March 19, 2026

FROM SARAH A. HOYT:  No Man’s Land: Volume 1 (Chronicles of Lost Elly).

Sufficiently advanced science is indistinguishable from magic.

On a lost colony world, mad geneticists thought they could eliminate inequality by making everyone hermaphrodite. They were wrong. Catastrophically wrong.
Now technology indistinguishable from magic courses through the veins of the inhabitants, making their barbaric civilization survivable—and Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus Kayel Hayden, Viscount Webson, Envoy of the Star Empire—Skip to his friends— has just crash-landed through a time-space rift into the middle of it all.
Dodging assassins and plummeting from high windows was just the beginning. With a desperate king and an archmagician as his only allies, Scipio must outrun death itself while battling beasts, traitors, and infiltrators bent on finishing what the founders started: total destruction.
Two worlds. One chance. No time to lose.

Volume 1
The Ambassador Corps has rules: you cannot know everything, don’t get horizontal with the natives, don’t make promises you can’t keep.
They’re a lot harder to follow when assassins are hunting you, your barbarian allies could kill you for the wrong word, and death lurks around every corner.
The unwritten rule? Never identify with the natives.
Skip’s already broken that one.
Now he’s racing against time to save his new friends from slavery—or worse—while dodging energy blasts and political intrigue. One crash-landed diplomat. A world of deadly secrets. And absolutely no backup.

Some rules are meant to be broken. Others will get you killed.

Posted at 3:33 am by Sarah Hoyt

I ABSOLUTELY AGREE WITH HIM ON ALL OF THIS; I HAVE NO QUARREL WITH ANYTHING HE SAYS:  Wars and rumors of wars.

Posted at 12:28 am by Sarah Hoyt

March 18, 2026

THANKS FOR THE SUPPORT: I really appreciate a number of you ordering my book His Side recently. I sincerely appreciate it.

Posted at 11:09 pm by Helen Smith

OPEN THREAD: Hump Day.

Posted at 9:30 pm by Glenn Reynolds

WINSTON SMITH SMILES, AS CESAR CHAVEZ IS GETTING OBLITERATED FROM HISTORY IN REAL TIME:

 

In a touching display of intersectionality, Fresno State breaks out the burka for an apparently transitioning Chavez statue:

But why now? Here are two possible explanations — and of course, there’s always “the healing power of and:”

 

Earlier: Gentlemen, Start Your Airbrushes! Cesar Chavez, a Civil Rights Icon, Is Accused of Abusing Girls for Years.

Posted at 8:45 pm by Ed Driscoll

FEDS PAY FOR DRILLING HOLES IN DOGS’ HEADS: It’s all for medical research, so it’s ok, even if the researchers involved admitted the new drug they were developing did not need to abuse puppies. If that’s not enough to boil your blood, how about this: The NIH handed out $86 million in grants for research that involved cruelty to dogs and other animals. Go here for more details.

Posted at 8:38 pm by Mark Tapscott

DISPATCHES FROM THE GRAUNIAD’S FATWAH ON A LONDON BAKERY: The real reason the Guardian is so hostile to Gail’s.

Nothing good has ever followed the words ‘we need to talk’, ‘terms of service update’, or ‘by Jonathan Liew’, and the evidence is really piling up on the third one. The Guardian columnist has written a piece about Gail’s, the bougie coffee shop and bakery chain, and it vents hostility from every sentence like steam from an espresso machine. If you’re wondering how anyone – even a Guardian columnist – could get worked up over pricey lattes, Liew makes sure to tell us Gail’s was ‘founded by an Israeli baker in the 1990s’.

Yeah, it’s exactly what you think. Actually, it’s worse.

Gail’s has become a target for people The Spectator’s lawyers would probably prefer me to call ‘anti-Zionists’. People who have called for boycotts of the bakery over Palestine and what its opponents (because bakeries have opponents now) claim is its role in ‘gentrification’. The rationale for the Palestine-related boycott is that Bain Capital, Gail’s parent company, invests in cybersecurity firms based in Israel. As for the gentrification business, the vilification of Gail’s as a symbol of affluent outsiders who don’t belong here certainly seems to dovetail with the anti…Zionism.

Exit quote: “Jonathan Liew writes like someone who wants to be liked, keen to hit all the right notes so that people he regards as high-status regard him as one of them. It’s hardly the gravest sin. Most people want to be liked. The error of judgement here is on the part of the Guardian. A good editor would have read this and refused to let Liew embarrass himself or the paper.”

How it started:

How it’s going:

UPDATE: Guardian amends ‘antisemitic’ opinion piece about Gail’s bakery.

A note from the readers’ editor sought to clarify the perception that the article had condoned previous attacks on branches of Gail’s. “A comment contrasting activism that is capable of influencing global events with ‘small acts of petty symbolism’, which was not intended to minimise local vandalism but rather to suggest its misdirected futility, has been removed to avoid misunderstanding,” it read.

The article’s standfirst was also removed. It had read: “A smashed window here, a provocative sticker there. In an age when protest feels increasingly meaningless, it’s no wonder that acts of petty symbolism are on the rise.”

Gail’s has become a target for protesters because of concerns about the impact of gentrification on small business owners and its ties to Israel.

The Archway branch was vandalised with smashed windows and red anti-Zionist graffiti twice within a week of its opening. The Metropolitan Police are investigating the incidents as hate crimes.

However, the amendment has not been universally welcomed, with some Jewish staff said to remain “shocked and angry” that it was published in the first place.

One staff member said: “Large parts of the editorial staff are horrified by stuff like this, but basically nobody ever raises it with the management. People fear for their jobs.”

A second journalist, who recently left the Guardian newspaper group, said polarising opinion pieces on Israel drove engagement, subscriptions and donations, even when they were “poisonous” and “fulminating”.

Which is why they keep happening at the Grauniad.

Posted at 8:30 pm by Ed Driscoll

A HUNDRED MILLION HERE AND HUNDRED MILLION THERE, AND SOONER OR LATER, YOU’RE TALKING ABOUT REAL MONEY: California’s unfinished wildlife ‘bridge to nowhere’ tops $100M.

In 2022, California Gov. Gavin Newsom broke ground on the Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing (WAWC), a project featuring an overpass for animals atop ten lanes of the 101 Freeway in Southern California.

At the ceremony, Newsom boasted that the state had committed $54 million. He promised to “complete the job within another $10 million,” before seeming to hedge on whether that final sum would do the trick.

Officials projected a 2025 completion date for the overpass, and estimated that the entire project — which includes the bridge and other ancillary developments — would cost $92 million, some of it coming from private philanthropists.

Nearly four years after the ceremony, the bridge is past due and the project some $21 million over budget. What was supposed to be the world’s largest wildlife crossing has become a jobs program for environmentalists, with taxpayers on the hook for what WAWC leader Beth Pratt told us is an overpass “for everything from monarch butterflies to mountain lions.”

Pratt, a cougar-sweater-wearing environmental activist who serves on WAWC’s Partner Leadership Team, is the program’s public face. She is also a regional executive director of the national Wildlife Federation. In 2021, the group received a $25 million grant from “Wallis Annenberg and the Annenberg Foundation” for the bridge that bears the late philanthropist’s name.

Related: Bridges and Cougars and Butterflies, Oh MY! Chris Rufo Exposes Yet ANOTHER Gavin Newsom Boondoggle. “If you are asking yourself why butterflies could possibly need a bridge, then you are a sane person who is in no way qualified for elected office in California…Now we know why his cringy social media team is so mad at Nick Shirley.”

UPDATE: David Barron, call your office:

 

Posted at 8:14 pm by Ed Driscoll

THE LESSON’S THERE TO BE LEARNED, IF PEOPLE WILL LEARN IT:

Posted at 7:07 pm by Glenn Reynolds