According To Hoyt

*First, I’m profoundly sorry at missing two posts last week. I do have a business post that must go up soon, and also at least a short story, but …. We had to go see family for various reasons. Getting to play with the baby of one of the readers was a bonus. :) I’ll be (a very tone deaf) Bach, but for now let’s deal with the delayed promo and vignettes. Cracks whip. On, internet hamsters! On Sluggish, on Confused, on Glitchy, on Typo,on Meme, on Spam, on Server Update, On very PARTICULARLY today’s internet Hamster “can’t display images” GRRRR. We have stuff to do. SAH*

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. – SAH

FROM HEATHER STRICKLER, (According to Hoyt’s Own Bard!): Lift High the Candle (Wyrd Rhymes)

When the storm rages onward
And the world comes tumbling down
And there seems no future forward,
And you’re deep enough to drown.

Some times a simple song uplifted
Can ease the burdened soul.
So here a book has drifted
With rhymes to ease the toll.

FROM JEFF DUNTEMAN: The Camel’s Question

FROM SABRINA CHASE: Red Wolf: Exile Part 1

Same map, different world.

Nic Duncan must prove she has what it takes to follow her uncle into the Special Forces. To get his backing she infiltrates a lawless area of postwar Asia posing as an adrenaline-junkie hiker. Checking out a newly discovered cave follows naturally as part of her cover.

But in that cave she encounters a strange artifact—and when she emerges, the world she knows no longer exists. While the terrain remains the same, every sign of civilization has disappeared. No road, no power lines, no GPS, nothing.

Starving and desperately searching for a way back, Nic discovers the relics of the past have vanished too – and the pre-technology people she encounters either terrified of outsiders or ruthless killers.

Can Nic find any safety in this strange yet familiar world … and what must she sacrifice to get it?

FROM LIANE ZANE: The Draka & The Giant: Book Three in the Elioud Legacy Series

With supernatural stakes never higher, everything rides on her.

Three years ago, Alžběta Černá, an officer in the Czech military intelligence, learned that she’s got angel blood. In fact, she’s one of the Elioud, the hybrid race tasked by Archangel Michael to protect humanity. A lone wolf, Beta ignores her newfound ancestry. She suspects she’s not cut out for the Elioud mission. Worse, she has to team up with András Nagy, a Hungarian Elioud warrior who drives her wild with exasperation—and desire. After András saves her life during a failed mission, Beta’s entire existence is upended. And she’s not the same woman she was. Something dark has descended upon her.
So she flees. From her best friends and their Elioud mates. From András, who’d given himself to the taciturn Czech, body and soul. Back to the VZ where she’s sent on a years-long deep-cover assignment that subsumes her.

Heartbroken at Beta’s untraceable disappearance, András becomes a stone-cold Elioud killer. Just in time to face the growing Dark angelic threat: emboldened daemonic hordes attack humans throughout Central Europe. András tracks a particularly nasty band of daemons one night to Prague where he picks up a trace of the woman he’d loved and lost—only to realize that they are now on opposite sides.

FROM RICHARD F. WEYAND: The Favor (Agency Book 2)

Bert Mangum, an operative for the secretive Agency, is back on the Crossroads space station waiting for a new assignment when Detective Elina Stavros of the Crossroads P.D. asks him to do her a favor.

Could he help her figure out how the dangerous and illegal drug RDT is getting onto the station?

But the more they dig, the more they find, until they’re facing a cluster-wide drug manufacturing and smuggling operation.

Worse, if they shut it down, Crossroads will go under and the economy of the cluster will go with it.

Mangum, Stavros, and Sam, with help from Gloria Dent and Claude Portnoy, have to find a solution before the economy of the cluster falls down around them.

FROM PAUL BAHLIN: Connections: Power Play (Tom & Suki Book 1)

Seal Tom Lincoln and his Belgian Malinois war dog, Suki, left the Navy together, planning on a new beginning in retirement. Fate finds him running from a righteous but questionable Samaritan act. On the run, and unable to engage law enforcement, he finds himself in a life and death struggle to save the country from shadowy terrorists and the corrupt elites that back them.
As he connects the dots on the terrorists, state police are connecting the dots from his past and the elites are connecting dots from his present. It’s a three way race against time, between him, the good cops that want him put away for a questionable crime, and the elites that want him dead.
With only his friends and his dog as allies, he has to bring down the terrorists to win the race. If he doesn’t win, he goes to jail, Suki is destroyed, and the country suffers an attack far worse than 9/11.

FROM LAURA MONTGOMERY: Simple Service: A Science Fiction Lost Colony Adventure (Martha’s Sons Book 1)

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: Cart

Why does the dumpster always catch fire when I’m away, and in this case busy getting a family-and-baby fix?

On the Poor Widdle Russia. Screw it, it isn’t, and it never was. Any time you are proposing to repeat FDR’s mistake of making several states slaves to another state’s paranoia, you’ve gone too far. FDR was not a good guy, in any way shape or form, and if he didn’t create the cold war all by himself, he certainly set the dominoes up, and it was only by the grace of G-d we didn’t end with the world enslaved to a system that didn’t work. SOCIALISM doesn’t work, in either “social democracy” or “communism” form, but he set things up so it infected the whole world. And he propped up Russian paranoia and imperialism.
Was the USSR always a potemkin state? Looks like that, yes. Was it true? Probably more true than not.

On the other hand their government believed they were a real threat. And governments tend to believe each other. I don’t think our intelligence was so much lying, as not being prepared with states made of lies. They still aren’t.

Does this mean I’m on the side of the EU and the internationalists? Oh, please. The EU is a mistake that should have never happened, and is going to kill people as it goes down in flames. Again, it’s part of the blue model that FDR popularized all over the world. It’s a center out top down big polity. I know because I was present at EU discussions in the late 70s early 80s that the Europeans looked at the US and decided the reason we were more successful is that we were bigger and more centralized. Poor rats. They’re going to pay for it, too.

Does it mean I’m on the side of the Junta? Put down the hooch. The Junta isn’t even really supporting Ukraine. They claim they are, but mostly they’re lining their own pockets under the massive Aid Bills.

Does it mean I’m on the side of Ukraine? Sure. I’m on the side of anyone being invaded by a power whose justification for war is that we took away their buffer states. Also our own foreign policy is less fraught without a crazy Russia. Maybe they’ll fund fewer “green” groups. Could happen.

So Russia getting smacked on the nose? Fine. None of our business. We shouldn’t send our boys to die over there, and we shouldn’t pass massive aid bills most of which money goes to democrat pockets. We wish plucky Ukraine the best. We have our own fights to fight.

Do I like the conclusion I’ve been coming to over the last three years that the Cold War was mostly self inflicted? Heck no. I will remind you one of the minor skirmishes of the Cold War hit my own life pretty hard.

Were we always wrong? Would the USSR have collapsed earlier, if we’d pushed harder? Almost for sure. Krushev himself admitted in internal documents that they had NOTHING. If we’d pushed they were scr*wed.
Did our people know that? No. Heinlein who was a shrewd, if initially leftist thinker, fell for the whole thing hook line and sinker.

In fact, it was impossible to know until the USSR fell, I think. But now we know. And treating Russia as though we learned nothing from the USSR is …. bad. Whether you want to admit it or not.

So — dumpster fire — we know, because we’ve had regulars go zonkers in the comments before. If these are new commenters, I ban. If they aren’t, I ask, and I’m asking NOW please stop the fight. It’s generating heat, no light.

There are dragons to fight. These aren’t it.

Russia is a bully. It doesn’t need our help. It needs a spanking and put in the corner. It’s getting that without our help.

I wish the plucky people of Russia all the best. I wish their leaders to get spanked hard. Our leaders too.

Actually worldwide leaders of the Marxist persuasion, which right now are pretty much all of them, all need a spanking and put in the corner. Stop defending one set against the other.

Bah.

In the left’s definition of “fascism” Musk is making Twitter fascist by “allowing hate speech.”

The problem, really, is that there is no hate speech. There is only speech. “Hate speech” or “misinformation” are terms used by people who hate free speech.

As you can tell from my post yesterday, I’m very fond of the first amendment which I hope will keep us from having to put the second to the purpose for which it was intended (the prevention of tyranny.)

But there’s other reasons for free speech.

Most importantly, to hear things that hurt.

Look, I don’t like being hurt or in pain any more than the next person, and the next person cries when threatened with being beaten with a wet sock.

And I have an older brother, and am the youngest of a group of cousins, then went into school as a bookish girl whose mother quite literally dressed her funny (there’s an entire series of posts on this. It was well-intentioned, we’ll just say that.) If you think I don’t know that words can hurt, you probably haven’t thought things through.

In my case, words really can hurt. Why? Well, because I have a tendency to take every criticism to heart even when totally crazy. Like you guys know my tendency to not go to the doctor till almost too late? As in, Dan throws me in the back seat of the car when I’m passed out and drives to ER? (At one time without rinsing the soap off me. They didn’t let me get up for two days. It itched. He just wrapped me in a blanket and threw me in the back of a car.)

This is because when I was a kid, faced with my bewildering (even to me) autoimmune, mom just assumed I was making it all up. So I tend to assume I’m making it all up, until I collapse.

And don’t get me started in on how much stupid criticism delayed my development as a writer. Because I believe everything said against me. (For people like me, it makes sense to have at least ten first readers, and take a problem as such only when three people who don’t otherwise know each other independently come u with it.

So yeah, “bad speech” with intent and malice OR NOT can hurt. It can hurt feelings, it can hurt people’s understanding of the world, it an hurt the development of entire countries that go careening down “green energy” illusions, when no such thing is possible and the result is their own people freezing in the dark.

Yeah, there is real disinformation abroad, a lot of it foreign. There’s a reason both Chinese and Russians invest more money in propaganda than in their vaunted (paper tiger) military. Because disinformation particularly when supported by the local satraps (his serene majesty Vice Roy Zhou Bai-Den, emissary of Xi the Pooh is all in on the Russian idea that we should not under any circumstances drill our own oil.) And don’t get me started on the Chinese nonsense with the Covidiocy.

But you know what the remedy for disinformation and hate speech is? More speech.

Because when there’s a big argument, people bring forth the reason they think that, and other people get to see both sides. While when government can run around suppressing “disinformation” it ends up being the idea of some crazy coot who simply told everyone that was the way to think. Like, at one point Fauci had recommended MASKS to stop AIDS, he was just riding his hobby horse, again. And no one even knew this, because the “expert” said to mask. And everyone who went and looked up the history of masks got silenced as “misinformation.”

Is there speech that is objectively bad/calls for bad things? Sure there is. And the best thing for it, unless they are credibly planning harm (and if they’re doing it in the open I question their sanity) is to tell them it’s crazy and explain.

The problem when some speech is considered beyond the pale (Some speech in some places or to some audiences is always beyond the pale. No, you don’t need to read or show porn to young kids, etc. But that’s different.) to all audiences, at all time, is that THAT speech might be what you need as a course correction for seriously bad stuff.

Look, we’re social apes. As such we tend to want to agree to the consensus. We’ll want to be on the side that “everyone agrees with” — which is how you get stuff like deciding cats must be killed because they cause the plague, and thereby unleashing the rats that really cause the plague, or the idea that the best way to counter a respiratory virus is to lock people down in their houses, or the idea that socialism is a great idea and everyone needs a little bit in their economy — but sometimes you need to hear the dissident opinion. The one that says “Yeah? then why do all socialists eventually starve in the dark?” Or “Socialism kills, fast or slow, depending on whether it’s the fast form (communism) or the sow one (“democratic” socialism.)

It hurts to hear that, because well, everyone “agreed”. But when speech is abridged, when saying something on a public forum, something wholly unrelated to your employment, can lose you your job, your house, your kids, your ability to bank, you end up doing truly stupid things as a civilization. Great Leap Forward stupid. Ban the internal combustion engine stupid. Shut down the economy for two years stupid.

And yeah, I know, the first amendment only covers what the government does. However, as we’re finding from the twitter mess, there isn’t as much of a separation between government and big corporations as one would think. Once it became possible for government to give big corporations everything they want, why would they not obey the sugar daddy?

So, yeah, here, on my blog, which I pay for, and where I allow comments simply for the entertainment of myself and my commenters, I do ban commenters, though not nearly as many as I could or perhaps sometimes should. This because RES told me if you let the drunken uncle take over the wedding, you’re ruining it for everyone else.

I do not, however, run around preventing people from writing blogs that disagree with me. Many do. I don’t seek them out, and frankly I don’t much care what they say, unless it’s funny. (The white Mormon male thing never gets old, that’s all.) And I’ve been personally banned on some blogs, including some on the right, because I don’t have any kind of monopoly on communication.

But But But “your words could hurt the vulnerable.” Yes, they could. And if the vulnerable are going to be on the internet, they’ll have to grow a tough skin sooner or later. And if they can’t, their loved ones or friends are going to have to protect them, just like my husband doesn’t let me read bad reviews for my books. Because I’ll believe them.

But you don’t get to declare who is vulnerable and who gets to be protected. Treating someone like a tinpot god who can’t be questioned turns them into tinpot gods.

At some point we all say painful things, or hear painful things, and at some point we’re all vulnerable. It doesn’t matter.

Life is pain, princess. Anyone who tells you otherwise is trying to sell you something. And trying to silence those who tell you that that gold bar is just yellow painted mud.

The truth often hurts, it’s still the truth. Lies are often pretty while being lies. The fact that vice-versa is also true just means you can’t get lazy.

If you can, if you’re not going to lose your job, your home, your bank: TALK. Make a loud noise. Counter what you view as lies.

It’s the only hope the Republic has left.

Having grown up in a time and place where electrical supply was unreliable and people had an uncertain grasp on how to work with electricity anyway — yes, the once and future time, what can I say? — so that you might very well have to take a candle with you to bed (HOW I never burned the house down trying to read till all hours is a minor mystery) because the electricity was out, again, or where people thought nothing of replacing that darn fuse that keeps blowing with a penny, I grew up with a very real fear of house fires.

Having spent some time living in the curious level of apartments best described as “student housing” (where not only might the wiring be wonky, but the cabinets might be so low over the stove that a small oil spill can turn into “oop, there goes half the kitchen”) did nothing for this fear. In fact, this is the first time in thirty some years that I haven’t had a fire extinguisher in the kitchen, and that only because I haven’t been in a place to buy one at the same time that I had money to buy it, but it’s on the list.

Add to this that both mom’s and grandma’s tales of the village in their lifetimes involved a manor house going up in smoke overnight. (Look, Portugal still has some structures that probably started life as Roman farmhouses. Knowing how much crazy I’ve found in Victorians where each new owner added a twist on “this will work for me, because” and then hid it in the walls, the amazing thing is how many Portuguese houses don’t burn overnight, even if most of the materials are stone and cement.) And in mom’s case, being a vivid storyteller, it involved the tale of six kids caught in a house fire while their parents were out, and being brought out as corpses “looking like roast goats.” Nightmare fuel, I tell you.

So, I have a healthy respect for fire.

If I could banish all danger of fire by not thinking about it, believing that fire didn’t exist, and disabling every fire alarm, I’d already have done that.

Why haven’t I done it? Because my thoughts and words, or even alarms don’t control reality. And my banishing fire from my thoughts wouldn’t make me less vulnerable to it, but more.

And not precisely a change of subject, but remember the late seventies, when Communism was the most stable and successful societal form in the world, and in the future — as every intellectual assured us — we’d all be communists? Heck, even the so called free countries recognized they had to add a little bit (or a lot) of socialism to their mix just to survive. Why! It was only sense, right? Planned economies were just more efficient. What kind of lunatic would build a house without a blueprint? How much more necessary was a blueprint and efficient top-down control of the build for an entire economy.

Just look at all the racial strife and economic suffering in the US with their pure free market (yes, I know, but bear with me) system! Do you want that? No. You want the stable, equitable, efficient Soviet Union’s system. Duh.

If you don’t remember this, you didn’t grow up in Europe (Or, curiously, in political and intellectual circles in the US) where what I stated above was not even vaguely controversial. Or in fact worth arguing, because everyone knew that.

Most of the people (unless geniuses and cranky) who opposed communism opposed it on the basis of its jailing prisoners, treating dissidents like cr*p and other moral issues. On that basis a lot of people “on the right” wanted “socialism with a gentler touch” or if you prefer “democratic socialism” (Strange ice and hot snow. They vote to despoil us, and we’re supposed to accept it because theft by the majority is somehow moral. And that’s not counting vote fraud, which is endemic in every socialist country, because of course those in power don’t wish to lose it at the whim of the unwashed.)

And yet, when people in power in the US said “Screw that, we don’t believe you, and we’re not going to appease you” the entire system of terror behind the iron curtain crumbled like a sand castle hit by waves, like fog when the sun shines.

Because of course none of it was true. The USSR wasn’t stable, efficient and prosperous. (The fact that Putin wants to revive it tells you what world-class intellect he ain’t.) It was a shambling mess, where people pretended to work where others pretended to pay them, and where you lost half your life to standing in line for goods, even goods you didn’t want because you could maybe, perhaps trade them for something you might want at some time. And if the supply issues weren’t enough, there was every single other issue. The medical care was worse than third world; the service economy was non existent; their defense industry was mostly smoke and lies; and their people were skilled in the art of double think. In fact, even with the black market they allowed to exist because it was often the sole source of food, I suspect they’d have lived in permanent famine conditions without overt and covert aid from the US. (Not to mention our letting them swallow up vast portions of South America and Africa, from which they extracted tribute.)

So why did they appear so successful and stable that non-insane people in the West hailed them as the future? Ah, because they’d broken the fire alarms, banned all mentions of fire, forbidden people to even think of fire. Or you know, revolt against the system. And if despite all this someone still mentioned fire, then they were declared insane and locked up.

Which not only projected an image of complete control and prosperity abroad, but also meant that the leaders thought — at least most of them — that they had perfect control and at least a minimum level of prosperity.

Until everything came crumbling down, fast and irreversibly, because someone dared (very dared) to question the image, and kept asking the non-existent system to compete with our flawed, wasteful, compromised but still somewhat free system.

The analogy with fire should be obvious. Rebellion and revolt (or even the sort of sullen non-compliance that acts like some wires smoldering in the walls) destroy polities the same way as fire devours structures.

And the best way to defend against either is both efficient alarm systems, and rapid deployment measures of control.

And when you think “But communism had that” you’re thinking of the Prague Revolt, or Tienanmen Square or the swallowing of Hong Kong, and you’re not precisely wrong. Not really.

There is a level of countering the threat that will prevent that which no one dares admit exist. If despite all your best efforts to banish even the thought of fire, a flame erupts on your stove, and you have a fire extinguisher to hand, you can hit it hard and fast. And then you forbid mention of it ever again.

It works, sort of, except that of course, if a bigger conflagration starts it can destroy you overnight and you’ll never see it coming. (Romania, Christmas 1989) Or an external fire, intentional or not can consume you, while your people run around screaming “What is this strange thing?” (I expect this is the failure mode of today’s totalitarians, because there is a conflagration worldwide. They’ve been tamping down individual instances and preventing people talking or thinking about it, but there it is.)

In a healthy polity which ours used to be, you had systems to both inform you when the people were getting seriously p*ssed, and mechanisms for making us considerably less prone to sudden revolt, not to mention to letting the kind of “fire in the walls” smoldering discontent and revolt.

For one, we had free speech, which meant, that yes, you knew when people weren’t happy. But you know, like having fire alarms throughout the house, that might give you false alarms, but also means you can get up and do something about the lamp the cats knocked down in the living room and which is making the carpet smolder, by fixing the conditions making people p*ssed.

We also had voting, which meant that if the wall was consistently getting hot, we could get it open and the wiring repaired; or we could realize the penny in the electrical panel had melted, and remove it, replacing it with a real fuse. Rigged elections don’t do that, of course. They’re much in the vein of putting the penny in instead of the fuse, and wiring the switch on “on” so it can’t take the electricity down, and stop the danger.

All we have left now is fire extinguishers in the form of corrupt police and/or military and a lot of hysterical ninnies who claim a small kitchen fire was the worst catastrophe since forever.

And this has extended to all levels of our once-free polity. They stop people talking freely on social media. In groups and associations, you have to keep quiet about any dissenting opinions, lest you lose job and family. People actively falsify their opinions, in order to stay in the good graces of those they need to continue surviving.

The problem is like disabling the fire alarm, it does nothing to prevent fires. In fact it makes it more likely that a fire will happen, because no one is taking the most elementary precautions.

And you — and I look at it — and wonder what the heck is in their heads.

Well, a great part of it is they know their control is precarious (at least at some level they know it) and that people are fed up. So like children afraid of fire who silence the fire alarm, they think if no one talks about it there will be no revolt.

They’re right to an extent (unlike with fire) in that there will be no small, widespread, annoying contagion rebellions. Well, except for things like Let’s Go Brandon.

And of course, we can’t vote them out. Ah. They wired that panel on, dare and take them down that way!

BUT all that does is set up the ideal conditions for an all consuming conflagration.

And the conditions are set.

Part of it, of course, is that the left has this strange dysfunction where they believe if you control the words you control reality. No, I can’t explain it, but it’s obvious in their obsession with controlling language (which always evades them) and their refusal to talk about anything that makes them uncomfortable. It’s not all crowd control. If you watch them carefully, there is a certain primitive belief that thoughts and words control reality. (Maybe it’s that so many of them work — if at all — in a realm of thoughts and words. Or maybe it’s the New Age affirmations movement gone wild.)

Take the social thing. They suppressed mention of anything counter narrative. They’re going insane at Musk buying Twitter, because they’re honestly convinced if things are never mentioned they won’t exist.

But of course people know things. If they lie with numbers and say there’s no inflation, it doesn’t make our household budget any better. If they say there are no supply problems, it doesn’t put food on the table. And their eternal obsession with Trump might make him exactly into the super-enemy they think he is.

The most they can do is make each of us feel alienated and desperate. But reality — let’s go Brandon — keeps breaking through. People talk in all sorts of places, and you don’t want to hear what I hear in the grocery store. (Or at least they don’t.)

But even fragmented and seemingly alone, desperate people do desperate things. We’re not desperate yet, but the pressure is going up every day. And pressure has a way of blowing.

The other part of why they do this, is that even in relatively free countries, the left has become the refuge of those who by inclination or stupidity believe in top-down, center-out. Maybe they just want power, and of course each and every one of these deluded idiots thinks he’ll be the Great Leader, or the Great Leader’s favored lapdog, or maybe they believe that things work better that way (perhaps they have a lot of Soviet Live magazines under the mattress, or have never studied real economics, who knows?)

Any command and control top-down system is subject to ass-covering. Yes, even (particularly?) corporations.

I’ve seen it time and again. People have a project and everyone reports it is going swimmingly. Because, well, of course they do. They don’t want to be fired. This means the project leader and every level up from that “knows” everything is fine and every goal is met.

So it was in the Soviet Union. So it is in Cuba, Venezuela and particularly China. (In case you wonder why China talked itself into the arrantly stupid one-child policy and why it took so long to correct and not completely, yet.) So it is with our “Great Leaders” the Biden Junta, and their infantile belief in “Climate Change” (Caused by humans. Of course climate changes. We’re in an inter-glacial period, for instance.)and their belief in auto-magic clean energy that will happen when we need it.

Because every level reports up that everything is fine. And only each person knows he or she is lying.

Look at what they say at every level of life interaction! Even in craft or social groups, people are all progressive. Theirs is the philosophy of the future.

No, they’re not actually aware of how many people have quit in disgust, or are silent, and getting angrier.

Everything they see and hear reinforces their belief that everything is fine. Why shouldn’t they be confident in their eventual triumph?

Sure, some woke corps collapse. And the bottom line on movies they bet on is weirdly low. But hey, it just means that people are gaming more and movies are a dying industry now. Or maybe they’ve been insufficiently woke, and need more paint-by-numbers socialism. Look, I heard this for years as an explanation for why print runs were falling through the floor. It was all “people don’t read anymore.” Till indie happened, of course.

You think the big advances on lefty biographies and books are bribes. And they are. But at some level, I bet at least 90% of the people involved in the projects are baffled at their failure, because everywhere they go, everyone loves these people and causes. So…. why are they failing? Oh, yeah, people don’t read anymore!

They’ve effectively stopped every possible fire alarm, and if you mention fire, they’ll descend on you with all their fury.

So they know they’re safe.

But of course, that’s not how any of this works. If you permit me to change metaphors from fire to flood, this is how it works:

“But afterwards there occurred violent earthquakes and floods; and in a single day and night of misfortune all your warlike men in a body sank into the earth, and the island of Atlantis in like manner disappeared in the depths of the sea.”
― Plato, Timaeus and Critias

And the Earth is shaking.

*With deepest apologies at doing two BFPs today. But we have a fridge being delivered at 7 am, and I was emptying current fridge and freezer till half an hour ago. I promise writing tomorrow – SAH.*

The Worst Possible Responses We Could Get From The Stars – A Blast From The Past from August 2013

The problem of getting into the frame of mind where you want to gore sacred cows is that sooner or later you’re going to run onto the fields of your childhood and gore Betsy, the cow who let you pet her when you were really little.

What I mean is that having started to doubt pretty much all ideas of the seventies and beyond, I find myself doubting some of the ideas that thrilled me to the core when I was an embryonic geek aged twelve or so.

Take for example the search for extraterrestrial life…

I remember how impressed I was when I found something about Voyager and what we’d sent our potential playfellows in space.  It seemed like a wonderful idea.  I mean – we wanted to talk to these people in space, so surely they’d want to talk to us?

Think of the wonderful scientific and philosophical exchange, the things we could never learn while locked in our symmetrical, bi-gender, ape-based bodies.  I mean, we could talk to ammonia-based aliens, reptile-like aliens, or things we couldn’t even imagine, but who would be intelligent and have wonderful secrets to reveal.

Sigh.

Then the seventies came to an end, and the effluvium of drugs saturating western culture receded a little, and we looked down at ourselves and saw that we were wearing bellbottoms and ran to cover them up with fig leaves.

What I mean is, I – alas – grew up and, like many ideas that seemed perfectly wonderful in the seventies, I started having serious doubts about the way we’d gone about searching for extra-terrestrial life.

I wasn’t so jaded, mind, that a few years ago I DIDN’T install SETI on my computer.  (I had to remove it, it made my old laptop very slow.)

But last night the guys and I were discussing the idea of search for extraterrestrial life and I realized how bass ackwards it is to be sending them all this information about us.

I’m, of course, not the first one to come up with this.  One of the reasons I love Independence Day was that the whole movie is a denial of a character’s optimistic statement that “They didn’t come all this way looking for a fight.”

This hooks up with the whole idea of Robert A. Heinlein that serious space exploration will only be undertaken for colonization or hope of colonization and that if some species has survived and become the strongest in the world they are not lotus eaters who like to pet furry bunnies.

More likely, like us, they’re bunny eaters, red in teeth and claw.  And if they are more advanced than us, they might very well also be stronger, meaner and more determined.

The whole idea of aliens being more enlightened, purer, less interested doesn’t seem to be supported by “how species survive.”

Oh, sure, if we really were created by a superior intelligence, who worked directly – and not through natural laws – with the clay of the universe, perhaps some of those beings out there, really are like onto angels.  (Although in at least one telling, angels come in two varieties.  And in others angels range from bloodthirsty to unimaginably vile.  Keep that in mind. If you have A LOT of time to waste, buy yourself a Dictionary of Angels.  Reading one gave me the idea of an eternal life with bureaucracy no one can understand, not even the angels.  No, I’m not writing it.)

BUT if we’re going with scientific principles, chances are that the aliens in Puppet Masters are cuddly and friendly as a puppy compared to the creatures that wait us in space.

So what on Earth possessed us to send them a whole heap of information about ourselves?  And to still look so hard for them with SETI?

… I got nothing.  Judging from the history of Earth, while the Aliens might have a lot to teach us, the most likely for us to learn it is by reading their entrails after we kill them all.  Sadly, that might be the best thing, because otherwise they’ll be reading ours.

Our sending that stuff out to the cosmos might in fact mark us as the “special” class of the cosmos.

Short of the massive force of Independence Day, which at least would make us feel important (as we died) here are some of the more dispiriting messages we could receive back, (and these would be written in English unless otherwise marked.)

–          Okay.  Whatevs.

–          How precious.  Is that the best you can do Buttercup?

–          You call that a civilization?  My kids can build better on a weekend in the backyard.

–          Riiiiiiiight.  Why don’t you stop trolling?  Your supposed information is internally contradictory and no one would be stupid enough to send the key to their civilization to us.

–          Ah!  Funny.

–          Ewwwwwwwwwwwwwww!

–          Pervert!

–          We have filed a restraining order with the Galactic tribunal. Please cease your transmissions.

–          (this one would be in some alien language and it would take us years to decipher to find it says) The over-under on conquering your sorry planet is three minutes.  We’ve sent our invincible armada your way.

–          (This one too, after incredible effort, we’d manage to read and it would say: )  Another one?  Another one?  Why is it that every species that hits this state of development sends out one of these? And they all think they’re so special!  It’s a good thing we have some morals and don’t eat children, or you’d be gone.  PS – Take off those bell bottoms and find some fig leaves.  Have you looked at yourselves in the mirror?

First, wordpress has decided what we really need as bloggers is a dorky question at the top of the blog, which it won’t let us remove.

It’s obvious from the question it thinks we’re all 20 somethings with our heads full of mush and leftism (BIRM.) So it asks questions on the ethics of eating meat or such rot. It also would like kompromat, so it asks what thing we’re most sorry/embarrassed by. Or what we’re most envious of.

<Rolls eyes.

Let’s say I’d need to be really blocked on blog posts to write to the world’s stupidest prompts. I wish they’d stop coming u with crazy stuff like that, and just make posting and themes and stuff EASIER.

Today I’m not blocked at all. I’m still tired and moving slow from the great coughening, and I probably should put a tree up sometime, plus I have curtains to finish, and three stories just hanging.

On top of which husband is working all the hours G-d gives again, which means he won’t come to bed till midnight, and gets up at six, which wakes me. I’m all right. I just don’t function well with sleep deprivation.

Anyway, I thought I’d put up some pretty SF pictures, but of course mind is stuck in short story mode, so some of these have titles, some have beginnings, and some I will write. Others not, of course. The not first….

The one above is a definitely not, unless my brain really breaks. Title: When aliens are late with their gift shopping on Christmas eve.

Probably not, but if I wrote it it would start with “Princesses on Earth, in the dark ages, thought it was terrible to be locked in a tower. They had no idea how bad it would be, when your father could put you in a whole other planet and never allow you to meet anyone.”

Likely not. “Myvara had had just about enough of Christmas. The entire trade station was hip deep in Christmas trees and kitchy ornaments. Ever astronaut that docked wore a Santa hat. And late at night, even in the most disreputable dives, there were sing alongs to the tune of “It came upon a midnight clear” as though any of them space born — had ever seen a midnight, or knew it by anything but an hour on the clock. She was going to build herself an isolation sphere and stay there till this madness passed.”

Likely not, because sad, but “The little Robot had walked the entire asteroid he’d been abandoned in, looking for someone, anyone. Just because he was old and obsolete it didn’t mean he didn’t want company. It had been made by social apes, and it was a social little fellow.
After months alone, he found a blue rose, growing out of the cracked, dry surface of the planet. It didn’t talk, and it didn’t think. But the question was, who had planted it, and how did it grow?”

By the time the aliens came, humans were gone and long dead or gone elsewhere. After centuries of experimentation, they’d recreated a pair from DNA left behind.
Now on the eve of opening the gestator, the aliens paused. The Earth was a harsh, unforgiving environment compared to their own. What would these creatures be like? And if unleashed upon the universe, what would they do?

Why the heck was a clock at the end of the bridge? Bob drove it every day, and normally there was … well, the other side of the bridge, a downtown street. There was a Greek Diner there, he wanted to go to.
So, what was with the clock, the weird portal, and definitely the lightening.
Bob had a feeling December 24 was late.

Spaceships were no place for cats and dogs. Not yet, at least. Later, when the price per pound of transport wasn’t so prohibitive, maybe.

But humans wanted pets. Even if they had to build them themselves from spare parts, working feverishly in off-duty hours.

Fuzzy came into being that way. A stainless steel cat, without the slightest bit of fur. But he walked silently on tiny cat feet, and as though form dictated function, he sat at Imrald’s feet and purred.

I am writing a short story, and a bit…. uh…. late on it. Oh, the short story is for here.

So, in the meantime, I thought I’d promote a couple of Hun businesses, and let you put your own in comments.

Remember my friend who, despite being young — or a kid, really, as far as I’m concerned — managed to get “complications from Covid” to the point we almost lost him, and he did a fundraiser to get his business going again (because being incapacitated is expensive.)

Well, he’s getting his business going again.

HAIRBORNE DEFENSES

Check his stuff here at: Hairborne Defenses

He has a Coupon code for fellow Huns: ACCORDINGTOHOYT

And for Lawdog’s review of the product.

Murphic Industries

Our very own Ian Brune is…. Murphic Industries!

His coupon code is: HOYTSHOCKED

He has a lot of pretties for all you fantasy addicted people. (Me? WHY would you think that? Snicker, snicker.)

Go browse.

And if you have a Hun owned business NOT books (Just send those to the Sunday book promo) let us know in comments! We’re all tight on money this year, but if we’re going to support businesses, let’s support our own.

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. – SAH

A BREAK WITH THE RULES ABOVE: DO NOT HESITATE TO BUY SARAH A. HOYT’S BOOKS. THEY ARE ALWAYS EXCELLENT, AND CURE MELANCHOLY AND DEEP SET DESPAIR.*
*Void or abridged where forbidden.**
**The author DOES NOT HAVE A medical license, and is not impersonating a medical doctor***
***Given the wide variety of plain silly she’s written in her life, you’d best download a sample first, to make sure it’s your kind of silly and not someone else’s kind of silly. Thanks.

STILL ON SALE FROM SARAH A. HOYT: Dipped, Stripped and Dead (Daring Finds Book 1)

A Dyce Dare Mystery
When she was six, Dyce Dare wanted to be a ballerina, but she couldn’t stop tripping over her own feet. Then she wanted to be a lion tamer, but Fluffy, the cat, would not obey her. Which is why at the age of twenty nine she’s dumpster diving, kind of. She’s looking for furniture to keep her refinishing business going, because she would someday like to feed herself and her young son something better than pancakes.
Unfortunately, as has come to be her expectation, things go disastrously wrong. She finds a half melted corpse in a dumpster. This will force her to do what she never wanted to do: solve a crime.
Life is just about to get crazy… er… crazier. But at least at the end of the tunnel there might be a relationship with a very nice Police Officer.

FROM SARAH A. HOYT: Odd Magics: Tales for the Lost

We hesitate to mention, but this book would obviously make a very good stocking stuffer.

Odd Magics
This is a very strange collection of fairytales, recast for modern life. In it the prize isn’t always to the fairest, the
magic is rarely to the strongest.
But lonely introverts do find love, women who never gave it a thought find themselves at the center of romance.
Doing what’s right will see you to the happily ever after.
And sometimes you have to kiss an accountant to find your prince.

AND NOW BOOKS BY BRAVE SOULS WHO CHOOSE TO ADVERTISE ON THIS BLOG AND THEREBY ASSOCIATE WITH OUR DISREPUTABLE SELVES!

FROM ALMA T. C. BOYKIN: Hunter In Shadows: Familiar Generations Book 2

Odd magic moves in Devon County. Someone is scattering spells in the courthouse. As the year turns to winter, twisted magic stirs, awakened by the mysterious spell caster. Or was it?

Jude Tainuit and his Familiar, Shoim, guard Devon County’s magic users, and others. That is, when Jude isn’t working at the bakery, helping the herb-wife Martha O’Neil, and wincing at his Familiar’s jokes. When Martha makes her claim to a long-abandoned piece of land, dark power moves to stop her.

As mild charm spells become threats, and strange creatures stalk the nights, Jude, Shoim, and their allies struggle to find the source of the trouble. The Hunter in Shadows must act, but how?

FROM CEDAR SANDERSON: Crow Moon: A Collection of Fantastic Tales

Eight fantastic tales of swords, sorcery, love and justice.

The honeymoon is over…. before it even began. Nico and Emie face the biggest decision of their lives, and hope that it won’t kill them.

Cecelia’s dowry is a worthless field, and a friendship begun in a macabre deal.

Soleh fights her way out of a cruel marriage and swears vengeance by the lost gods of a dead clan. She rides with the darkest of companions at her side.

In a breath of air on an unmasked face, the worth of a life is laid bare.

Amaya Lombard faces her past, risking her future, in the very place where her magic was stripped from her blood and bone.

He answered his son’s call for help, but nothing could have prepared him for what his son had done… and expected him to take care of.

The boyar’s son must marry, to save his lands and people. The domovoi bids him wed, but she will only come to him if he fills her every request. Can he swallow his gorge long enough?

Lom rides for the goblin camp, death along the path. His bargain will have a cruel cost…

FROM KAREN MYERS: Monsters, 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

MONSTERS – Xenoarchaeologist Vartan has promised his young daughter Liza one of the many enigmatic lamedh objects that litter the site of a vanished alien civilization.

No one can figure out what they’re good for, but Liza finds a use for one.

ADAPTABILITY – The Webster Marble Deluxe Woodsman, Model 820-E, has been offline for quite some time. Quite some time indeed.

Good thing Webster has a manual to consult, and a great many special functions.

FROM C. V. WALTER: Healed by His Alien Nurse (Alien Brides Book 7)

Captain Michael LaGrange and Damina have been negotiating over their future together since the day they met. Both stubborn, both cautious, neither wants to make a decision either of them will regret. Desire and friendship build into a need they can’t ignore any longer.
Unfortunately, duty has to come first and they find themselves on a good will tour prior to the Prince’s wedding.
When something goes wrong at an event, they’re forced apart, and into the machinations of a shadowy conspiracy. Kidnapping, injury and a mysterious illness conspire to keep them apart. To get together they’ll have to get away but they’re surrounded by enemies and good allies are hard to find.

FROM LAURA MONTGOMERY: Manx Prize.

Charlotte Fisher lives under colliding skies.It’s the second half of the twenty-first century, and mankind has reached Earth orbit but not much farther. Orbital debris is a by-product of the industrial activity, and it’s dangerous both to everyone up there and the bottom lines of the corporations offering a prize to get rid of it. Charlotte heads up a team chasing the Manx Prize for the first successful, controlled de-orbit of a dead satellite. To win, she and her team must out-think and out-engineer a cheating competitor, dodge a collusive regulator, and withstand the temptations offered by a large and powerful seastead.The sky’s not the limit. It’s the challenge.If you like hard science fiction, impossible odds, and a touch of romance, you’ll love Laura Montgomery’s Manx Prize. Buy Manx Prize to join the race for space today!

FROM ANNA FERREIRA: Christmas at Blackheath.

Agnes Rawlins would never dream of showing a melancholy face to her brother’s guests. She may be a spinster, and treated little better than any common housekeeper, but she is responsible for bringing Christmas cheer into the dark and rambling Blackheath Manor, and she does not shirk her duty, even when she has little reason to celebrate.

William Marlowe, Viscount Claridge, has reluctantly accepted an invitation to spend the Christmas season at Blackheath. It’s not his first choice- how anyone could wish to spend time in the gloomy manor house is beyond him- but when he meets the kind and gentle lady of the house, he finds that Christmas at Blackheath might not be so bad after all.

FROM DOROTHY GRANT: Between Two Graves (Combined Operations Book 4)

He swore he wouldn’t be back while his parents lived…

Now, almost thirty years later, AJ is going home.

Ordered to attend his mother’s funeral in the rugged northern border of the Empire, AJ is baring old wounds to his new wife, and burying familial feuds.

But the past won’t die that easily, and grave secrets will threaten all the survivors and the women they love. Because the Feds are after AJ’s unwanted inheritance…

And they’re willing to risk a war to get their hands on it.

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:Familiar*

*Miz Boykin to the white courtesy phone.

First, being a Derp Canoe, I completely forgot I had a sale on on Dipped Stripped and Dead. Anyway, It’s up…. I think till the 12th, but don’t quote it, and it’s 99c.

Yes, new one is in the works, and honestly, I think I’m getting to the point my health is more reliable, and book will be out …. March-ish?

Dipped, Stripped and Dead

A Dyce Dare Mystery
When she was six, Dyce Dare wanted to be a ballerina, but she couldn’t stop tripping over her own feet. Then she wanted to be a lion tamer, but Fluffy, the cat, would not obey her. Which is why at the age of twenty nine she’s dumpster diving, kind of. She’s looking for furniture to keep her refinishing business going, because she would someday like to feed herself and her young son something better than pancakes.
Unfortunately, as has come to be her expectation, things go disastrously wrong. She finds a half melted corpse in a dumpster. This will force her to do what she never wanted to do: solve a crime.
Life is just about to get crazy… er… crazier. But at least at the end of the tunnel there might be a relationship with a very nice Police Officer.

The Other THING… Well, I got up late, and I need to assemble some furniture, and unpack some stuff, and finish curtains and setup the Holiday decor, before the neighbors escalate from dirty looks to knocking at the door, so I’m going to share with you a disturbing problem I’m having with someone I share workspace with.

Ahem.

December 3 2022

Dear HR Department of Hoyt Publishing,

I have spent the last year tolerating Inappropriate Displays of Affection at my work place, ranging to being interrupted in my work for a kiss, to being hugged and groped in lunch and recreation space.

Note, since this happens with D. M. Hoyt it’s not so much a complaint, as by way of a brag.

However, I wish to lodge a complaint against our junior co-worker, Mr. Havelock Vetinary Fuzzy Hoyt.

He’s always been mildly inappropriate, in that he tends to jump on my lap and walk across my keyboard while I’m working, as well as walking around my legs screaming if I refuse to stop my work and pay attention to him.

However, recently, he’s developed more disturbing behaviors. To wit, he’s started inappropriately and repeatedly licking me at all times. Mostly he licks my hands, but more recently he’s started licking any portion of me with exposed skin. Since I don’t wish to work in a beekeeper’s outfit, this has become disruptive.

In addition, he has started to pet my face and particularly my lips with his litter-tainted paw, which strikes me as a work-place safety issue, since that paw can’t be clean.

While I understand the limited brain capacity of Mr. Havelock V F Hoyt and all allowances must be made, I request that you approach him and tell him I cannot work under these conditions.

Sincerely,

Sarah A. Hoyt

December 5, 2022

Dear Ms. Hoyt,

We have contacted Mr. Havelock V. F. Hoyt and explained your complaints, to which he tended the following justification: Meow.

Respectfully,

the HR department.

December 7, 2022

Dear H. R. Department,

I very much doubt that Havlock V. F. Hoyt Meowed. He doesn’t know how to meow, and most of the time carefully says “Meow”. I’ll also point out he has an accent and has been known to insert an H in the middle of mehow so it’s actually mee — h — ow.

This has led to suspicions that he’s actually a very small human in a fur suit.

Also, he’s taken to waking me up in the middle of the night, by licking my foot. This is unendurable.

Sincerely,

Sarah A. Hoyt.

December 9, 2022,

Dear Ms. Hoyt,

We’ve investigated your allegations, and regret to inform you Mr. Havelock V. F. Hoyt is in fact a cat, not a tiny human in a fur suit.

His peculiarities appear to derive from the fact he has a brain the size of a walnut, and an over abundance of affectionate disposition. You obviously will have to tolerate him.

Annoyedly,

The H. R. Department.

December 9, 2022

Dear H. R. Department,

Are you sure? Because he’s now taken to half-hiding behind furniture and watching me very intently.

Desperately,

Sarah A. Hoyt.

December 10, 2022

Dear Ms. Hoyt,

Oh, for heaven’s sake.

Is CAT. Cat is Cat. Live with cat. You love cat.

Stop being a neurotic writer.

Dismissively,

The HR Department.

December 10, 2022

Dear H. R. Department,

IS WRITER. Is Neurotic. Can’t stop being writer.
You’re more annoying than Havelock V F Hoyt!

Bah and also pfui,

Sarah A. Hoyt.

At the instigation of Jolie, this is not exactly an open-floor post, but is close to.

She pointed out some things she was doing/we could do to fight back against the idiots in charge, at least insofar as not giving them our money. And asked for ideas.

I’m throwing this open, as well as “How to support our own” without giving a fortune in GiveSendGo, though…. well, it will continue to be a part of my monthly expenditures, as far as I can tell, because the worse things get (and going grocery shopping yesterday scared me, and made me grateful it’s just the two of us, and we’re now 60) the more people we know and love, and the more people on our side will need help. And the less able we’ll be to give it, which also means if we can support them in their endeavors so they don’t need help/as much help, it’s better.

Note that ahah, sure crucifying all the bastages (or putting them up on stakes) or a revolution yes would “surely be fighting back.” But we’re looking for solutions short of and maybe averting that. First because only glowies or idiots plan that kind of thing — or instigate it — in public, and frankly I don’t want to deal with either glowies or idiots. Second because — eyes Kenye West narrowly — if we tip into that, what comes out might call itself “right wing” but will not be the Republic we love or have anything to do with the vision of the founders. So before you think it’s funny, DO NOT POST THAT. It’s not funny and will get me in a snit. And you don’t want me in a snit.

Instead of that, come up with ideas on how we can live as closely as possible adhering to “Not one red penny for the blue” and “Support people who don’t hate us.” AND (very important) how to mitigate the h*ll about to descend on all of us the next few years, particularly for people on our side, who’ve done nothing to deserve this. Yes, the river flood destroys the homes of decent people and b*stards alike. But in this case the b*stards are causing the flood. Let’s build barriers that don’t let the homes of decent people wash away. And no, I’ve got no idea how, but one of you might have.

And while I appreciate — btw — “build alternatives to Amazon” it needs to be more precise than that. One of the things I’d like to do (It needs only getting the person I’ve explained it to to build the site for me, after which TeamHoyt can enter new names) is a website that promotes writers to the right of Lenin. (Without saying that, but it will be at least at a remove run by me, and anyone who wants to associate with us…) By its design, it would be easy to convert into “little stores selling ebooks to the public.” I kind of want to do that with MGC too (I NEED to talk to the website designer, because it would be easier to pay him before end of year) for serialized work.

BUT there should be other models/ideas for that.

I also — note lack of a donation button in top right corner — still need something to replace paypal. For the yearly fundraiser, yes, which I promised my guys I’d do, but also to have the button there, so when I resume serializing and/or doing free shorts on the regular (probably tomorrow, actually) people who come by, are not regular readers, and wish to hit the tip jar can do so. (For that one, I’m almost certainly going to start a permanent GiveSendGo campaign with a ridiculous goal. But I can’t use it for the fundraiser, because they don’t allow the giving of incentives. BTW on that, I AM assembling the USAian collection this weekend. It was delayed by my medicine reaction. ALSO if you want/donated for the personal mentoring, I’ll be in touch with you by end of year. But if you want it earlier, please email one of my emails, and I’ll try to schedule you earlier. Tuckerizations will come too, and those of you who snarkily requested a math death will be in a world of trouble. I’m not sure how, but just you wait.)

ANYWAY — open floor for ideas on how to fight the (ah!) establishment by completely legal means, with our minds, our treasure, and most definitely our sacred honor.

Go!