August 21, 2026

I LOVE THIS IDEA:

Posted at 7:09 am by Glenn Reynolds

FROM JEFF DUNTEMANN: Drumlin Circus / On Gossamer Wings.

A starship malfunctions and strands its 800 passengers on a planet eerily like the Pleistocene Earth, complete with prehistoric mammals including woolly mammoths, dire wolves, and smilodons. And something else: tens of thousands of abandoned alien machines consisting of a bowl and two pillars that respond with drum-like sounds when touched. Tap 256 times on the pillars in any combination, and…something…coalesces in the bowl. It might be a spoon or an axe or a twisted lump of silvery metal. These artifacts (dubbed “drumlins”) help the unwilling colonists survive, but there’s something a little weird about what comes out of the “thingmaker” machines. High-pitched sounds sometimes make drumlins twitch and combine into more complex things. Stranger still, what drumlins do seems to depend on the thoughts of nearby humans. Wish hard while you whistle just so…and something amazing may happen. 260 years on, the castaways have created a civilization resembling late 19th Century America, based in part on coal, steam, iron, and hard work–and in part on the mysterious drumlin artifacts. Both short novels in this volume are set against this background.

Drumlin Circus: Every spring, Bramble Ceglarek takes Pretty Alice’s Wonderland Circus down the dirt roads of the west country, dazzling townfolk with clowns, acrobats, calliope music, and trained animals — especially trained animals. His wife Julia trains them with a drumlin whistle, and they obey with peculiar precision. The cultlike Bitspace Institute, hoping to train animal assassins, sends agent Simon Kassel to steal the whistle. Unknown to him, Kassel has been set up to fail by his Institute rivals who want to be rid of him, and after Julia and her apprentice Rosa are abducted by Institute thugs who attempt to kill him, Kassel switches loyalties and joins the circus as a very scary clown. He returns to Institute HQ to rescue Julia and Rosa, only to discover that the training whistle is much more than merely a whistle: a mysterious “function controller” that compels animals, human beings, and even the alien drumlin artifacts themselves to obey its bearer.

On Gossamer Wings: From out in the dry rye fields of the west, rumors have come to the Bitspace Institute that someone has drummed up something valuable from the alien thingmakers: a large sphere of pure iron. Institute agent Hiram König rides out to investigate, and discovers the strange, mute young woman who has done the drumming. He also learns that the Big Ball of Iron is just the beginning of the previously unknown drumlins that she has discovered in the vast “bitspace” of the alien thingmakers. Despite the slow progress of technology in the Valeron colony, where steam locomotives and the first primitive hydrogen airships are state of the art, Natalie Bishop is using her talents with the thingmakers to seek out the drumlin parts she needs to build a heavier-than-air flying machine. For her, the flier is her masterpiece, the work that will prove her worth to the people she cares about. The race is on for König to extract Natalie from the pressure-cooker of a small town that is her home, before it blows up around her and before she takes the dazzlingly risky final step and tries to fly.

Posted at 7:00 am by Sarah Hoyt

AS ANYONE IN PUBLISHING CAN TELL YOU, SIMON AND SCHUSTER IS A DISGRACE:  Simon & Schuster’s Disgrace.

Among other things, the royalties reported/paid to those imprints is distributes (but doesn’t own) are…. some of the greatest works of fiction it publishes.

Posted at 4:01 am by Sarah Hoyt

FORGETTING IS INVITING IT TO BE REPEATED:  Never Forget.

Posted at 2:00 am by Sarah Hoyt

DON’T FEAR THE AI (OR THE REAPER):  Tech and Fear.

Posted at 1:00 am by Sarah Hoyt

August 20, 2026

OPEN THREAD: I want to see your best work here.

Posted at 9:30 pm by Glenn Reynolds

“WHO SAYS SELF-DEPORTATION WON’T WORK?” Are You Ready for … Megxit 2: Back to Britain Boogaloo?

The Sussexes came to the US seeking fame, fortune, and validation as poor victims of the Establishment, complete with complaints about racism and classism. The American media and celebrity clique ate it up – for a couple of years. Harry and Megan got a development deal with Netflix that went nowhere, and the two of them palled around with Oprah and the A-list for a while.

And then … nothing happened, in the most brutal way possible. Their narcissistic and commercial antics wore thin among the celebrity set. The $100 million Netflix deal produced nothing except Markle’s embarrassing “lifestyle” show that drew derisive hoots from most observers. Netflix cut ties in March of this year, and no one stepped up to fill the supposed demand of Harry-Meghan drama. Other business ventures flopped as well, and the constant whining about media from a couple desperate for attention likely killed off any charm left.

It took a while for reality to set in: the only value these two had was as royals. When they renounced that status, their main value was novelty. Had they approached that status with some groundedness and fewer mercantile machinations, they could have succeeded in building a lasting brand. Instead, the two of them put on a performance-art tour of entitlement and arrogance that quickly sapped the commercial value and appeal of the Sussex “brand,” which was never authentically theirs in the first place. It belonged to the family that Harry and Megan snubbed as racists and classists.

Having discovered that they’re nothing special without the royalty, Harry and Megan now apparently want back in.

Ed Morrissey adds, “The Twitter analyst of all things British, VBSpurs, posted a good explainer for the sudden retreat to the British Isles based on her expert observations over the past few years. Harry’s visa status has nothing to do with it, but his status as a king’s son does. Read it all and track the conversations that are still ongoing for more insight:”

Related: True scale of Meghan and Harry’s US political plans revealed — from request for Biden Oval Office meeting to eyeing Senate seat.

Delusional Prince Harry and Meghan Markle sought US political clout far beyond the dreams of any British royal since King George III, The Post has learned, with the Duchess of Sussex angling to take over the Senate seat held by Kamala Harris ahead of the 2020 presidential election.

Weeks before Democrat Joe Biden’s win over President Donald Trump, a source says, Markle requested a sitdown with California Gov. Gavin Newsom because she “wanted to be considered to be appointed” to the seat held by Harris, which she vacated just before becoming vice president on Jan. 20, 2021. The source added that the discussion was publicly described as a welcome-to-California chat to head off potential inquiries.

It is unclear just how far Markle’s appeal got with Newsom, who appointed California Secretary of State Alex Padilla to replace Harris two days before her swearing-in as Biden’s second-in-command. Padilla subsequently won election to a full six-year term in 2022.

A Sussex source firmly denied that Markle wanted to take over the Harris seat, while a rep for Newsom did not respond to a request for comment.

To be fair, isn’t going from 90210 to the US Senate something of a lateral move?

UPDATE:

Posted at 9:14 pm by Ed Driscoll

MATT CALKINS: I was a sports columnist at the Seattle Times for 11 years. This is why I resigned.

16-year-old Ahnaleigh Wilson, who’d lost to a biological male in a track and field race in eighth grade and was holding a sign reading “Thank You Sophie for Speaking up for Girls!”

* * * * * * * *

One thing Wilson emphasized to me at the rally was that she wasn’t anti-trans. Another student-athlete named Frances Staudt — who said she’s endured daily verbal abuse after refusing to play against a biological boy in a basketball game — echoed Wilson’s sentiment.

So that was the thesis of my column (which you can read here) — that supporting the separation of biological females and males doesn’t automatically make you transphobic, so let’s stop throwing those labels around.

I sent a draft after talking to my editor the morning of Friday, July 31, telling him there was no rush to run it. He told me later that day that he and others were looking at it, but that it wouldn’t be ready for Sunday’s paper. Monday night, I got an email saying that his boss was hoping to talk to the top two newsroom editors about it on Wednesday. No feedback had been given to me. Thursday afternoon, my editor informed me that it wasn’t going to run because I didn’t tell him I was doing this in advance. I didn’t buy this reasoning. If that were the case, the piece would have been killed on the spot, not passed through the hands of multiple editors over several days.

My response? To resign on the spot.

In 2023, Jeremy Clarkson wrote thusly about his longtime former employer:

Remember, what everyone on every BBC platform fears more than anything is a Twitter backlash, so to try to keep that festival of left-wing madness happy, they have to be even more left wing and even more right-on. And they have to make sure that every show is pitch-perfect to the BLT+ community and the ethnic minority communities and the community communities, and when you’re thinking defensively like that, the concept of informing and educating and entertaining pretty much goes out of the window.

Considering Seattle was held hostage by an inflamed leftist Twitter mob during 2020’s infamous “Summer of Love,” the editors of the Seattle Times are likely even more afraid of being devoured by their core subscribers than the BBC.

Posted at 6:30 pm by Ed Driscoll