilt more and more until they’re doing something in a bizarre — or for society’s often monstrous — way, without realizing it.

Do you think that Germany woke up one morning and went “Hey, let’s kill six million people — men, women and innocent children — and use their body parts to make stuff? And treat them worse than we’d treat any animal?

No. Of course not. It started with what everyone knew and acknowledged as only sensible. They had just enough biological knowledge that eugenics seemed super-sensible. They’d also lost a war, were under financial pressure due to wretched leaders, but believed that “the best people should lead” and it was easier to turn on a minority in their midst than to confront their failures as a people, since part of their ideology (and still that of most of Europe) was that their nationality was a race, and superior to all others. (The only thing different between them and the rest of Europe is… well, nothing. Every European country considers itself the “master race” even if they don’t voice it most of the time. Turning on a minority, treating people as things, invading and plundering their neighbors: all of that was easier than confronting the bizarre and inherent contradictions in what “everybody knew.” But they didn’t decide it overnight. They did it a little bit at a time, to relieve psychological pressure, until they were full-on-monsters and still lying to themselves. Those people who said they had no clue what was happening down the street? Well, they weren’t precisely lying. Of course they knew, they could smell the smoke. But they couldn’t tell even themselves the truth.

Which brings me to the situation we’re in. There are now people who aren’t me (mostly because I didn’t say it, even when I thought it, except I think once at instapundit) saying that we need Nuremberg trials for the people — worldwide — who used a virus that they may or may not have cooperated in creating and unleashing as an excuse to make war on their own citizens.

Are they right? Have the crimes committed against the world reached that point? I don’t know. But I know the path we’re threading. And if they’ve not, they soon will.

These people have knowingly and with malice aforethought unlawfully imprisoned the citizens of their country; restricted them in the earning of a living and commandeered their private property and businesses through enforcement of mask laws which have no basis in science; closure of eating establishments, which ditto; closure and curtailment of the operation of stores. They have barred citizens of the use of parks, public buildings, and other community property financed from those citizens’ taxes. They have refused to allow their citizens the exercise of religion. They have forbidden the use of medicines which might or might not be effective, but seem to work in the rest of the world (and are not, at any rate, sufficiently harmful to be forbidden.) They have forced on a vast majority of the population an untried gene therapy and then at the same time hid the deleterious side effects while forcing people to take it to be allowed some measure of liberty.

They have done all this, not just with lack of proof, but in full contravention of proof that it does nothing. The highest vaccinated states have the same rates of hospitalization and death as the least vaccinated; the states that are ordering full masking and lockdown have the same effects as those that haven’t.

Perhaps less important — except to those affected — they have effectively banned international travel unless you take said untried gene therapy (Yes, I would like to see my father, thank you so much. No. I’m not going to mess with my wonky immune system for something that doesn’t protect anyone from illness and is insufficiently tried.) They have unnecessarily terrified anyone within reach of their mass media leading them to believe a “bad flu year” is the equivalent of the black plague. They have caused seniors in their final years to be deprived of contact with their family and friends, causing rapid cognitive decline and often death.

They have laid off health care workers and closed hospitals, denying critical treatment to those in dire need of it, and deeming everything that didn’t have to be done right then “elective.” Yes, this included cancer surgeries. No, this wasn’t while the hospitals were full. In fact most hospitals are more empty than they’ve ever been. Also least staffed. But fear not, they are importing Chinese doctors (And others, but a truly spectacular number of Chinese) by the plane full. As we know it is a culture that respects human rights and freedoms and would never use humans as experimental animals, so you have nothing to fear. (And I wish to make clear for idiots reading this, I have nothing against people of Chinese ancestry who have been raised as Americans and are doctors. I do have issues with our recent training of doctors, but they’re not worse than anyone else. On the other hand, people raised in the post-Mao and now Xi-poisoned culture of China have been poisoned by the same authoritarianism that has galloped through the west these last two years.)

Are these crimes worthy of Nuremberg trials? How many people have they killed and treated like penned animals?

We don’t have a count, and we’re never likely to, since, unlike the Nazis, they don’t keep accurate records. (Perhaps because they learned, perhaps because they are unable to find their own butthole with two hands and a seeing eye dog, being in fact 4th generation Marxists, which is to say idiots.)

But if treating all of your citizens as enemies, attempting to torture them, intending to destroy their economy, culture and long-accustomed ways and force them into an unnatural pattern of living and having — as has been stated often — the intention of reducing their numbers and their standard of living is not a crime comparable to those that led to the Nuremberg trials, then we owe the monsters there tried an apology. Because their errors were of the exact same quality and perhaps less ambitious in scope, since they didn’t make war and terror on the vast majority of the population of their country. (Well, they did, in a way, but that was not their aim.)

However that is not the level we must set; the conversation we must have.

It is important to realize why this keeps happening. By the numbers. In vast quantities. Over and over. If you want to go back far enough, I’d say since the French revolution. People in power imposing bizarre, insane rules on the rest of the population, and making people cosplay illusions and philosophical theories that have no basis in reality.

Just like the French revolutionaries forced everyone to give up the names of the normal days of the week, or attend temples to “reason” or other insanity, our would be lords and masters whimsically suggest double masking, or tell you to stay home, as if your car were contaminated, or make you give up Christmas and cancel fourth of July celebrations, because fireworks carry cooties, or–

All this: a small group turning a vast mass of people into experimental animals, whether social or biological; treating free citizens as widgets and things; demanding you conform to their internal psychodramas is rooted on one thing: the belief that a small number of people knows what’s best for society and can tell you how to live and what to do.

This has been particularly in evidence in the twentieth century, which is why it’s probably the largest graveyard of history. The experts knew what you should eat and what you should wear, what you should learn and what you should buy and how much you should pay for it. And always, even now, the experts knew which lives were worthy of life, and which… weren’t.

As long as that goes on, Nuremberg-like trials will be needed again and again and again, even if they aren’t in fact enacted. I still say we should have hanged Putin and all his ilk from their own rotten guts. Because it’s important for the monsters to die. And it’s important to know they were killed for crimes against humanity. We should have hunted down every petty Marxist, every bureaucrat, here and aboard, and tried them for their share of the 100 million dead at the hands of their ideology (and that’s those directly killed, not counting other casualties.) We should have rubbed their faces in the misery, death and deprivation their grandiose theories and their demand people enact them created. Yeah, some of them were merely idiots and not deserving of death. But they should have been tried, and made to feel their guilt.

We didn’t. And we didn’t — and this is very important — repudiate the poisonous and horrifying idea that a small number of people should have the power to enact vast, sweeping changes in the way the mass of people live their everyday lives.

Yes, there are times — rare — in which the common defense demands unified response. That was the lesson the Romans learned from Hannibal’s attack.

They are rare, they are limited in scope, and they should be restricted to those occasions in the Constitution (in America. Part of letting go of the poisonous idea of centralization is to say I neither know nor care how the foreigners choose to live their lives. I will have opinions, but so long as they leave us alone, it’s their bailiwick.)

All other powers should be exercised at the most regional level possible. And the rights, judgement and ability to choose how to live of the citizen shall not be infringed unless they are affecting someone else (and this would need proof. None of this “you wear a mask to protect me.”)

There might be a time a city block or a house needs to quarantine. Locking up an entire country is not quarantine. It’s false arrest and an act of totalitarianism. And it must be punished, but more importantly, all of them — every one, from the people who corrupted our legal institutions, to the journalists who propagandized fear and panic-porn — must be made to know what they did wrong and must make restitution. Let’s not make the same mistake we made with the fall of communism.

And let’s restructure. The Constitution was written by men who understood well the power and fear of epidemic disease, but they did not put a clause in there saying all our rights are suspended in case of a bad epidemic respiratory illness, nor did they create a post that allows some bureaucrat to play doctor to people he doesn’t know and whimsically dictate what they can and can’t do.

It’s time to get back to government by the people for the people, and to most rights devolving to states, municipalities and ultimately individuals.

Or we will need to hang monsters again and again and again. And millions will be sent to their graves in terror and abject horror again and again and again.

Centralized power kills. Efficiently or stupidly, but it kills.

Give no small group of humans the power kill millions. Start spreading the word. It’s time to level set. You know the tune:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.-

According to legend—which means I don’t want to go look up the year and stuff—teabags were invented when a tea company sent out samples in pretty little scrap-silk bags, and the Americans were too stupid to know that was just packaging.  They dropped the whole thing into the pot.  Didn’t sell a lot of the tea blends, but they wrote back and absolutely raved about the wonderful little packets, could they get more of those?  Not being utter fools, the company’s response was a solid “Oh?  You want to buy?  Sounds great!” and now my kitchen has a few dozen different flavors of tea ready to go for individual cups.  But: stupid customers!  How dare they misuse my brilliant system?!?

Part of keeping kids alive is figuring out how to deal with someone who hasn’t been trained to all the systems that we don’t even notice– all the assumptions we can’t see, because of course that’s just what you do.  They do not inherently know what the important variables are when you say “do not touch that”– is it the effect on the thing being touched?  The effect on the thing doing the touching?  That if you touch it wrong, it will hurt you?  That would be the icing on the cake I’m working on getting mussed, harassing the cat is a bad habit, and electricity or boiling water is dangerous, respectively.

Kids aren’t, generally, stupid.  Nor are they failing to think– that theory was actually tested with brain-scans, and the researchers expected to find that adults were thinking more effectively before they made the obviously correct choice.  Nope.  Turns out that the adults weren’t thinking at all, because they already knew the correct answer, that’s why they were so uniform in giving it– it was the kids who were thinking, and considering vectors that the adults already knew had nothing to do with the problem being solved.  The kids hadn’t found those things out, yet, so they tried different things.  The more intelligent the kid, the more absolutely off the wall “what on earth were you thinking?” variables they could come up with, and test.  (Why, yes, I did remember that study because it fit so well with the “something so stupid only someone very intelligent could have created it” situation, and yes I have very little tolerance for the supposedly Einstein quote about ‘doing the same thing over and over,’ mostly because it gets applied when the person quoting it hasn’t bothered to check if it’s actually the same thing, or just variables that didn’t change anything.  The latter is called science.)

  Moving up a bit in the “what were they thinking?” olympics, Redneck Engineering.  Yeah, a lot of them are in the Hold My Beer category, but when it works, it’s stop-and-cuss brilliant, even when the folks who designed the system(s) and tool(s) used had never considered them being used in such a manner. 

Sometimes, it’s simply: why would you want to do that?  Video Game designers may be recognizing what was known at one point as the “dancing naked on mailboxes” effect, where what players want to do sometimes has absolutely nothing to do with what the designers were thinking people would do in the game.  Yes, someone made a video game where you control individual characters, put in an athletic and busty group of females that could 1) dance in a style based off of a very attractive young lady noted for her sexy dancing, 2) strip down to underwear and 3) jump well enough to reach an elevated surface that let them be seen over a crowd, and they did not realize people would be doing exactly that.  It took several re-designs of the system to make it so that mailbox dancers didn’t make it so you couldn’t access the mailbox.  One of the early fixes was making it so game objects to occupy the same space, thus dancers just fell through the mailbox.  This resulted in people deliberately causing distress in others by standing on the mail box, so it could not be accessed—both the want-to-be-seen dancers, and people who were griefing.  (Keep this dual effect in the back of your mind, it’ll come up later.)

The mis-match of designer expectations and user expectations can result in major confusion.  Users tend to have this crazy idea that systems should serve them, not the theoretical goal of the system designers.

 Sometimes, this is something you really need to fight, because the goal is to get a specific result for a third party.  Pencil-whipping documentation in the Navy is not going to make the measurements off of the system accurate, even if it does make things easier for the users. 

When the users are the ones who decide if the results are desired, then demanding that they use it the way you want them to is just silly.  My favorite example is the OK Cupid rating system, which was designed to help you find a date that was attractive to you.  So it sorted the results on a scale of one to five, with “one” being “not if she were the last woman on earth”– which, if she also rated you a 1, would send you both a note to that effect– and five automatically sending her a “hi, you’re cute” break-the-ice note.  The guys who designed the system then, with a straight face, a “https://archive.fo/BtTP2“reported that amazingly few women were rating men as a 5… (OK, mostly straight face, the profiles they used as examples are folks who work there so there’s teasing involved.)

Now, the data in the post makes perfect sense if you look at the system from the perspective of the results that an individual using it gets; roughly one in three men were rated as “I do not want to see this profile ever again, and tell him yeah, you too if he thinks I’m ugly” and low single digit percent were rated “automatically send them a note saying I think he’s cute.”  Meanwhile, women were rated in a rather nice rainbow-arch, slightly heavier to the least attractive but high single digit percent being among the most attractive.  Gals tended to contact guys who were below average on the scale, while guys overwhelmingly went for the top 25%.  If you’re aware that guys are very visual, while gals are tea-leaf reading off of everything from ‘the profile picture is sports gear, I don’t do sportsball’ to ‘this guy is way out of my league, I don’t even want to see this, probably fake anyways’, the pattern makes perfect sense.  If you’re expecting to get accurate data on visual attractiveness, you are going to draw the wrong conclusions.

So, is this an example of a foolproof system finding that the universe has made better fools?  Or that the ‘idiot’ user is just using the system in a way the designer didn’t expect, because it gets them the results they want?

This is an important consideration when you’re making any system– say, social safety nets.  It doesn’t matter that the idea is to help people.   You have to think about what people will actually do, both in innocence and with deliberate malice.  Like blocking off the mailbox in a game, because you can.  At the same time, if you design with an eye on nothing but the possible abuses, you block off the ability of people to do anything good, much less anything fun, and if you can’t force them to use your system…they’ll go somewhere else.

Yes, you absolutely are right. That is a terrible title for the blog of a Freedom lover. which is why I felt the need to do it. Because it’s one part of the whole “toleration/authoritarianism” paradigm I did not talk about sufficiently. I kind of glanced off it, in pointing out that allowing people to do whatever they want is bad for other people and you need to draw the line there.

This is absolutely true. I don’t care if you want to live on the street, but I draw the line at your attacking passerbyes, pooping on the sidewalk, being allowed to camp anywhere that’s “public” because that makes cities unusable for other people. And eventually other people get tired of it, and the totalitarian boot comes down. (Not that it’s not there, before, since other people are being forced to indulge you and give you everything you want to live in this way, and never say boo to it. The difference is only in who is being oppressed.)

However, and this is important, and a fine distinction, the people who are being indulged are not actually receiving any benefit from it, and might be destroyed by the indulgence, because they never learn to correct their behavior to what is functional.

So, all the compassionate cities who allow the homeless to just shit on the sidewalk? They’re telling them they don’t even consider them human. Because animals also poop on the sidewalk. (The irony being a dog owner will be fined if his dog poops on the sidewalk, but if he, himself does it? That’s fine.) Allow them to “camp” anywhere, which often seems to mean just slump on the sidewalk with a sleeping bag? Any number of them will die when the winter cold comes.

It’s not just the awful effect on other people it’s the awful effect on themselves.

Now, these “effects” are of a different order, and they require different ways of dealing with.

Take the homeless, because they’re such a found of floridly bad behavior and of being indulged.

Pooping on the sidewalk should definitely be regulated, because it’s not only awful for the person (it is) but it also makes the city unhygienic (real public health issue) and impassible. It makes often expensive downtown properties worthless. It makes tourists stay away. All of this affects other people. Heck, the germ theory of disease caused a whole lot of public cleanliness laws including “don’t spit on the sidewalk.” This might seem oppressive, but it really resulted in a lot less disease and early death. You can be as filthy as you want in your own, private property, but don’t poop/pee/spit on the sidewalk. (Emergencies, such as someone throwing up are obviously different.)

And no, you shouldn’t be allowed to camp in parks/sidewalks/public venues, because by doing so you’re limiting how others can use it.

And of course you shouldn’t be allowed to attack other people. It’s not their fault or responsibility that you’re feral. Attacking people, particularly random passerbyes, used to be known to be a bad thing, because of course it affects other people.

BUT you want to be homeless? Permanently stoned? Beg for a living? Well, buddy, that’s your bailywick, so long as you’re not interfering with anyone else.

You know what society — and by society I mean lefty (and weirdly some right) custard heads — shouldn’t do: Tell stories about how we’re all guilty of your homelessness; talk as if only people who are forced to this choose to do it; pick the three families that are legitimately and temporarily homeless and pretend every other homeless is like that; start charities to “feed the homeless” and therefore make it easy for people to live like that; start charities that enable that type of life to continue; give help without a sermon.

Look, yeah, people are allowed to self-destroy. We’re not REQUIRED to enable it. Yes, sometimes you’re going to help someone in that situation, but yes, you absolutely should do it with a “Sermon” because your explanation of how they got to this point might be the one that finally sinks in.

Self-destructive behavior should come with its own consequences. For the person. Because sometimes it’s the only way they’ll give it up.

And that ultimately is the highest help you can give them.

It is time — again — to talk of the glitzy, glamorous life of a working writer.

I think I’ve done a couple of posts on the fact that whenever I get an award, or this blog gets mentioned by someone bigger, and my phone starts ringing off the hook with congratulations, it’s always on a particularly blah day.

So, the last time Rush mentioned me, I was scrubbing the kitchen floor on my hands and knees when the phone started ringing.

The Prometheus award call? I was in the middle of a Piss-war with the cats, who had peed on the sofas so much they mildewed. So I’d just dragged the sofas to the curb, to be hauled away by trash, and bought cheap used sofas, for which I was making impermeable covers, because I do learn. And yep, Euclid had just peed on the covers I was sewing. (Euclid was actually the issue, since he’d never been box-trained. In fact, he’d been inverse-trained since the elderly person who owned him before apparently put down towels and newspapers for him to pee on. BUT once he started the other cats all assumed that was the place to pee. The only good thing about his dying is that the p*ssing out of place has stopped.)

When I won the Dragon we a) didn’t have the money to attend. (I will add that my preference is not to do the massive cons. I am too introverted for them) b) we were on an unavoidable trip in a tiny town (less than 3k people) staying in a shady motel. We’d just eaten at one of two restaurants — Mexican. The other was Italian. And they only opened on weekends, for the tourists — when Kevin texted me the image of himself holding the award. I texted back “Is this for real?” and then the phone started ringing with other people. That’s when I went back in, broke the low carb rule and had the fried ice-cream.

Those, ladies and gentlemen, are the HIGHLIGHT of the Hollywood glamour that’s my life.

But there’s also a rule that if someone recognizes me while out in public (not often) I’m invariably wearing my painting clothes, with my hair a complete mess, and frazzled in the extreme. Once, I was in my robe, had just locked myself out of the house, and couldn’t get the guys (all of them asleep) to wake and open the door. We lived at the corner of Weber and Columbia in downtown Colorado Springs. Weber is kind of busy. So I’m standing in front, trying to figure out what to do, and a car skids to a stop and someone I remember vaguely from a con in Denver comes running out. “You’re Sarah A. Hoyt. I know you are.” (Turned out useful. He let me use his phone to call Dan’s until Dan woke up and came to open the door. But we had to give him breakfast. Completely worth it.)

Anyway, the reason I was thinking about this: as you know, I wash my bed clothes, and Havey has diarreah. It’s a fact of nature. Havey is also super fluffy:

And his mommy might not have been around to teach him to clean himself.

So, yesterday was devoted to washing all the bed clothes. But I must have had a premonition, because I put an old quilt on the bed, rather than the eiderdown. wouldn’t you know it? Last night he jumps on the bed, and we caught a wiff.

I immediately jump up and grab the shaver.

There ensues a mad chase all over the house, because he caught on he was about to have his butt at a minimum shaved, and perhaps washed. He’s hilarious in these circumstances, because he runs while making a sound like “nope, nope, nope”.

Meanwhile Dan and I chase behind like silent-movie comedy. Only not silent at all, as often there are instructions and swearing in various languages. (To get an idea of how not silent, our previous house was in a not-that-close suburban development. During one of these chases, a neighbor knocked on the door to see if everything was okay, and did we need the police/ambulance.)

Fortunately Havey (besides being a filthy beast and running like a cartoon animal — he does, I swear his legs go binka binka binka) is also…. simple. So eventually he TRUSTED DAN and went to him. At which point — curse Dan’s sudden but inevitable betrayal — Dan grabbed him and proceeded to hold his legs, while I scruffed him and shaved the mess off him (Washing would have been easier, but then he’d get on the bed with a wet butt, and his fur is like a sponge.) Meanwhile he tried to pump his little backlegs and made sounds much like “nooooo” and “Squeak” in an attempt to escape by being pathetic.

He finally forgave me this morning, but the entire scene was both pathetic and roll on the floor laughing funny, in retrospect.

Yes, I’m sure Heinlein and Pratchett had moments like this. (For sure Pratchett because we got to talk about our cats more than once.)

BUT fortunately I mostly got into this job to get the stories out of my head and — if possible — help feed and clothe the family. If I’d got in it by the glamour I’d be seriously disappointed.

So, when you meet me, don’t be overwhelmed. Just imagine me in my nightgown and bunny slippers chasing Havey all over the house, while he meeps and nopes and his legs go binka binka binka.

It’s how I want to be remembered. :)

One of the advantages (eh) of growing up int he seventies in Europe, is that there are very few examples of bizarrely distorted thinking that doesn’t make me yawn and go “been there, done that. The stupid hasn’t changed.”

The fact that once or twice these last two years the idiots have managed to scare me tells you how bad it’s been. Now, mind you, the thought process was still not new, but the things they did with it were… well, if not new, more insane than I thought we could achieve after the peak of mass LSD usage.

One of the most bizarre pieces of pseudo “common knowledge” that my classmates, teachers and eventually professors kept repeating was “the extremes of political systems touch. Politics is a circle.”

Mostly they were using it for the cheap virtue signaling of “We’re moderate, and therefore we are correct.” It was what they used to justify their “mixed” economy, because you know, a bit of socialist sewage in the wine-barrel of freedom was absolutely necessary and made it mo’ better. Or something.

I never believed it, mostly because I have an inate ability to fixate on the things people don’t want me to see. And even America in the seventies, with the sh*tton of crazy and more than a drop or two of socialism, as “extreme” as my illustrious preceptors insisted it was, was nothing like the USSR. Their screaming about American oppression didn’t make it that, either.

So, you know, I almost failed economics by spending three pages explaining to the idiot teacher (he really was) in detail how an excess of individual liberty looks nothing like an excess of collective repression, with examples and quotes from Heinlein. The teacher didn’t refute a single one of my arguments, just gave me a C- and told me, sullenly, I was not nearly as smart as I thought he was. (And I barely scraped by because when he’d tried to fail me early on for pointing out that Marx was a mental midget who never understood distribution, Mom had come down with reference books to explain how I was right and if he didn’t change my grade to an A she’d explain it again. You’d have to known mom. So he calibrated this slap to just barely pass me, which I didn’t care about, since we had an exam that actually determined my change of going into college, and economics wasn’t on it.)

Anyway, they are completely and utterly wrong. The funny thing is, though, that I know what they’re seeing that caused them to say that. (Other than the innate need of Europeans whose goofy socialism was subsidized by American military spending to act like they were super important. They’re kind of like cats that way. “You clean my litterbox and feed me, so I must own you.” Only most of them are not as charming as cats. And keep pissing in our shoes, besides.) The even funnier thing is that they don’t see it.

So, I was thinking about how the left has gone from “free love” and “do your own thing” and “if it feels good, do it.” to “Reee, all copulation is violation; straight people should be forced to have sex with gay people; Muslim women are way freer, because by being forced to cover up they’re freed from the male gaze; we need the races segregated to prevent white supremacy oppression” etc etc etc.

You see, there is a …. ramp to permissiveness. Note I’m not saying liberty. Liberty is individually-regulated and comes with responsibility. For instance, if you’re allowed to drink as much as you want, but you’re punished for doing bad things while you’re drunk? That’s liberty. What it is not is permissiveness. Society at large isn’t saying “Oh, you poor widdle thing. You want to drink and drive/steal/act like an ass. We can’t stop you because that would be oppressive.”

The left routinely confuses “permissiveness” with “liberty” and “enabling” with “compassion.”

Most of us had absolutely no issues at any time with toleration of homosexuality, or even with some form of marriage (yes, yes, civil union. Look, where I come from “civil marriage” is the only legal marriage. The religious ceremony is extra and there’s no legality to it. To have it, you must first be legally married and show proof. (It’s also considered the real one by religious people. No argument there.) For the record, if I need to say it, I’m against forcing churches to perform any marriages against their doctrine and custom.) However, we draw the line at say suing bakers who won’t bake a cake for you.

We definitely draw the line at sex changes for toddlers, aka, let’s castrate/sterilize the baby. And we draw the line at “You’re homophobic/transphobic/oppressive for not wanting to have sex with person of x genitalia.” (Hey, it’s a game everyone can play. Some of my gay friends have been told their misogynistic for refusing to have sex with women. Because this is the stupidest time line.)

And let’s not start on people having their lives ruined because they used “the wrong pronoun.” To whom it may concern, no I won’t use your pronoun. You know why? Because when speaking about you, I’m not talking TO YOU. So to you I’ll say “Hey, you idiot with the pronoun listing, what’s wrong with your head that you think you can compel my speech.” When talking about you, otoh, I’ll say “That idiot who thinks he can compel my speech.” You might as well put your pronoun as “that idiot” and comply with truth in advertising laws.

No, stupid pronoun declarations and making people obey them is not “just good manners”. It’s actually the poorest of manners, making other people responsible for indulging you. It’s demanding NOT liberty but permissiveness.

In fact, all the idiocy we’re observing is permissiveness. It’s “Oh, poor things. Let’s not punish them.” and then suddenly it’s “Oh, poor things, have virtue because people like them were hurt in the past so we must all encourage them, indulge them and enable them.”

That way lies totalitarianism.

What? Stop looking at me that way. I said what I meant and I meant what I said.

You see, it’s impossible to indulge every micro-minority forever, and making everyone else responsible for making sure the individual is coddled and happy FOREVER! and in every little thing.

Sooner or later, it pushes to far, and suddenly the super-indulged “that idiots” find that society is perfect okay with them being repressed. In fact with them being more repressed than similar people in the past were repressed.

…. and that’s not good, and the society that results is also not good.

So before we go for a ride on the mobius strip, how about we try liberty instead of permissiveness.

I frankly couldn’t care less if you’re both a yellow, wingless dragon and an ornate building, provided you function in day to day society like a normal human being, you’re over 18, and you’re not making anyone else bow to you or tell you how ornate you are. If you choose to dress as a dragon in your own time and place, carry on. And if you spend hours online telling your friends about the crenelations on your soffit? I couldn’t care less. If we have something else in common, we might even be friends.

But whether your particular insanity is that you think society owes you a living so you can ‘work on your art’ or that we’re insufficiently respectful of your sexual attraction to snail-darters, or that we don’t respect your opinion that 2 + 2 should be 459, my answer is “Go be crazy on your own time and place.” You have a right to be as crazy as you want to. You have a right to say all the crazy stuff you want.

You do not have a right to make me pretend to agree with you.

I will not say what you want me to. I will not wear what you want me to. I will not pretend that whatever your latest insanity is is all true. And I will not shut up when you want me to.

I will be responsible for my own actions (which no, don’t include your unlawful reprisals. Those will be returned with interest) and I will not accept responsibility for your actions.

Individual liberty and self-ownership but not one inch of mollycoddling and kowtowing.

American. Do you even speak it? Because I do!

And you need to. Before we loop de loop into totalitarian oppression.

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, by clicking through and buying (anything, 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. That helps defray my time cost of about 2 hours a day on the blog, time probably better spent on fiction. ;)*

FROM AMANDA S. GREEN: Fire Striker (Tearing the Veil Book 1)

Some say monsters aren’t real. Others say the only monsters are those people who aren’t fully human: the witches and shapeshifters, elves and dwarves, and all the others who one day stepped out of the realm of fairy tales and into “real life”. Morgan Walsh knows the truth. Monsters come in all shapes and sizes, and some of the worst are human.

She didn’t start out life as Morgan Walsh. Once upon a time, her name was Adriana Grace Hensen. Everything, including her name, changed the day she turned thirteen. That day she learned several lessons she’d never forget. The first was that monsters were real. The second was that her parents were two of the worst “monsters” alive. The third was that those you trust the most can and will turn on you.

Morgan’s parents betrayed her because she wasn’t “human”. Now she’s back with one goal in mind: vengeance.

Never, ever conspire against a Fire Elemental, especially one with other “talents” as well. When you do, you’d best be prepared to get burned.

FROM TIM WUEBKER: The Forbidden Book: A novel

Mark and Rose are typical high school seniors: afraid to speak, aware of the cameras watching them in every room and on every street, and smart enough to walk away if anyone dares discuss the place known only as “The Island.”

They know how to stay invisible. But on his way to school, Mark gets caught in the crossfire between two revolutionary gangs, and later that day, Rose’s friend…just…disappears.

When violence happens, Mark—who is destined for the NBA—knows the unspoken rule: don’t talk about it. You weren’t there. It didn’t happen. And when someone vanishes, Rose–who gets away with things she shouldn’t—knows denial is the only ways to survive.

But each has reached a breaking point. Mark decides to smuggle his family out of the country. And Rose will risk everything to get her friend back.

“The Forbidden Novel” is the story of two people who live in a nation hell-bent on domination and control. Will they be crushed beneath the wheel?

Or will freedom strike back?

FROM J. L. CURTIS: Rimworld – Diplomatic Immunity.

Fargo’s latest attempt at quiet retirement is going haywire quickly.

Hiding the officially missing Dragoon heir at his cabin is about to get interesting.

A GalPat change of command brings new attention to his militia and their capabilities, just as he’s falsely accused of murder. Facing a stacked prosecution, he finds that friends have hidden abilities when they come to his aid, including hiding the heir.

When he comes back out, he’s got an agenda and an heir to get home in one piece… A young man thought lost, whose homecoming will shake an entire empire. And hopefully Fargo will survive the experience.

FROM PETER GRANT: Wood, Iron, and Blood: A Classic Western Story Of The California Trail (Annals of Ash Book 1)

Sometimes wanderlust skips a generation… but when it strikes, it strikes gold.

In 1852, fourteen-year-old Jeremy Ash rises to his grandfather’s challenge and sets out on the adventure of a lifetime – the California Trail.

It’s four deadly months and 1,600 merciless miles from the Missouri River to the goldfields of the Sierra Nevada. There’s alkali water that’ll poison you; desert heat that’ll fry your brains; mountain passes that’ll crush you; swarms of biting insects that’ll drive you mad; deadly diseases that’ll plague you; and warrior tribes that may make it lethally clear they don’t want you there.

Will the California Trail kill Jeremy, like so many others before him? Or will it make a man out of him?

FROM CHRISTIAN TOTO: Virtue Bombs: How Hollywood Got Woke and Lost Its Soul

Inside Hollywood’s Descent into Dreary, Dull Leftist Groupthink
Hollywood’s Dream Factory is now a nightmare of woke restrictions, Identity Politics run amok, and freedom-snuffing rules and regulations. The Oscars are unwatchable, as are many films and television shows thanks to the woke revolution. Virtue Bombs breaks down where Hollywood went so wrong, illustrates the slow-motion disaster infiltrating the industry, and offers a glimmer of hope for a woke-free tomorrow. Award-winning film critic Christian Toto has all the receipts, showcasing Hollywood’s virtue-signaling follies and how it could get much, much worse before it gets better.

FROM DAVE FREER: CLOUD-CASTLES. – NOW ALSO IN PAPERBACK!

Augustus Thistlewood was an idealist. The youngest scion of a vastly wealthy family, he’d come to help the poor, deprived people of the strange world of Sybill III – a gas-dwarf world with no habitable land. The human population, descendants of a crashed convict transport, lived on a tiny, crowded, alien antigravity plate they called ‘the Big Syd’, drifting through the clouds in the upper atmosphere. It was a few square miles of squalor, in a vast sea of sky, ruled by the degenerate relics of two alien empires.
The problem was that the people of the Big Syd wanted to help themselves, first – to his money, his liberty, and even his life.
Only two things stood between them and this: the first was his ‘assistant’ Briz, – a ragged urchin he’d picked up as a guide. She reckoned if anyone was going to steal from Augustus, it was going to be her, even if she had to keep him alive so that she could do it. And the second thing was Augustus himself. He didn’t know what ‘giving up’ meant. Actually, he didn’t know what most things meant. As a naïve, wide-eyed innocent blundering through the cess-pit of Sybill III, he was going to have to learn, mostly the hard way. Some of that learning was going to be out in the strange society that existed on the endless drifting clumps of airborne vegetation, and the Cloud-Castles of the aliens who hunted across them. Most of it was learning that philanthropy wasn’t quite what they’d taught him in college.

FROM KATRINA LEGG: The Case of the Rollerskating Armadillo.

Spacestation: Arcadia is a vacation destination for the rich and connected.

When a midnight call from one of the guests includes assault from an unfriendly lawn decoration, Deputy Corbin knows something isn’t quite right.

It’s not just the grumpy old man who needs his help but it’s going to take all his wits to uncover the other victims in the mess he’s stumbled upon.

FROM DALE COZORT: Raphaela, Princess of the Jungle: A Snapshot Novel (Snapshot Jungle Adventures Book 2)

Nearly a hundred years ago, in an alternate reality Africa dotted with lost cities, Raphaela of Zan was eleven years old and dying of a rapid aging disease. A mysterious gray-eyed man gave her a drink he claimed would cure her. Instead, it stopped her from aging at all, trapping her in an eleven-year-old body, on the verge of life, but never able to truly live. Now, the rapid aging disease is back, threatening to turn her into a withered crone before she has a chance to live. Can she survive man-apes, Romans and Mad Puritans to find the gray-eyed man and convince him to save her?

FROM DANIEL L. NADEN: Parting Shot.

“A brutally smart gorefest, and uproariously funny to boot!”
James H Longmore

Brian has survived for ten years beyond the end of the world, but he’s not sure why. He’s not even sure if he cares anymore.

When the dead began strolling around and eating people, society was certain to collapse. Brian never realized how lonely a guy could be in a world with six billion hungry zombies hanging around. Or how empty a life of just surviving could be.

Meeting survivors in Brian’s world is dangerous. Living with survivors is almost suicidal. Zombies like large groups of people: the more, the merrier. Caring about people in Brian’s world is insane. How often can someone lose every person they’ve ever known or loved before they just quit trying?

When he hooks up with a new group of survivors, they all find a way to…well…survive together. After so many years, surviving is easy part. The real challenge: can they find a reason to live? To love? Can they find a reason to hope? Can they remember how to laugh when so much of the world is dark and despairing?

FROM CHRISTOPHER WOERNER: Army of One.

Collection of my best essays and one-liners, thoughts on history, the War on Terror, current events, pop culture and lots of humor. Get yourself a cup of Rococo Coffee and read this book. Or just buy Rococo Coffee and ignore this book. Wait, what?

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.

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.

If you have questions, feel free to ask.

Your writing prompt this week is: wretched

Weirdly this is not about governance. Well, self-governance maybe, in the sense that you govern yourself through life.

I was 53 the first time someone told me I was ADD. The someone was my kid. Ask me how he knows. He’s higher functioning than I am — I barely held it together through University, and then it all fell apart — mostly because I refused to believe either of them was ADD because they were like me and no one had ever told me I was ADD. So they had to learn to function without meds or crutches. One of them is way better at it, but he’s finding out it too has limits.

So, how come no one noticed I was ADD before then.

In retrospect, it was floridly obvious. My parents and the teachers who gave me grades and comments like “You could be perfect if you applied yourself” are excused. First because ADD is highly inheritable, and Portugal seems to have a very high baseline of ADD (even if mine is freakish even for there, and was thus noted.) Second, because the concept didn’t exist.

All my other doctors and various evaluators aren’t so. Oh, my family is also excused. Husband because he’s also ADD — but the hyperfocus kind. Or I should say more hyperfocus than I tend to be, though I have my moments — and because my extreme ADD was viewed as doing things to be a pain. (Yes, there are reasons for this. Part of it being because it’s really hard to believe an adult can’t control things like: not wandering off from your full shopping cart, aimlessly, because you’ve been more than two minutes in line.)

As for me? Well, I’d been this way all my life.

A friend recently said that he’s getting very tired of everyone labeling themselves “neuro atypical.” Mostly because when everyone is neuro-atypical, no one is.

Is there even a “neuro-typical”? yeah, sure. There is a range. Out of that range things get dicey.

I’d add there is a range where you can function fine with discipline and non-medicine strategies, too, and I keep trying. I hate medication. But after the last three months, I’m about ready to go back on meds, though still fighting it.

The question ultimately is ‘Are you atypical enough that anyone would notice?” (None of us is standard issue.) AND more importantly “Are you being impaired by whatever it is that most people seem able to do, and you can’t?” And then the money question “Can you mitigate most of your issues by strategies of various kinds.”

Ultimately the question is “Is the work being done?” and “Is the work being done to about 90%” (because people rarely notice that 10% though you might.)

For instance, when I say I barely held it together through University, note I was still getting top grades. My studying strategies, or even the ability to be in class on time, every week, kept disintegrating more every year. But because I was in a field that was a given for me, had a deep reserve of knowledge AND could fake even more knowledge (like a pro) with high verbal fluency, I still could get very good grades. Would that have continued through a doctorate? I doubt it. My brain was trying to check out at 3 years, and I’m not sure I could have held much longer than 5. Particularly since my interest in the field kept diminishing (and it was never high.) Which is why I was disintegrating more and more every year.

However, not only shouldn’t I have been medicated, but frankly what I should have done is be in a different field of study. Now, the result might have been the same because I’m ADD AF (guess) and once I master something, I get worse, but the training time would have been better.

Another friend yesterday posted a thing that said: Let’s face it if you’re ADD the only way things are going to get done is if: It’s new and interesting; it’s an inherently pleasurable activity; you are in a panic and it’s life or death; there’s food at the end of it, and it’s food you like.

His conclusion was that we are cats, and he’s not wrong.

For years my strategy to get work done was to wait until publishers got really mad, then panic and write the novel in under a week. The problem is that I couldn’t do it till that point.

BTW part of the problem is it doesn’t matter how much you WANT to do it. “Executive dysfunction” which is what ADD is, often means you simply can’t start. Even if you want to, you need to, and you think you’re a lazy ass for not doing it. (Chances are you’re not a lazy ass. Your head is just broken.)

If I REALLY wanted to write a novel, I might be able to write it, but it involved chasing myself around for a varying period — could be weeks, months or years — then forcing myself to sit down and write it in a few days. If I were interrupted and it took more than a few days, I had to start again (which is how one of the current novels in progress is 40 years in the making.)

The reason I know it’s not laziness is that some of the stuff I’ve been “avoiding” is quick, simple, easy and I NEED TO DO IT. But I don’t. I can’t start.

Like this morning I got up with a few goals.

The quickest/easiest: BILL FOR WORK ALREADY DONE. This is money I need in the business account, because it’s funding things like my paying an editor. The work was done third week of December. The money is…. well, for most of my years it’s about 20% of income.

Next, not so easy but needed: work on Bowl of Red. Because I’m three and a half weeks late on it. (Yes, I’ve been sick, and?)

Third, typeset Odd Tales to FINALLY get it out.

What did I DO? I looked at and downloaded fonts. I also considered buying some graphics that are things like “Build a person” “build a couple” and “build a family”. Think “components” to all of these, and it allows you to make cartoony covers, super-useful for cozy mysteries, yeah, but NONE OF THIS IS STUFF I NEED TO DO TODAY. Or this week.

So why the heck didn’t I do what I needed to do? Because I couldn’t start. I kept trying to. I.e., I was chasing myself around inside my mind.

One of the things my thoughts do, which is beyond annoying is interrupt each other. Like, I’ll be thinking about potatoes and my mind goes “you know what we need? A recipe for bread.” (No, I shouldn’t be eating either potatoes or bread. And I really don’t. The reason those examples popped into my mind is that I’m hungry. And my mind loves potatoes. Frankly it couldn’t care less about bread. I love baking, but I rarely eat it. Eh.)

When I first took Adderal was the first time I figured out my thoughts interrupted each other. It was bizarre to just be able to think of something to its logical conclusion. This was strange, and had never happened to me before. I do think things through, but in the middle I think other things through. It’s also made easier, if I’m doing something else at the same time, which is why I could never understand why I couldn’t crochet while on panels. (“It makes it look like you don’t care.” “No. It makes it much easier to concentrate.” So I doodled, extensively. Otherwise, I was going to blurt out something completely unrelated and highjack the panel because I was bored. And this had nothing to do with not respecting others opinions. It’s just how I think. I do it to myself too.) And why the minimum I needed to study was REALLY LOUD AND DISTRACTING MUSIC. With words.

My mom who weirdly is just as ADD has had her mind …. uh…. propagandized so she thought what I really needed was perfect silence. And what I really needed in school was to be on the front row and have the teacher watch me like a hawk. This was exactly opposite what I needed. Some of my best years were listening to a lecture, while writing a novel at the same time. And she should have known that, because her most productive years were designing clothes while listening to audio lectures. The problem was in that one thing — and because when I space I tend to space inside, while perfectly calm outside while she’s the opposite — we are actually exactly alike, and she didn’t realize it.

Now there are things you can do to make it easier to get stuff done when you want to. These usually include “establishing a routine” “Not being stressed because potential buyers of house are insane and you’re sick and tired of the whole thing” “not being stressed about money” (Weirdly this stress makes it hard for me to bill for things, or remember to cash checks. Everyone I’ve worked for has been driven insane by this.) “Not having to navigate social landmines and conventions” (part of the reason I prefer to work for myself. Do you know how many times I ignored office politics until I was made into the devil by mean girls of either sex, and found myself fired? Uh… practically every job, including free lance. Part of it being because when someone decides to make me into the devil I’m annoyed and appalled by it, and I disconnect.)

I lost an entire year to my son having issues in middle school. To be fair, this could have been remediated if I’d been allowed to set people on fire. (I told you I’m a dragon.) But — waves hand — NOT ALLOWED TO.

And we’re going on to a year lost to moving, and now attempting to sell the house.

Executive dysfunction affects everything. You might find yourself in the kitchen, eating things you don’t even like, because “it was there.” And “My body wandered off without permission.”

Am I going to have to go back on meds? It’s possible. I’d prefer not to, but it’s possible, if the world in general continues being a peeve, and if I can’t chivvy myself into establishing a routine. Maybe. I really don’t want to do it. And it’s difficult to do it after you moved, because doctors tend to view you as a drug seeker (which to be fair you are, even if sometimes reluctantly.) They also tend to have a lack of understanding for “high functioning” and the cost of ADD anyway. Like, sure, I’ve written 30 some novels. BUT without ADD I could probably have written that in a year. (Okay, probably not, but 3 years is doable and not even a stretch.) Which would be better for me and my family. But they will say things like “If you can write novels, you’re not ADD”. Dude, walk a mile in my brain. Or of course, my favorite — for any illness. I mean someone tried to do this to me for pneumonia, until they measured my blood ox — “You’re just depressed. I’ll give you a prescription for depression” — this is the one psycho-drug every non-psych doctor wants to prescribe, which is bizarre. It’s like they think everyone is depressed all the time. 90% of the time, I suspect they’re wrong. (Or I’m highly atypical. Look, I’m always at least mildly depressed, but I know the limits, and I can control THAT. It’s not executive dysfunction. It’s an evaluation dysfunction.)

Anyway, you know what doesn’t help with executive dysfunction? Convincing yourself you’re both lazy and stupid, and trying to abuse and berate yourself into doing what needs to be done. Or actually, worse, it works great when you’re young and everything else aligns perfectly. but it works less every year.

Which is why I need to figure out how to stop doing it.

And actually fulfill my to do list.

(It would take a miracle, but I’m going to storm the castle, nonetheless.)