Author: Sarah A. Hoyt

One of you left a comment, which unfortunately ended up in moderation, so I didn’t even see it until I was rescuing something else. (For obvious reasons for me, less obvious things for her (because she doesn’t post her reasons/life here on the regular) neither my assistant nor I have been QUITE on top of pending and held comments these last few weeks.) Anyway, so I answered him late and it probably fell through the cracks.

His comment was that he often shares my posts, but in a group someone said I had quite the wrong idea about Marxism, because nowhere did Marx say that economics was a finite pie. So, he wanted me to tell him the passage in Marx’s writings that said this. No, he was not an hostile, he’s someone I’ve known forever online.

Did Marx ever say it explicitly? I don’t remember. I used to have eidetic memory, but two concussions did for that. And also I will confess to having studied Marx in three courses in high school, but having hated it so much I probably blotted out a bunch of it, even before the concussions.

I doubt he said it explicitly though, for the simple reason that Marx didn’t say the most outrageous parts of his philosophy outright and explicitly. It was just such a deep assumption of his psyche that it never was questioned by either him or those who follow him.

First of all let’s dispose of the idea that Marx was an economist. That’s a canard when the man understood about as much of economics as I do of advanced physics. (Maybe less.) What he was was a polemicist who leaned heavily on his natural resentment and envy.

And inherent in all his writing was the idea that not just economics, but life in general, was a finite pie, that value was inherent in objects and labor (meaning that each had a value that could be assigned by the person possessing/doing it), and that innovation and value creation was impossible.

How so?

Well, what would be the point of taking the means of production from the evil “capitalists” controlling them (and underpaying the workers) if you could in fact just create different means of production and out-earn the “evil capitalists”? Which is in fact what happened in history and is still happening to a great degree, where the government doesn’t make it impossible?

More importantly, why does he assume that having acquired the means of production, the workers will then continue producing and receiving the like profit only now without an evil capitalist twisting his mustache and stealing the value of their labor?

Yes, the man was an idiot who didn’t understand distribution or commerce. This all came from not understanding relative value as determined by those who buy. As in, if you don’t understand the proverbial transaction (not actually true and far more complex, but let’s imagine it was as reported) of buying the island of Manhattan for a bag of beads was fair on both sides, you don’t understand value or distribution.

To unpack that: Land was valuable for the colonists who came from a place with land rights and settled agriculture. Land meant nothing for roving bands of hunters. (Shush. I told you to go with the cartoon version. I know NE Amerindians were agriculturalists, and also the transaction probably never happened, and they didn’t own that particular island, and– Not the point.) So for them what they were selling was valueless. Meanwhile the colonists also came from an industrial society, where beads could be produced by the bucket load for very little. The natives OTOH came from a society where beads were only manufactured one by one, at great expense, were a symbol of wealth, and often were used as currency.

It would be like aliens who cr*p gold buying your weekly trash from you for a kilo in gold. You were throwing the stuff away, anyway, and for them gold is literally waste, while you can put it in a Swiss bank account and retire in style. Of course, over time, the aliens who cr*p gold will make it valueless, and once your descendants have the drive that makes trash into power to travel the stars, they’ll hate you for selling your potato peelings and used cat litter. But that’s because value is not static, and the economy is not a fixed, limited pie.

Marx failed to get that. He failed to get that value didn’t inhere in objects. He failed to understand that labor didn’t have a fixed value.

Yes, when you’re starting a business, and also in Adam Smith’s formulas, price is raw materials plus labor. BUT that all is subjugated to the reality that you can’t get any of that unless someone is willing to pay you. To which I’d add that the value of both the raw materials, the labor and the finished object very much depends on supply and demand, which depend on … location, location, location.

We’re kind of getting a course in this, since some things that were scarce and expensive in Colorado are cheap here, and vice versa. More obviously, as we’ll experience over the next few days, things that are expensive here are cheap in Europe, and vice versa. To wit, in Portugal anything that depends mostly on human labor — most services — is very cheap, while industrial products are more expensive than here and I can’t imagine how they can afford to live with that disparity, which is something I’ll touch on in a minute.

This is because some things — say labor — are more abundant some places than others. As explained above in the parabola of the Manhattan Island purchase.

But if you don’t understand positional value, nor that value is what someone is willing to pay for it, you fall into the error of current Marxists, so that even educated people have rocks in their heads about economics.

Now keep in mind most economics being taught in school are actually Marxism. I read my kids’ books. Under no circumstances should the lesson on hiring people direct you to take into account who “needs it more” unless humans are fungible and all labor is the same, for instance.

And their geography book talked about how Europe and America stole all the raw materials from indigenous people in colonized lands, which is a belly laugh. Look, dudes, dudettes and dudekins, even the potentially more valuable in the west raw materials are still plentiful in Africa and Asia and Latin America. For a stupid but real example: South Africa still — I’m sure — has diamonds rolling around on the ground in ridiculous abundance. It had them when it was first colonized. It had them when it was first-world-wealthy. And it has them now when it is impoverished via Marxian rage, Gramscian variant. All they need is to be picked up to be worthy trade goods…. Or let’s take Venezuela. I remember the relatives who immigrated there talking in awe about the fertility of the ground, where even a backyard garden could produce enough for a family, and did so year around. … it had that when it was the envy of Latin America. It has that now, when people are reduced to eating their zoo animals or starve. Obviously it isn’t the raw materials.

But the idea that once they take your “raw materials” you’re poor forever is pure Marxism. And pure finite pie. (You can’t find new utility in other raw materials. You can’t find/grow more raw materials. You can’t do anything, but starve, because someone bilked you of your all precious “raw materials.”)

Granted, it is the Marxism Gramscian variant, since Marx was more concerned with the early industrial state and its (within the country) inequities. And he was obsessed with the means of production.

If the workers could only control the existing machines, and be paid for their labor enough that no one was stealing for them — i.e. making a profit from investment — there would be pie in the sky by and by.

Note his followers, not as sophisticated, didn’t laser-focus on the “means of production” but on the end product. Communist revolutions often took both, and talked about taking the goods of the rich and “distributing” them.

But both are ULTIMATELY closed pie. If you can (or let’s face it, have to. Those seized means of production, weirdly didn’t last forever) build new machines, seizing the old ones is a bit silly. And if you steal the stuff from the rich and distribute it, yeah, sure, poor people will have more stuff, but there’s scale there and–

Look, people are rich and become rich by being able to save a bit off the extreme needful and accumulate capital to invest.

I know that Marx thought that this was impossible for the working class, and granted for some it was very very difficult, but there was mobility even in the Victorian working class, and it absolutely was possible to save, start your own business and slowly move up.

These things are possible because there is humanity innovation and cunning and wealth is not a finite pie.

And if you — like the guy who protested my reader sharing the post — think I’m making a straw man, and that no one really thinks the economy is a closed pie, and that the result of Marxism being taught everywhere hasn’t put big fat Marxian rats in people’s heads…

There was a tweet this week I won’t link, mostly because I can’t find it in my history (I answered it) meaning it’s buried, where some “artist” was saying that “art” was an essential good and “artists” should demand to be paid high amounts for their labor.

This is pure Marxism. Art is needed, therefore art is essential. Artists labor long and hard at their work. Therefore they “deserve” to be paid a high share of the value going around.

This only makes sense if there is a finite pie and some benevolent and all-knowing entity is assigning shares of it to occupations that are “high value” as determined by the value inhering to the goods, which is of course a fixed portion of that fixed pie.

In fact, that tweet was so wrong it wasn’t even wrong. To be merely wrong, it would need some contact with reality.

Art is more intangible even than normal “production” because what people are willing to pay for it varies so much depending on so many things.

Take my occupation. I’m told it is art. I wrote for free for over a decade. Not because I thought my stories weren’t worth anything, but because no one else thought they were worth anything. As judged by speedy rejection letters.

Did the stories have inherent value? I don’t know. Do you? Was the value the printing paper plus the electricity the computer used plus what I would like to be paid an hour? Wait a minute, I need to stop laughing. Okay, no. As judged by the fact that when I started selling my “value” was 1/10th of a cent a word. Later upgraded to 1/4 of a cent a word, until I was selling for 6c a word, and now when I can make thousands from a short story.

What changed?

Weirdly some of the stories I sold for 6c a word had been rejected by magazines that paid 1/10th of a cent a word. The fools! Not. You see the value had changed. Young Sarah Hoyt sending out 4 new stories a month, had no name or recognition, and no fan base who would buy a magazine or antho because her name is on the cover. She was, therefore, objectively worth less, regardless of the fact the material she produced was not only “As good” but objectively the precise same. (I have no trunk stories left, except three that I deemed too stupid to circulate. Oh, and two I’ve genuinely lost. I think they disappeared in one fo the computer crashes.)

If at the beginning of my career I had sent out a note saying “This is my short story, and you can buy it for the $3k I know it’s worth” (what I can get from a long short story indie. Keep in mind I still sell them for less to anthologies. It’s just I can reprint them later and average that over five or six years. I’ve also made more from a story first year out, but those are outliers.) I’d never have sold to trad pub. And it’s not because the publishers were “exploiting” my “labor.”

And then there is the tweet one of you (Thank you Ian!) called to my attention this morning. It is a thing of beauty and it perfectly exemplifies the “closed pie” mentality in people educated in Marxian pseudo economics which always transmit a heavy dose of his inherent envy and malice like a viral infection. The link to its being shared is here.

Again, it is so profoundly wrong, it’s not even wrong. To be wrong, it would need a much higher share of contact with reality.

The wrongness starts with his not appreciating that the “immense wealth” of America is not by and large at this moment in the hands of young working people. In fact, our working people are having problems finding A job, let alone one that keeps body and soul together. (This is largely due to too much socialism sewage in the wine barrel.) Then there is the fact that American wealth is not a thing lying on the ground, inhering to the soil, and just existing, waiting for envious Europeans to come steal it.

The idea of finite pie is baked in into his idea that if Europeans could somehow storm America and take our “immense wealth” they’d be equally wealthy, in “fairness” forever. And the brilliant idea that distribution should be “fair” by which I think we’re supposed to understand “equal.”

It makes no sense whatsoever, unless wealth is a) static. So if you steal your “fair share” it is forever fixed. b) finite. Because once you redistribute it, it stays the same forever.

Another “fixed pie” idea involved in that tweet and which is also pure Marxism is the idea that if one region is rich, it causes others to be poor. In this poor sob’s head, he’s being paid less and barely able to afford to live BECAUSE American “corporations” are so rich.

Of course, this also assumes corporations are sort of alien entities, roaming the world, vacuuming up “wealth” which they presumably store in money bins, into which they go for a swim on the regular.

No, think about it. It has to be, because he’s raging at the billions the corporations “have.” Seemingly without realizing corporations are by and large a way to organize to do business. (My corporation, for instance, is right now extending its little bowl and saying if all corporations have billions, it would like its share, please. Heck, it would be quite happy with millions. And considering how bad this year has been because the loooooong book ate my brain, thousands would be kind of nice. (And why have a corporation: If something happens to me it makes it trivially easy for my heirs to continue the business.))

He also doesn’t understand the notional “billions” these corporations have are often in property assets that are in use to produce whatever the profit is the corporation actually pays salaries (and taxes) from. Say a company owns a big Manhattan office. This might be headed to a worth of some beads in another 100 years, but for now at least it’s likely to have a notional (theoretical until they find someone to pay it) value of billions. Then there is the billions invested in research/paying scientists salaries/paying employee salaries/creating new product/marketing new product. etc. etc. ad nauseum. Point being that none of, or a very small portion of a corporations worth is in fixed wealth waiting to to be seized, be it by envious Europeans or our ludicrous governing Junta, which was indoctrinated the same way as the above twit.

Also not mentioned is that the money corporations have is often actually owned by small investors who own part shares of the company. Some young people who are making about as much as the creature above, and from their spare $600 manage to squeeze a couple hundred a month to invest, with the idea that when they’re older and unable to work, they will collect the increased amount of their investment. I know several young people squeezing just such investments by incredible amounts of self-discipline. If you seize the “billions” you are in fact taking their few thousands and rendering them paupers.

So, ultimately what does this person envision, if Europe took everything from America? That Europe would now be rich, and Americans would be poor scrabbling in the dirt?

All supposing we can prevent the Junta from stomping harder on our necks, I can tell you with absolute certainty what the result would be. Within 10 years, Europeans would be scrabbling to survive while America would have “immense wealth” they wished they could come over and steal.

The real difference is in America having a Constitution that — however barely respected now — prevents their ruling class from stomping around stealing everything from the productive people. And (again much curtailed by people who think that socialism is workable) leaving people able to invent, invest and create.

Meanwhile, if the “poors” (I can’t tell you how much I hate that term) of Europe want to make a difference in their livelihood and lifestyle, the easiest method with the biggest result would be to get rid of VAT.

And then, one by one, start cutting off their unproductive, redistributive departments and institutions. Hey, it seems to work for Argentina, despite its having “lost” all its all precious “raw materials.”

Perhaps giving up some of the inefficient and costly “services” like “national health” which are mostly the means of producing ineffective service while enriching bureaucrats might help?

Nah. Never mind. Of course, Marx was right, and if they just seize American wealth, they’ll now be much wealthier forever and ever.

In another world. In which humans aren’t humans, and nothing works as it does here.

Now, excuse me, I have a — metaphorical — pie to bake, so I can acquire the raw materials (in my case? mostly books. And piece of mind) to make many many more pies.

The Slicing Edge of Freedom a Blast from the Past from May 24, 2017

I’m sorry I’m so late with this.  The post at MGC took far longer than I expected.

I started to explain how much more freedom we, who deal in stories and words, have nowadays.  I don’t know if anyone who is not in the business can fully appreciate how much.  It’s so much, in fact, that many in the business still don’t believe it.

I remember circa 98, when no one was buying Darkship Thieves blowing up with something like “I wish writers could just sell their work on the street and at fairs” (I lived in Manitou Springs, then, a small town in the Colorado mountains, with a surprising number of working artists, some of whom are actually very good.  None of them were “known” but they sold and made a living in stalls, store fronts, co-ops and fairs.)

Well, now we can do one better.  We can set up our little stall on line and attract a global audience.  We’re free to write anything, regardless of what “real publishers”TM think of it.  Note for instance how well military science fiction does with the public in general, even though the only publisher who would buy it (for decades) was Baen.  We’re free to have it copyedited or not.  Yeah, some people don’t, and some people aren’t even punished for it.  We’re free to take our books on sale, monetize and get paid, and to work as hard as we want for what we want.

This is not a post about writing, so we’ll leave it at that, but I’ll note there is a reason many of my colleagues are terrified of this development.  They lash out at indie writers, they lash out at anyone suggesting indie writing is an alternative, and they always lash out at Amazon who made all this possible.

That is because freedom is terrifying.

The Bible, which, whatever else it is, is a repository of impressively old traditions and narratives and very accurate on the nature of the walking upright hairless monkeys, says that the Israelites, in the desert, longed to be back in slavery.

I know a lot of my colleagues long for the fleshpots of NY publishing, chains and all.  I also know that after the wall fell the Eastern countries got a number of “backlash communists.”  And I know a lot of people go back to bad marriages of (practical) servitude, rather than walk away.  And that humanity as a whole seems to be trying to crawl back into a caste system in which 90% of the people have no freedom and 100% of the people aren’t as free as we are.

A Libertarian friend of mine thinks this is because people like being slaves; they like servitude.

He is wrong.  It’s not that people love being slaves.  It’s that freedom is scary, because if you’re free you can fail AND YOU ONLY HAVE YOURSELF TO BLAME.

It’s no coincidence that America, arguably the freest country in the world, when it comes to pursuing the avocation you want to pursue and being successful (or not) is also the birth place of SJWs and Micro aggressions.  It’s no coincidence that it’s in America, a country that prizes women so much it’s almost a matriarchy, that women keep insisting they live in a patriarchy and are grossly oppressed.  (All without realizing how much more oppressive even other western countries are. Let alone places where your genitals will be mutilated for the crime of being a girl.)

These things are done, and eternal oppression forever claimed, because humans don’t want to be slaves.  Oh, no.  They want to be free.  Completely free to do whatever they want.  They also want someone to blame as they fail.

A few people have even managed to get themselves into that position, but if you’re not the son in law of someone relatively rich and important, it ain’t gonna happen.

You’re going to have to take your freedom, your failure, and your guilt about your failure, as one single deal.  This is called being an adult.

At one time there used to be much psycho-babble about fear of success.  Frankly I thought — and still think — this is bullsh*t.  Everyone I know who claims a fear of success aren’t terrified of being acclaimed, rich and famous.  No, what they fear is that they’ll succeed just enough for everyone to realize how they failed.  Say, they’ll have a bestselling book, but the websphere will be on fire with word of their horrendous typos, or their ignorance of chemistry or something.

Because success has downfalls.  And being allowed to succeed comes with fear you won’t.  Or that your success will be imperfect, and everyone will make fun of you, or–

Yes, sure, you can try to blame the cat for your failure (my son at five blamed the cat for removing the muffins from the oven and eating one, so why not?)  And you can try to crawl back into a situation where you have an excuse for your failure.

But barring the son in law thing, you can’t have your cake and eat it too.   And no one is REALLY going to believe you’re oppressed for you gender/looks/race in the US today.  Maybe a little picked on, sometimes, for a few people, but not OPPRESSED to the point you can’s succeed.

Adulting sucks.  But it is what you must be, if  you want to have your freedom and eat it too.

Shut up about it, take the bitter with the sweet, shoulder the awesome burden of your freedom and carry on.

As some of you know I watch very little TV. Even very little SF TV. I’ve assumed for QUITE a while this means I’m extensively broken and not normal. I mean my father used to tell people I didn’t watch TV in the same tone that you warn someone your kid has a handicap. It’s not exactly wrong. I work around it just like I work around the driving phobia.

Mostly, if a series makes enough impact, you guys will eventually tell me all the highlights and important points with references over time. But also eventually Dan will be in a hard project — coff, the last five years — which doesn’t leave him mind space to do anything after work, but sit vegetating in front of the TV. These days, with streaming available, he usually catches up on old tv series. All of them. At once. And I sit in the next chair, usually doing blog posts or reading. So, I kind of get a bit of it and some visuals. Sometimes I get enough for the politics to p*ss me off. Other times, as with Star Gate, I get a general impression of it, but would be hard pressed to name a character, much less an episode.

Anyway, for a while there, I’ve heard a quote going around. “The avalanche has already started. It is too late for the pebbles to vote.” – Ambassador Kosh (Vorlon on Babylon 5)” Straczynski J. Michael.

Note, I only figured out it was Babylon 5 when I looked to attribute. I thought it was some commie. (Looks at Hollywood politics, snaps mouth shut.)

You see, there are two versions of history and how it happens. There is the “great man” version of history. And then there is the “popular movement” version of history. I was taught both, because the culture in Portugal is “Great Man” or if you prefer “People are born special and fated to lead and they change history.” And I was raised in the sixties and seventies, and after the revolution it was all Marx all the way down, so I was taught a lot of “The inevitable forces of history, blah.”

Of the two, I’d say the first is more correct. The second is typical Marxist autism, trying to reduce humans to widgets and history to economic pressures. Something like “Given 26 inHg of economic pressure per capita, the people all together, at once, rise and blah blah blah.”

Some of it takes in account things like propaganda which then puts the cart before the horse and assumes Nationalism and Militarism caused WWI, instead of WWI required a ramp up of nationalistic and militarist propaganda. Particular kudos to the idiots who convinced us that fashions that imitated military uniforms led to WWI. Instead of their being inspired from the Napoleonic wars and– (BTW WWI was the LEAST stylish of ALL wars. So no.)

Note I said the first is more correct, not that the first is correct. There needs to be what I’d call the “one guy who had about enough” version of history.

Note even we fall into the Great Man version when talking of the founding fathers. And indeed, they were cultured, and relatively smart and– But the thing is, for their time and place they were only slightly above average. People just thought and studied a lot more, partly because they didn’t have as many distractions, to be fair but also because life was harder, and you needed to be better to survive it.

But to an extent the American revolution happened when a few guys (and gals) had had about enough. It was never the Marxist “if only everyone.” And it was never just great man leading. Apparently 3% engaged in fighting, and they were probably supported by 15%, opposed by double that, and the rest of the people were trying to survive in the maelstrom.

Not that I’m saying we’ll get a second American revolution. That is not where likelihood lies if people don Hawaiian shirts and organize a big luau. Most revolutions consume themselves and end badly.

But there is something building, all over the world. And the quote above keeps coming through my mind.

A friend this week told me that something seems to have changed in Israel — which weirdly has more bleeding hearts than even we do, despite the proximity to danger — with 10/7 and the response to it. Something material. In the past, they would have stopped in response to the usual ginned up “international outrage” about nine months ago. But they’re not.

I told him I think it’s because 10/7 rubbed their noses in the fact that it’s fight or die. And it might be both, but at least you have a chance.

Mind you, for all that, they’re still being civilized people, who aren’t killing indiscriminately and take care not to destroy more than they must. In fact, almost unearthly careful in waging their war. (And brilliant. The page thing. Chef’s kiss.) It makes me think of the motto of the kosher hotdog brand (National Hebrew? I think?) “We answer to a higher authority.” (I prefer them, because I like hotdogs, but most give me heartburn.)

ANYWAY…. The rest of the world doesn’t answer to a higher authority. America sort of does, to the extent we’ve internalized our founding documents. I don’t know how many of us have.

But… bear with me. This is the feeling I get. You can hit me with cudgels later.

For a hundred years, and a little more, the “elites” and “the educated” have been trying to shape a future that made sense with the story in their heads. You know that future as well as I do, because it was the thing of all the early SF: centrally controlled everything by enlightened rulers, with people who are “educated” en mass to all behave like polite automatons. A world government. Humans being almost superfluous while machines do everything for them.

Yes, 1984 and Brave New World were the dark side of this, but most of the books sold it as the desirable thing, or if not desirable inevitable.

Communism — mostly the USSR — piled on top of that, because the ethos suited their politics to the ground.

But the problem is, like communism, none of it works like those fantasies. The “international elites” are not actually educated. They go to important schools that accept them because daddy has money. In fact, most of our “big schools” internationally were taken over by communists very early (There is a reason for this. Psychologically communism appeals to slightly autistic idea people.) They teach, but other than practical things, most of the teaching is not for this particular time line. Or reality. It’s stuff you learn by rote, which lets you signal you were very well educated.

The “International elites” are ultimately rich and connected elites who do not understand even slightly where food comes from, or how a huge, chaotic world keeps functioning. They think they can direct what you eat — eat the bugs! — what you drive — bicycles — and what you own — nothing — without realizing if they inflicted that on the masses their own world would break.

…. And they’ve been running with their program for about 100 years. Listening to the “experts”, reading approved books, and running in possession of bright ideas. (Which are much more dangerous than scissors, if left unchecked.)

Which means right now the world is on fire. If you think we have it bad here, you haven’t looked at the rest of the world beyond the headlines.

I fully expect our government junta to hold on by fraud, because people like them, the delusional elite, have been doing that everywhere in the world. Fraud or force, from Brazil to France to Venezuela.

The problem is that they can hold on, but they can’t do anything functional. At this point, I don’t think they’re even trying to. They know their ideas don’t work, and are breaking everything (“We can’t afford four more years of this- Tim Walz”) but they are trying to stay in power to avoid the reckoning AND to avoid being PROVEN WRONG. Because that means their entire life was in vain. People will do anything to avoid admitting that.

The other problem is that the longer they stay in power, the worse things get, and the more a lot of common guys get close to saying “Screw THAT.”

I think most of the world is really close to a final snap, like what happened in Israel. I think the US is more so, due to our scheduled supposed to be peaceful revolution this November.

The problem with being in this state is that it can last forever or seem to. Look at the last forty years and Israel. But eventually there is something that just snaps it. There always is.

Here, the way I see it, and trust me, I hope I’m wrong — not hoping for any of this — there are two potential breaks and then we tip in the pot.

One, they fraud themselves in, then feel super-confident and do what Brazil or Venezuela have been doing: start randomly rounding up people in batch lots. People who talk against them. People related to people who talk against them. Random people they don’t like, like say Jews (particularly observant Jews) or Catholics, or PTA moms, or homeschoolers, or well, yes, bloggers. But in the end, when you get to the “batch lot” stage these things are always more or less random. (Even in Nazi Germany they swept up non Jews as Jews, and some Jews managed to avoid attention, the same way that they also rounded up random Catholics, gypsies, Poles, etc. etc. etc.) And yes, I’m aware there are people under unjust arrest right now, and that they’ve been arresting pro-life people almost at random. Just not batch lot stuff yet.

It’s just I predict they’ll be even more jumpy if they fraud themselves in this time, partly because they’ll know the REAL numbers. And that’s a heck of a lot of jumpy, considering last time they had barbed wire and National Guard units. So I predict batch lot rounding up AND weaponizing the people they brought in to “demonstrate” and commit violence. Sort of a combination antifa and illegals. Because that scares them, so it will scare us.

If they do that, it will tip in the pot. Not right away, I think. It will take six months for the outrage to penetrate and pile up. And then it tips in the pot.

Or they don’t fraud themselves in, and Trump wins. And they activate their antifa brown shirts and incentivize illegals to cause mayhem. That tips in the pot overnight, because I think the result will be so much like 10/7 in a significant number of town — and I don’t mean just sanctuary cities like NYC or Denver or Seattle or …. — I mean I’m not sure MY town will be safe, because there’s been an increase in obvious third worlders homeless, hanging around.

Keep in mind this doesn’t work as they expect. The third worlders aren’t an army. They’re not even a rabble in arms. They’re a bunch of mutually warring groups. It will be rape and pillage.

And that happens almost immediately if Trump wins.

I suspect the response will be a lot of average guys just losing it, utterly, with the whole “elite” project.

After that…. After that I don’t know.

I suspect that if the US goes up like a Roman candle in that sort of thing, it will carry the world with us. Look at it this way, Israel already changed a lot of us. 10/7 marks a worldwide inflection point. The US will be more so.

If we’re lucky we’ll break the same way Israel did: remaining essentially ourselves, but relentlessly getting rid of the stupidity and evil we’ve tolerated for far too long.

Will we be that lucky? I don’t know. Hence why I don’t wish for any of it. Also, I know, even if we’re lucky, those of us who survive will be different. Call it hardened. Call it bitter. Call it broken. An entire generation will bear scars, and the marks won’t pass away for at least a hundred years.

But–

What I know is that while the quote about pebbles voting is essentially right, it’s also fundamentally wrong.

Take Covid. I drove myself nuts, because I kept trying to find a way to stop the insanity. I couldn’t, of course. Some events are too large for an individual to stop or change.

But I flatter myself I kept a significant number of you sane, and perhaps alive. Not that I was alone in this, and that’s important, too. There were a number of us doing that work. And overall, maybe society came apart less than it would have. It certainly came together again faster than the “elites” expected. And has resisted attempts at locking us down again, etc.

So, the pebbles do have some vote.

There is nothing you can do about the macro event. Oh, vote, for the love of heaven. Even though I think war will happen faster if they don’t fraud themselves in, there is a very narrow chance we’ll escape it. Can we overwhelm the fraud? Probably not. But it’s worth a try given the alternative.

But that probably won’t do enough. We’re caught in things larger than ourselves.

However, we’re not insignificant. Keep yourself sane as possible. Keep yourself healthy as possible. Prepare to look after yourself and those you can help in circumstances that you can barely imagine.

Try to make arrangements to keep in touch with those who matter to you who are further away. Have a place to run to and go to ground if your area is one that goes up in flames.

Most of all, study history. Become as informed as possible about how we got here.

And if needed, if that’s the only hope we have? Teach the children well.

For now, keep clothes and weapons where you can find them in the dark.

Be not afraid. These pebbles ain’t getting ground up.

Two Computers, by Bill Reader

Imagine if you will two computers.

One computer is built in a fuchsia case. One computer is built in a chartreuse case. Every component part of these computers is identical—same CPU, same GPU, same RAM, same motherboard.

But— and now we’ll look at two random examples of computers from the whole nation—the computers are running different operating systems. We will call these operating systems A and B.

Operating system A (OS-A) is a pain in the tail to install. While not impossible to install by yourself on your own computer— or a new one you acquire— it is sufficiently difficult to install that people who wish to do so often contract it out at great expense. Nonetheless, it is technically free. It is also, while not perfect, objectively pretty decent. When you install things on it, the programs generally work with relatively few bugs (not none, but fewer). The computer does what’s asked of it (at whatever pace the CPU is able), updates in a timely fashion, and is less susceptible to computer viruses. The people who maintain operating system A are also reasonably open minded—they’ll adapt good ideas that they like from anywhere. People often accuse people who run it of stealing code, which is a pretty silly accusation because all the code they adapt is likewise open source.

Operating system B (OS-B) is also free, but considerably easier to install. In fact, if you leave your computer in a house with other computers that have OS-B, and do nothing to prevent it, the computer will download and install OS-B by itself. OS-B is also pure misery to run. It’s pure misery even to be around. The more computers in your vicinity run it, the worse your life is. The worse the computers are, too—a special feature of the OS-B is that the more computers around it run OS-B, the harder it is to get rid of, and the worse all the computers run. Programs do not reliably install on it—they often end up corrupted and non-functional because the system doesn’t put much emphasis on parsing data accurately. Indeed, many programs can’t be installed at all— OS-B runs very inefficiently and refuses to even accept many programs. The creators of OS-B, who—unfortunately—maintain the codebase quite aggressively— tend to program computers running it to refuse to accept any program that becomes too popular on OS-A, in order to keep the two operating systems distinct. Despite the constant updates, it is exceedingly poor at maintaining its system integrity. It constantly pushes ads at the user demanding expensive peripherals be installed on it that do nothing to improve function. It actively seeks out things to download that will further destroy its ability to function. And because of this, it is very susceptible to computer viruses, which makes every aspect of its function worse. 

And it happens that OS-A is running in the computer that’s in a chartreuse case, and OS-B is running in the computer that is in a fuchsia case. This is somewhat unsurprising because OS-A tends to more commonly be shipped in computers that have a chartreuse case, in our world. There are complex historical reasons for this, but they’re mostly irrelevant. Why? Because the case, and the software, are totally distinct. The internal hardware being identical, you can install OS-A as easily on a computer in a fuchsia case as a computer in a chartreuse case, provided that the computer is not in a house full of OS-B, which will try to override it very hard. Sure, if you had a gun to your head and were forced to guess about the OS on a fuchsia computer, your best move would be to guess that it’s running OS-B… but it wouldn’t totally guarantee your survival.

Businesses very disproportionately have computers that have chartreuse cases— because, as we said, that’s what OS-A ships in most of the time. That doesn’t mean they have anything against computers with fuchsia cases that also run OS-A— when they find one that can run the programs they need for a price they can afford, they’re all too happy to buy one. Most business people don’t really give a crap about the color of the case because they’re not getting the computer to look at it, they’re getting the computer to run the programs they need.

But—

Some people with high opinions of themselves exist, who think of themselves as computer equity advocates. They fancy themselves nice, noble, brave, and very intelligent, and the last of these is particularly funny, since their understanding of computers is nearly non-existent.

It is so superficial, in fact, that they don’t really understand the difference between the color of the computer case, the hardware inside, and the operating system that it runs.

Ignorant as they are, they are more than capable of causing a lot of trouble.

For example, they have noticed that businesses—and the offices of the wealthy, and much of government, and really anywhere where people actually need to get things done rather than just look decorative— have a disproportionate tendency to use chartreuse computers.

Since they themselves get next to nothing productive done, and barely have any concept of getting productive things done, they’re not really capable of appreciating why this might be. They have instead concluded that the only possible reason for this is because the manufacturers of chartreuse computers are engaging in unfair market manipulation.

They support this by saying there cannot be any meaningful difference between fuchsia and chartreuse computers. T

hey point out that everyone reasonable agrees that the two types of computers have the same hardware. They cite examples of many fuchsia computers being used to accomplish important things, arguing that logically, if any fuchsia computers can accomplish this, all fuchsia computers can accomplish this.

People who are computer literate notice that these examples usually fall into one of three categories: a fuchsia computer running a completely custom OS or totally different foreign OS, unlike most on the consumer market; a fuchsia computer from a long time ago running what was effectively OS-A, which fact is totally lost on the computer equity advocates; or a fuchsia computer running OS-B and doing things that are objectively bad, which the computer equity advocates are pretending are good.

At all events, despite the problem existing mostly in their head, computer equity advocates are very quick, and vocal, in demanding it be solved.

They have demanded that people who have chartreuse computers be punished, since obviously they must have some unfair advantage. Things that have been demanded include that people running chartreuse computers pay a big fee for doing so.

Other people demand that the number of chartreuse computers in the world simply must be reduced, or the number of fuchsia computers increased. A very few slightly more technically savvy people, in that they are aware of what an OS is, demand that we stop installing the “chartreuse OS” on computers. This is somewhere between confusing and infuriating to anyone who can actually see what’s going on, since 1) there is no “chartreuse OS”, there is only OS-A, and 2) the reason it’s more popular is because it works better, and so they recognize that essentially people demanding this want computers, in general, to work less well. Confronted with this, computer equity advocates demanding “chartreuse OS” not be installed say that “fuchsia OS” would work just as well if only “chartreuse OS” didn’t exist and the people using it weren’t crowding out all the people running “fuchsia OS”.

Initially they agreed to proposals to have computers evaluated exclusively based on their performance statistics, since they both had equivalent hardware. But they were subsequently shocked and alarmed to see that chartreuse computers were still being used at just a high a rate in all the places they wanted fuchsia computers used. Subsequently they performed endless benchmarks to figure out what went wrong. To their chagrin they found that the fuchsia computers were consistently underperforming. Since most literally cannot conceive of an operating system, and the few who can can’t see it as a distinct concept from the computer hardware, which they likewise cannot distinguish from the computer case, this was puzzling in the extreme. But after a long while, they finally cracked it.

Clearly, the benchmarks themselves had been set up in a way that detected fuchsia computer cases and made the benchmarks run worse in computers that have them. Or maybe chartreuse computers interfered actively with the fuchsia computers to make them run worse. Probably both.

Moreover, they reckoned, this was a pretty far reaching conspiracy, as it was reproduced in thousands of different ways, across computers in a host of applications and settings. Clearly the only explanation was that in every case, the metrics themselves were built to disfavor computers with fuchsia cases. Of course, that would mean that tens of thousands if not millions of people were complicit in this conspiracy who would never have any reason to be, so the only explanation had to be that they were subconsciously participating in it. So they proposed a radical idea: break all the benchmarks so they don’t mean anything anymore. And tell people with chartreuse computers what bad people they are constantly, for doing all that subconscious slowing-down of fuchsia computers. They reckoned that, if no meaningful information is available to differentiate computers, and chartreuse computer owners are constantly being shamed about being part of a conspiracy so secret even they didn’t know they were in it, that should take care of the problem. Statistically, all other things being equal, the numbers should stabilize. And having determined in their own heads that the most important thing is to get equal numbers of fuchsia and chartreuse computer cases into every corner of society, this seems perfectly logical to them. A great many people—literally thousands of technical professionals and people experienced with computers— have tried to explain to them how unbelievably stupid this is. But the response of computer equity advocates is to accuse them of being in on the worldwide computer color conspiracy and then tell them to “educate themselves”.

They have even demanded that businesses be forced to buy equivalent numbers of fuchsia and chartreuse computers. Many less fuchsia computers are manufactured than chartreuse computers, so this is already difficult to comply with, and only a subset of fuchsia computers run operating system A. When companies are nonetheless forced to comply with this nonsensical order, they have to put all the computers that run operating system B in places where they can’t hurt anything. Various auditors will then come through and complain—to the exasperation of the people who run these businesses—that the fuchsia computers aren’t being allowed to do anything important, and the company is just checking a box, which of course it is.

Lately, because basic facts about numbers have started to catch up with the less catastrophically dim of them, they’ve been trying to hastily import large numbers of fuchsia computers so that it actually makes statistical sense to get even numbers of both computers, or preferably, more fuchsia than chartreuse. These computers don’t even run operating system B—they run operating system C, a basic OS that’s been around since roughly the dawn of humanity, has next to no features, can’t run almost any programs, and is fully incompatible with any of the modern systems around it. It’s not so much susceptible to viruses as being, itself, indifferentiable from malware, harming everything around it. Virtually anything is better than operating system C. OS-A is effectively the product of thousands of years of development to make something less awful than OS-C. In a way, operating system C is actually why it’s so hard to install A— the critical libraries for OS-C ship pre-installed in the BIOS of most motherboards. Not that anyone is allowed to say this, because computer equity advocates—geniuses that they are—know what your real problem is with operating system C.

Your problem is that it’s mostly shipped in a fuchsia case.

Casist.

And though all of the above is just a fanciful little story, as you have of course guessed, OS-A and OS-B are very real. You might know some people who run operating system A—it’s very popular among, say, upwardly mobile Asians and Indians in the United States. In fact most people successful beyond a certain degree for any reason other than luck are usually running some variant of it. You probably know of some people who run operating system B too— the original source code traces back at least to poor white southerners of the civil war era, but lots of other people run it now, unfortunately. It’s got a very active community that’s constantly cosmetically modifying it, but it’s been essentially the same old codebase for about a century and a half. About all they’ve kept is a variant of the southern accent—for old times sake one supposes.

And yes, some people will point out that in real life, there are the equivalent of people who are as violently in favor of chartreuse computers as the computer equity advocates are of fuchsia ones.

 But they are an incredibly tiny minority, and the only people who don’t recognize that are the real-life computer equity advocate types— that is to say, emotionally manipulative, psychotically paranoid gaslighters, who pursue ill-considered ends by means as ruthless as they themselves are ignorant.

They don’t make for the most reliable narrators, is what I’m saying. You’ll notice you almost never meet chartreuse boosters. But you hear about people faking being them pretty regularly, because there aren’t even enough to be an effective strawman. Moreover, and ironically, the reason real life computer equity advocates hate chartreuse boosterism is because, in their mind, they’re supporting the wrong color, not because the color is unimportant—as, in fact, it is. The truth is, they’re all idiots, both making a category error and arguing over whose interpretation of it is correct. Neither will ever win, because both are wrong.

I’ll say one last thing in closing—for the sake of argument above the hardware is noted to be the same. Someone out there—granted, probably a chartreuse booster, but never mind—is going to try to have an argument about that, so I’ll explain in advance why they’re being stupid. That way they— well, more likely the trolls pretending to be one of them— can be missing an explicitly stated point rather than an implied one.

Yes, as in real computers, the range of hardware in humans runs the gamut. For humans in the same general culture, though, most people of any color will fall in a range perfectly capable of running OS-A or OS-B equally well. The only people genuinely too dumb to run OS-A are people with cognitive impairment so severe they’re more like smart animals than dumb humans; such people are rare, and however much you rage, there is no entire race, however malnourished or mal-educated, on hardware that broken.

Many newly freed slaves were both, and yet were solidly on OS-A. It’s taken decades of intentionally predatory policies, exclusively by the Democratic party— first in the form of formal discrimination, then in the form of a welfare “safety net” that looks much more like a spider web, then again as paying their descendents to tear apart their own family structures, for OS-B to become so prevalent. In life, you’ll meet slow people on OS-A and quick people on OS-B—hopefully not too many of the latter as they can be extremely dangerous. Their status within whatever community they’re in will often reflect the underlying hardware, but where they assort in society depends a lot more on their operating system and what they install on it.

There have been many men with unexceptional CPUs who achieved fortune by dint of the right software. There have been many men with exceptional CPUs who ran software too dysfunctional and incompatible with society to ever achieve anything much, and certainly nothing good.

Your car will not go faster because it’s painted red, your computer will not be more capable if the case is chartreuse, and you are neither an intrinsically better or worse person because you tan better. What makes you a better or worse person is your software.

And yes, some software is better than other software. It’s a blindly obvious fact to everybody who uses a computer with multiple programs that do the same thing, even the real life computer equity advocate types. They just get selectively obtuse when talking about software running in human heads because they’re mediocre people who want to feel special for bravely fighting against bad guys… and to fit in with their friends. The trouble is, we really need our human network to work in real life, and we can’t afford their designer ignorance anymore.

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 SAM AND SHARI ROBB (EDITORS): Tales From the Wood: Stories in the Key of Tull, Volume 2

Jethro Tull has an amazing discography. Spanning everything from folk music to heavy metal over 50 years, their music has inspired generations of artists of all types – including authors. This anthology of speculative fiction pays tribute to that inspiration. Just as the music of Jethro Tull spans genres, so do these stories.

Come join us around the fire for stories of all manner of witches, wizards, dragons, and fae beings both light and dark as these bards bring you their Tales from the Wood.

FROM MOE LANE: Tales From The Fermi Resolution: Vol. 2: Lights in the Darkness

“Moe has a bunch of great stories in this collection, including the best response to that Le Guin story I’ve ever seen.”
– Karl K. Gallagher, author of Torchship Trilogy and the Fall of the Censor series.

Return to the world of the Fermi Resolution! Ten stories of a post-apocalyptic North America, gone mad with magic. Adventure abounds, from the treachery-haunted ruins of Michigan to the magic-kissed streets of Cin City! Action and derring-do, on land and sea – well, all right, the ‘sea’ part is actually a bay. But there are sea monsters fighting elvish privateers! Bears with hats! Orcs attending operas! Several flavors of mad cultists! Nine hundred years of patient heroism, all to protect those precious lights in the darkness.

This book includes the first three chapters of the upcoming Tom Vargas novel BANSHEE BEACH.

FROM HOLLY CHISM: Light Up the Night

Dane Crockford is tired. Tired of the green energy crapping out and leaving his wife Rose gasping for breath when their air conditioning dies, tired of trying to hide his use of his own solar panels from the nationalized electrical company, and tired of worrying about his daughter and son-in-law, trapped in an abusive indenture program to pay off their student loans. He’s not the only one, either. Everyone in his home town is in a similar situation, many of them with their children doing dangerous jobs without pay to offset crippling student debt. So when his grandson Toby accidentally discovers an energy generation method that isn’t wholly owned by the federal government, he jumps on the possibility of building something that works, in spite of and around the federal monopoly.

But what the monopoly doesn’t realize is that their grip on Dane, and on his home town, is far less secure than they think. When they disconnect his house from the power grid, they have nothing to hold over him, to force him to work for small rebates on his monthly bill. The utility has unleashed the power of a cranky old man with a rare skill, and they’ve got no idea that they’ve tossed the pebble that starts an avalanche.

FROM JAMES TOTTEN: Annie’s Got A Gun: A Pole Dance Aviation Short Story

Ukraine is becoming a very dangerous place. Suicide drones attack civilians and infrastructure with impunity after all of the $100k surface to air missiles are gone and the “flack tracks” run out of bullets. In a horror show of a war, it’s time for some good old American ingineuity. Pole Dance Aviation, a Private Military Company, is established by its charismatic owner Jason Kane to assist with counter drone operations. Flying highly modified Cold War airframes, PDA gets down to the nitty gritty of shooting suicide drones out of the sky far cheaper than launching missiles that cost thousands of dollars a shot to kill hundred dollar drones. What happens if a PDA aircraft gets shot down? Send in the downed aircraft crew recovery platoon, The Shitheads, and they will fast rope into hell to get the pilots out. No fight is too tough and no enemy to too bad to keep the Shitheads from doing the deed and getting the pilots back. The Shitheads are supported by a cast of character’s, planes with call signs like Spy and Fat Amy, pilots named Axel and GO Juice, and leaders named Turtle and Mikey (that pre-workout fueled fight junkie will eat ANYTHING). Come along for the nonstop thrill ride set in the near future with headlines ripped out of tomorrow’s news feed. Oh, did I mention, Annie… yeah, she is there too, and she got a gun!! Mount up for grueling action as the Shitheads take on all comers in this high tech fight to the death on tommorow’s battlefield in Eastern Ukraine.

FROM I. M. LERNER AND CATHERINE OSORNIO: The Hidden Entrance (Under the Staircase – An Economic Adventure Series for Kids Book 2)

On a hunch, he pressed down on the ledge, first on Hubris and then on Nemesis.
Crrrr….
The click-clackety sound of moving gears creaked loudly on the other side of the wall.
Slowly the bookshelf slid aside, revealing a dark hallway.

After spending the summer discovering the Under the Staircase Society, Nate, Maya, and Maggie are finally back at school. But while Nate would be happy puttering in his workshop and tinkering with his 3D printer, he can’t stand by as their beloved Apprenticeship Program comes under attack. The discovery of The Road to Serfdom sparks a chain of events they could never have expected. From Cipher Wheels to Cicero, secret desks to hidden passages, the kids must solve the mystery…before it’s too late!

Under the Staircase® Books A mystery and adventure series that teaches treasured values: personal responsibility, individual liberty, and economic freedom.

Psst! Parents & Teachers: The second book in the series introduces a variety of Friedrich Hayek’s economic concepts—individualism and collectivism, the knowledge problem, the fatal conceit, and other topics—using examples from kids’ day-to-day lives in school, with friends, and in familiar situations.

FROM MARY CATELLI: Journeys And Wizardry

Drunken mermaids — a clan cursed to become crows — a magic book that even the Nameless Necromancer fears — and more in this reprint collection of thirteen stories and a poem.

FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: Ice Storm

Everywhere Evangeline looks, a thin coating of ice makes objects gleam in the sunlight. However, the beauty proves deceptive, for it hides a deadly secret, one only she can recognize.

In her youth, Evangeline had aspired ot master the powerful magics of her world. Those dreams died the day her Gift awakened uncontrolled and plunged her into a vision of a full fleet battle. The Admiral’s Gift will not be denied, and for Evangeline there was no choice but to trade her mage’s robes for Navy blue.

Now she is faced with an enemy she cannot fight save by magic. Except those who bear the Admiral’s gift are forever barred from working magic.

FROM KAREN MYERS: The Visitor, And More: A Science Fiction Short Story Bundle from There’s a Sword for That

A Science Fiction Story Bundle from the collection There’s a Sword for That

THE VISITOR – Felockati is anchored to his permanent location underwater and misses the days of roaming his ocean world freely.

But something new drops out of the sky and widens his horizons — all the way to the stars.

YOUR EVERY WISH – Stealing the alien ambassador’s dagger is a sure thing for Pete — just what he needs to pay off his debts.

Until he starts talking to it. There has to be a way to get something for himself out of the deal. Has to be.

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: SWEET

Quite obviously the promo post will be tomorrow. Sorry.

Thing is, you see, there’s this book. It’s 212 thousand words. I … It might be the weirdest thing I ever wrote, and it has kidnapped my mind for the last several months.

This morning, when I woke up, I thought I was fifty pages from the end. It was just about fifty pages from the end. I just finished … an hour ago. So maybe now I can go back and finish Witch’s Daughter and Winter’s Prince. Maybe even during the time in Portugal. (Yes, while getting the wedding ready to go and all, because, why not?)

Posting here will be irregular and all over the place (more than this) while I’m in Portugal. And instapundit posting will also be weird, the first 2 weeks of October, because we’ll be in Portugal.

However, this too shall pass and posting and book writing will resume.

And the promo post will be tomorrow, yes.

Again sorry. I had to finish the book. It’s a monster, in case you wonder what took me so long. It weighs in at 212000 words and change.

And now to revise. So my editor can get it.

When I did my fundraising in July, one of you sent me a litter robot. (The picture above is AI generated, because the box is under a cabinet in the bathroom and devilish to take a picture of.)

I don’t remember who sent it, so this is my thank you.

At the time I thought it was a strange gift, even knowing I’m cat-infested, and perhaps a little too expensive, so that I was cringing because I do that.

To clarify we used to have two litter robots. They’re very convenient, because they allow us to take vacations or whatever and let our friends cat sit without having to deal with the mess. They’re also very good for someone like me, who is ADD AF and sometimes simply forgets that cat boxes exists, because she’s writing a book. I can just empty them once a week, and we’re fine.

The problem is the litter robot — my husband calls it alternately death star and eye of sauron — on the right got weird, so I ended up having to smack it over and over again. And sometimes, even so, it would not work. Eventually I got tired and got a replacement, which, unfortunately, due to tight finances was a chineseum one. when we acquired the kittens, I got another Chineseum one to supplement.

They are okay, or so I thought till today. However, they need to be emptied twice a week, and for reasons I couldn’t figure out, there was a smell in the cat box bathroom.

Today I finally had the time to put the new litter robot in rotation. That means I took the Chineseum box apart to store, in case I needed it later.

And that’s when I found out it’s been throwing litter and poop into the places under the tub where I had to take it apart with a screwdriver to reach.

This means when I have the money I’ll get a second litter robot to replace the second Chineseum box.

But until then, I really, really, really want to thank the person who sent it, and whose name I unfortunately can’t remember. (I’ll have to search comments to find it.)

Sometimes we don’t know we need gifts, but we do.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Our idea of the past has no relationship to reality. Specifically, our idea of “past generations.”

A few years ago, I accidentally found myself reading a page where some young women were talking about Christmas gifts. One of them was going on about how she was buying her mother — of all things — a vibrator. Because she thought her — Catholic, married, about my age — mother needed to find out that vibrators existed, and how wonderful they were. (Because her mother specifically had told her she didn’t want one.)

I was so shocked at the utter stupidity and callousness it took me a long time to realize that beyond this young woman being an utter and complete brat, she was utterly deluded.

Look, someone my generation could not have avoided knowing that vibrators existed. Nor could she have arrived at the conclusion she didn’t want one without pushing back on a lot of Freudian nonsense about avoiding frustration, and how terrible celibacy was for your psyche.

My generation came of age in the early eighties. We were taught by boomers in school. Our only chance to avoid having sex pushed on us was to be alone in a dark room and never interact with other humans.

Look, the boomers who came of age in the sixties and early seventies are now either grandparent age, or great-grandparent age or… well, dead.

Every time in a movie that someone talks about how shocked their parents or grandparents will be about pre-marital sex, or divorce, or some other “innovation” I wonder if the parents or grandparents were somehow transported forward in time from the 1800s or are perhaps Amish.

It’s not just sex, either. They will have the weirdest ideas, like that grandma never heard of communism. Or grandma never questioned the governmental organization. Or grandma–

Look, guys: Robert A. Heinlein was roughly the same age as MY grandmother. And in his twenties, he hit the artistic scene in NYC which was a wild sexual frontier. He also was a Fabian socialist (he got better.) And he had all sorts of wild ideas that curl the hair of young whipper snappers. If Heinlein were alive now, he would be 117. If he’d had a kid early, his kid would be my dad’s age. I could be his granddaughter. And I myself, had I reproduced in my early twenties, and had my kids had kids in their twenties, could now have a kid of marriageable age.

If you look at pictures of hippies in the sixties and seventies? They are now grandparents and great-grandparents.

So why do we have this weird picture of the past?

Mostly the media. And the fact that people who want to feel like they’re young, hip and rebellious keep forever rebelling against the same things that are already dead.

You know what’s rebellious? Refusing to buy the vibrator. Refusing to assume that abstaining from irresponsible sex is injurious to you. Refusing to believe that communism will work this time, if only the right people are in charge. Refusing the follow the insanity and the disproven myths of the last century is not old-fashioned or ignorant.

It is instead genuinely rebellious innovative and dangerous. It risks your career and sometimes your life.

On the other hand, it shocks the stodgy idiots who call themselves “progressive.” And it will make you feel warm and tingly.

So get out there, you wild person, you. Be traditional. Be uptight. Be monogamous. Be whatever the heck you want to be.

And cock a snook at the naive kids who think they are shocking us.

Sorry guys. It’s been a very weird month of so, and today (9/18)I just ran dry on blogs. I really need to try to finish the book tomorrow!

A few tie-offs on the fundraiser: A few of you requested an answer, one of you by mail. I will try to get back to you when we get back from Portugal on October 15th.

By now we’ve deposited every check. If you haven’t got notice of that, we didn’t receive it. (Our post office can be flaky.)

If there’s something I promised and haven’t done, please let me know. Other than, you know, finish a bunch of books which I haven’t, because the book I need to finish tomorrow stole my brain. I’ll try to do another reading for substack tomorrow. (And that one will be posted for free.)

Right now I just need to go to bed and hopefully actually sleep.

Feel free to tell me about why we’d send a racoon to space…