August 21, 2026

TWENTY MINUTES INTO THE FUTURE:

As James Lileks once wrote, “Here’s what I find interesting: whenever the sci-fi movies of the 60s and 70s wanted to set something in a horrible totalitarian world, they just shot on location at a government housing project.”

Posted at 7:44 am by Ed Driscoll

THE NEW SPACE RACE: The floodgates are open after another Chinese company lands a reusable rocket.

The Zhuque-3, or ZQ-3, rocket lifted off from a commercial launch zone at China’s Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center at 7:35 pm EDT (23:35 UTC) Tuesday, about an hour after sunrise Wednesday at the spaceport in the Gobi Desert. Nine methane-fueled engines powered the 216-foot-tall (66-meter) rocket on a course southeast from Jiuquan, then the rocket’s upper stage took over the task of placing a single satellite into orbit.

The rocket’s first stage, made of stainless steel, soared to the edge of space, then maneuvered toward a prepared landing zone some 240 miles (390 kilometers) downrange, settling to a propulsive touchdown on four extendable landing legs. LandSpace, founded in 2015, declared the mission a total success.

“This mission marks China’s first-ever successful recovery attempt of the first stage of an orbital-class launch vehicle using landing legs, and China’s first successful booster recovery on land,” LandSpace said in a statement. “It is a pivotal flight test for Zhuque-3 as it transitions from the technological demonstration and verification phase toward the engineering application phase of reusability.”

That it took the Chinese — the world’s masters of high-speed copy & paste — a decade just to make their first two catches is a testament to just how difficult this is.

Posted at 7:36 am by Stephen Green

WELL, GOOD:

Key bit: “DHS tells me blue states are quietly and very secretly working with the Trump administration to assist in the mass deportation of criminals. The criminal alien issue has become so “politically toxic” and “costly” that Democrat Governors have given the green light to Sheriffs and Police Chiefs in major blue cities to drop their illegals off with undercover ICE for removal. It’s happening. You just don’t see it.”

Related:

Posted at 7:30 am by Glenn Reynolds

RELIGION OF PEACE UPDATE:

Posted at 7:20 am by Stephen Green

DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: God and Man at Yale at 75.

The purpose of Gamay (the publisher’s abbreviation) was clear. “I propose,” Buckley explained in the foreword, “simply, to expose what I regard as an extraordinarily irresponsible educational attitude that, under the label of ‘academic freedom,’ has produced one of the most extraordinary incongruities of our time: the institution that derives its moral and financial support from Christian individualists and then addresses itself to the task of persuading the sons of those supporters to be atheistic socialists.” Yale, widely believed a fortress of conservatism, had lost its sense of mission as a private university, and its alumni, a large and loyal group of donors (customers), Buckley suggested, might play a more proactive role in shaping educational policy through its elected representatives (trustees).

Buckley anticipated the ensuing uproar. Every major periodical devoted space not to careful consideration of the book’s propositions but mostly to distorting and misrepresenting them, while leveling ad hominem attacks on Buckley. The gist of the outrage exhibited by leading voices in the public and private sectors was that Buckley was a draconian menace ruling with an authoritarian fist to shape the university, where Woodbridge Hall would resemble the Kremlin and trustees the Politburo issuing ukases in between five-year plans. As well, Buckley was compelled to question the sanity of a Yale trustee who declared, “the book is one of which has the glow and appeal of a fiery cross on a hillside night. There will undoubtedly be robed figures who gather to it, but the hoods will not be academic. They will cover the face.” Such is what Gamay drove otherwise nice and intelligent people to say.

Plus ça change: 

Posted at 7:14 am by Ed Driscoll

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