Like the label on the tin says:

Thing The First

Star Trek's "Genesis Trology" proved you don't need to have a plan. As somebody who committed trilogy by accident, I fully endorse this idea.

Thing The Second

Afghanistan Isn’t 1975 South Vietnam, It’s 1948 China. Basically, we "lost" China because Chiang Kai Shek’s Kuomintang (AKA Nationalist) Party ( Read more... )

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Per Wikipedia, Sublimation is the transition of a substance directly from the solid to the gas state without passing through the liquid state. I shall address the relevance of that to politics in a moment.

I am continually weary of the phenomenon in which, no matter what evils Trump committed are revealed, he always has a group of loud supporters ( Read more... )

Three things make a post, so here's three random thoughts.

Random Thought #1

I recently had cause to watch the WWII movie The Guns of Navarone. In it, there are several scenes in German, but no subtitles are provided. I also noted that the theatrical release of The Battle of Britain had a lot of such un-subtitled scenes. When did the convention ( Read more... )

Word has come out that Trump appointee General Mark Milley, Chief of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, took various steps to ensure Trump did not unilaterally launch nuclear warheads after Trump lost the election. Various right-wing sources are running around claiming "treason" or "loss of civilian control of the military."

These sources are wrong. ( Read more... )

I Can Haz Clothes Dryer!

As reported previously, my clothes dryer went to that Great Laundry Room in the Sky. As my washing machine was well into senior citizen territory, I replaced them both with a pair of GE models. Said models are one step up from the entry-level machines, but had all the features I needed. (I do *not* need Wi-Fi on my ( Read more... )

Here's my ballot so far. I'm still working on the short fiction and Lodestar categories, so that will be reported later.

Best Novel
1. Piranesi, Susanna Clarke (Bloomsbury)
2. Network Effect, Martha Wells (Tor.com)
3. Black Sun, Rebecca Roanhorse (Gallery / Saga Press)
4. The Relentless Moon, Mary Robinette Kowal (Tor Books)
5. The City We Became, N ( Read more... )

More thoughts about Afghanistan.

1) Is our evacuation really a disaster? As noted here, we've pulled 40,000 people out of Afghanistan for zero losses.

2) Also noted here, the people we put in charge of the former Afghan government seem to be calmly negotiating with the Taliban.

3) From this post by an American who has been living in ( Read more... )

I recently had cause to fly down to Gainesville Florida. For a variety of reasons, I looked at flights from Indianapolis to Gainesville, which involved going to Charlotte and taking a regional jet (specifically, a CRJ700) to Gainesville.

Now, largely because I live in the Chicago area and fly Southwest, I wasn't very familiar with these jets. But ( Read more... )

As I'm writing this, I'm listening to Congresswoman Liz Cheney criticize the US pullout from Afghanistan. Unless you've been under a rock, the news is wall-to-wall video of the collapse of the US-backed government in Afghanistan. I rarely if ever say this, but Trump was right. (Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.) We needed to leave ( Read more... )