by Smitty
Emphasis mine:
“Assuming Chris really does plan to dumb it down in the name of clicks, what’s maddening is the way he has betrayed the premise on which he bought it. It’s like buying a historic Victorian mansion with the promise of preserving it — and then carving it into condos two years later,” one former longtime TNR staffer told POLITICO.
“I hope Chris realizes how much intellectual firepower he’s losing here — and how hard it is to fake intellectual substance,” the former staffer said.
I just love it when these Progressives get all emotional about the destruction of institutions. Given that this has been their stock in trade since the Summer of Love, culminating in six years of #OccupyResoluteDesk making a total cock-up of the Presidency, one is left to wonder why the Lefties can’t just enjoy their liberation from “intellectual substance”. This is another suck-is-the-new-cool call from the manor house down to the the peasants working the fields. Dig it, lackeys.
Progressivism is not a creative movement. It is the combustion of traditional, positive, moral values in a propaganda machine for the production of political power. Once all of the moral values of the culture have been burned, Progress will generally collapse into the kind of thuggery most recently seen in Ferguson, MO.
via Hot Air
, a ponderous tome leaden with Warhammer 40K thud and blunder. I’m taking another stab at at, but I don’t think my second opinion’s going to be any better than the first.
is good stuff; Drake and Flint write well together (see 
and 
from the Raj Whitehall series) and the books are full of swashes being buckled, derring-do in far-off lands, and skulduggery close to home. I’m looking forward to the other four books in the series.
is a fascinating book about the importance of esthetics in modern American society and how it impacts not just our cars, appliances, houses, and other objects but our very concept of who we are and the kind of people we like to hang out with. She has convincing rebuttals to both Abraham Maslow and his pyramidal hierarchy of needs and the Frankfurt School with its “manufactured consent” and the argument that we’re all just puppets manipulated by advertising. Very, very solid work and worth having even though it’s no longer on sale.
was a good read, a cut above the average brain candy. It starts as a tale of guerrilla war against a repressive off-planet invader, but the unexpected success of the guerrillas’ desperate final attack forces a change in the invaders’ government even as the guerrillas get off-planet and begin to assemble a government in exile that might be able to carry the war to the enemy’s home. I’m going to be very interested in seeing where Grant goes with this story. 
, an amusing collection of death scenes written by Larry Correia, David Weber, John Ringo, and other Baen authors, with some added poetry and songs by fans. Who is Joe Buckley, and why do so many Baen authors enjoy killing him off? Even if you already know the answer, you may still be amused, and the proceeds go to Operation Baen Bulk and ReadAssist, unquestioably worthy causes. 
