THE PROBLEM IS GASOLINE TAXES. NEVADA GETS GAS FROM CALIFORNIA, NO PIPELINE DIRECT: INTRODUCING FUC-EES I have a business plan and I would like investors. Six locations. Every one sits four hundred yards past the California state line on Interstate 15, Interstate 40, Interstate 10, Interstate 8 and Interstate 80. Arizona and Nevada. You will see the sign before you see the border.
Author Archive: Sarah Hoyt
August 22, 2026
August 21, 2026
HE’S A SOCIALIST JOURNALIST, HE WAS JUST PRACTICING REDISTRIBUTION: Disgraced Mamdani-loving journo Ross Barkan apologizes — after being caught plagiarizing 67 times.
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.
GEE, HE SEEMED SO MODERATE: Abdul El-Sayed wants to go a ‘step further’ than even Bernie Sanders in pitch for public ownership of AI firms.
HE THINKS THEY’RE SO DUMB THEY’LL VOTE FOR HIM: James Talarico Claims Black Americans Too Dumb to Get Voter ID.
HEY – THOSE ARE DEM VOTERS!: Multiple Sex Offenders Snatched in Latest ICE Arrests: ‘Defending the Homeland’.
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.
IT IS, INDEED, A DEMOCRAT: DSA Co-Chair Got His Comrades To Pay Him After Lying About Job.
OUR FOUNDERS WERE ANTI-DEMOCRACY FOR A REASON: Tocqueville was certain that it was impossible to have liberty without democracy, but he worried that it was possible to have democracy without liberty.
THE GOVERNMENT. REALLY? NY Gov. Kathy Hochul: Don’t Deport ‘Essential’ Haitians, Salvadorans Who Staff Government.
FORGETTING IS INVITING IT TO BE REPEATED: Never Forget.
POOR CALIFORNIA! AT THIS POINT CLEANING IT UP MIGHT INVOLVE MAKING IT A TERRITORY FOR A WHILE: California’s Medicaid Program is a Voter Registration Program…Literally. An LA resident discovered some shocking loopholes in CA’s public health exchange process.
LIARS, DAMNED LIARS, AND TRUE BELIEVERS: George Bernard Shaw’s role as Stalin’s useful idiot.
DON’T FEAR THE AI (OR THE REAPER): Tech and Fear.
HE’S GOING TO NEED PLIERS TO EXTRACT HIS TONGUE FROM HIS CHEEK: What is the purpose of a steel mill? From a birds eye view a steel mill takes in iron ore and coal in huge quantities plus a few other things, and outputs steel. As a result it also makes money which is taxed.
August 20, 2026
SHE THOUGHT WELL OF IT: Review: The Timeless by Richard Paolinelli and Gibson Buffa.
CULTURES ARE NOT THE SAME! Still More Tales of the Base Tour Guide – Host Nation Sensitivities.
THE AD SHOWS THE REPUBLICAN CANDIDATE DRIVING A PICKUP TRUCK, KLANSMEN DROVE PICKUP TRUCKS, SO YES, IT’S JUST LIKE THAT: El-Sayed Staffer Just Compared This Campaign Ad to the KKK.
SHE’S A DEMOCRAT; DEMOCRATS DON’T MATH: Democrat Mary Peltola’s Economic Math Ain’t Mathing.
IT WAS TIME: America Sanctions ICC President and Trial Lawyer.
HIS GUEST SAID THE BIBLE AND QURAN ARE ESSENTIALLY THE SAME BOOK, JUST IN DIFFERENT LANGUAGES? Bill Maher Shut Down a Muslim Comedian When the Conversation Veered Into This Topic.
MOSTLY BY STEALING WHAT WORKS: China today finally succeeds in vertically soft-landing a first stage.
I SWEAR THAT’S THE ENTIRE PURPOSE. KEEPING THE “PEASANTS” FROM DRIVING: California’s New Tire Mandate Could Drive Up Costs.
ARE WE SEEING MORE FOODS RECALLED FOR ISSUES, OR JUST MORE REPORTING? Blueberry recall over deadly E. coli fears hits FDA’s highest-risk level — with 12 sickened, 4 hospitalized.