October 13, 2026
DISCOVERY DAY — Or, why I keep Columbus Day.
[Howard] Zinn was right about Columbus, but he never once turned the critical lens he applied to the Spanish colonists to the native people of the New World. In Tenochtitlan, the Aztecs sacrificed war captives by the thousands, cutting out their hearts atop the Templo Mayor, and stacked the skulls in a tower of more than 650 heads cemented together, including women and children, while captors ate parts of the bodies in ritual feasts. Around 1450 on Peru’s coast, the Chimú cut open the chests of children, some as young as five. In South Dakota around 1325, attackers at Crow Creek slaughtered villagers, scalped and dismembered the corpses, and carried off the young women. In Colorado around 1150, Ancestral Puebloans at Cowboy Wash butchered and cooked people. And across the continent, slavery was widespread. None of this excuses Columbus. He was a savage. But so were these indigenous people.
Nor did Zinn turn the lens he trained on Columbus Day toward Martin Luther King Day. He was happy to put on his historian’s hat for the uncomfortable truths of Columbus the man, but he did no such thing for King, who plagiarized portions of his doctoral dissertation, serially cheated on his wife, rejected the virgin birth and the bodily resurrection that his Baptist congregants took on faith, and according to an FBI surveillance summary, may have looked on and laughed while a fellow minister raped a woman in a Washington hotel room. None of this approaches the scale of Columbus’s crimes, but it’s the principle that matters. We acknowledge the truth of the words King delivered at the Lincoln Memorial, and we honor the man even though he doesn’t live up to the symbol. But more importantly, we would never assume that someone celebrating MLK Day is celebrating being a scumbag husband, just as we don’t assume that someone celebrating Indigenous Peoples’ Day means celebrating eating children. Rather, these holidays celebrate the good parts, and we don’t sit around debating whether we can separate the good from the bad either. We just separate them. Readers familiar with my history may be wondering, what about someone like Vladimir Lenin? Do we get to celebrate him too? But with King and Columbus, we celebrate specific achievements worth honoring, and set the sins of the men aside. With Indigenous Peoples’ Day, we celebrate an ethnic identity, which I find less deserving, but not inherently immoral. But with someone like Lenin, the atrocities were not distinct from the achievement. When we celebrate King, we celebrate his antiracism. When we celebrate Columbus, we celebrate his discovery. But when people celebrate Lenin, they celebrate his revolution.
The decisive push for Indigenous Peoples’ Day came on the same anniversary when I was sitting in homeroom, learning about the real Columbus and what he did to the people of my mother’s homeland. In the Bay Area, activists formed a group called Resistance 500 and lobbied the Berkeley City Council, which voted unanimously to make Indigenous Peoples’ Day an official city holiday. In 2014, Seattle and Minneapolis adopted it too. And in 2021, President Biden formally recognized it.
Curiously, the author misspelled then-President Obama in that last sentence.
LIMITED TIME DEAL: HOSHANHO Cleaver Knife 7 Inch,. #CommissionEarned
XI’S GOTTA HAVE IT: Chinese carmakers increasingly rely on overseas markets as September exports surge.
China’s passenger car exports surged 64% in September from the same month in 2025, an industry association reported Monday, as Chinese automakers increasingly focus on exports to drive growth at a time of sluggish domestic sales.
China exported around 919,000 passenger vehicles in September, lifted by overseas demand for plug-in hybrids and pure electric vehicles, data from the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers showed. In the first nine months of 2026, China exported over 7.1 million passenger cars, up more than 70% compared with the same period last year.
Meanwhile, domestic passenger car sales in China have fallen for most of the year as they face weaker consumer confidence at home and scaled back government subsidies. They declined 27% in September year-on-year to over 1.6 million units, according to the association.
Why is Trump the only national leader who seems to understand that tariffs hit right at China’s achilles heel?
ANSWERING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Yes — Minn. Rep. Ilhan Omar Can Be Denaturalized And Deported If Her Original Immigrant Visa Was Obtained Via Fraud By Her Father.
THE INTERNET OF DANGEROUSLY CONNECTED THINGS:
I’m sorry, but hackers remotely turning off refrigeration systems at hundreds of supermarkets and destroying all their fresh and frozen food is INSANE. We’ve connected so much of our physical world to the internet that apparently even keeping milk cold is now a cybersecurity… https://t.co/4g9SYvTlsb
— Rushi (@rushicrypto) October 12, 2026
HE DIDN’T MEAN HIS MONEY: El-Sayed Wants “Money Out of Politics.” A New Ad Shows Who’s Funding Him.
FROM C. CHANCY: The Words of the Night (Colors of Another Sky Book 1.)
It’s 1618. Do you know where your historian is?
Retirement wasn’t supposed to have dragons….
Historian Jason Finn crossed the planet to escape the Black Dog of depression – and almost got there. Over the mountains of Korea, a monster out of nightmares tore his plane from the sky… and into another world.
Hunting down ravenous shapeshifting pirates, Night Magistrate Lee Cheong found survivors from elsewhere. Survivors who say pirates are not the only threat. Over twenty years ago Hanyang burned in dragon flames… and that monster still lives.
Now the young magistrate must lead demon-hunters on a desperate chase, aided by a bandit sharpshooter, a seafolk medic, a Heavenly cultivator on the run for her life… and a time-lost historian.
Jason’s willing to help, but he’s cursed, fighting to survive, and struggling to understand a land of magic and monsters. All the while doing his best to keep a teenage girl alive.
Upside? Jason’s definitely not depressed….
SECURITY & CIGARS: An Oath is a Terrible Thing: Why Former Major Nidal Hasan Must Be Executed.
OH, BOY, I HOPE HE’S RIGHT: The human colonization of the solar system is now unstoppable, except by force.
WE SHOULD ALL DO AS MUCH ‘NOTHING’ AS ELON MUSK, JEFF BEZOS AND OTHER BILLIONAIRES: Debunking Another Socialist Lie: Abdul El-Sayed Thinks Billionaires Make Money by ‘Doing Nothing’.
THEY COULDN’T FORCE THE FACTS INTO THE NARRATIVE: So, We Know What Held Up ABC News’ Hit Piece on Trump’s Sons.
LYING LIARS LYING BOLDLY: Dem Campaign Ads Cite Soros-Backed Fake News Sites to Sway Voters in Key Races.
IT SEEMS THAT THINGS ARE GETTING MORE UNSTABLE IN CHINA: Xi’s Purge and the War Over Taiwan.
MORE ACCURATELY, WE’VE CONFIRMED WHAT WE ALREADY KNEW: We Know Why the Liberal Media Left Out Some Important Context Regarding the Latest Cornell Texts.
TO BE FAIR THE LIBERAL ARTS DEGREE AS TAUGHT TODAY ALSO DOESN’T GIVE YOU A TOEHOLD ON THE FUTURE: Holding onto the past often requires more than a liberal arts degree.
WHAT DO YOU EXPECT FROM COMMIE MAMDANI? Mamdani Monday: DSA Demands And The Italian Snub.
THIS CERTAINLY SEEMS TO BE TRUE: Kimberly Guilfoyle Is A Headache The Administration Doesn’t Need.
THIS, PRECISELY THIS: “Happy to Mail That Ballot for You”?! What the right to vote does NOT require is governments providing every possible personal convenience imaginable.
If other rights were exercised like the right to vote, the government would bring me the gun of my choice and drive me to the range every time I want to practice.
IF YOU HAVEN’T HEARD MARCO RUBIO’S SPEECH ON THE WESTERN CIVILIZATION, GO DO IT NOW: A Speech You Need To Hear.
AND HE’D BE RIGHT: Trump warns of a 1929-style depression if Dems win.
“GREEN” POLICIES, AS WE NOW HAVE THEM ARE LARGELY JUST ANTI-CIVILIZATION: The Iran war didn’t make your heating bill this high. Blue-state energy policy did. The US has just 130 operable refineries, down from 301 in 1982.
NO, THAT’S ABSURD: Does African Writing Sound Like AI? Spoiler: Only after LLMs arrive on the scene.
On the other hand, at what point does “read a lot of AI” devolve to write like an AI. Over time, I found myself doing things like confusing They’re and their when writing, while knowing the difference perfectly well, just because I read it wrong so often. And don’t get me started at using third person plural for third person singular, because I object to that with all my mind, and yet I read it so much that it’s started to invade.
Not yet. Probably. But how soon before we all sound a little like AIs?
