So, the snake thing? As you know I’ve been whole immersed in fixing this book, to the point nothing much is happening. Though, really, nothing much has happened this week. The meds now discontinued gave me terrible heartburn which, in me, manifests as shoulder pain. Which in turn means I don’t sleep, and I become so massively ADD that someone mentioning a multitool leads to a two hour browsing for the best multitool. Not that I wanted to buy it. But I had to know EVERYTHING about multitools. And it’s liek that with everything. I’ve become the world’s foremost expert on …. well, nothing. But I know a ton about what amounts to chaff. Or dryer lint. Which means not much work gets done. Sigh.

This to say I haven’t read The Man Who Sold The moon, or done much in the way of revision. I will.

But it also means in the sleepless hollows of the night when I can’t even concentrate enough for Jane Austen Fanfic, which is the lowest level of engagement for me, the characters for the second book start babbling in my head. (Oh, other books and series too, but–)

One of those, a constant though not voice character is an eighth circle magician — yes, this space opera has magic. Not real magic, but never mind — which are the people who who do illusions, story telling, memory and apparently mind-healing, though they’ve only found that out recently.

Anyway, this character insists that I’m also an eighth circle. Their derrogatory nickname is Serpent. I was very offended, since…

Because I’ve always been in love with story, I am very afraid of getting caught up in one and losing track of reality. And I try very hard not to lie. Partly because it’s really uncomfortable to confess. I already made my priest laugh helplessly by confessing Twitter hooliganism. (which is actually pride and anger, but, yeah.) But mostly because just like it’s important to know whose voice in your head is yours, it’s also very important to know which reality is actually real. (This from a woman who has long discussions with characters while zonked out of her mind with lack of sleep. Hey!)

But he pointed out it doesn’t mean lies. Knowing story is an ability in itself. Like with mind healing, they’re good for all sorts of analysis of stories and situations.

The places I search for the truth are weird.

Look, nothing we’re being told is real. Okay, not nothing. But nothing that relates to say, job reports, population figures, how the economy is doing, etc. etc. etc.

That is why I’m looking all the time and in the weirdest places. Stuff like monitoring what’s on the grocery store shelves and how fast it’s selling, or listening to people’s conversations, or seeing what people are talking about buying and what is aspirational, or–

Look, the other day I told Dan I know the economy is getting better because the scam emails that tell me I’ve won a free dinner are now for expensive steakhouses, not places like Applebees. In the depths of Let’s Go Brandon, I got those, and it scared the spit out of me. Because when dinner at applebees is aspirational, people are in serious trouble. And scammers have to know what actually works, so they know when the low-price restaurants are beyond people’s reach and they are willing to answer a scammy email for them.

So, the insanity yesterday is looking (already) more and more like something weird.

Hey, it could be a legitimate spat. Both Elon and Trump are volatile and neither of them are used to being in politics.

But the walk back started by yesterday night, and uh…. something feels wrong about it. My story sense is tingling with “this doesn’t add up.”

And maybe it’s wrong, maybe. But… I don’t think so? And what really bothers me, if it was fireworks, it’s “what was it supposed to blind us to?” Because while fireworks are going on, you don’t see other stuff in the dark.

Or the spat could be real, but we can’t be sure of the reason for it. The real reason. Nor what the fall out will be.

Give it forty eight hours. We can’t know the truth before that anyway (and maybe ever). As with all these public things, give it forty eight hours. Let it chill, and see what is there after.

Even if Elon and Trump really fought with each other, or whatever…. it is not the end of the world.

It’s not even the end of our current ascendance, such as it is. Vance said this week, this is the work of a generation.

There are going to be setbacks. There are going to be more pushes forward, though. And maybe one or two miracles along the way.

Guys, tech is our way, the wind is at our back, and the left hasn’t been able to catch their breath — even during Brandon’s so called presidency — even while they were supposed to have everything their way. They need total media dominance to thrive. And we’re not going to let them do that.

It’s not Trump, as valuable as he’s been. It’s not Elon, as much as he’s tried to do. It’s not any one individual.

This is our battle. It’s all of us. That’s the story. It’s all of us.

And now I’m going to slither off and try to get some rest, so revision can be finished this weekend, and then I can write the other novels, and give them to my newsletter subscribers, and all of that.

So. Chill. Chill. Let the story play itself out before you analyze it and prepare for the fall out or not.

This is a long march.

This is not the end. It’s not even the end of the beginning. Let it be, however, the end of “the world is ending.”

Put your shoulders into changing what can be changed. Look at the rest as a passing show. Decipher it if you can. Don’t let it control you.

But I can’t seem to do it. Not today. Post tomorrow.

We had a cat — Pixie! Best cat ever — who had an habit of pretending everything that happened was part of his master plan.

Lick himself and fall from the chair? He’d look around with that smug expression, like “I meant to do that.

Now combine this with the fact that humans make up stories out of anything.

So, what I am trying to say is that it’s normal for humans to make up stories and to make things make sense. This is why you need to be very careful about conspiracy theories. Because it’s really easy to look at assorted facts and make up a theory where they all “just fit.”

It’s the same part of the brain I use to make up stories.

I’m going to tell you a secret, though: not everything fits. It just seems to, but there’s always stuff that sticks out. Always. Whether it’s your theory, or a novel, or a story the people in power are selling you, it’s hard to make up a story without holes. So, for instance, when you they were selling us the covidiocy, what stuck out for me was “why aren’t the homeless dying in droves?” Look, you can’t know everything. I happened to know that the cruise ships were virus boats, which means that I knew the numbers from Diamond Princess meant there was no real danger. But a lot of people fell for “top of the line care at cruise ships.” However the other great big problem was the homeless. You can’t know everything, but you’ll know some things. And I knew that the homeless were like the collecting pool for every disease possible and also that the homeless have a ton of people who just crossed the border illegally, or came in on a plane to distribute drugs or…. whatever. And yet the homeless weren’t falling down dead.

And that was the hole in the story that allowed me to see it how it was all glued together with spit and wish powder.

You can do this to anything. Yes, stories too, though I try not to. Though of course there is a problem when you first become a proficient story teller because you can’t help seeing the gears of the story, and the holes. it’s why most writers stop reading for a while after they become proficient.

But that’s neither here nor there.

This post is about the tendency of EVERY totalitarian regime to act like Pixie, only infinitely less cute. So, you get everything that happens being “I meant to do that.”

There are videos explaining how everything that happened in the west, all the decline and the bad stuff was a clever plan by the the Soviet Union, and everything is just following their plan.

I think I fell for them when I was young and stupid and they were in late night programs. But you know, guys, even then, I’d been telling stories for a while and things stuck out.

Mostly what sticks out in that type of video is that the story only works if you stay inside the story. If you only look at the facts they show you and not outside them. For instance, the so called decline of the west was mostly something that the media sold us. Under the elites machinations and the barrage of media telling us we sucked, we thought these things were true, but they weren’t. As we know given how hard they’re finding to shove decay down our throat, and how they keep importing third world basket cases to plump up the “failures.” (Mostly because the idea we were in decadence was a stupid Marxist just-so-story and they were mostly lying to themselves. This is the whole idea that living well makes you soft and “decadent” is a soviet idea. It’s also a lie. Living without challenges makes you decadent and soft, but there are challenges in prosperity if you don’t let the government hamper you.)

Look guys, we continually tell ourselves The Arabs, the Chinese, the Russians, whatever the authoritarian group we’re up against are “careful planners. They plan for centuries. They’ll win in the end.”

To be fair, they in general believe that about themselves, too. But that’s because by and large they have all these myths. It’s the only thing they have.

Look, guys, let’s be serious. What is the big problem of totalitarian societies, like the Chinese and the Russians (not just commies, but historically, though communism makes it worse)? Information.

No one could tell the Soviet leaders the society was falling until it was completely beyond salvation, because no one wants to give their supervisor bad news in a totalitarian society. The same reason no one could tell Putin they couldn’t take the Ukraine in a weekend, because they just didn’t have the wherewithal.

In the same way, I bet you Xi thinks his country is much stronger and more capable than it actually is.

So, how can they plan for a thousand years if they don’t actually know what is happening in their own country?

As for the Arabs? Bah. They culturally have serious problems with time and keeping track of why things happen, as well as a bunch of their very own cultural blindspots that means they don’t understand Western culture at all. Yes, they think they do, but they don’t. (Not to mention they too are poisoned with Marxist story telling.)

They can’t. It’s bullshit. They’re selling you a story. And there are holes you can drive a mac truck through.

Yes, they will take the latest spill and tell you that they meant to do that. Every time. Every single time.

But in the end, in the very end, they didn’t mean to do that. They’re not in charge of their own plans. They just keep adjusting them and saying “hey, I meant to do that.”

Be not afraid. And don’t attribute magical powers to the enemy.

Humans don’t plan for centuries. Nope, not even us.

We just stumble from disaster into salvation by the skin of our teeth, to disaster again. And then we say “We meant to do that.”

Even us.

However, over the long time, individual freedom that gives us the ability to react to and recover from disaster in many ways, without holding on to some “grand plan” dreamed up by a single brain or a consortium of single brains have a better chance of surviving and thriving.

No one has a plan. Not even us. All is chaos.

Fortunately chaos is America’s native environment. We thrive on it. We eat chaos for breakfast and then go out and create new challenges.

Be not afraid.

We’re entering a time of high chaos.

We’re coming home.

Terry Pratchett, in one of his books (I want to say it was in the Tiffany Aching series) said that the secret to success in life was to be yourself as hard as you could.

I find myself wholeheartedly agreeing with it, which is odd in a way.

Why is it odd? Well, because I’m the person who says things like “Don’t chase your passion” and “Don’t take that degree in creative writing, take a useful degree” and “First take care of yourself and those who depend on you.”

Mind you, that’s not how my life works. Every time I try to be responsible and do the things that I’m supposed to do, it backfires on me wildly. Every time I do the wildly inadvisable: say marry a foreigner and move across the ocean with no plan other than “we’ll figure it out”, or have a kid when we can barely support one, or buy a house that is deeply distressed and trusting I’ll figure out how to fix it, or set out to be a writer in my third language … it turns out all right. On the other hand, when I take the degree that will be guaranteed to get me a job… I marry a foreigner and render my credentials moot. When I buy the house that’s a sure thing to appreciate… cover your eyes, because I don’t want to revisit that debacle. And on and on–

But that’s just — as my kids put it — I have luck that beats the odds. Not good or bad. Just highly improbable. So the sure things flop, but the wild risks pay off. That’s fine. No, it’s not. I’m a nervibore, living on my nerves, but then again after sixty two years if things suddenly became calm, I wouldn’t know what to do. (Though I could do with fewer emergencies. They do seem to be slowing down. Kind of.)

I do think when you’re twenty or so and you decide you want to follow your passion being a living statue or playing tiddly winks on the international stage, you’re not likely to find yourself. Well, not immediately. Somewhere between failing, finding out that even succeeding wouldn’t be the thing you would want and eating your millionth meal of cheap ramen, you’re going to find you really have a vocation for industrial design. Or 3-D printing the ideal tiddly winks and selling them to professional players.

Mostly what’s wrong with pursuing your passion when you’re young and so green that certain kinds of lettuce think you’re their kin, is that you don’t yet know what your passion is.

This comes mostly from the fact that when you’re young — and these days that can extend to your early thirties — you have no idea how the world works. So what you think you will really do is often not what the profession actually is. Partly because a lot of what people actually do in the world and how fields actually work are not only not widely known, but often — these days, and I suspect in every time, TBF — work in the most backassward and confusing way possible.

So you planned on being the world’s greatest tiddly wink player, but find they only want skinny blondes for the cameras, while you’re a zaftig brunette. And then…. you tumble. And eventually you figure out who you are. And how to be yourself as hard as you can.

You start out with the idea you should be good at a ton of things you were never good at and can’t even begin to do. Like, you know, I remember my life being destroyed over my inability to jump rope. Or my inability to memorize chemical formulas. Or–

But none of that matters. Because I eventually found my talents, and those things did not matter in the slightest.

So, be yourself as hard as we can, but first find out who you are and where you fit in. So start with something you can do to begin with, and then learn to tumble with circumstances.

Here’s the thing though: when you find out who you are, and what you do well? It’s going to take courage. It’s not just settling into the easiest thing.

At some point you’re going to find out who you are and what you really want to do. And I can almost guarantee taking that step is going to scare you spitless.

Do it anyway. Step out.

You might be on thin air. And you might fall. But at least you’ll have tried.

And if you don’t fall?

It’s the best thing ever.

I’m not a hundred percent sure what’s happening, but I’ve had this sense building, building that when Trump actually made it past inauguration and started getting briefings — was he getting them before the election? I know he was supposed to, but did he? — he became highly alarmed.

Now, understand that we’re trying to read tea leaves. Some of this we have no way of knowing, and frankly it’s a good thing we don’t know. Because we can’t do anything about it, and worrying about it will just make us ill and solve nothing.

And some when we try to see the shape of them, we realize that we can’t second guess the decisions this administration is making. And that burns me up something terrible, because I like trusting but verifying and governments are dangerous things that we should always keep an eye on.

But I have a feeling that something hit him really big, and from the … shape of things, including his trying to end two wars in a hurry and playing mad tariff chess and ignoring a couple of other things that I’d expect him to be all over? … I think it’s China.

First of all, let me point out I’m not particularly worried about China’s conventional abilities, just like — and I do know all of you are absolutely sure I’m a crazy optimist on this — I’m not that worried about Russia or… anyone in the conventional sense. Yes, yes, some or all of those might have a few functioning nukes. It’s possible. But they know what our retaliation will look like, and it takes a level of insanity even totalitarian regimes don’t have to challenge us.

But… China doesn’t really do conventional unless they know they have massive superiority.

And they have so many other ways to get us. I still don’t know what the whole spy balloon was about. And no, neither do you. But then there’s stuff that we know is there and makes me scared sh*tless.

Like the fact that they seem to be addicted to a My Little Genetics Kit of their own when it comes to illnesses. I don’t think that it’s as easy or that they’re as capable of creating lethal viruses as they think. But– They can make things uncomfortable and difficult at very bad times.

More worrisome is the back switches and various other backdoors they have in literally all of our electronics. And what is in our medicines. And everything else that China has been putting its fingers into.

In the seventies Heinlein wrote up a thing saying we’d bear any cost, etc. for the sake of bringing up our nuclear arsenal to USSR’s level. That might have been uneeded and misguided — maybe — but it was the fact that we ramped up our investment in the cold war that broke the USSR, so–

Right now, I want you to keep in mind how vulnerable we are to China, because of how stupidly we gave them everything to produce.

And I want you to realize that any pain we bear is worth it to decouple from that slave-state. Any pain short of death of everyone is worth it.

It’s not just what they can do to us at a whim — do you remember the pagers Israel used? Are you sure ours aren’t mined? No? Neither am I — it’s what their culture is doing to ours.

No, I don’t mean their “ancient culture” though even that, depends what parts. They have a tradition of treating individual humans like dirt. But their culture as it is now, with the communist implant?

They are destroying us. Part of the reason all our companies are such sh*tshows when it comes to how they treat employees is because it’s easier and cheaper to buy Chinesium. Yes, they steal our stuff, and the stuff they make isn’t very good, and we have to take it on faith they’re putting in what they say they’re putting in. And sure, we know they use slaves and political prisoners and everyone in the most unethical way possible. But they sure are cheap, aren’t they? And if a company is using them, it makes a lot more money than everyone else around. And so, the next company starts using it, and then the next. And the next.

Even if they wouldn’t use every bit of what they have against us — and they will — they are destroying our culture, our industry, our ability to innovate and survive, because slaves are cheaper to buy. Yes, sure, their product is never as good, but they’re cheaper.

We need to decouple from China. We need to decouple from China hard. It’s going to hurt. But it is absolutely worth it.

Our survival depends on it.

UPDATE: If it needs to be said — and it should not, but I remember the time an arrant idiot thought I was being racist towards the Chinese by using CHICOM, aka the State Dept. abbreviation for Chinese communist, and therefore, to prevent such idiots — for disambiguation: I have nothing against the Chinese people. In fact, I know I have several first, second and third generation Chinese immigrant fans because every time I do one of these posts they email me to thank me. I do however loathe and despise their regime, which is one in a chain of several exploitative and horrifying regimes they’ve suffered throughout their long history. Chinese people away from China and set free tend to do better than anyone else. Their current affliction combines the worst of their previous bad regimes and the worst Western regimes: communism.
I wish the people of China the best. I do realize on the way there there will be pain for both nations. But we must decouple from them before their evil regime does its worst or we shall both be lost.

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.*Note that I haven’t read most of these books (my reading is eclectic and “craving led”,) and apply the usual cautions to buying. I reserve the right not to run any submission, if cover, blurb or anything else made me decide not to, at my sole discretion.– SAH

FROM WALLY WALTNER: Overture of Shadow (Muses’ War Book 1)

Light reveals, shadow conceals. What we illuminate, we become.

In Breheimen, artisans and craftsmen aren’t just respected. They are revered. The Muse-touched are individuals whose creativity seems divinely inspired, capable of conjuring beauty so profound it borders on the mythical. Their gifts shape culture, hold political sway, and define the kingdom’s identity—the very spirit of the realm.

But when Master Bard Dorian Silversong is summoned to the capital by his mentor, he walks into a world unraveling. That same mentor, the head of the prestigious Collegium Bardica, has been murdered. Muse-touched artisans are vanishing. And at the heart of it all lies a web of courtly machinations and unseen forces determined to twist the bond between creator and creation for malevolent ends.

What if the power to create was the greatest one of all?

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

When your meth lab is built on a factory scale…

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

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

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

The Clerics in the Kitchen

FROM HOLLY CHISM, ON PRE-ORDER: Soul Inheritance

Fresh out of college, Evelyn Alexander’s first order of business was finding a place to live. One she could afford on her small inheritance before her job started. None of the local rental agencies had anything in her price range, but…she found a small Victorian house for sale, the only one mostly untouched in a decaying neighborhood of subdivided rental houses.

Complete with a ghost. A very attractive ghost. A very attractive ghost with a strong dislike of the idea of anyone changing his house. So, of course, she bought it. A cranky ghost for a roommate was still a better option than the tiny studio with criminal neighbors.

Between working to restore her new house, embezzlement at work and a murder next door, Evelyn has her hands full. As she works to get on her feet as a productive adult (and not fall in love with a ghost she can’t have), the problems start to snowball. And it’s only compounded by learning that her house has far more secrets than just a single, cranky (attractive) ghost…

FROM CAROLINE FURLONG: Theophany

Ten years ago the Savients took over Niban, forcing the independent inhabitants into poverty and despair. Bass White saw the careless cruelty of the Savients kill his mother and his father. When a resistance cell is discovered in his city bloc, the Savients seek to make everyone pay.

With his wife Amie, Bass races into the caverns to escape the Savients’ brutal enforcers: the Atrasai. The couple barely make it to the limits of known territory outside their underground city, however, before the Atrasai catch up with them. It would take a miracle to save them…

…or a combat medic robot.

Join Bass and Amie in this sci-fi story of healing, hope, and wonder. After a decade of fear and pain, even a little light can bring out the best in man and machine. But will the best be enough to heal?

FROM KYRA HALLAND AND ON SALE FOR 99C THROUGH JUNE: Mages’ Home (Defenders of the Wildings Book 1

Once, they were hated and hunted by mage hunters and Plain folk alike. Now, former bounty hunters turned renegade mages Silas and Lainie Vendine finally have the life they dreamed of – a home and ranch of their own where they can live in peace and raise their family, and the friendship and respect of their non-magical neighbors.

When a company from across the western sea comes to Prairie Wells, bringing marvelous new inventions, Silas and Lainie figure it only means more prosperous times ahead for the town and for them – until an old and vicious hatred of mages rears its head.

As troubles stirred by unseen enemies divide the town, many of Silas and Lainie’s neighbors turn on them. When danger strikes at the heart of their home and family, Silas and Lainie must fight to protect everything they love, everything they’ve worked for, before it’s all destroyed.

If you love fantasy filled with romance and adventure in a unique setting, come join Silas and Lainie Vendine in this new tale from the Wildings. Mages’ Home is the first book of Defenders of the Wildings, a follow-up series to the epic romantic fantasy-western series Daughter of the Wildings. It is a self-contained series and can be enjoyed even if you haven’t read Daughter of the Wildings.

Contains language, violence, and mild sensual content.

EDITED BY MICHAEL BURNETT, WITH A STORY BY JOHN C. WRIGHT: ’til Death Do Us Part

Eleven stories of married couples facing adversity and adventure together.

FROM JOHN DAVID MARTIN: The Lost Sword and Other Stories: A Collection of Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Alternate History

Jared Thorne: A para-human detective and his dryad wife hunting for a legendary lost sword in a multi-dimensional city.
Eysteinn Bjarnarson: A descendant of the viking who settled North America fighting to win the love of the town beauty. His only opposition? A monster of Indigenous Canadian legend and…her father.
Captain Faust of the North American Marine Corps: A descendant of one Dr. Johannes Faust who learns some deals are heriditary. But can they be re-written?
Milo “Wolfkiller” Patel: A teenage bullrider on an alien world facing the challenge of his young career.
Pawel and Tamar: Newlywed asteroid miners whose wedding cruise from the trans-Martian orbit out to the belt turns deadly.
These are the characters whose stories I have faithfully recorded for you here.

BY PETER RABE. REVIVED BY D. JASON FLEMING: Dig My Grave Deep (Annotated): The classic pulp noir

Danny Port wanted out. Being the right hand man to the boss of a political machine in a second rate city was no longer interesting, let alone exciting. But Boss Stoker wanted him to stay. And Stoker’s main competition, head of the local Reform Party Bellamy, wants him to switch teams. And nobody, but nobody, is willing to let him leave. Worst of all, every one of them knows about Shelly, and some of them even know what she means to Port.

• This iktaPOP Media edition has a new introduction giving the book genre and historical context.

FROM J. M. ANJERWIERDEN: Dagger in the Black (The Black Chronicles Book 7)

Peace was won in blood, but can it endure?

After a bold but costly raid, Morgan captured Hillman’s ‘Comrade Father.’

With him in custody, the war will soon be over…
…but the real challenge has just begun.

Convincing the rest of Hillman’s Navy to stand down will be the easy part. Healing the deep scars left by the war will be much harder. Between the righteous fury of Parlon’s people to the bitter divide between Hillman’s elite and the miners trapped below, revenge seems far more likely an outcome than reconciliation.

Can Morgan help her new home and her homeworld heal?

FROM SARAH A. HOYT: Other Rhodes (Rhodes Mysteries Book 1)

Lilly Gilden has a half-crazed cyborg in her airlock who thinks he’s Nick Rhodes,
a fictional 20th Century detective. If she doesn’t report him for destruction,
she’s guilty of a capital crime.

But with her husband missing, she’ll use every clue the cyborg holds,
and his detective abilities, to solve the crime her husband was investigating
when he disappeared.

With the help of a journalist who is more than he seems,
Lilly will risk everything to plunge into the interstellar underworld
and bring the love of her life home!

Vignettes by Luke, Mary Catelli and ‘Nother Mike.

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

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

If you have questions, feel free to ask.

Your writing prompt this week is: EDUCATION

My husband has a Mike Rowe habit. Normally this doesn’t affect me at all, even though we share an office. If I’m writing, I put headphones on and do writing, which is fine.

However, sometimes I’m doing non-word-things, like redoing covers or fixing typesetting issues, or whatever. Which means I don’t have the headphones on.

Normally I also don’t pay any attention to whatever is going on in Mike Rowe’s world.

Note in general he’s either fairly anodyne or says things I largely agree with. I mean being a a writer in a time when breaking in and staying employed demanded a lot of money involved a lot of work. And having written things that I had not the slightest interest in, so I know to bring my passion along, etc.

In fact, I agree with most of the SWEAT pledge. Most? Well….

Take rule 9:

Sigh. He’s missing one very important thing. Well, two. One of them is emblematic of the biggest issue I have with a repeated theme in his talks where they touch on our outsourcing to China. The other, the “library cards are free” thing it just makes me giggle and wonder if he was preserved in amber.

So, we’ll go after the first one, first, then continue to the other which will roll us into the reason I’m writing this post. (Because he annoyed me THAT much and here, at According to Hoyt we believe in punching UP because punching DOWN is for suckers.)

So, the library cards are indeed free, Mr. Rowe. They are also largely useless. Your not revising that point on the pledge makes me wonder if you’ve gone into a library in the last … 20 years?

Because not only do libraries increasingly not have any books, but the books are increasingly not useful at all. I say this as a writer who used to use the library extensively for research and then suddenly 20 years ago found it less useful, and then eventually — six years ago? — couldn’t find anything to do real research on. Craft books, sure. Videos, sure. Music, sure. I hear some places lend out kitchen equipment and tools. But books? Useful books for an education? Pah.

While an internet connection isn’t free, you’re more likely to find useful things to learn, from household repair to how to build things on youtube. And if you’re careful an internet connection can be free.

The second issue I have with that part of the pledge is more directly related to the follow up — though the fact he seems to be TOTALLY out of touch with the times and common people’s lives (like those who have gone to libraries) also comes into it — is that he doesn’t quite seem to connect with the fact that most people who pay for an “education” aren’t paying to LEARN. They’re paying for a certificate. Because without the magic sheep’s skin, you can’t get a job, even as a clerk.

Okay, now to roll into the part that made me furious: twice!

The first time I heard him say this, he was talking about this was on his just talking about how we’re too dependent on H1B visas — agreed. ABSOLUTELY agreed — and then he smoothly slides into how the problem is that Americans don’t want to work, so we absolutely need all these H1Bs and illegals.

As proof he comes up with various surveys; how many young men have given up on even finding work. AND brings up Obama’s “shovel ready jobs” and then says, straight up that this failed because no one wanted to or was ready to do the work.

At that time, I was doing something under time pressure and I yelled at bit about how “I was alive at that time, Mike. That’s not WHAT HAPPENED!” but I let it go, on the understanding that everyone is allowed to be stupid once.

Then yesterday I was doing some needed graphics work, and too sick to do writing, Dan had a program on where a guest was exposing the true horrors of China, from slave labor camps, to transplants that take organs of living political prisoners, to–

And again, Mike Rowe comes out with how he talks to all these people who are contracting jobs to China, and while he deplores this, it’s not entirely their fault, because Americans JUST don’t want to work. Look at Obama’s shovel ready jobs, and how he got no takers, so his stimulus did not work, because Americans are unprepared to work, and complete layabouts. (my term, but it was implied in what he was saying.)

This is when I hit the roof. And I said I was going to write about it. I don’t care if he never reads it, but I’m sick and tired of this meme.

I honestly don’t understand how he doesn’t know that Obama’s “shovel ready” jobs were vaporware. Everyone even vaguely aware at the time KNEW that.

Fact Check: Joe Biden Repeats False Claim About ‘Shovel-ready’ Jobs.

Quote from article:

CLAIM: The Obama-Biden administration provided “shovel-ready” jobs in the 2009 “stimulus” that Joe Biden managed.

VERDICT: FALSE. Even President Barack Obama himself admitted that the “shovel-ready” jobs did not really exist.

More on the Shovel Ready Jobs scam here: Why Obama’s Stimulus Failed: A Case Study of Silver Spring, Maryland.

More here. (Man, I miss this Jonah Goldberg.)

And pardon me for Reason, again, but this has a good point: The Reason That Shovel Ready Stimulus Didn’t Work Is That There Wasn’t Any Stimulus.

This was found on a cursory look through the internet. I remember other issues with “shovel ready” including that apparently it couldn’t exclude… pin collar jobs.

In other words, Obama scam that doesn’t say anything about Americans interest in working.

For THAT I’ll point out to 2019, before the lockdowns, when the economy was heating up. People who had been “out of the job market” for various reasons, from people who had criminal records, to people very young and very old were suddenly working. We all saw them, at restaurants and grocery stores, and pretty much everywhere.

Why? Because there were jobs, the job market was tight and employers weren’t being picky.

Then of course, we got the open border, and people that can easily be used and abused at will and can’t complain, and we’re back to “Americans” Particularly males, somehow. “Just want to play games in their parents’ basements.”

Well, while I understand that every generation has layabouts, and that complaining about the young has been the pasttime of old people since there have been people (the theory is that all the screaming increases their circulation and substitutes for exercise) I’ve had enough of this abusive myth.

Americans, even young Americans, aren’t lazier or less prepared than anyone else. As horrible as our education is, people keep learning anyway. Ten years out of school, unless captured by the diploma factories, people have acquired skills. And most people — not the idiots talking about how much work is bad because capitalism — are willing to and want to work. As proven by the hot labor market at the end of 2019. By the fact that Americans have voted three times for the guy who promised jobs, not handouts, and frankly by getting out there and looking around.

So, why do companies “need” to contract to China or get H1B Visas?

Frankly because companies want to get work cheaper and they want to be able to have very stupid managers.

Stupid managers? Sure. Managers who want to set schedule by computer and notify workers at the last minute, which makes it impossible for people to work two jobs or even have time off for medical appointments or school. Stupid managers? Sure. Managers who insist people have to come into the office to do work that’s easily and more cheaply done from home. Stupid managers? Sure. Managers who prefer to hire illegals at wages too low to live off of, but can do it because the border is open and the government is giving welfare and health care to illegals.

All of this is objectively stupid. It’s short term gain for long term pain. None of it is sustainable, and while it produces a bump on the profit line, overtime it destroys industries, the country and, yeah, people.

So faced with impossible situations some people — particularly young men who have been abused and marginalized from kindergarten on — give up. “Staying in the basement and playing games” is fairly typical depression behavior.

And then the abusers turn around and say “but we have to contract with the slavers and sellers of human parts. If we don’t no one will do the work.”

It’s time to stop repeating their lies.

You want to yell at the young? Do. They dress funny. Their music is weird. And they keep telling me there’s certain words I shouldn’t use because they are “offensive.” Which means they’re also namby pamby. (Ah!)

But do not pile on on the side of the abusers who are trying to justify their abuses.

Americans — young and old — want to work. And are a more creative and hungry work force than any abroad. No, not the slaves of China, and not the imported and often rather desperate workforce they brought here.

Americans will step up and work, if the jobs are there, and if companies don’t have cheats that allow them to exploit people.

The whole “But we don’t have a TRAINED workforce” is nonsense too. Education in China is not what we’d call education. And most people are objectively less educated. Yes, kids picked to show off certain skills are better. I for one remember the Soviet and East German athletes and how good they were. Because that’s all they did, and they were raised for show. Grow up.

Now, can Americans work as cheaply as enslaved political prisoners or literally indentured servants in China?

Well, no.

On the other hand, they won’t install back-door switches on our infrastructure critical hardware. They won’t sell our trade secrets. And they (probably) won’t go to war with the country.

This doesn’t mean companies can’t get the work done cheaply. It’s time to bite the bullet and invest in automation. More than time.

And it’s time for management that doesn’t eat the seed corn and does invest in the future.

It’s time, in other words, to enable Americans to work and stop selling them vaporware and guilt.

And Mike Rowe as many good things as he says and does should be ashamed for propagating the myth that you can’t find good workers in America, and for aiding and abetting abusers and sucky managers.

Growth Mindset and Evil In the Guise of Good by Charlie Martin

I think it’s more of an effect than a cause, but academic education’s terminology gives me a pain in the brain. You know what I mean. So I admit I wish I could come up with a better way to talk about this, but we’re going to have to go with it. It does have the one advantage that it is the common terminology.

I’m talking about growth mindset and its opposite, fixed mindset.

Growth mindset is simple. It simply means that you believe that applying effort and learning enables transforming ability. In other words, in order to learn, you have to believe learning is possible, and that learning thrives when you — and those around you — believe your abilities can grow.

Its opposite, fixed mindset, is the belief that you are genetically or culturally limited—that your abilities are static and unchangeable.

The original idea and the research supporting it were reported in a book, Mindset: The New Psychology Of Success[1] by Carol Dweck, a book I recommend very highly to anyone who is either teaching someone a new subject or anyone who is learning a new subject.

Early in the book, Dweck proposes four statements:

1. Your intelligence is something very basic about you that you can’t change very much.
2. You can learn new things, but you can’t really change how intelligent you are. 
3. No matter how much intelligence you have, you can always change it quite a bit.
4. You can always substantially change how intelligent you are.

She suggests that if you agree more with statements 1 and 2, that’s a fixed mindset; 3 and 4 indicate a growth mindset.

Now, this has a problem for anyone who has paid much attention to the whole debate on intelligence over the last decades, going back at least to The Bell Curve[2] by Hernstein and Murray, a book that has been widely — and wildly — misinterpreted, which is probably a topic for a whole other article, but it does propose there is a quality of general intelligence that they denote that is fixed and invariable.

The Bell Curve was instantly controversial because they suggested that this correlated with race and economic class.

Clearly, to the extent that you believe Herrnstein and Murray, that leads to a fixed mindset, although there are a lot of issues with that conclusion that don’t necessarily follow.

Dweck makes the whole argument more difficult because she clearly equates having learned new skills and gained knowledge with “intelligence,” which — whatever you call it — is clearly not what Herrnstein and Murray identified as .

This confusion is hardly limited to The Bell Curve vs Mindset. Oddly, for all the objections to The Bell Curve that were raised, the education establishment adopted the conclusion they spuriously ascribed to The Bell Curve — that non-white kids were constitutionally unable to learn like white kids.

This toxic assumption led to a whole host of pernicious effects. It’s the assumption underlying most affirmative action programs — that somehow some people needed extra privileges to make up for their inherent or imposed disabilities.

And there we come back around to growth mindset. If teachers, administrators, and educators start with the assumption that certain kids simply don’t have the capability to learn and achieve, that is a fixed-mindset assumption. And one of the things Dweck learned in her research is that a fixed mindset assumption on the part of teachers was just as harmful as if a student believed they weren’t capable of learning a topic.

Basically, students respond to the teachers’ expectations. If the teacher’s expectations were low, the students would succeed in meeting the teachers’ expectations.

If the teachers’ expectations were high, the students would succeed in meeting those higher expectations.

A recent blog post by Joanne Jacobs, “How ‘anti-racist’ ideology hurt the students it was supposed to help,” talks about this problem. It’s a discussion of a new book, The Lost Decade: Returning to the Fight for Better Schools in America, by Steven F. Wilson.

Wilson was the founder of the Ascend charter schools in Brooklyn, where [this link and others to New York Times are to archives pages since the articles are behind the New York Times paywall.]

5,500 students, 84 percent of them living in poverty and nearly all children of color [emphasis mine], who were reading “The Tempest” and Auden and studying African masks and the Dutch masters by fifth grade.

But by demanding high standards, Wilson was accused of the crime of “white supremacist rhetoric”—and fired.

In schools where students were saved from “white supremacist rhetoric” and given “anti-racist” curricula, scores — surprise! — plummeted.

At one school that went anti-racist, “the percentage of students meeting or exceeding standards on the math section of the SAT plummeted from 41 percent in 2017 to 4 percent in 2024,” [Wilson] says.

In theory, the SAT is supposed to measure critical reading, writing, and mathematics skills, but the scores correlate highly with IQ as measured by standard IQ tests, and thus are a measure of .

So maybe Dweck’s observation that a growth mindset includes believing that it is possible to increase “intelligence” is not as far off the mark as I suggested earlier.

Or, maybe “anti-racist” curricula actually reduce intelligence.

I think the real point is that anything that encourages a fixed mindset — whether it’s based in race or class or just damn stubbornness — is damaging.

The “anti-racist” approach, like so much of the “progressive” project, has or purports to have good intentions. But it appears these good intentions have paved the road to illiteracy and a permanent underclass it wanted to help.

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[1] Dweck, Carol S.. Mindset: The New Psychology of Success (p. 12). (Function). Kindle Edition.

[2] Herrnstein, R. J., & Murray, C. (1994). The Bell Curve: Intelligence and class structure in American life. New York, NY: Free Press.