Recently, in a conversation between friends, the hypothesis was floated: what if all the burning farms, derailed trains, crop failures, etc. etc. etc. etc. ad scary nauseam aren’t really enemy action, but more a competency crisis.

As in these things happen not because big-bad is plotting against us, but because no one knows how to do the things they purportedly do anymore. Some kind of know, but they are hampered, slow, and sometimes hemmed in by counterproductive regulation or the result of previous “strokes of genius” decisions that broke the system.

I’m not going to bore anyone with what I know to be a massive crisis of competency plus inherited factors breaking ability to function in the field. I already did that at Mad Genius Club this morning, and am not unpacking the whole thing again.

But here’s the thing: All of us can live without a functioning fiction writing/selling market. Maybe not as pleasantly/happily, at least for those of us addicted to reading, but we can survive. We have old books to re-read, and if we get really desperate we can write our own fanfic.

It’s another thing when you talk of transportation or medicine, or farming, or– Well, everything else.

I have friends and fans in a lot of places. And almost everyone’s story is of being caught in the middle of a system where nobody knows or can do much of anything. It’s all the way the cogs and bureaucracy move. And the way they move is completely divorced from what needs done, or what anyone knows how to do.

To give an example: Suppose you were hired to haul buckets from a well. But when you actually get the job, you find out, no. Because of inherited systems, and what your superiors expect, you’re supposed to climb down the wall, hand over hand, and bring up water by the cupfull. And there are regulations in the works to make that by the spoonfull. However, you’ll be fully held to account if you can’t provide the amount of water the company is contracted for. You. Personally.

So, you do what you can. You fudge the books. On paper, you’re getting all this water up. Where the water goes no one knows, every one down stream (pardon the pun) from you does the same.

If this sounds like the soviet system? It is. It’s just that the directives don’t come directly and traceably from the government. (Though under the infestation of Bidentia they increasingly do.) Instead, they come from “experts” “scientists” “Studies” “marketing gurus.” And sometimes they are curtailed or made worse by agencies and regulations.

Yes, the managerial or worse “expert” class is the same that furnishes government. These are not your friends, are not meant to be your friends, and are convinced they know much more than you do.

What they know in fact is “how to manage.” But it’s not how to manage anything. They know theory of management (or whatever) derived from no reality (mostly from the writings of Marx, if you dig a little) and pushed ALL THE WAY DOWN.

It’s like — exactly like — being run by “experts” who memorized the Little Red Book. It might please those in power, but it has nothing to do with accomplishing the actual job in front of you.

Part of this has to do with colleges. Remember all those student demonstrations of the 60s? If you’re like me, and didn’t hit college till the eighties or younger, you might think these are, as the movies show, all anti-war and for civil rights, and all that jazz.

Unspoken to any of us is the fact that half of these demonstrations were to DUMB DOWN THE CURRICULUM. To demand easier grading. And social factors taken into account. And to “update” to “relevant things.”

The idea being that we were in a sort of an year zero and anything else, in the long storied glories of Western civ no longer counted, except for us to declare ourselves superior to it.

Hence, Liberal arts majors who don’t know Latin or classical history (or really any history except maybe ‘history of pop music’ and that watered down.) And economists who don’t understand the basics of economics (hello, AOC), etc. etc. etc.

It gets worse from there.

My own job ad hoc and has more or less always been self taught. But the degree I have is the closest thing to preparation for it. (If you ignore the languages part and look at the literature.) What this means is that I had to unlearn all my training before I became even passably competent.

Again, my job is non-essential. But I hear the same story from everyone Either being taught the “current thing” which is actually wrong, or being taught relatively correct things, but not what came before, so there are holes in your knowledge you don’t even know are there and don’t find out until you trip and fall headfirst into them. If you survive, you start learning. But sometimes…. well, there’s a fire or a derailment.

Now imagine that at every step of the way. Every. Step. Of. The. Way.

The problem is not that we have so many fires and destruction of infrastructure. The problem is that we’re averting maybe 9 in ten through sheer stupid luck and inertia. Which won’t last forever.

A friend was bitching about a newly-laid down road, which already had potholes. This is sort of emblematic of our situation.

My generation, and I say this as a studious kid who learned everything she could, was half taught. I’m still filling in holes in my knowledge, both of routine everyday things relating to the household, and of my job and how to do it. I’m not alone in this. I’m 60.

But I know, from reading, that my father’s generation was already, for whatever reason half-prepared. Which means I’m more like a quarter prepared. And the kids…

Well, I saw what they were teaching mine which amounted to making it impossible for them to learn anything real. So I taught them as much as I could around/over/under the school. This means they’re good on the basics. But I didn’t do their professional training. They’re trying to do that over/around/despite the schools/system. Yeah….

So, what we have is a crisis of competency. Some of it might be the end result of what happens in a top-down system, including education.

And some is the results of that maleducation. Sometimes I think the only thing preventing a total crash is that people are working later and later. That at this point that means my generation is holding up the tent is horrifying, because I know how badly prepared we are.

Ladies, gentlemen and cats — Indy is lying across my wrists and biting my knuckles as I type. Sometimes he rolls across the keyboard. It’s not why this is so late, but it’s not helping — we’re in trouble.

We keep waiting for the adults to come in and rescue us. We are the adults. See that white horse? Get on it and ride to the rescue.

Or in other terms: it is our honor and our very great privilege to be the generation with our butts in the bear trap in the crucial place at the crucial time.

You know where you’re weak and where your system of work is absurd. I know you’re tired. But you can’t say “apres moi le deluge.” It’s the future of humanity at stake. Not just the west, not just civilization. If we fall, humanity falls, and I don’t know when and if we climb again.

Learn, learn, learn. Become aware of the holes, and fill them. And teach, teach teach. Yeah, yeah, the children are the future. Only they’re now middle aged, and the future presents itself lost and uneducated. Go fix that.

Do it now. We might not have tomorrow. With incompetence winning this war, we’re skating over the abyss by our lucky charms.

And luck is an unreliable mistress.

The Antidote for the End of the World as We Know It
By Cedar Sanderson

Without hope, the human race perishes.

The first time I wrote that, I followed it with a bit of mental shorthand and got a raised eyebrow, which made me realize what I’d done. So it’s not ‘Without hope, the human race ceases to exist, because who has children without hope?’ as that’s an easy fallacy. Bad Cedar, no cookie.

It’s all too easy to have a child without hope. Although I suppose you could argue that even the very act of procreation is itself a statement of hope, if no more than hope of fleeting pleasure. And in the United States it is far too easy to eliminate a child if you despair. However, the eyebrow made me backtrack to unpack what I was thinking.

Without hope, you cannot raise a decent human being. Without hope, the child is feral, almost animal, and the human race cannot exist if we all devolve into animals. Which is not to say that I think this is our ultimate fate as humans, at all. Like our kind hostess, I am a peddler of hope.

We must have hope, or why live at all, much less bring the next generation into the world? We already see the product of despair and nihilism in the coming population collapse. Too many people have internalized the hopelessness they were taught, and choose not to have children. There is hope, but you can’t force it onto someone. It’s not as easy as walking into a dark room and opening the curtains wide to let the sunshine in. They have to draw the blinds of their own souls up and see what the world holds for them, with flowers and rain and all the wonders of the universe. Limitless hope, if only they will open their eyes and see it in front of them.

I, personally, am hopeful for the next generation. Not only because I am a mother, but because I know mothers who are expecting, and at least two of those are lovely young women who joyfully lean into motherhood. With two such, and their supportive husbands at their sides, gazing starry-eyed into the future? Humanity has a chance. I shall do my small supports where I can, with a little gift for babies, but more, if I’m close enough, the tangible supports of a meal, an offer to sit so the parents can get out to refresh their enthusiasm for one another. I’m past having children (and glad of it, four lovely humans are enough for me) but I can make sure the next generation is given hope enough that they can carry on past when I’m no longer around to talk about why hope is so essential.

This is something you can do, you know. On the internet, it’s much less of a tangible ‘here’s a casserole, and paper plates so you don’t have to wash up, and the casserole is in a disposable pan so you can just rest and not have any care while you fuel your body’ and more of an intangible but nonetheless important role of encouragement. You’re doing the right thing, young Mama, or you, new and terrified Papa. I know you feel like you’re doing it all wrong and where the heck are the adults, but I know you’re doing just what you need to do. You’re loving your children. You’re loving each other. The specifics? Not so important. Remotely, a support system to listen when you need a place to blow up, or cry, or ask very specific questions about life (why is the baby’s poo green?!) can help. In person, that’s even better. So here’s what I’ll challenge you with – because I know and love the comment section here – start making friends in real life, not just here on the ‘net.

Making friends is very hard. I know this. Oh, how I know this. Like most of you, I was an Odd and I was raised Oddly. A military brat, homeschooled, moving every few years (more often, at some times, as I had 19 addresses by the time I was 18) all over the North American continent, it’s a miracle I ever learned to make friends at all. In a way, I didn’t. I had to move a thousand miles two years ago so I would have IRL support. It was worth it, even if it took all our savings and dipped us into the red. I’m not saying that’s what you have to do – some of you cannot do that. What you have to do is to get out of your bubble. You might be scoffing that you live in an area where there’s no one else like you. Possible, but unlikely. Far more likely you live in an area where it’s a full-blown quest to find them. First thing? Let it be known in your ‘net groups that you want to plan a get-together. Find a location. No budget? Find a park. Set a time. And then… show up. You have hope, that others will come too. Don’t know what to do once you do show up? Well, you might try sitting and writing. Introverts, gather and ignore one another! Even so, there’s power in being in the same space.

It’s going to feel weird. That’s ok. You lovely weirdos, embrace the power of mutual strangeness. Remember – you’re on a quest and the treasure you seek is hope. Gaining friends along the way is the way to generate that hope. Mission: Mutual Support.

The next hardest thing? Do it again. Reach out, pull someone else into your little band of quirks and peculiarities. Play a game together at a table, and laugh. Have fun. The point of this is to find people who spark joy in you. If they don’t spark joy? Then don’t have them in your life, or if you must (blood family…) then keep them on the other side of sharp boundaries. Rediscover play, find people you can debate with, who sharpen your mind, steel on steel, even if it’s only with a raised eyebrow emoji.

Then, you’ll know you are contributing to the longevity of the human race, restoring a sense of wonder to the universe, and that… that’s fulfillment, right there. Be present with your friends, online and offline. Be an encouragement. That’s how to help someone open up their soul to hope again. Children are born hopeful, from the first breath they draw in, so disappointing they wail in protest. And yet, they take another and another, and then there is warmth and sweet milk and hope blooms. And in those children, there is the hope for humans, that we endure.

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 KAREN MYERS: On a Crooked Track: A Lost Wizard’s Tale

SETTING A TRAP TO CATCH THE MAKERS OF CHAINED WIZARDS.

A clue has sent Penrys back to Ellech, the country where she first appeared four short years ago with her mind wiped, her body stripped, and her neck chained. It’s time to enlist the help of the Collegium of Wizards which sheltered her then.

Things don’t work out that way, and she finds herself retracing a dead scholar’s crooked track and setting herself up as a target to confirm her growing suspicions. But what happens to bait when the prey shows its teeth?

In this conclusion to the series, tracking old crimes brings new dangers, and a chance for redemption.

FROM E. L. LYONS: Starlight Jewel: Gifts of the Auldtree, First Book

The human city of Minalav is renowned for its lavish balls, where nobles bring wealth from distant lands to the Starlight Palace, to be romanced—and robbed—by the half-human hybrids who live below the city. The wealthy guests leave without their treasure, and with no memory of their evening—except the unforgettable feelings that bring them back, season after season. But the magic of Minalav is built on dark secrets and lies.

Axly, a hybrid assassin and seductress-thief, will do anything to protect her human half-brother. The path of blood and chaos she carves will tip the precious balance of Minalav, and the world around it.

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 PAM UPHOFF: Special Agent (Fall of the Alliance)

A Novella about events before the Fall of the Alliance

Konstantin Aslanov has to split his time between his job at the Bureau of Intelligence and partnering with his wife in their horse show business. So while Ninochka is winning in the show ring, Kon is off investigating.

Because something odd is happening in the multidimensional universe.

FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: A Hymn for Those Who Fall Forever

Endings always hurt, but Vitali Grigorenko never expected a nightmare in orbit.

Assigned to command the last flight of the orbiter Baikal, Vitali had started the mission in a nostalgic mood. That went out the airlock when he saw the body tumbling through space just beyond the flight deck windows. A body in NASA blue, not Russian tan.

Now he’s trying to get to the bottom of a murder in space, and his own country’s space program as much a hindrance as a help. It’s becoming clear that politics is involved, on both sides of what used to be the Iron Curtain, and he’s going to need to go clear to the top.

A short story of the Grissom timeline.

FROM SCOTT JONES: Hero Complex: A Thomas Cole Book

After ten years and fifteen combat deployments overseas Ex Army Ranger Thomas Cole is living a simple, peaceful life. But when a woman from his past, a woman he once loved, asks him to use his Special Operations training and skills to help her, he reluctantly sets aside his quiet life. What begins as a favor leads Tom to stolen drugs, dead bodies, meth dealers and White Supremacist, sending him down a path of death and danger with no turning back.

FROM LIANE ZANE: The Covert Guardian

Prequel to the Elioud Legacy series

Every hero starts somewhere. She’s going to take the fast track from student to trained covert operative.

Six weeks ago, Olivia Markham testified in the grueling murder trial of her cousin Emily’s killer. When her boyfriend Jamie surprises Olivia with a trip to Ibiza, party island of the world, her family and friends urge her to go. After all, Emily had been her best friend, the one she’d planned to room with at Brown University her freshman year.

Olivia gets her chance to let loose—only not in the way anyone could foresee.

What was supposed to be a vacation dancing and drinking on the beach trying to move on from her cousin’s death turns into a nightmare terrorist attack instead. As men with automatic weapons and knives move through screaming, swimsuit-clad, and drunken tourists, Olivia can’t flee. She has to do something. Even if it kills her. So she stops and confronts a knife-wielding man who’d just slaughtered a young couple.

It was a foolhardy act.

But Olivia’s presence of mind and surprising fighting skills don’t go unnoticed—or in vain. A team from the Special Activities Division, the CIA’s ultra-clandestine paramilitary unit, miraculously intervenes. What happens next changes the course of Olivia’s life forever.

Set six years before THE HARLEQUIN & THE DRANGÙE, THE COVERT GUARDIAN narrates Olivia Markham’s genesis from idealistic college student to trained intelligence operative.

FROM HOLY CHISM: Fire and Forge (Modern Gods Book 3)

Long after their worshipers are forgotten, the gods are still holding up a corner of the bar at the Godshead Tavern. Some have learned since their stories became myths, some never did, and some are still finding old curses coming back to haunt…

Poseidon wants Artemis to lift Medusa’s curse so he and Medusa can resume relations, while Chronos seeks another chance to be whole and get to know his kids.

Meanwhile, Ares falls head over heels for a mortal half his size who manages to kick his ass not once but twice, and Loki’s son is trying to rebuild his life (and his credit) after a short marriage to Pandora.

Life and love runs smoothly for no one, god or mortal. And another disaster is brewing…

And… Some writers and their endless self-promo….

I’m serializing two novels on a substack called Chapter House. This is a link to the free portions of the books, which are updated two chapters a week till done. (And then I’ll start other novels ;))

Winter Prince

Witch’s Daughter

These serializations are part of the author’s funding of her high fallutin’ lifestyle of two meals a day, roof over head and food for cats. Not the only ones, of course. I will be publishing other books, while these are being written in public, as it were.

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: Nerve

(I’ve got some nerve bumping the promo post to Monday!)

Yesterday I had a heck of a time working and couldn’t finish the chapters for Chapter House.
I was pretty mad at myself.

This morning, I woke up with a sore throat/fever/ general feeling like crud. Still working on chapters. Will do promo tomorrow.

I’m so sorry, both to chapter-house subscribers and my readers here. Sometimes the body has a say.

DON’T BUDWEISER MY BLOG. I REMOVED THE SECOND INSTANCE OF DYLAN MULVANEY.

When I went in to give birth to second son, we were — son and I — put in a dangerous situation because the doctor was misinformed, and therefore misdiagnosed the moment.

To make it clear, I don’t blame the doctor — not exactly — since we were the idiots who gave him access to the report of our first son’s birth. That said, he should have been able — I think — to read between the lines and figure out that the first doctor was covering her ass. Because unless that woman was much better at writing than doctoring, an experienced Obgyn sound look at it and go “something went seriously wrong.”

On the other hand, I also get doctors trusting other doctors over their patients. They’re in many ways a closed fraternity.

So the doctor accepted that the first birth had been incredibly slow and then stopped for no good reason after three days. I never read the report, so I have no idea, but I’m going to assume it wasn’t there that the baby crowned in an hour, and then the birth stopped, so I was in hard, unproductive labor for three days. The reason for it being that the doctor thought if a little pitocin was good, a lot was better. And excess pitocin stops the contractions and causes the uterus to fibrillate uselessly. (I got yelled at for not being able to tell when the contractions were, because I was in continuous extreme pain. Yeah.)

Anyway, so believing the report, when I presented 3 centimeters dilated and with about-normal-period-level-cramp-like-pain on the day I was scheduled to be induced, the doctor logically thought he didn’t want me in forever labor. So, over my protests, he gave me “just a little bit of pitocin, to make sure you’re ready to give birth by this evening.”

The pain took the freight train to hell, and the baby was crowned less than an hour later, over the shouts of nurses for me not to push — I found when experiencing full contractions it’s almost impossible not to push — and the doctor barely made it there in time to catch the baby, still wearing a three piece suit (the doctor, not the baby. He’s not the three piece suit kind.) The doctor admitted he’d been wrong to give me pitocin, and said the next one he wouldn’t, and also he’d wear a catcher’s mitt. (No other baby made it to term, alas.)

The entire birth took an hour and a half from admission to being in a room resting. Which is fine in a way, but did some damage which I won’t describe, and could have literally maimed me or killed me. Possibly the baby too, if there had been some complication like cord around the neck, because the doctor wasn’t even there yet, and the nurses were panicky and not functioning. I might not be the only mother of a vaginally-born baby who had a perfectly round Caesarean-baby head, but we’re a small club. His head never conformed for the birth. He was pushed out too fast. “Like a cannonball” the doctor said.

So, what is the point of this story? Ah, it is because we — the whole world, but mostly this country — are in the middle of this situation, writ large and figuratively. (Mostly figuratively. The shit and the blood of such a birth, as well as the pain, screaming and danger are real.)

So I told you…. going back 12 years at least that we were in the middle of catastrophic societal change. Why catastrophic? Because normally things change very slowly.

We like to imagine that our lives will be more or less like our parents’ lives as we perceived them as small children, only maybe a little better.

The rhythm of change was already too high for that when I came on the scene. Even if I hadn’t kicked the beehive over by moving here it would already have been too much change for that time period. Now–

Well, the internet and the ease and speed of communication made things even faster. And changed them in ways we can’t fully understand. Also took the clamps that the establishment had put on arts and sciences to slow down their development and channel them along predictable paths. Because people of various avocations could communicate and find funding on line. Or sell directly to the buying public.

By the mid nineties I could already see it coming. It was blindingly obvious. And portions of it were already worrying me to death.

Like, I could see the working from home revolution coming, but then what would happen to all those empty office buildings? More importantly, what would happen to the cities that relied on having people come in to work, and having to live in reasonable proximity? For the love of Bob, what would happen when you could outsource jobs to much cheaper countries and didn’t pay enough to allow people to live and work in more developed countries. (For those who don’t know this — does anyone not know this? — cost of living in the US varies WILDLY among states. It’s more so like that internationally.)

I mean, look guys, if 40 year old me was looking at this and going “This is headed for us within ten to twenty years” — counting on natural human fighting of change — “and it’s going to have very bad echoes down the line, as well as good things” how come the people in charge didn’t see it? Because they clearly, blindingly, missed it.

I mean, look, take the writing field, because I know it and can give you the best examples: as gravity shifts from publishing houses to indie publishing, as is already happening to be fair, writers who produce regularly will make a much better living. However, meanwhile, every other step in the chain — if the market were functioning properly which it isn’t for various reasons, including fiction publishing being an appendage of much bigger entertainment conglomerates — would be out of a job or making less. Like, yes, a lot of publishers and editors, but also printing plant managers, printers, maintenance workers, etc. etc. And because the losses would be concentrated while the gains weren’t, A particularly city would be hit hard (To be fair, it’s being hit hard.)

This type of change would be hard enough on society — because most people don’t even realize the change is already in process when it’s happening. Which is why in the days of Noah people married and were given in marriage. And in our days, journalism schools are still full — even distributed over 20 or 30 years. Which it would normally have taken.

But then the idiots in charge, who are blind fools attempting to graduate to mere morons, decided to manipulate a bad flu eruption into locking down the entire country’s population and economic armagedon. Because this would allow them to steal the election and give them POWAH!

They did succeed at their immediate purposes. Sort of. It involved in front of G-d and everyone cheating at the last minute, but hey, they got it, right? Yay! Now they get everything they want, right?

They don’t get everything they want. It’s falling apart even as they try to push it.

But worse than that, because of the means of power grabbing they chose, they have sent the already catastrophic tech-driven societal change into full tilt boogey into hell.

People are not — no matter ho pushed — going to go back to the offices after years of being forced to work from home. Yes, sure, okay, some people want to go back, but entire fields are populated with introverts who don’t wanna and are not going to.

And this has so many knock on consequences. Like the fact that cities are outright dying. I read an article about the federal government being shocked their buildings are empty. The complete idiots. Like it wasn’t predictable! But so are private companies’ buildings. And the sunk costs of the empty buildings are enough to sink some of our big corporations already.

For regulatory reasons, they can’t easily or cheaply be converted into housing, even in housing starved areas.

And on, and on and on, it just keeps going on. The lockdowns also sent the implosion of mass education into full roaring freak out, because parents saw what was being taught. And add to it a completely jaundiced view of “experts.”

What’s collapsing is the blue model ratcheted onto the republic by FDR almost 100 years ago. It was always unnatural, never took fully, and was always going to fail and fall away.

However fast change is always bad. It was bad implementing it, and overall, it wasn’t that fast (and never fully took, or we’d be soviet.)

It will be bad, bad, bad losing it too fast. Really bad. And 20 years was too fast, while this will be more like five.

Particularly since the idiots in charge aren’t seeing the problems or mitigating them, but instead are trying to pile on the disintegrating tower of central control by adding the green bullshit to it, and trying to break the parts of the system still more or less working.

Imagine a tsunami long held off and rushing back in, but there are tornados on the tsunami and whirlpools sucking people into unkown depths.

Or if you prefer, you’re about to give birth, and some idiot just gave you pitocin, so everything is rushing, it hurts like hell, and idiot nurses are yelling at you not to push, while you can’t help pushing.

It’s all going to come out, baby, shit, blood and fluids, in an almighty rush. It’s going to be a hell of a cleanup. And it’s going to rip you from stem to stern in the process. If you’re lucky the essential parts can be reconstructed into functionality but it will take a while to heal.

That’s what we’re looking at. There won’t be anyone who isn’t affected by this. You have to stay awake (but not woke, which is the opiate of the masses, designed to make you fight the curtains while the sofa is on fire) and aware, and know what’s changing and how fast. (It’s easy to reason from causes. I mean, if I can reason it, anyone can.)

You have to have wide knowledge, and the ability to move and do things before what you’re counting on changes. Or find a place you won’t be touched and fortify your position. It’s one or the other.

This one is going to hurt like a mother. Literally.

But once you’re in it, you’re committed. There’s no way out but through. Shut up and push.

**************************

I have some free images leftover from funding days.

And because I’m getting a lot of donations with “we didn’t know this was happening” remember I’m not closing any of the funding instruments, and they’re available at the top of the blog. Also listed here.

Whew! It’s the last day of rattling the can, at least for now. All together it probably comes to around 25k. I won’t lie and say I didn’t hope for more because that would be stupid. Of course I was hoping to fully fund. However, the methods of donation plus a couple of other ways to donate will now be on the website and once every three months or so I can remind people of them at the bottom of posts. You know, in case one of you wins the lottery.

And I’m convinced Chapter House will gain more followers overtime, particularly after fun with doctors is done, and chapters are more regular.

As to why I’m doing this? Well, I do the work, I should get paid. How much honestly is based on what people who do syndicated columns get paid per year, but also … well, it really is a lot of work, even if no one holds a gun to my head to do it.

The total at Give Send Go is the desired total for everything. No, it’s not going particularly well this year, but a bit always trickles in through other means. Oh, and we’re starting (if the emails don’t get blocked again) to pay off on pledges from last year, but I still have a month on USAian story collection. And mass (and math Ah!) deaths will take place as more books get written. As will tuckerizations. If you gave enough last year to get a Moose and Squirrel mp4 it should be in your mailbox. Check your junk folder.
I’m going to try to assemble Usaian collection this weekend, the creek not rising.

The first option to donate is Give Send Go. They forbid the use of incentives to donors. So if you give via GSG you’re doing it for the satisfaction of helping According to Hoyt stay up and for me to be compensated for my work. Yes, that total is scary but I never intended for it to be carried by GSG alone. That’s the funding goal for all methods, for the year. A keeping-track-of goal, you might say. To donate to Give Send Go: Link Here.

’ve started a substack called Chapter House, in which I’m serializing two novels, one fantasy and one Space Opera, at two chapters a week. (The idea is for Witch’s Daughter to get two new chapters on Wednesday, and Winter Prince two on Friday. because July is h*ll this year (Fun with DOCTORS! People and cat doctors. Yeah) these might slip for the next two/three weeks. After that they won’t. Anyway, to subscribe to Chapter House, the link is: Here.

And for those of you who have Patreon and just want to donate in a system you already have, I have one of those, and I will be posting life events, and excised scenes, and art, and … well, be warned, likely cat stuff. Because I’m owned by cats. Anyway, to donate on Patreon, please: Go here.

Finally, if you must send things by snailmail, yes, we accept checks, cash, and gold coins. Just package those really well.

304 S. Jones Blvd, Suite 6771
Las Vegas, NV 89107

The pretty pretty pictures are the result of my playing with midjourneybot and teaching it to sit up and beg. (Grin.) And they’re free for whatever you want to use them, though you might have to run them through an embigenning AI.

And for Monalisa Foster who tells me she has a type….

Okay, this one might be too purty for her, but them’s the breaks. You can’t have everything you want. Where would you put it? Who would dust it?

I was thinking of Phantom’s post yesterday, and it occurred to me it never fails: when people create big, overarching dreams, they fail to take in account some small detail of mundane reality.

Usually too, what they purport to “solve” either is a problem that doesn’t exist, or one that was already being solved when they stomped in to impose their shiny idea.

Socialism-Communism, Environmentalism, Centralized Public Education and probably a million others “grand unified solutions” are usually solutions looking for a problem.

Someone woke up one day and came up with this entire system in their head like “How to abolish private property and make everyone absolutely equal will bring about paradise.” Or “Wouldn’t it be great if the Earth could be perfect, like if there were no humans” and then went poking around looking for a reason to impose their shiny, beautiful just-so-story-with-attached-system on the rest of us.

In the case of environmentalism, those of us who are old enough remember d*mn well that when the Earth was freezing — which switched seamlessly to boiling, with no space in between — the solution was exactly the same: Let some jackwagons who have no comprehension of engineering, or energy, or frankly where food comes from engineer the entire life of everyone on Earth, banishing things that work like fossil fuels, so that we can live in harmony with nature. Or go extinct. Honestly, more and more I think that’s what’s at the back of the green nutbars’ heads. Their contempt and hatred for us is barely disguised. And by us I mean the entire human race. Sure, they pretend it’s only those who oppose them, but dig deeper and they hate everything that walks (even occasionally) on two legs, including but not limited to great apes. (Or even so-so apes.)

Which is why their “solutions” increasingly seem to involve the destruction of all life on Earth. Honestly, I think it’s because they have a vague idea none of it works like their beautiful shiny system and that pisses them off because the system is beautiful and perfect, and d*mn it, why won’t it work?

They’d rather have their system than reality, and therefore they’re willing to destroy reality to pretend their system is perfect.

The same, of course, applies to never-sufficiently-damned Karl, the angry inkblot, Marx. His solution was so beautiful and perfect. Everyone would just “naturally” give up on property or even competitiveness over sex, and it would all be perfect and paradise. (If this sounds to you like “I wanna be rich and sleep with every woman who won’t have the ability to tell me no” this only makes Marx like every communist ever.)

He came up with this entire system, then tacked it on to “current day injustices” which even at the time he wrote were already in the process of being addressed/mitigated. And which, anyway, would have gone away much faster without his poking around and intervening.

As for centralized education: since it’s been a federal matter here, has it got better?

What if I told you it’s exactly the same in every country that centralized education?

Education and more importantly learning was improving everywhere, creating a vast and productive middle class. And then the governments took them over. It’s been in decline ever since, and heading back to pre-history where people can’t read, or not functionally.

But on paper it works really well. It’s a perfect system, with everyone entitled to education, and becoming a better and more functional person thereby.

And that’s the hallmark of all these systems (and there are a ton more, big and small– correction, they all bet big –) They work marvelously on paper.

Except the megalomaniac cretins who designed them don’t actually know anything about the systems they’re trying to replace.

We have people who want to stop oil extraction, who don’t realize all plastics, lubrication and a good deal of food processing go away, which means their magical windmills won’t work either, even they could get them fabricated without oil, which they damn well can’t.

We have people who want to “smash capitalism” who think the government can provide them a living while they write bad poetry and never think of where the food they eat comes from.

The other thing — and why they get big — is that these perfect systems are never limited to the one thing, even if they suck at the one thing. They have to expand to include everything.

Like, “green energy” — I have no beef with if they just limited themselves to creating alternative forms of energy and telling us how great it is. But no, it has to grow to include everything, from whether people have to eat bugs to how you grow your garden, to the houses you are allowed to have, to the left’s obsession with choo choo trains, to– ad infinitum.

Because these perfect systems depend not only on “If only everyone” — which has never worked in the history of ever — but also “if only everything.” And since they don’t know where everything comes from, what everything does, let alone what everything IS, they dream big, unaware that “if only everything” has also never happened, and if it did it would kill them deader than their sense of reality.

Intellectuals, the creators of these “in the air” “systems of everything” are the most dangerous things on Earth.

They’re just smart enough to create these mental constructions and fall helplessly in love with them, completely unaware of the fact that their monstrous creations can never life in reality.

We need to get better at spotting “systems of everything” and telling the idiots “no” before the death and destruction starts.

And we must — must — make everything as small, as local and as MERITOCRATIC as possible, so we’re less in the power of idiots running around with systems of everything, and no idea of what’s under their feet.

And chapters of Witch’s Daughter also later, on Chapter House.
I need to go get dressed now, because today is “Fun with doctors.” (sigh.) Again. For both of us this time, because why not.

Meanwhile, an important PSA: Those who contributed to blog last year: we’re sending things out and we have confirmation it is sending and arriving. What we just sent out was the Moose and Squirrel MP3. If you donated enough to qualify for that, look in your junk mail (sometimes it ends up there, from the people I know who got it.) It will be coming from SAHSwag.

Next we have questions for those my assistant unnervingly calls “Aspiring Dead” — those who donated enough to be killed in mass (or math) casualties. And the Tuckerized ones. And in the next couple of day we will send an inquiry for addresses to send physical stuff to.

The collection might not be till first week in August, because fun with doctors. BUT since by the original terms I have to the end of August, that’s fine.

Anyway, check your junk mail. I’ll post here when the other stuff goes out.

Yes, I am aware Day By Day pushed my fundraiser, and I’m extremely grateful to Chris Muir!

In very short: I’m doing the blog fundraiser, not because it’s an emergency (yeah, we could use it, like who couldn’t these days, but it’s not an emergency) but because I do the work, and I want to get paid.

The total at Give Send Go is the desired total for everything. No, it’s not going particularly well this year, but a bit always trickles in through other means. Oh, and we’re starting (if the emails don’t get blocked again) to pay off on pledges from last year, but I still have a month on USAian story collection. And mass (and math Ah!) deaths will take place as more books get written. As will tuckerizations.

AND THE CHAPTERS FROM WINTER PRINCE WILL BE DONE TODAY. I’d forgotten today is Wednesday, so you know, I had to go write a post for Mad Genius Club. I thought it was Tuesday….

Now on how you can donate:

The first option to donate is Give Send Go. They forbid the use of incentives to donors. So if you give via GSG you’re doing it for the satisfaction of helping According to Hoyt stay up and for me to be compensated for my work. Yes, that total is scary but I never intended for it to be carried by GSG alone. That’s the funding goal for all methods, for the year. A keeping-track-of goal, you might say. To donate to Give Send Go: Link Here.

’ve started a substack called Chapter House, in which I’m serializing two novels, one fantasy and one Space Opera, at two chapters a week. (The idea is for Witch’s Daughter to get two new chapters on Wednesday, and Winter Prince two on Friday. because July is h*ll this year (Fun with DOCTORS! People and cat doctors. Yeah) these might slip for the next two/three weeks. After that they won’t. Anyway, to subscribe to Chapter House, the link is: Here.

(For subscribers: I’ve first-personned (totally a term) Winter Prince, and finishing 2 new chapters now. More on Friday.)

And for those of you who have Patreon and just want to donate in a system you already have, I have one of those, and I will be posting life events, and excised scenes, and art, and … well, be warned, likely cat stuff. Because I’m owned by cats. Anyway, to donate on Patreon, please: Go here.

Finally, if you must send things by snailmail, yes, we accept checks, cash, and gold coins. Just package those really well.

304 S. Jones Blvd, Suite 6771
Las Vegas, NV 89107

Oh, and while funding looks really low, I found in the past that about half comes in after I close. I don’t know why. I think it’s people keeping it in mind then finding the money. So, it will be lower than last year, but not THAT low. Probably. I hope.

And now more pretty pictures which are free for you to use, which someone mentioned might be suitable for screen savers (though I think you’ll need AI embigenning for that)