I KEEP THINKING OF THE BOOK “THEY THOUGHT THEY WERE FREE”: Guest Author: Dr. Simon Goddek on the Reality in Europe Today.
The problem is their media lies even more than ours, so they think we’re more controlled than they are. The arguments I get into when I visit….
A SOUND AROSE AS THOUGH A MILLION CHOCOHOLICS CRIED OUT IN ONE VOICE: Take my money. Cocoa Piles Up At Ivory Coast Ports As Buyers Face Cash Shortage
FADING IN TIME: An Inconvenient Memory.
SHOCKED, SHOCKED, SHOCKED: Mamdani Drops New Video Teaching New Yorkers How to ‘Stand Up to ICE’.
IT’S A FOREIGN PSYOPS, TRYING TO SELL THIS TO THE RIGHT IN THE US: America Last: How Fuentes’s Coordinated Raids and Foreign Fake-Speech Networks Inflate His Influence.
I knew that, because only leftists and foreigners think that the American right is the same as the hard European right. It’s stupid, and insane, but they think they know this.
IT’S ONE OF THE STUPIDEST THINGS YOU CAN DO: Threatening to Prosecute Your Opponents When They Give Up Power Is a Bad Idea.
SOMETIMES I THINK THAT I’M NOT SO MUCH A WRITER, AS A THING WRITING HAPPENS THROUGH: The Stars in the Sky – Free, complete Short Story.
I mean one minute I’m writing along and the next minute a Spatine appears. What the heck is a Spatine? Eight hours later I have a short story and just as much writing in notes on what Spatines are as a branch of the Space Force of Britannia. Also my head hurts. I’d just very much like to know why me.
OPEN THREAD: Monday, Monday.
REALLY, REALLY FIRST-WAVE FEMINISM: Female gladiators shocked the ancient Roman world — but not for the reason you think.
YES, NEXT QUESTION? Were the late ’80s and early 1990s “the best time in recent years to be alive?”
RE: A Golden Age
Mrs. Dr. Publius and I were just discussing how awesome the mid-to-late ‘80s and early '90s were, in general, as the best time in recent years to be alive (full disclosure, for each of us this was our favorite time to be alive), and we were wondering if:
"Are…
— Cynical Publius (@CynicalPublius) December 8, 2025
ACE OF SPADES: Supreme Court Seems Likely To Rule That the President Has Control Over, Get This, the Executive Branch.
Related:
Repeat after me. There is no 4th branch of government. There is no such thing as an "independent" agency. https://t.co/bD0mUaqiTR
— unseen1 (@unseen1_unseen) December 8, 2025
ANDREW FERGUSON: Getting Intimate With Updike.
When he was a young writer—[John] Updike was astonishingly precocious, becoming a regular contributor to the New Yorker when he was barely out of Harvard—the protagonists of his fiction tended to be sex-obsessed young men. As he grew into middle age, the protagonists evolved into middle-aged men obsessed with sex. Entering his dotage, full of honors and years, he somehow conjured up older, materially successful protagonists who were obsessed with sex. One of the great American stylists, he nevertheless managed to write sex scenes that were unbearably cringe-making. The meticulous, magical gift for poetic physical description that led him (for instance) to describe a snowfall at night as “an immense whispering” was misapplied to the mysteries of sex. A year before his death in 2009, the British magazine Literary Review, famous for its annual Bad Sex in Fiction competition, simply threw up its hands and gave him a Lifetime Achievement Award.
And yet it would be a mistake to call him the horniest writer of his time. It was quite a time. And he had lots of competition—an entire class of phallocrats, as they were sometimes called. These were male novelists who were too old to have enjoyed the vanguard of the sexual revolution, led by youthful baby boomers, and who were making up for lost time. In the 1990s, the novelist David Foster Wallace lumped several of them together—Updike, Norman Mailer, Philip Roth, Frederick Exley, Charles Bukowski—under the heading GMNs, the Great Male Narcissists. As Wallace pointed out, however, Updike was the one who evoked an especially intense mockery, at least among Wallace’s own contemporaries (Wallace was under 40 at the time, Updike in his 60s). One of Wallace’s feminist friends called Updike “a penis with a thesaurus,” a deathless tag that followed him to the grave.
Heh, indeed. It’s Andrew Ferguson, so definitely read the whole thing.
I’VE SEEN THE LOCKDOWNS AND THE DAMAGE DONE: COVID School Reopenings Quickly Cut Childhood Anxiety, Depression, and ADHD.
ROGER SIMON: Our AI Future Has Its Problems: Ask Freud.
OUT TOMORROW: Kurt Schlichter’s latest Kelly Turnbull novel, Panama Red.
TO BE FAIR, WHICH GRANNIES WERE WE SUPPOSED TO PULL OUT OF THEIR HOMES?
Charlie was killed almost 3 months ago. No Antifa raids. No major network arrests. No financial takedowns. But we have seen a lot more left-wing violence.
Dems were dragging grannies out of their homes almost immediately after J6 and going full CSI: Capitol Hill on anyone who… https://t.co/b0qqBJAN78
— Sean Davis (@seanmdav) December 8, 2025
Snark aside, the Right does need to punch back — but I’m not sure what role Congress has to play here.
DISPATCHES FROM THE BLUE ZONES: DC squatter takes over woman’s property after refusing to check out of Airbnb—police let them stay. “A homeowner in Washington, DC is now fighting to have her home back after a squatter took over the property she had rented as an Airbnb for 32 days, but has yet to leave after months. The alleged squatter, Shadija Romero, has been living in the home since February and police have said there is nothing they can do. The squatter allegedly tried to push the homeowner off a ladder.”
EVERYTHING IS ABSURD: FIFA ‘Pride Match’ Will Feature Two Countries That Ban Homosexuality.
TREAT THE PAIN: Shoulder-Heating-Pad-Heated-Wrap. #CommissionEarned
A GUT-CHECK FOR LEFTIST BIGOTRY: Lefties Can Now Wrestle With the Horror of Discovering Their Friends Own Guns in the Safety of a Chicago Theater.
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