February 15, 2026 · 5:07 am

Three books about women

“Strengthen the female mind by enlarging it, and there will be an end to blind obedience; but, as blind obedience is ever sought for by power, tyrants and sensualists are in the right when they endeavour to keep women in the dark, because the former only want slaves, and the latter a play-thing.” That quote from Mary Wollstonecraft (from the Matriarchal Blessing substack) convinced me to read her VINDICATION OF THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN — but in hindsight I wish I’d looked for an annotated edition. She refutes authors I’ve never heard of and I often suspected that the two centuries since she wrote have altered enough word usage I may not be getting her meaning.

The gist of Wollstonecraft’s argument is that women are not shallow ninnies obsessed with fashion, incapable of deep thought and never accomplishing anything: this is, rather, what they are trained to be. They’re told their value is their looks, told their value hinges on landing a man, they’re discouraged from thinking, cut off from education — free the mind and the rest will follow. Her comparison point is the idle rich whom she sees as engaging in the same sort of frippery and shallowness. What happens to an uneducated woman if her husband dies and she has to care for the family? What will occupy her mind once she’s an empty nester? If a relationship is purely based on looks and sex, how long can it last?

This argument hasn’t aged — lots of people today would agree with Wollstonecraft about the effects of educating women but they’d think the effects are bad. However while it hit the late 1700s like a bomb, it’s not as radical today — at 300-plus pages I found it interesting but not compelling (though if I’d never read anything on this subject before …).

SHADOW OF THE GOLDEN CRANE by Chris Roberson and Michael Avon Oeming is a spotlight on BPRD agent Susan Xiang. As she investigates various cases (most notably involving a demon-possessed biker granny) she keeps getting visions of a Chines precursor to the BPRD, the Order of the Golden Crane. Each time she flashes back, she gets a clue to how to handle the monster of the issue and learns more about the society.

I like Susan and a series focusing on her should have been fun, but this was “meh.” Like several of these bounce-through-history Hellboyverse series, it doesn’t really build, it’s just four stories of Susan battling monsters, with the history stories. Can’t say I’d have missed it if it didn’t exist.

ARCANA ACADEMY: Book One by Elise Kova is a romantasy I picked up for this month’s Genre Book Club. It’s set in Oricalis, an oppressive kingdom where magic is channeled through the Tarot’s Minor Arcana and tightly controlled by the crown. All practitioners train in the eponymous school; practicing magic outside it will get you imprisoned or sent to the mines, where you’ll die fast extracting the minerals used for the magical card-inking (this reminded me of Diana Wynn Jones’ quip that in fantasy worlds, miners are always slaves).

Clara, the protagonist, was a rogue arcanist, imprisoned, but suddenly released by Kaelis, the sinister second son of the king. He passes her off as a lost heir to one of the great houses and his betrothed, part of a scheme to get her into the Academy and use her skills in his plan to remake the world. Clara soon finds he’s less of an ogre and more of a charmer than she thought, but can she trust him? Can his plan work? What about her missing, possibly dead sister?

The romance doesn’t play any bigger role here than in most fantasies; I’d have decided “romantasy” is purely marketing but the other members of the book club say otherwise. It’s definitely the weakest part — when they finally get physical (400 pages through a 500 page book) it feels like an absurdly rapid escalation rather than a slow build.

That said, I like the book. I love the idea of Tarot-based magic, the plot is complex, the characters are fun. I might have liked it better as a one-in-done rather than a series — the last 60-80 pages suddenly fling in so many twists, reveals and complications it felt rushed. Nevertheless I’ll pick up book two when the library gets it.

Covers by Oeming and Concorina, all rights remain with current holders.

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February 14, 2026 · 5:07 am

A slacker and an interrogator: one movie, one TV show

Another pick from the Leonard Maltin book TYG got me last year — AURORA BOREALIS (2005) stars Joshua Jackson as Duncan, a Minneapolis twentysomething who’s stubbornly resisting adulting: he works dead end jobs, sticks with the same group of friends he’s always had, and lets life continue in much the same vein it has since he graduated high school.

As the movie starts, however, Duncan’s just lost his convenience store job. His brother is using Duncan’s apartment to bang women without his wife knowing (inspired, Duncan says, by the Jack Lemmon movie The Apartment). And now his beloved grandfather, Donald Sutherland, is suffering both Parkinson’s and the onset of dementia. Can Duncan get his shit together enough to help both grandpa and grandmother Louise Fletcher?

Things change when Duncan meets Kate (Juliette Lewis), his grandfather’s home healthcare worker, a free-spirited vagabond who never stays long in one place. Sparks fly, they become lovers and she begins nudging him to become more than he is — but will the lure of keeping everything the same make a difference?

While I’m not fond of coming of age/New Adult books, I can enjoy the tropes in a movie and this was a good one, well-acted and well-written. The special features reveal it was based on a stage play which explains why, despite the title, we never see the Northern lights. Curiously, everyone insists the closing scene is open-ended because we don’t know how Kate/Duncan will work out in the long run; as you can say that about most HEAs, I don’t find this striking. Still, thumbs up. “Do you realize you sound like Don King when you use big words?”

A friend of mine used to be a huge fan of THE CLOSER, a 2005 TNT series staring Kyra Sedgwick as Brenda Johnson, a former CIA interrogator turned head of a major-crimes unit in Los Angeles. As it turned up on Netflix recently, I gave the pilot a look; it’s solidly done but I don’t know I’ll bother to watch more.

Johnson’s team aren’t thrilled about having an outsider in charge, she has a messy personal life, and in this episode she’s facing a headscratcher: An unknown women has been found murdered in a prominent plastic surgeon’s office. The surgeon’s vanished. The victim’s fingerprints are all over his home while the surgeon’s are nowhere to be found. How does it make sense? Like I said, it’s a solid job, fitting into the subgenre of cops who have One Simple Trick for getting to the truth. The Mentalist and Lie To Me both have someone who can read people like a book; Psych has a guy who’s hyper-observant about everything, HPI has someone who’s hyper-observant and can match up what she sees with a storehouse of knowledge. Here, Johnson’s a genius interrogator; having figured out what’s going on, she calmly guides the killer to a confession.

The results are good and if I were more of a fan of cop shows I might keep up with it. If I had more time for TV (and lately I don’t seem to) I might try a couple more episodes. As neither of these is the case …

All rights to image remain with current holder.

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February 13, 2026 · 4:32 pm

The camel’s hump is an ugly lump

(Title taken from Rudyard Kipling. I’ve used it before).

Wednesday is, as we all know, hump day — once we pass it, we’re on the downhill slide toward the weekend. Lately, however, I seem to be having trouble getting over the hump. My Wednesday is a slog.

Part of that this Wednesday was Plush Dudley (seen in an older photo while he was still on cage rest). Usually he sleeps most of the afternoon. For whatever reason, he was lively. Bark. Whine. Try to get my attention. Licking my feet. A lot. I finally had to give up getting work done for the last couple of hours, though I wasn’t able to read or relax much either.

He’s still my boy.

Even before that, I was struggling to write. I had a relatively simple article to write on Carrboro’s budget discussions but it turned into a plodding exercise, though I think the results were good. Reflecting on it, I realized one problem is Monday and Tuesday evenings. Monday I work into the evening to make up for us taking the dogs to PT during the day; Tuesday I often have my Zoom writer’s group. After I finish, it’s typically another hour to take care of the dogs. I end up going to sleep later than usual and I don’t usually make it up in the morning. This Wednesday that left me tired; I also woke up late (compensating for Tuesday’s late night) which always throws me off my game. Mentally that left me behind the eight-ball.

Monday and Tuesday were productive though. I worked on Savage Adventures, went through all the books where my manuscript was unclear (why did Doc Savage do X? What exactly was the villain’s plan?) and made the corrections. This draft is done!!!!!

Next up: rereading some of my Doc Savage reference books for anything worth adding, working on the bibliography, then printing the manuscript out and proofing it. Then the writing is done and I can look at indexing (sigh), finding a cover and I’ll be ready to rock.

Thursday I put in more time writing for The Local Reporter. I got in one good story about Chapel Hill’s budget decisions — they have $3 million left over from fiscal year 2025 to spend — but nothing else. Nobody returned my calls. Annoying. However I already have the materials for one, possibly two stories for next week, and there’s a Carrboro Council meeting. So I’ll be in good shape.

Over at Atomic Junk Shop I blogged about mondegreens, the death of the Green Goblin and comic book writers as psychics.

And this blog is still getting lots more hits than average. Hi there, whoever you are. I hope you stick around. If nothing else, the pet photos are adorable.

Doc Savage cover by James Bama, all rights to images remain with current holders.

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February 13, 2026 · 5:10 am

A worm, a bird and a cat

Random photos I haven’t posted yet. First a caterpillar caught hanging from its silk (I think)

Then a heron.

And finally, a cute shot of Snowdrop.

Happy Friday!

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February 12, 2026 · 5:23 am

The good side of 80 percent, 10 percent, 10 percent

I’ve blogged repeatedly about the idea society is made up of 10 percent heroes, 10 percent villains and 80 percent who can go either way depending on circumstances. The first year of the Necrotic Toddler administration, seeing how many institutions caved to him, that was depressing: would the 80 percent simply submit to they tyrant and do nothing?

As we’re seeing in Minneapolis, I may have been too cynical and too lacking in faith. As Paul Krugman wrote last week, “moral outrage over the Trump administration’s brutality (and its corruption, but that’s a subject for another post) has exploded as a political force over the past two months. There was substantial resistance to ICE’s attempts to intimidate Los Angeles and Chicago. But the response since the invasion of Minneapolis (and now all of Minnesota) began in December has been on another level, a mass nonviolent uprising reminiscent of the civil rights movement in the 1960s and the color revolutions in the former Soviet empire.

MPR News reports that nearly 30,000 Minnesotans have been trained as constitutional observers, with another 6,000 volunteers registered to deliver food, give at-risk families rides, and so on. This is time-consuming, exhausting, dangerous activism. Yet ordinary Americans in large numbers are willing to do it.”

Adam Serwer: “Vice President Vance has said that “it is totally reasonable and acceptable for American citizens to look at their next-door neighbors and say, ‘I want to live next to people who I have something in common with. I don’t want to live next to four families of strangers.’” Minnesotans are insisting that their neighbors are their neighbors whether they were born in Minneapolis or Mogadishu. That is, arguably, a deeply Christian philosophy, one apparently loathed by some of the most powerful Christians in America.

… No matter how many more armed men Trump sends to impose his will on the people of Minnesota, all he can do is accentuate their valor. No application of armed violence can make the men with guns as heroic as the people who choose to stand in their path with empty hands in defense of their neighbors. These agents, and the president who sent them, are no one’s heroes, no one’s saviors—just men with guns who have to hide their faces to shoot a mom in the face, and a nurse in the back.”

This does not guarantee victory. But as I blogged about Sunday, other countries have had resistance movements that persevered in the face of tyranny and won. And while I’m still horrified at how many people support the Necrotic Toddler, I’m not quite so despairing about humanity as a whole.

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February 11, 2026 · 5:06 am

Random writing/reading/creative links

“When a writer is rightfully outed as being abusive/hateful, I hate to see takes like “I knew there was a reason I didn’t like their work”. It only adds to the fallacy that equates quality of work with quality of character which is a HUGE part of how abuser artists are justified in the first place!”

“Artists are not vending machines of joy, obligated to dispense performance on demand. They are human beings. And their decision to step away from this moment is not divisive; it is a refusal to be conscripted into propaganda.” — Sharon E. Cathcart on artists refusing to appear at the Kennedy Center. There’s also the practical aspect that some artists perform and don’t get paid.

I’ve not seen Heated Rivalry but this seems like a good post on its success and why it baffles Hollywood.

Mo Ryan: “A thing that often makes me see red is execs saying “but we’re doing an elevated version of [x].” What if you… just did x? When an exec says “elevated version of” you can be pretty sure they mean “I think this is trash so we’re trying to not do the thing you want but make you think we’re doing it” Total agreement with this and the rest of the thread — as she notes, specfic gets a lot of this attitude (creators who sneer they’re taking some comic book character and Transcending The Genre).

Senator Eric Schmitt is horrified Netflix might buy Warner Brothers/Discovery because Netflix is too woke.

“The sweeping cuts this week that axed crucial reporting teams on the foreign, local and sports desks, eliminated all staff photographers and most of the video team, raised the prospect that The Post is on the brink of a death spiral as subscribers flee and advertisers walk away under Bezos’ ownership.” — from a look at Jeff Bezos choosing to kill the Washington Post as a functioning newspaper rather than put money into it (he could afford it) or sell it to someone he cares. As Josh Marshall put it, “What we’re seeing is something that should be familiar to any close of observer of the news over the last generation. Let’s call it the formulaic billionaire white knight press baron doom cycle.”

“Flaws do not define a character or make him boring: bad writing does that. Flaws don’t make interesting stories: conflict does. Flaws just provide one type of internal conflict; choices present another, and the best stories involving Superman and Dr. Strange are about the choices they have to make. (Or about external conflict, which is heaps of fun.) Superman has the “can’t save them all” story, which gets reused regularly (and is vitally important for understanding the character); Dr. Strange has the “must condemn someone to save the world” story (same).” — the Mighty God King blog on writing Dr. Strange (obviously it has wider application).

“Words like “wondered,” “believed,” “my mind,” “idea,” “might,” and “thought” place distance between the point of view character and the narrative. And between the narrative and the reader. You probably don’t use those words when you’re talking to yourself in your head.” — Barbara Ross.

Art by Gene Colan, all rights remain with current holders.

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February 10, 2026 · 12:07 pm

The Necrotic Toddler of the United State is both loathsome and fragile and he’s ready to cheat in the mid-terms.

First the loathsome: “President Donald Trump has shared a video depicting Barack and Michelle Obama as apes in a late-night Truth Social posting spree.” This is an old racist trope, one that’s been used at them before. The Toddler isn’t even hiding his racism — and the Republican Party will be fine with it. As John Scalzi said some years back, not all Toddler supporters are white supremacists but they’re all comfortable with supporting it. His press secretary Karoline Leavitt, for instance, dismisses criticism of the video as fake outrage. No, trust me, Ms. Leavitt, my outrage is real. It’s also outrageous the administration blocked an investigation into Renee Good’s murder.

I’m also outraged the administration’s National Park Service “has removed visitor brochures from the Medgar & Myrlie Evers Home National Monument. Among the anticipated changes? No longer calling his murderer a “racist.””

Now the fragility of his ego. In return for releasing Congressionally approved funding for a tunnel project, the Toddler wants Penn Station and Dulles Airport renamed for him. I’m glad Sen. Charles Schumer responded with a flat No Way. Toddler toady Lee Zeldin has confirmed the Toddler withholds fire aid because Gavin Newsom chooses to “lob insults at the president all day, every day, and in between insults.”

And then there’s this: “The U.S. ambassador to Poland announced on Thursday that the United States will have “no further dealings, contacts, or communications” with Włodzimierz Czarzasty, the speaker of the lower house of the Polish parliament, over what Rose called “outrageous and unprovoked insults directed against President Trump.”” The insult in question is assumed to be Czarzasty saying the Toddler hadn’t done anything to deserve the Nobel.

(And no, none of this is a distraction from the Epstein files. He really is this pathetically needy).

The Toddler has been screaming for weeks about how all the polls showing he’s massively unpopular are fake news, his country loves him! Which is another example of his fragility (and probably lots of his toadies lying to him) but leads into the next topic: faced with a high probability of Dems winning bigly thiz fall, he’s not willing to take the blow to his ego or his power. Or admit that any loss is legitimate.

As Oswita Nwanevu says, it’s not like he cares about Congress: he’s had incredible success by ignoring them, he can do a lot more by asserting further executive authority. “Why go through the trouble of cheating your way to a Congressional majority as president if you don’t actually have a legislative agenda? You would have to be deranged and stupid. And… unfortunately…”

Jamelle Bouie is skeptical: “he wants to cancel the midterms. how does he get the VA state board of elections to cancel the midterms? how does he get the Georgia board of elections to do it? how does he convince republican house members to quit their jobs and give up their paychecks?” It’s possible his reach once again exceeds his grasp. Then again, Paul Campos is more pessimistic. And there are disturbing signs the Toddler will try something. Here’s one possibility. Here’s another. It’s also possible Venezuela’s Maduro will confirm the myth he rigged the 2020 election in return for leniency, thereby providing an excuse to stop the non-existent steal this time.

I’m continuing sending my GOTV postcards and calling my Dem Representative, Valerie Foushee, to keep up the fight (my Repub senators are probably a lost cause but I’ll contact them too). And I think there’s truth to the argument we should also keep an eye on local politics. Local governments, many of them, are doing what they can; shoring them up isn’t a silver bullet but it’s a sound investment.

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February 10, 2026 · 5:15 am

Three covers for Tuesday

First, the one and only Richard Powers

Second Paul Stahr.

Third Clark Hulings.

All rights to images remain with current holders.

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February 9, 2026 · 5:11 am

No, nothing is a distraction from the Epstein files

One of the standard takes on well, almost anything the Necrotic Toddler does is that it’s “a distraction from the Epstein files.” Or from the murder of Good and Pretti in Minneapolis. Or Good and Pretti are a distraction from whatever other atrocity he’s pulled lately.

Nope. The Felon of the United States doesn’t do distractions. Neither do his people. They want the world, they want it now, and they don’t seem to grasp their might be blowback. As Paul Krugman says about their strategy in Minneapolis, “the obvious answer is that there isn’t any strategy. These people aren’t evil masterminds — evil, yes, but masterminds, no. They’re just thugs too crude and undisciplined to control their own thuggishness. They were caught off guard by the strength of the resistance because the very concept of citizens standing up for their principles is alien to them, and they still can’t believe it’s real.”

As others have said, if you’re trying to figure out why the hell they’re doing X, the usual answer is going to be “They’re stupid.”

However it is very easy with everything going on to forget about the Epstein files, about Epstein’s long, horrible history of raping girls with impunity, and the horrifying number of people who seem to have turned a blind eye. Let’s not forget, and let’s not forgive. In that spirit, a few links:

“This fake Medvedev interview plays into that, suggesting that Russia has leverage because they have the Epstein files.”

“”Once again, survivors are having their names and identifying information exposed, while the men who abused us remain hidden and protected. That is outrageous.”

Still some embarrassing information is coming out. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick planned to visit Epstein’s island. Musk was apparently a good chum. Musk denies this but “even if you do your absolute damndest to read this guy’s freshly released Epstein emails in a positive light, what you get is the story of a tech tycoon stating unambiguously that he wanted to attend an absolute rager on a sex criminal’s private island.” Perhaps it’s no surprise Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche wants us to know that partying with Jeffrey Epstein is not a crime. Because I’m sure Musk isn’t alone.

France, investigating Musk over Grok’s ability to make child porn, reminds him he’s not on Epstein’s island now.

“A Duke University professor appears in more than 700 of the newest Epstein files released by the Justice Department, one of which asks the convicted sex trafficker to provide the name and email of a “redhead” he wished to see again.”

Neither is attorney Brad Karp who had to step down from his leadership role at the Paul Weiss firm (he’s still employed) due to his gushing emails about fun parties with Epstein.

“Documents published last week by the U.S. Justice Department contain new revelations, including papers suggesting Mandelson shared sensitive government information with Epstein after the 2008 global financial crisis, and records of payments totaling $75,000 in 2003 and 2004 from Epstein to accounts linked to Mandelson or his husband Reinaldo Avila da Silva.” — from a still-unfolding British side to the story.

No wonder the Felon likes Kid Rock, with lyrics like “Young ladies, young ladies, I like ‘em underage/See some say that’s statutory/But I say it’s mandatory.” A reminder that as many people point out, Epstein was extreme but his attitudes weren’t an anomaly.

Oddities in the latest release.

““The essence of the Jeffrey Epstein scandal is one man doing terrible things to girls – we can kind of understand that. But having so many powerful men who were enablers, who all just thought this was a joke – it’s so sad,” she says. “Everyone’s just laughing, it’s so funny how Jeffrey Epstein enjoys young women giving him massages. There are these secrets they all have together – it just makes my stomach turn.”

“Included in the documents released Friday was an exchange from 2015 in which Attia had written a note — redacted by the Justice Department — that bore the subject line, “Got a fresh shipment.” Epstein responded, “me too,” with a photo that was also redacted. Attia responded, “Please tell (me) you found that picture on line … bastard.”

Woody Allen’s wife Soon-Yi Previn corresponded with Epstein years after his perversions were known, complaining that MeToo had gone too far and saying the horrifying thing about Anthony Weiner, in his fifties, hitting on a 15-year-old, is that the girl was a “manipulative” predator. Um, no. I can’t help thinking of her sister Dylan Farrow, who accused Allen of assaulting her as a child and how much of a subtext to Previn’s comments that might be.

Prominent scientists were friends of Jeffrey too. And complained to him about how unfair it was they’d been accused of being lechers and sexual harassers. Creepy game apparently does recognize creepy game.

No, Zohram Mamdani is not Epstein’s son.

Dems say they’ll subpoena the Toddler over the Epstein files.

I’ll conclude with a quote from my friend Karen: “The most depressing thing about the Epstein files is how very very boring billionaires are. All the money that ever existed and they use it to perv on 13-year-olds.” Well said.

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February 8, 2026 · 5:21 am

A resistance movement and a drunken inventor: books I’ve read recently.

Reading THE CIA BOOK CLUB: The Secret Mission to Win the Cold War With Forbidden Literature by Charlie English felt profoundly unsettling. Despite the title, this is primarily a history of Poland’s solidarity movement and Communist Poland, particularly when they try to break the resistance foreshadows what we’re seeing in the US today: ruthless repression, detention, constant monitoring and spying, intolerance for anyone questioning the state, a desire to control everything the people read, learn or watch. Against this we have a resistance that refuses to stop and struggles to keep pushing for freedom and reporting on what the regime is really doing.

(There’s a school of thought that objects it’s not enough to compare Republicans to tyrants, you have to pick the right tyrants — Jim Crow states a century ago, the banana republics America propped up in Latin America rather than looking at Nazi Germany or the Communist Bloc. I think they now resemble all these things and I’ll use whichever comparison works in a given post).

The title refers to the CIA program spreading banned literature in Poland and other Soviet-dominated states (1984 was very popular) and helping underwrite the Poles’ own underground newspapers and publishing efforts. This program is fascinating, and largely ignored even in the CIA’s own histories; English suggests it’s because the agency prefers seeing itself as James Bond, not Barnes and Noble. Still the emphasis is so much on Poland I suspect that was English’s real interest and he highlighted the CIA purely for an American hook. It’s a good book, regardless.

ROBOTS HAVE NO TAILS collects Henry Kuttner’s stories (in the introduction CL Moore confirms they’re 100 percent her husband’s work rather than one of their many collaborations) of Galloway Gallegher, an inventor who does his best work when he’s too drunk to know that what he’s creating is impossible (if you find heavy drinking and alcoholism inappropriate for humor this is not the book for you). In one story he wakes up from an alcoholic blackout to find he has three clients demanding the miracle solution to their problems he promised; the only thing he’s invented is a machine that disintegrates dirt and sings drinking songs.

In my favorite story “This World Is Mine,” Gallagher discovers he’s built a time machine that’s brought three cuddly, rabbit-like Martians to Earth from the future; having read lots of science fiction they know it’s their destiny to conquer Earth with their terrifying superweapons, would he please build them one? Oh, and the time machine also keeps materializing his murdered corpse on the lawn … Kuttner seems to have as much fun with the future’s byzantine legal system as he does the SF but it’s funny stuff regardless.

All rights to images remain with current holders. Don’t know either cover artist.



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