March 4, 2026 · 5:27 am

Sherlock Holmes:”Nothing clears up a case as much as stating it to another person”

I’m not sure when it occurred to me that getting feedback from other people before I submitted my work might make it better.

While memory isn’t always accurate, I’m pretty sure I didn’t show my first novel to anyone until after I sent it off to DAW Books (came back with a “not bad, submit again,” which was quite a thrill). I showed my second novel (currently a new WIP as Let No Man Put Asunder) to my friends Martin and Cindy because I remember their feedback. Cindy, in particular, pointed out that my protagonist Adrienne (Mandy in the current WIP) didn’t have a purse or anything else to carry her stuff. I rewrote accordingly.

I’m a good self-editor. I can spot plot holes. I can sense places where my work needs something more, even if I can’t define what it is (eventually I do). I’m not an infallible self-editor. Showing my work to beta readers has made it so much better.

My short story “You Are What You Eat,” for instance, has the food in a married couple’s house possessed by ghosts. Every editor I submitted to said the ending disappointed them. Cindy made me see what was wrong with it: it had become a standard revenge story when it needed something weirder. I rewrote accordingly; it sold to Tales of the Talisman.

It’s hard as writers to see our work clearly. Once I’ve written a story I tend to think of the finished work as the only possible way it could have been done. Even if I can see alternatives, they’re clearly not as good. Obviously the reader will see that … right. Someone outside my head, reading cold, may (and usually does) have a completely different reaction. Sometimes it’s the aesthetics — the ending lacks oomph, the character’s issue got left unresolved. Sometimes I left out a point on the page that was very clear in my head, leaving the story an illogical mess. Plus the little things like changing a name between drafts and not catching all of them, head-hopping, etc.

This hasn’t always been an option. There have been stretches of time where for whatever reason I didn’t have anyone to provide a critique. I’m pretty sure I wrote Questionable Minds without any feedback; it’s a little too gruesome for Cindy and I didn’t have anyone else to ask at the time. I think it turned out well, and it got positive responses from some editors (even an acceptance, right before the publisher shut its doors). Still who knows if a more thorough beta-reading might have helped.

Now that I have my writer’s group here in Durham, that’s not a problem. I have feedback on almost everything, including my film reference books. They were great help on The Aliens Are Here and Watching Jekyll and Hyde, for instance — pointing out where I wasn’t clear, where I’d gotten bogged down in synopsis, where I’d wandered off topic.

Beta readers are not infallible either. And when you have 10 or more of them, there are inevitable outliers. The ending of my short story “The Schloss and the Switchblade,” for instance, has the lead hooking up with his long-ago crush. One of my beta readers had issues with that; I kept it in. Still, when you have a solid majority of people saying “that was a mistake,” it’s worth thinking about. And even one person can be right when they’re pointing out an obvious mistake.

Occasionally beta reading goes sour. About 30 years ago, I showed an intense, angry short story to one of my writer friends. She didn’t think it was marketable. This threw me enough I don’t think I ever tried to sell it — a shame, because what’s the worst that could happen? A no, that’s what, and I’ve had plenty of those. I didn’t submit it, which guaranteed it would never be accepted (and for various reasons, I don’t think it’s good enough now). I’ve no idea why that critique shook me so much, but it did.

Overall, though, beta reading has been a big win for me. I highly recommend it.

Rights to all images remain with their current holders. Questionable Minds cover by Samantha Collins.

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March 3, 2026 · 12:12 pm

Kennedy will get more people killed than Hegseth … maybe

Having an inept, unqualified schlub like Hegseth in charge of our armed forces is bad; particularly when the administration is all in on waging war. his commitment to weeding out anyone who isn’t an outwardly straight white Christian man from any position of authority is bad already. But still, Robert F. Kennedy Junior is worse, as the premier medical journal The Lancet points out in a blistering editorial.

Kennedy talks a lot about environmental poisons but “under Kennedy’s leadership, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) shuttered programmes studying the health effects of air pollution, HHS withheld a report linking alcohol consumption to cancer, and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) withdrew warnings of potential harm from consuming products (such as raw milk and chlorine dioxide) falsely marketed as treatments for autism.” As noted in an earlier post, for all his professed concern about chronic disease his department has cut grants for dealing with diabetes. For all his concerns about environmental poisons he’s not concerned that the Necrotic Toddler wants to repeal a Biden-era rule about replacing lead pipes in water systems.

Some of this is undoubtedly a response to business interests lobbying for themselves, others Kennedy’s personal crackpottery. Some may be a mix: I’m sure whoever makes bank on raw milk is glad to have his support but Kennedy seems sincerely convinced pasteurization is the devil.

He’s a shrewd enough politician that he knows he has to serve the Toddler’s whims; sure the Toddler hasn’t ended inflation but hey, Kennedy says just eat cheaper meat. As the Senate seems terrified of defying the Toddler, that means Kennedy with his anti vax bullshit will preside as our health collapses. The Lancet again: “And crises are looming: in November, 2025, the first human infection (and death) from the H5N5 strain of avian flu was recorded in Washington state; pertussis, which killed 13 people in the USA in 2025, continues to spread across the country; and the measles outbreak that began in January of last year now threatens the elimination status of the USA and Mexico.”

I’m sure Kennedy and his supporters will hold up criticism from a pillar of the medical establishment as proof he’s being attacked like Gallileo. It’s important not to forget that Gallileo was an outlier. There have been lots of people with theories challenging established science; for every Galileo there’s a dozen people who were just wrong. People who had reasonable but erroneous theories, people who believed in the Hollow Earth, Nazi researchers who believed the hammer of Thor was a distorted memory of an Aryan super-weapon. Lots of others have been in medicine. Science and medicine are often wrong but that doesn’t make the lone genius/theorist/crackpot right. In this case, he’s completely wrong. But unlike most crackpots he’s got the power to turn his theories into action.

The Lancet’s right. What lies ahead will not be pretty.

Neither, of course, is the Iraq war. The mainstream media devoted quite a bit of space in 2016 to explaining why the Necrotic Toddler would be a dove compared to Clinton. Now look at us. And while a number of Republicans are talking about freedom for Iran, we don’t have a plan for that. We don’t have a plan at all. And we’re wasting billions and using up military resources, for a war with no clear endgame or rationale.

Why are we attacking Iran? It’s not because they’re a malevolent authoritarian state; the Toddler loves Putin, jokes about Saudi Arabia having a journalist murdered, screams with outrage because Brazil and South Korea have put would-be dictators under arrest. The probable factors are that we’ve never forgiven Iran for owning us by seizing our embassy in ’80; Netanhayu has been pushing for us to attack them for years; Saudi Arabia and Iran are hostile to each other. And possibly the Toddler’s seething resentment that Obama gets more respect. Obama negotiated a no-nukes deal with Iran, which the Toddler tore up; one theory is that he expected Iran to come begging for a new deal, instead of which they decided there was no point. Now his fee-fees are hurt, again. For a deeper analysis, turn to Heather Cox Richardson.

As Lawyers, Guns and Money says, this is why the Toddler is so terribly damaging to America (and the world) even when he fails. He can’t admit he was wrong. He can’t reconsider his strategy. Instead, he doubles down: if he’s thwarted, his immediate response is to try something bigger, worse, and stupider. So things get worse. He’s ultimately responsible for picking Hegseth and Kennedy, and the Senate Republicans are 100 percent responsible for approving them. Do not be fooled when some of them pretend either man’s conduct was unexpected. And many of them, like Rep. Tim Burchett of Tennessee, are still in the cult. Anti-Muslim bigot Laura Loomer thinks this is only step one, and the Toddler should follow it up by locking up American Muslims for being, you know, Muslim (like most current Republicans, she hates us for our freedoms).

As for Iran, I’m seeing the inevitable shrieking online by Repubs demanding unity, supporting the troops, trusting the president, anyone who doesn’t is a terrorist sympathizer — exactly the same bilge we saw in the Gulf War. Either they’ve learned nothing or they think we haven’t.

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March 3, 2026 · 5:33 am

We are what we do OR an old man will now yell at clouds

College dropout Advait Paliwal claims to have co-created an AI, Einstein, that will help college students cheat. Not that he phrases it that way: according to Paliwal, it’s taking the burden of work off the students, like automation has always done. Why should they learn things if AI can learn them? Isn’t the whole model of education teaching people outmoded? He specifically compares students to the horses that used to pull wagons and coaches — the automobile engine came in and suddenly they could live free! Well, if you overlook that the horses were often shot as they were no longer of value (we’ve seen a massive drop in the horse population since 1900).

This put me in mind of two articles I read at least twenty years back. In one, the professors quoted said they’d seen an increasing number of kids who had no particular interest in learning or acquiring skills — college was just one more hoop to get through, like their SAT scores, their high school GPA, their extracurriculars, and none of it had any meaning to them.

The other was a discussion of cheating in high school. The students were adamant they were not cheats — come on, high school isn’t real life! It’s just something you need to get the diploma that leads to real life down the road. Once they’re out, they’ll stop cheating.

Will they? Maybe … and maybe not. “Honest when convenient” is not the same as “honest.” Like C.S. Lewis’s thoughts on being invited to join the cool kids, once you cross that line it’s easy to have a repeat performance — cheat on other tests, wildly pad your resume, hope nobody catches you. And yes, they’re cheaters, because whatever is in their hearts, they are still cheating. As Thomas Jefferson says, “it is in our lives, and not from our words, that our religion must be read.”

Or as Immanuel Kant put it, “act as if what you did set a universal law.” If you cheat, you’re not saying “cheating is wrong but this is an exception,” you’re saying “it’s okay to cheat.” (more here).

In the lively comments thread at the first link in this post, several people argued that yes, college really is just a hoop to jump through for a lot of people; that those who are genuinely curious about learning have always been a minority. There’s at least some truth to this; I remember a study some years back that concluded most fluffy, lightweight degrees exist so the college can bring in rich kids who can pay a full ride, kids who need a degree on their CV but will be getting jobs based on their family and connections. They have no interest in study so a degree that requires little effort will let them graduate while spending four years carousing and screwing (and building some of those connections for their future).

The thing about degrees, though … they aren’t just a formality. They’re supposed to indicate a basic level of proficiency in field X, with abilities including writing coherently and (as one commenter put it) sitting and listening. If someone’s got the degree but not the skills, having jumped through that hoop may not help them in the long run. I certainly hope it doesn’t.

Paliwal’s bullshit makes no sense: training and learning are not like being yoked to the plow and taking the “burden” off the student isn’t more efficient, it’s less efficient, as they’ve spent four years in college accomplishing nothing and learning nothing. And as someone recently opined on Bluesky, if you duck the hard part of learning, you miss out the fun part — discovering you’ve mastered a skill. It’s the same with writing: sure, writing a story is hard but that’s why it’s satisfying when I succeed. What would be the point in turning that part over to an AI?

In the words of Chanda Prescot-Weinstein, “The thing is, even if you’re just thinking in terms of fiscal value, having gone through a degree program and being able to put it on your resumé/CV isn’t the most significant return on your investment: the way you have further developed your mind is.”

For further reading, 404 Media looks at how many people will be hurt if college studies are discredited. Inside Higher Ed looks at the short-term steps (back to bluebook exams!) and the long-term need to shift education away from the transactional model.

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March 2, 2026 · 5:15 am

Misogynists want law to protect men but not bind them, to bind women but not protect them

The title is a variation on Wilhoit’s Law, that conservatives believe the law should protect them but not bind them, and bind others but not protect them. For the majority of right-wingers, men are free to claim any job they can qualify for; women should be confined to one job, stay-at-home mom, preferably when they’re vulnerable teens. As Simone de Bouvier put it, women have been “denied the human right to create, to invent, to go beyond mere living to find a meaning for life in projects of ever-widening scope.” Women are chattel who should be bound by the will of their husband and master.

Many right-wingers support marital rape; many of them want to end women’s suffrage. James Dobson is one of many right-wing evangelicals who think the only way to stop spousal abuse is for the husband to chose to stop — turning to the church or the police would be defying her rightful lord and master and going against God’s will for her to submit. Patriarchal writer Lori Alexander, along with insisting marital rape does not exist (marriage is consent, end of story), says taking action to escape an abusive husband will anger god. Other conservative female misogynists think sexism is bad, when it’s directed at them (though no, they don’t deserve that either).

None of these ideas are unique to the right wing, to be sure (or unique to America. See also this). Most people, however, aren’t as devoted to making their misogyny into law as the right wing. As Jill Filipovic says, “they are getting very, very clear on what they think an acceptable life looks like for women: Settle for any man who decides he wants you; don’t go to college; marry early; have as many babies as possible; quit your job (or don’t pursue one in the first place) to stay home full time and depend financially on your husband; shoulder the blame if you wind up married to a jerk; wind up impoverished if you divorce; and face social condemnation if you fail to follow the Trad Wife script. Contraception should be illegal or at least hard to get; same for IVF and other fertility treatments. The reactionary conservatives of the New Right are not simply pro-natalists who want lots of babies; they are people who want to impose a strictly patriarchal model of the family on all of us, which has certain kinds of women having babies, and other women punished for deviating. And that requires giving men greater rights and freedoms, while allowing women fewer.”

One way the Heritage fascists plan to accomplish this: financial aid for women with kids but only married, two parent families, excluding step and adoptive parents. And targeting families who are more well-off rather than less. This is typical: when the right says it cares about families, it means families who conform to a 1950s sitcom image. Not single parents, not divorced parents, presumably not rape victims who choose to keep the baby (or have no choice due to forced-birth laws).

Right-wingers have also expressed enthusiasm for ending laws that protect women from discrimination: no job, no choice but to marry to support yourself (and the kids you’ll have a hard time not having). As right-winger David Frum puts it, when you’re living on the edge of ruin you have to behave carefully. Economic hardship for women is a win for the right.

You can find more raving misogyny in the long list of posts with the Undead Sexist Cliches tag.

As I’ve written in Undead Sexist Cliches, there should be no compromise on gender (or any other kind) of equality. Neither men nor women being dominant is the compromise position, the balance between the male supremacy we have now and the female supremacy so many people imagine is the alternatives (by envisioning a world without supremacy, feminists are visionary). By imagining equality as the extreme opposite to “men are in charge,” people fool themselves into believing “well, women should have some equality but not 100 percent” is a moderate position, e.g., the New York Times. Or there’s this story, which assumes that if a gay man or a woman is promoted ahead of you, that has to be affirmative action. Which as an analysis shows isn’t true; “Instead, what appears to have happened is a lot of empty talk, no real significant change, and backlash that is causing real harm. This is the worst of all possible worlds.”

Compromise with people who to reduce women to chattel is unacceptable. As Jessica Valenti says, “You don’t ask the guy with the boot on your neck to wear a softer shoe. You rip his fucking foot off.”

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March 1, 2026 · 5:19 am

Do coyotes love tahini and horror films? Books

COYOTE NATION: A Natural and Supernatural History by Dan Flores paints the coyote’s history and its clashes with Homo sapienx as “a nature story where nature wins!” — despite a century of trying to wipe coyotes out, they’re thriving more than ever.

Flores covers the coyote’s role in indigenous legend (something I’ll come back to in a later post), it’s evolutionary history (no, it’s not a species of jackal), and the European colonists and explorers having early encounters with the “prairie wolf.” In the 19th century things took a turn for the worse as Americans began seeing the coyote as a cowardly, sneaky, no-good varmint (Mark Twain vents on this line in Roughing It). It didn’t matter: coyotes adapted to us just fine. When various wildlife agencies began butchering wolves (Flores shows protecting livestock was an excuse to justify a much larger budget), coyotes adapted to that too (wolves have been known to prey on them), expanding their range and growing in number. Eventually that led to the same agencies justifying continued big budgets by killing them too, at various times using poison, bear traps and shooting them from the air (one “researcher” explains sheep farmers, the main ones demanding this, want to see corpses rather than being told sterilizing adults gets the job done).

Again, coyotes won. Unlike wolves, they can hunt as pack animals or go solo after small prey, giving them more options; they’re even able to eat vegetables. Coyote howls are a guide to population density: if they don’t hear many of their kind, they produce larger litters. Suck it, killers. While solidly on the coyotes’ side, Flores does thing we should be hostile when we encounter them in urban areas — keeping them afraid of us minimizes things going bad.

It’s an excellent book though when Flores gets away from the core subject his science is wonky — Richard Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene is not about the genetic basis of selfishness, for instance.

I’ve learned that tahini, the basis of hummus, has a lot of uses in cooking — in many recipes that use peanut or other nut butter, it makes a tangy alternative, for instance. That led me to check TAHINI BABY: Bright Everyday Recipes That Happen to Be Vegetarian by Eden Grinshpan out of the library. I’ve made one — a fruit dish with a tahini/oat crumble on top — and might try a couple more before I take it back, including a variation on regular hummus. Others simply aren’t practical for someone who relies heavily on leftovers (I have that problem a lot) — a shakshuka sandwich with poached eggs isn’t something I want to leave in the fridge. And there’s not quite as many tahini recipes as I was hoping for — still, it’s a good book if your taste runs to Israeli/Middle Eastern cooking.

Despite the title, William K. Everson admits his CLASSICS OF THE HORROR FILM: From the Days of the Silent Film to the Exorcist isn’t attempting to pick the best of the best as much as to select a wide array of great films. Overall I think he succeeds as he looks at Frankenstein, The Undying Monster, Night of the Demon and The Exorcist.

This 1974 book did its job as it whetted my interest for a number of the films contained within. Enough I can live with the times I disagree strongly — he doesn’t care for Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein and while he’s delighted to see a modern horror movie make big bucks, he dismisses The Exorcist as more shock than art. Overall, interesting, though dated by coming out before cable, VCRs, DVDs and now streaming made many movies he laments are never seen easily available.

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February 28, 2026 · 5:15 am

Upstairs, Downstairs and in the predator’s chamber: TV and a film

When I blogged that the third season of UPSTAIRS, DOWNSTAIRS was eventful I had no idea the fourth season would go “hold my cuppa!” Given that it’s all taking place in WW I, I probably should have anticipated that.

James (Simon Williams) and Edward (Christopher Beeny) go off to the front as respectively an officer and an enlisted man. Georgina (Lesley Anne Downe) goes too, as a nurse; for years I thought a sequence where she lights a dying man’s cigarette came from an adaptation of Testament of Youth, but nope. Richard (David Langton), as an MP, has to deal with the political and strategic side.

Among the servants, the staff has to deal with tight rationing, shortages and Rose (Jean Marsh) going to work as a bus conductor as a second job (manpower shortages were chronic then, as in WW II). There’s a clash with a terrified Belgian refugee family, James and Edward returning on leave scarred by what they’ve seen, Hazel’s (Meg Wynn Owen) charity work, Edward and Daisy getting married and a tragedy as the war ends in the season’s final episode (I’d correctly pegged that death would strike on the home front but now how). As always, great viewing. “It wasn’t very dignified — fighting for my husband in a ward full of injured soldiers.”

Following 2022’s superb Prey and the animated Killer of Killers, PREDATOR: BADLANDS (2025) continues the winning streak. I missed hearing about it when it hit theaters last year but as soon as Camestros Felapton blogged about it streaming, I caught it.

The protagonist is Dek (Dmitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi), a Yautja (Predators’ name for themselves) runt of the litter, thereby deserving of culling. His brother sacrifices himself to give Dek a shot at redemption — hunting and killing the Kalisk, a kaiju no Yautja has ever overcome. Arriving on the Kalist planet, Dek discovers every lifeform on it, even the plants, is hostile. Fortunately he encounters Thia (Elle Fanning), a synth (android from the Alien franchise) who lost her legs trying to capture the Kalisk. She knows this planet; if Dek takes her along, together they might have a chance (“I know the Yautja hunt alone — but they also die alone.”). Suddenly we’re in the Predator/Android buddy comedy I didn’t know I wanted. Of course, Dek is hardly a fun or trustworthy travel companion but it turns out Thia’s got a few secrets of her own … Two thumbs up. “I’ve never been thrown before — what a thrill!”

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February 27, 2026 · 4:30 pm

This week, I ate my own homework

Which is to say, not much done.

In fairness, part of that carried over from last week’s dog chaos. We’ve only now reached the end of all the added drugs they’re getting. and spacing them out, adjusting them to the “don’t give with food” rules, etc. means the regimen sucks up more time (plus Plush Dudley is increasingly uncooperative about eating his meds). And Monday Trixie had her recheck at Peak Paws (our PT place) and with added errands on the way home, I wound up starting work Monday way later than usual.

(No, I don’t know why she’s sniffing Plushie).

I rewrote the introduction to Savage Adventures when it hit me that I bog down in the history of the pulps instead of selling why Doc Savage is cool to read (and read about). I turned in two Local Reporter articles, one on how Carrboro’s funding stormwater management projects and a debate in Chapel Hill on taking a stand against President Toddler’s anti-immigration raids. And I got a bunch of stuff done on various tasks — picking up pet meds, contacting contractors, etc.

And that was pretty much it. The week kind of evaporated. I always have a fear that if I let that happen once, I’ll let it happen again, and again, and I’ll end up with nothing but a hatful of rain (to borrow from the title of an old film). I know that’s not true, but still.

The flip side: as the 501(c) non-profit Local Reporter takes a two week pause I have more time but now I have less money coming in. Not that the wolf’s at the door but I do take pride in contributing to household bills.

February overall was disappointing for fiction writing. Between the dogs and the snow I got almost no fiction written. On the plus side I did complete the latest draft of Savage Adventures; updated my “in case of my death” paperwork; provided my obligatory critiques for some of the stories in Break the Sky (as it’s a collaborative anthology, we all edit each other); donated blood today; and made more money than usual, thanks to The Local Reporter. On the downside, my social life has been quiet, as either my schedule or my friends’ proved unworkable (one coffee date, very short due to an emergency on their part).

However the week wasn’t all wasted. Monday I got an FB message from a reporter for the Christian Science Monitor (an excellent paper — I subscribed for years). Between the president declaring a release of the government’s UFO-related files (I do not expect any shocking revelations) and the upcoming movie Project Hail Mary, reporter Stephen Humphries came up with the idea of interviewing me, as an expert in ET-visitor films, about movies, real-life UFO beliefs and how they interact. One reason I didn’t get more work done is that I pored over The Aliens Are Here, refreshing my mind on the subject. It paid off — it was a 45 minute interview and I think I talked intelligently for all of it. I’ll link to the article when it comes out.

On that note, have a good weekend. All rights to images remain with current holders; Doc Savage cover by James Bama.

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February 27, 2026 · 5:15 am

Go for baroque!

A few weeks back, TYG and I went to a baroque music concert at a local church. It’s more her kind of thing than mine but I did enjoy the music. And the church looks cool.

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February 26, 2026 · 5:12 am

Republicans, rancid and rotten

As I mentioned recently, the Necrotic Toddler of the United States tried to pressure Democrats into renaming Penn Station and Dulles Airport for him. Florida was more cooperative: the state legislature has renamed Palm Beach International Airport for the Toddler. And by what I’m sure is a complete coincidence, one of the Toddler’s private businesses has filed a trademark on the name President Donald J. Trump International Airport. I haven’t the slightest doubt the Toddler not only wants his name glorified, he intends to make it another way to suck up government money and put it into his own pocket. While it’s not how trademark law works, as we’ve seen the Toddler’s willingness to ignore things like laws frequently works out well for him. Case in point, threatening to send ICE after people who ignore fundraising letters.

Which raises the question of what he’ll do now that the Supreme Court has struck down his beloved tariffs — in his delusional, clueless brain, the greatest instrument of economic policy conceived by the greatest president of all. I’m sure his claims of a Secret Backup Plan are just as rational as his claims there’s a legal theory allowing him to nationalize elections.

Part of the appeal of tariffs was that he could wield them as a personal weapon to punish whatever nation didn’t kiss his ass enough. For example raising tariffs against Switzerland because when he met one of their leaders ““I didn’t really like the way she talked to us,”

Politics is quite literally personal for the Toddler and his toadies. “U.S. foreign policy over the past year makes no sense if interpreted through the lens of national interest. How can it serve U.S. interests to insult and demean Canada, which has been an utterly reliable ally? Why would a U.S. president talk about seizing Greenland, which belongs to another ally, Denmark, and is a place where America already has a military base and can do whatever it considers necessary to protect our national security? But the Trump clique doesn’t care whether nations have been staunch allies of the United States. They want subservient clients paying tribute, not to America, but to them personally. And that’s something democracies like Canada and Denmark won’t do.”

That personal touch extends to wanting to lash out at anyone he doesn’t like, such as Democrat Ihlan Ohmar. And again.

The Toddler’s lackeys are just as rancid. FCC head Brendan Carr is quite clear that politics on TV is bad if it involves giving time to people who criticize his master. He recites the standard talking points about “trump derangement syndrome” but I’d sooner be deranged (not that opposing the Toddler is at all deranged) than a crawling toady like Carr.

Carr also wants networks “to pledge to provide programming that promotes civic education, national pride, and our shared history.” I presume that means nothing that will hurt Pete Hegseth or Stephen Miller’s feelings by reminding them white people do not own America more than any other group, and that slavery and segregation were bad things.

Over in another cabinet department, “Donald Trump‘s Department of Education has unveiled a new policy that will make workers of LGBTQ+ nonprofits ineligible for student loan forgiveness.”

And Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick’s sons are poised to make bank on the end of tariffs.

Kennedy Center head Richard Grennell is shocked and appalled by Nazi imagery and themes deployed by Republicans — oh, wait, he’s outraged liberals are pointing it out.

To wrap up, here are two blog posts about the Toddler’s State of the Union speech and all the lies in it.

Now, moving into the wider world of rotten Republicans

Raving anti-semite Lara Logan is now shrieking that it’s the gas chambers for conservatives if Dems win in the mid-terms. And yet as usual, it’s people on her side demanding their enemies be put to death.

Ever-rancid Ann Coulter declares even a fourth-generation descendant of immigrants isn’t really American enough to be president. The Toddler, of course, is only a second generation immigrant but she thinks he’s fine.

“It puts a bounty on the government of $10,000 just simply for somebody being in the wrong room — not for them having done anything, but just having been in the wrong room,” — an Idaho Republican on the Idaho House’s support for an anti-trans bathroom bill.

“They want to create a new Voldemort. They want to create a new genocide. They want that genocide to be of white people. They openly talk about it. They want white people to be subservient slaves to them.” — Kremlin-funded MAGA bullshit artist Benny Johnson.

Florida’s Matt Gaetz was a shitbag. New House Rep. Randy Fine to Matt: Hold my beer! More about Fine here. And here.

Sen. Ron Johnson insists an attack on Ihlan Omar was no big because Dems wouldn’t punish an attack on a Republican.

Texas Republican Bo French wants to deport Native Americans. So far he hasn’t explained where to.

Ben Shapiro thinks the State of the Union could have best captured America by having Tom Homan arrest members of the audience.

Megyn Kelly insists the cult isn’t MAGA, it’s people who think ICE is bad: “being convinced that you have everything to fear, the Gestapo is here, like these ICE agents, they’re locking people up, they’re stopping innocents and throwing them away without a key — American citizens.” Never mind all of that is true. And never mind that ICE’s conduct includes stealing work visas and IDs from legal immigrants. Ron DeSantis likewise thinks ICE deserves our sympathy, not protesters.

Go Trump, Go Broke. Paul Krugman looks at the topic in more detail.

Of course, it’s not like they’re all the same shade of rancid rottenness. Despite the dictum “no enemies on the right” Cheryl Rofer points to cracks in the coalition, some from ideology (not everyone’s comfortable with blatant Nazis), some from losing out in the struggle for power in the Toddler’s coalition. Let’s hope that works well for us.

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February 25, 2026 · 5:15 am

Wow, my teenage protagonist has taste identical to my 67 year old self!

Several years back, Camestros Felapton reviewed Stephen King’s Fairy Tale and liked it, with one reservation, “the extent to which King makes a young (17) contemporary (2010s) protagonist into a template that would work for a character in the 1970s. Charlie has an iPhone and a laptop and looks things up on the internet but for plausible background reasons has watched lots of classic movies and read lots of relevant books and has an interest in fairy tales. Physical newspapers even play a role in the story. Partly I think this is King trying to emphasise that smaller American towns have changed slowly — I’ll take his word for it because my only experience of small American towns is via fantasy-horror. Less artistically, I suspect it is also a convenience to have a just slightly updated setting.”

I have not read the King book but this is one reason I prefer writing books set in the last century (e.g., 19-Infinity, above): I simply don’t know contemporary popular culture as well as, say, the 1980s. Even if I did, I write slow enough that it would probably change by the time any book of mine came out. Three years from now, will Taylor Swift fans still be calling themselves Swifties? A few years ago I’d have thought nothing about a reference to CBS News doing serious journalism, but now that Bari Weiss is turning it into Pravda?

As Camestros notes, one way around this is to give someone old-fashioned taste — and in today’s world, that’s not implausible. If someone wants to read Bronze Age comic, 1930s pulp horror or listen to old-time radio, it’s easier than ever before. In my previous draft of Impossible Takes a Little Longer, protagonist KC Rogers read a Silver Age Supergirl TPB in her pre-teen days and decided she was the coolest hero ever. It’s easier to find those stories now than it would have been in the last 30 years of the 20th century. In the new draft it’s the early 1980s and KC’s old enough to have read the issue when it was new.

However there’s also a degree of hand-waving in that. In my first draft of Let No Man Put Asunder, my protagonist Paul was a film buff with a particular fondness for the Golden Age of Hollywood. Plausible as I was writing in the 1980s and I knew plenty of college students who’d gotten into old movies. When I started rewriting in the 21st century, it felt more of a strain — pop culture had 30 more years of film under its collective belt and it’s not like Paul saying “the old movies were better” was entirely convincing (as you know if you follow my movie review posts, I watch a lot of more recent stuff).

My current version of the book is set in 1976 so that’s not a problem. Mandy, who so to speak inherited Paul’s passion for movies, is the right age to have grown up with Universal’s horror films in syndication. She caught B-movies on the late show. She also enjoys new films but it’s not implausible she’s seriously into the old films.

I’m not fool enough to argue with Stephen King’s creative choices (except The Stand, which was a terrible, terrible book) but I think I’m happier with mine.

Covers by Kemp Ward (top) and Curt Swan, all rights to images remain with current holders.

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