I don’t belabor the point, but the truth is 20th and 21st century of my alternate-history science-fiction space-opera universe is in large measure a family saga of the Reinhardts, heirs of the inventor of the microchip and his fortune. Recently I’ve been brainstorming a new … Continue readingReady for Rapunzel
Making daylight saving time permanent, i.e. the “Sunshine Protection Act”? Blech. What we really need is to make standard time permanent; in the spirit of the rather propagandistic moniker springing forward for good goes by these days, I’ll call my solution of falling back for … Continue readingFor a Darkness Protection Act
“What?” you might ask: “Third Rome? Viking Tsars? Russian Turan?” I’m talking, of course, about what happens in the Russian sphere of influence in my alternate timeline, the history all of my science-fiction and space opera stories, from the 20th century to over a thousand … Continue readingThird Rome, Viking Tsars, Russian Turan, and Beyond
No doubt prompted by the ongoing war scare between Russia and Ukraine, I’ve been idly thinking about geopolitics, alternate histories, possible futures, borderline utopian visions. And about aspects of discourse that have long bugged me, such as how “Europe” as a geopolitical entity is very … Continue readingIdle Geopolitics
Novak Djokovic’s case, and especially his recent reversal at the hands of a regime who obviously hate him personally and want to turn (what they no doubt consider to be) a filthy unvaccinated Serb untermensch into an example of their power for the undesirables to … Continue readingA Stream of Thoughts Against Lockdown
The other day on the road, which was lined with garbage and litter, I saw groves of trees being cleared, leaving poor little raccoons homeless, to build “luxury housing”…but not luxury enough to keep any of the woods it seems. That arouses several thoughts in … Continue readingGermanic America’s Strange Dearth
At LessWrong Virgil Kurkjian has a fascinating post, “Leto among the Machines”, analyzing Frank Herbert’s “Dune” chronicles, specifically its worldbuilding point of the Butlerian Jihad (the elimination of computers from human civilization), from a “rationalist” perspective, especially how the Butlerian Jihad makes perfect sense once … Continue readingNemesis Among the Machines
This morning I was thinking back to the start of the COVID-19 pandemic; back then, in the winter of 2020 and through March 2020, various right-wing personalities and influencers, particularly the “smart right”, the “mainstream conservatives”, and the like, were equivocating about lockdowns and restrictions … Continue readingFolkways From Our Past Return
“Starve the beast” has been the go-to strategy of American conservatives to restrain government spending since the 1970s, but in light of the reality of ever-increasing profligacy and ballooning debt and deficits even in the face of repeated tax cuts, “starve the beast” has gotten … Continue readingStarve the Beast: Still the Path to Smaller Government?
By now the “progressive hegemony”, or whatever you want to call it, over the arts, the entertainment industry, and sophisticates and cultural elites more generally is well-known, but almost everyone is missing a crucial piece of the puzzle: the creatives actually don’t like today’s mainstream … Continue readingArtists Exit Stage Left?