And...

...Dreher returns to the same old bullshit.

We can't hold White Nationalists responsible for their acts! It's those evil Leftists! If they didn't demand equal rights and a level playing field, why, those poor young white men wouldn't have to become Nazis!

What I'm Reading

Despite the piles of work that surround me, I am still reading obsessively. What else can I do, with our blowhard joke of a president threatening nuclear war, and the white supremacist fuckwads who support him marching in Virginia, shouting, "Jews will not replace us!"

Oddly, not a single Trump supporter has denounced this march, which devolved into the white supremacists beating counter-protesters, including members of the clergy, with flaming torches and spraying them with mace and other chemicals. Rather than mentioning this, one conservative asshat we all know and love is still screeching endlessly about the persecution of that dudebro at Google.

Update: Dreher, uncharacteristically, condemns the White Nationalist protesters, though he doesn't seem to grasp that Nazi = White Nationalist. And of course his comment stream is filled with those defending the Nazis.

But anyway! Here's what I'm reading lately:

Anthony Trollope, The Small House at Allington, Can You Forgive Her?

End of Summer II

I've finished all my grading and entered the grades for my Summer II classes.

Here's my schedule for what is left of the summer:

Friday, Saturday, Sunday: Work on Fault Line edits.

Monday: Start packing with the Kid, noting everything we forget to buy

Tuesday: Packing with the Kid, buy last-minute objects

Wednesday: Drive the Kid to school, help her move into dorm. Buy her books with her.

Thursday: Pre-school conference at my university.

Friday: Ditto

Saturday, Sunday, Monday August 19-21: Work on Fault Line edits. Deal with last minute prep for Fall 2017. Fret about the Kid.

Tuesday, August 22: My first day of classes.

(The picture is the Kid, age 12, at Hanukkah. I share it for nostalgia's sake.)

Well, Obviously

...there are DIFFERENT sorts of free speech* -- duh!

As a professional scientist of online, I am pleased to present a preview from my new paper "Oh You Just Care About Free Speech At Work Huh". pic.twitter.com/IiCNkUnDDD

— Oliver Keyes (@kopshtik) August 8, 2017

*For instance, there is free speech by white rich men. And then there is free speech by black upstarts who don't appreciate everything this country has done for them. When the first group speaks, we must be protected their right to say whatever like they like, at all costs, no matter what damage is done to others. When the second group speaks, we must vilify, condemn, and punish them until they shut up.

Fisking the Dreher

Andrew Johnston is doing a chapter by chapter read of Rod Dreher's pompous tome, The Benedict Option. All Johnston's posts are worth reading, but today's is especially good.

Today's youths are likely to grow up around some openly gay people and many of them have reached the same conclusions as me - queer folk are as boring as anyone else. Gay people aren't predators, they're just people. But let's not stop there - you could apply this to any of Dreher's other signs of sexual breakdown. Once you've known some women on birth control (or better still, once you've taken them yourself), you know that they aren't mindlessly fornicating animals. Once you've known some single mothers or divorcees, you know that they aren't stupid sluts. 

Links for your Sunday

Summer II is almost over here -- I'm at the stage where all my students are resubmitting their revised drafts, which means I've got heaps of reading and editing to do. Combined with working on the edits for Fault Lines (which is going well!), well, I'm busy!

But! Not too busy to rummage the internets.  Here's some links:


This won't be quite as funny unless you saw the original

It's a Streak!

A very short streak, but still.

Last night right before I started getting ready for bed, I checked my email (as I always do) and found I had sold a story to Daily Science Fiction.

Much rejoicing followed, and then (about 40 minutes later), I really did start getting ready for bed, and checked my email (it's part of the bedtime ritual) to find I had sold a second story, this one to The Sockdolager.

Two stories in one hour! It is a record for me, beating out my previous record of two stories in one year.

Go me!

What's Up?

Here, it is just over two weeks before the kid goes off to her first year of college. (Wasn't it just yesterday she was starting her first year of high school? WTAH.) We're occupied with the incidentals of getting her prepped for college -- dealing with financial issues, buying her supplies, thinking about the gear she'll need.

Trump's America

Here's what Trump tweeted before the election:

Thank you to the LGBT community! I will fight for you while Hillary brings in more people that will threaten your freedoms and beliefs.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 14, 2016

Linkage

My editor has given me the next set of edits for my new novel, Fault Lines; so expect light posting for the next few months.

Meanwhile! Have some links!

Conservatives are weird

As Louie C.K. notes, the most dangerous person in a woman's life is the man she's in relationship with.

What I'm Reading Now

I've sent my novel edits off (the first round), but I'm still teaching two sections of comp, with a different prep for each. So I'm busier than usual.

Nevertheless! I'm reading and reading.

These are the books I've finished lately:

Cooking

I've been living on tabouli for the past few weeks. It's too hot here to actually cook, plus the tomatoes from my little garden are all coming ripe.

Here's the recipe I'm using now: Tabouli.

Also, a recipe for red sauce.

Fault Lines

 From Candlemark & Gleam:

Velocity Wrachant, owner and captain of the merchant starship Susan Calvin, is broke and stranded on a Drift station, when she is offered what seems like a simple job: to escort young Brontë Ikeda into Republic space and help her retrieve several bonded-labor children.

While Velocity is tempted by the fee Brontë offers – which is enough to clear her debts – she also knows that Ikeda House, a powerful Combine, just had a major coup; and both she and her crew suspect the story they’re being told by the Combine child is not the whole story.

Velocity takes the gig, but it takes her into the heart of Combine territory, a place she fled almost twenty years earlier. What is the price she and her shipmates may end up paying for this job?

More here.

July? Again?

There are only two things I like about July.

(1) Homegrown tomatoes

(2) In less than 12 weeks, it will be fall

Today we have a temperature in the 90's and a humidity in the 60's and all I want to do is drink seltzer and mope.

What I'm Reading Now

Since I had revisions of my novel and am teaching two classes in Summer II, my reading rate has dropped off just a bit. Also my physician gave me some Valium for my anxiety, which has helped so much.

But! Not much Valium -- just enough to use when the anxiety is the worst. So I'm still self-medicating with excessive novel reading.

Here's what I've read over the past week or so: