December 17, 2025

DO AS MUCH AS YOU CAN WHEN YOU CAN:  Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good:  Argue for the Achievable.

Posted at 2:29 am by Sarah Hoyt

AND ANOTHER BOOK IN THE ROLLING CHRISTMAS SALE:  FROM SARAH A. HOYT:  Deep Pink.

Like all Private Detectives, Seamus Lebanon [Leb] Magis has often been told to go to Hell. He just never thought he’d actually have to go. But when an old client asks him to investigate why Death Metal bands are dressing in pink – with butterfly mustache clips – and singing about puppies and kittens in a bad imitation of K-pop bands, Leb knows there’s something foul in the realm of music. When the something grows to include the woman he fell in love with in kindergarten and a missing six-year-old girl, Leb climbs into his battered Suburban and like a knight of old goes forth to do battles with the legions of Hell. This is when things become insane…. Or perhaps in the interest of truth we should say more insane.

 

Posted at 1:23 am by Sarah Hoyt

ON THE ROLLING CHRISTMAS SALE: FROM SARAH A. HOYT:  Here Be Dragons: A collection of short stories

A collection of short stories by Award-Winning Author Sarah A. Hoyt. From dark worlds ruled by vampires to magical high schools, from future worlds where superhumans face all-too-human struggles—this collection showcases Hoyt’s signature blend of high-concept adventure and deeply human drama. Her characters face impossible odds in worlds both strange and familiar, yet they never surrender. With vivid storytelling that has earned her recognition in Analog, Asimov’s, and Weird Tales, Hoyt delivers fiction that is as emotionally resonant as it is imaginative. Angel in Flight is set in Sarah Hoyt’s popular Darkship series.

The collection contains the stories: It Came Upon A Midnight Clear, First Blood, Created He Them, A Grain Of Salt, Shepherds and Wolves, Blood Ransom, The Price Of Gold, Around the Bend, An Answer From The North, Heart’s Fire, Whom The Gods Love, Angel In Flight, Dragons—as well as an introduction by fantasy writer Cedar Sanderson.

Posted at 12:51 am by Sarah Hoyt

December 16, 2025

DON’T MESS WITH THE CHOSEN PEOPLE OR GOD’LL GET YOU FOR THAT. First it was “from the river to the sea.” Now Gaza is the river to the sea. Cry harder, Jackon!

Or, possibly, it’s a lie. Well, most things from Gaza — by which I mean pretty much all things from Gaza — are. Meanwhile — to drive the lesson home — Jehovah has subjected Tehran to a literally killing drought.

Posted at 10:06 pm by Glenn Reynolds

OPEN THREAD: Destination Unknown.

Background here. And here.

UPDATE: Well, hell. This was supposed to be sked for tomorrow night. But I have two up and they both have comments so . . . Open Thread in stereo or something, I guess.

Posted at 9:30 pm by Glenn Reynolds

OPEN THREAD: Tuesday’s Groovy.

Posted at 9:30 pm by Glenn Reynolds

BRITAIN IS IN A CLOSE CONTEST WITH GERMANY AND AUSTRALIA AS TO WHO HAS THE DUMBEST GOVERNING CLASS RIGHT NOW:

France, as usual, is losing — but not by much.

UPDATE:

Posted at 9:07 pm by Glenn Reynolds

JACOB SAVAGE: The Lost Generation.

The doors seemed to close everywhere and all at once. In 2011, the year I moved to Los Angeles, white men were 48 percent of lower-level TV writers; by 2024, they accounted for just 11.9 percent. The Atlantic’s editorial staff went from 53 percent male and 89 percent white in 2013 to 36 percent male and 66 percent white in 2024. White men fell from 39 percent of tenure-track positions in the humanities at Harvard in 2014 to 18 percent in 2023.

In retrospect, 2014 was the hinge, the year DEI became institutionalized across American life.

In industry after industry, gatekeepers promised extra consideration to anyone who wasn’t a white man—and then provided just that. “With every announcement of promotions, there was a desire to put extra emphasis on gender [or race],” a former management consultant recalled. “And when you don’t fall into those groups, that message gets louder and louder, and gains more and more emphasis. On the one hand, you want to celebrate people who have been at a disadvantage. On the other hand, you look and you say, wow, the world is not rooting for you—in fact, it’s deliberately rooting against you.”

As the Trump Administration takes a chainsaw to the diversity, equity, and inclusion apparatus, there’s a tendency to portray DEI as a series of well-meaning but ineffectual HR modules. “Undoubtedly, there has been ham-fisted DEI programming that is intrusive or even alienating,” explained Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor in The New Yorker. “But, for the most part, it is a relatively benign practice meant to increase diversity, while also sending a message that workplaces should be fair and open to everyone.”

This may be how Boomer and Gen-X white men experienced DEI. But for white male millennials, DEI wasn’t a gentle rebalancing—it was a profound shift in how power and prestige were distributed. Yet practically none of the thousands of articles and think-pieces about diversity have considered the issue by cohort.

This isn’t a story about all white men. It’s a story about white male millennials in professional America, about those who stayed, and who (mostly) stayed quiet. The same identity, a decade apart, meant entirely different professional fates. If you were forty in 2014—born in 1974, beginning your career in the late-90s—you were already established. If you were thirty in 2014, you hit the wall.

Because the mandates to diversify didn’t fall on older white men, who in many cases still wield enormous power: They landed on us.

Read the whole thing.

UPDATE: Bumping this post up, and including the related tweet that Steve linked to earlier today:

UPDATE (12/16/25):

To boldly go where Howell Raines had gone before: Raines had his famous Freudian Slip in 2001 that the New York Times’ hiring campaign “has made our staff better and, more importantly, more diverse.”

UPDATE (20:30):

Regarding how one goes bankrupt, Hemingway famously wrote, “Gradually, then suddenly.” The Compact DEI article covers the gradual part of the movie industry’s decline; the combination of Warner Brothers being absorbed into either Netflix or Paramount+ and Sunday’s murder of Rob Reiner certainly feels like the “suddenly” half.

Posted at 8:30 pm by Ed Driscoll

GOSH, LUCY PULLED THE FOOTBALL OUT FROM CHARLIE BROWN YET AGAIN: White House Does Damage Control After Susie Wiles Criticizes Trump, Top Officials in Candid Interviews.

The Trump administration is doing damage control after a new series of extraordinarily candid interviews with White House chief of staff Susie Wiles set the political world ablaze.

In a series of eleven interviews with Vanity Fair conducted throughout the first year of President Trump’s second term, Wiles gave her unfiltered thoughts on Trump’s “alcoholic” personality, Vice President JD Vance’s “sort of political” conversion to Trumpism, Elon Musk’s “odd” behavior and drug use, and Attorney General Pam Bondi’s mistakes in handling the Epstein files.

Wiles, the veteran GOP strategist credited with overseeing Trump’s successful 2024 presidential campaign, conducted a series of interviews with author Chris Whipple over the past year. Vanity Fair published the remarks in a two–part series Tuesday alongside interviews with other administration officials and a glamorous photoshoot.

Soon after the interviews were published, Wiles criticized Vanity Fair’s coverage and her White House colleagues rushed to her defense.

“The article published early this morning is a disingenuously framed hit piece on me and the finest President, White House staff, and Cabinet in history. Significant context was disregarded and much of what I, and others, said about the team and the President was left out of the story,” Wiles said.

“I assume, after reading it, that this was done to paint an overwhelmingly chaotic and negative narrative about the President and our team. The truth is the Trump White House has already accomplished more in eleven months than any other President has accomplished in eight years and that is due to the unmatched leadership and vision of President Trump, for whom I have been honored to work for the better part of a decade.”

Trump administration officials made sure to emphasize their support for Wiles in statements attacking Vanity Fair for running a supposed hit-piece on her.

Wiles’ father was Pat Summerall, who spent decades broadcasting for CBS Sports and Fox Sports after his NFL career, and she’s worked with numerous GOP politicians over the years. So she had to know what would happen when she agreed to a Vanity Fair profile. Perhaps she’s setting up a gig in the DNC-MSM after she leaves the administration. Speaking of which, clock’s ticking, fellas:

Posted at 8:14 pm by Ed Driscoll

AUSTRALIA IS A SAD PLACE THESE DAYS:

Posted at 7:29 pm by Glenn Reynolds

IT REALLY IS:

Is it corruption, or incompetence? Why not both?

Posted at 7:07 pm by Glenn Reynolds