In The Mailbox: 10.19.21 (Morning Edition)

Posted on | October 19, 2021 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 10.19.21 (Morning Edition)

Silicon Valley delenda est.

F*** Joe Biden and his mandates too.

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: How California Destroyed Its Trucking Industry
EBL: Chicoms Start The Long March, also, General Burgoyne Surrenders At Saratoga
Twitchy: WaPo Telling Americans To Lower Expectations Does NOT Gp Over Well
Louder With Crowder: Rapper Drops “Let’s Go Brandon” Track, Hits #1 On iTunes Hip-Hop Charts
Vox Popoli: Murder, He Suspected, Rule By Pervs & Pedos, and Red China Refuses To Flex
Stoic Observations: Hanging With Mr. Cooper

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: COVID Refugees
American Conservative: Lament For The Pickup Truck, also, It’s Time To Disobey COVID Mandates
American Greatness: What Happened To Our Beloved Military?, also, New Capitol Video Contradicts DOJ/Media Narrative About J6
American Power: As Afghanistan Sinks Into Destitution, Some Sell Children To Survive
American Thinker: The Unvaxxed Are Looking Smarter Every Week, also, Did Zuckerberg Buy The Oval Office For Biden?
Animal Magnetism: Goodbye, Blue Monday
Babalu Blog: Another Cuban General Is Dead – 16th Since 7/11 Protests, also, “Growing Old In Cuba Is Like Living In Hell”
BattleSwarm: A Pilot On The Southwest Airlines Jab Snafu, also, Ruy Teixeira 2002: Hispanics Will make The Democrats A Permanent Majority – Ruy Texeira 2021: Not So Fast
Behind The Black: ULA’s Atlas-5 Successfully Launches The Lucy Probe, Chicoms Get Failed Satellite To Proper Orbit, and Rocket Lab Reschedules Next Launches
Cafe Hayek: Economists Have Long Been Aware Of The Monopsony Theory, also, The Amount Of Government Financing Is Not Independent Of The Means Of Financing
CDR Salamander: The Navy In Afghanistan At Flood Tide – On Midrats, also, Zinni On Wargaming – Value & Danger
Da Tech Guy: Well, I Was Wrong On Scheller, Five Chappelle Thoughts Under The Fedora, and The Chestnut Man
Don Surber: Biden Makes Trump Look Even Better, I Just Checked – Jonah Goldberg Is Still Stupid, and Left Turns Machin Into Coalfinger
First Street Journal: The “Journalism” Of The Philadelphia Inquirer, also, Lexington Ties 2019 Record!
Gates Of Vienna: Urgent – More Housing For Culture-Enrichers!, Nice Work If You Can Get It, and Mad Vax Disease
The Geller Report: France To Close Mosque That Promoted Armed Jihad, Totalitarian Virginia Tech To Restrict Football Game Chants Critical Of Joe Biden, and TSA Employees Refusing The Jab
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post Of The Day, If You Enjoy Flying Now…, and Eight Asteroids
Hollywood In Toto: Why The Howling Is More Than a Subversive Werewolf Thriller, also, Last Duel Is A Major Misfire
The Lid: Katie Couric Wasn’t The First – FDR, Truman, & The Jews, also, Yitzhak Rabin’s Vision Of Peace Wasn’t What The Liberals Claim
Legal Insurrection: Is “Insurrection” Cool Again?, La. School Boards Association Quits NSBA, and George Soros Drops $1 Million In Austin To Keep City From Hiring Police To Fight Rising Crime
Nebraska Energy Observer: Random Observations, also, The Feast Day of Our Lady of Walsingham (US Version)
Outkick: Mayor Groot Seen Maskless At WNBA Game In Violation of Her Own Mandate, Patrick Mahomes’ Hateable Brother At It Again, and Starting 11 – Chaos In Knoxville Edition
Power Line: Texas Poised To Redistrict Either Sheila Jackson Lee Or Al Green Out Of Congress, also, The Carter Blues Again
Shark Tank: Deutch & Crist Push Renamed Carbon Tax Legislation
Shot In The Dark: Filed Under “Things I Never Knew Were Problems”, Go Home, Facebook, You’re Drunk, and Semantics
The Political Hat: Terry McAuliffe Protects The Darkness
This Ain’t Hell: Whatever Happened To West Point’s Commie Cadet?, Ft. Drum Soldiers To The Rescue, and NG Two-Star Whines About Army Nail Polish Policy On Twitter
Transterrestrial Musings: That Chicom “Orbital Weapon” Test, also, The Biden Administration’s Bad Luck
Victory Girls: Kamala Harris Stumps In Churches For Democrats In Va., also, Colin Powell Dies, Everyone Rushes To Find Narrative
Volokh Conspiracy: Justice Thomas’ Opinion In Little Sisters Of The Poor Provides Another Path To Challenge The OSHA Jab Mandate
Weasel Zippers: Ethics Watchdog Accuses Bad Orange Woman Of Violating Hatch Act, also, Energy Secretary Granholm – “We Don’t Have Much Moral Authority To Call Out Red China”
The Federalist: Under Administration Plan, Poor Would Be Three Times More Likely To Get IRS Audit Than Wealthy, also, McAuliffe Agrees Schools Shouldn’t Tell Parents If Kids Are “Gender Fluid”
Mark Steyn: Tragic Event Of No Broader Application, Once Upon A Time In The West, and The Ages Of Woman

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Category: Linkagery

‘Social Justice’ as Fashion Accessory

Posted on | October 18, 2021 | Comments Off on ‘Social Justice’ as Fashion Accessory

“That’s the thing about a Missing White Woman story — the damsel-in-distress angle only works, in terms of TV news ratings, if the missing woman is young and attractive, preferably blonde. Males can and do go missing, but those disappearances never dominate national news. It’s always a woman, and a young, attractive woman — if she’s old, fat or ugly, nobody cares if she goes missing. But the nubile blonde? Oh, yeah, that’s nationwide headline stuff, because she’s Prime Rape Bait, and sex is the secret ingredient in the Missing White Woman story.”
— Robert Stacy McCain, Sept. 22

Going off on seemingly irrelevant tangents is one of my bad habits, and perhaps I should begin by telling you that this is not a post about the case of Gabby Petito, who was apparently strangled to death by her fiancé, Brian Laundrie. In saying “apparently,” I don’t mean to raise doubt about the cause of her death — the autopsy confirmed that she was strangled — but rather it’s because so far Laundrie has not been formally accused of Gabby’s death, but is what police call a “person of interest.” The manhunt for Laundrie continues, but this isn’t a post about that; rather, it’s about how social media is affecting the beliefs and behavior of young people. Gabby Petito evidently got the idea that she could find a career as a social-media “influencer,” by monetizing her Instagram posts and YouTube videos on the #vanlife hashtag. That was what she and Laundrie were doing on that trip out West where she got strangled to death.

Where would a middle-class girl from Long Island get the idea that #vanlife was something she could pursue full-time? Well, young people have been doing stupid things since time immemorial — no fair bringing up my disastrous 1979 psilocybin experience, OK? — but the particular forms of stupid youthful behavior are now being shaped by social media. It’s like the phenomenon of “social contagion” by which impressionable teens are sucked into the vortex of Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria.

So here is this blue-eyed blonde girl from the affluent Suffolk County hamlet of Blue Point, N.Y., deciding at age 21 that the thing to do is to save up, buy a van and then go driving westward, recording her travel experiences for an online audience, up until the point where she became the poster girl for the #strangledtodeath hashtag.

Excuse my caustic sarcasm, but Gabby Petito is an extreme example of a much larger problem of young people ruining their lives by following whatever trendy fashion caught their attention on social media.

Back in 2014, when I began my deep-dive into radical feminism, the reason was because I could see it becoming trendy, mainly because the strategists behind the Hillary Clinton campaign saw that promoting feminism as a “brand” would be helpful to her 2016 presidential bid.

That’s something many people don’t understand — a lot of trends these days don’t just spontaneously happen. The Democrat-Media Complex exerts a very powerful influence, and the army of naïve young women who suddenly became all “F–k Yeah Feminism!” circa 2014 are evidence of how easily people can be manipulated. And if you pay attention to such trends over time, you’ll notice that the same cohort of impressionable youth will jump from one issue to the next as the focus of their online activism, depending entirely on what narrative the Democrat-Media Complex happens to be promoting at any given time. The same twentysomething crowd that was ready to #SmashPatriarchy in 2014 shifted seamlessly to ranting against the “Alt-Right” and the sinister influence of Vladimir Putin in 2017. Then, quite suddenly in May 2020, the same people were marching in the streets for #BlackLivesMatter, and all the other activist causes they’d been concerned with were forgotten.

The marionettes in this puppet-play never notice the strings, and it does not seem to occur to them to ask, “Why should I care about this?” or “Who is really benefitting from my activism?”

Because I spent so many years inside newsrooms, seeing how the daily diet of news is assembled, I’m rather cynical about this stuff. As a blogger, there is always pressure to be part of the herd, everybody bleating in unison about the same stories — whatever is on Fox News, etc. From my perspective, resisting this herd mentality is part of the value-added calculation of my efforts: What is the value of my becoming the 27th blog to write about a particular subject? And if I’m going to dogpile on the same issue everybody else is writing about, how can I find something to say about it that is different? Otherwise, I might as well just be linking headlines or posting video clips. But you don’t get a lot of that kind of thinking — “What’s the point of what I’m doing?” — when the left-wing mob jumps onto something like the George Floyd story. Everybody just echoes the same insipid slogans, as if the sheer number of people mindlessly repeating this message is the whole point.

The frightening conformity of these mobs ought to attract more critical scrutiny than it does. On June 2, 2020, thousands of Instagram accounts posted nothing but a black square with the hashtag #BlackoutTuesday, which was basically the antithesis of critical thinking.

Examined closely, we can view this as an example of what Thomas Sowell famously called The Vision of the Anointed. What really matters to these people is perception — on the one hand, they wish to be viewed by their peers as “socially conscious,” but on the other hand, they’re also posing in a mirror to admire their own reflection, so to speak. Their perception of themselves as morally and intellectually superior is very important to them, and this drives them to join various “causes” as a venue for proving their superiority, both to themselves and others, so that over the course of time, their lives become a sort of political pageant.

There is a disturbing thoughtlessness to how such people behave. One day, the Instagram “influencer” is posting about her favorite coffee shop or the new sweater she bought, but then the next day, she’s repeating militant “social justice” slogans, demanding an end to oppression, etc. And this strange shift doesn’t seem to bother her in the least; whatever cognitive dissonance it may engender is expiated through an ostentatious display of hyperemotionality — literally crying about the latest “injustice” she saw on CNN. There is absolutely no rationality or objectivity to this kind of trendy activism; it’s all about feelings. Viewed objectively, nobody benefitted from her posting that black square on Instagram as an expression of BLM solidarity, but it made her feel like she was doing something, rather than being a passive spectator.

And we might just laugh at all this — “LOL silly kids!” — were it not for the fact that so many of them take it so seriously, to the extent that they are ruining their lives for “social justice.” Let me explain, for the benefit of any young woman who does not yet understand this: You’re not going to meet nice guys at an anarchist rally. Whatever else you might say about Republicans, the party tends to attract people who share certain beliefs, including an appreciation of the value of hard work, sobriety, thrift, etc. The young woman who starts hashtagging all those Communist “social justice” slogans is communicating to the world at large her contempt for the values of all decent and honest Americans.

On the one hand, she’s making it easy for guys seeking companionship of the conveniently slutty variety. Check her Instagram account, and if she was all about #BlackoutTuesday in June 2020, buddy, you’re in like Flynn. Of course, on the other hand, there’s the risk of herpes to consider. But why would I bring up Ella Dawson at this late date? (She’s “taking a break from men,” for which men should be grateful.)

A moment of total candor from Ella Dawson.

Even if you were the kind of reckless daredevil who would risk a hookup with someone like Ella Dawson, however, you certainly wouldn’t consider her “wife material.” No, when it’s time to settle down, any intelligent guy will be looking for a nice Republican girl, instead of some dingbat “progressive” who’s hashtagging social justice slogans. So the girl who thought it was all cool and clever to jump on the “activist” bandwagon as a 19-year-old college sophomore is apt to find herself at 29 living in a tiny apartment, with her cat, and prescriptions for Valtrex and Lexapro.

Did I mention that Ella Dawson recently published a “micro-memoir” with the altogether fitting title Life Ruiner?

What Ella Dawson did to her life by becoming a “pro-sex” feminist is just slightly less stupid than what Gabby Petito did with her life. But as hashtags go, #DamagedSkank is not much better than #ShallowGrave.

Category: Crime

Democrats Desperate in Virginia

Posted on | October 18, 2021 | Comments Off on Democrats Desperate in Virginia

You can tell by the TV ads that are running in the D.C. metro market that the Terry McAuliffe campaign is in deep trouble. The essence of the Democrat’s pitch, in the off-year gubernatorial campaign, is that Republican candidate Glenn Youngkin is a puppet of Donald Trump.

Let’s be clear about just who Glenn Youngkin actually is — a Richmond native who attended Rice University on a basketball scholarship (he’s 6-7), majored in engineering and management, and later got an MBA from Harvard. He spent 25 years with the Carlyle Group investment firm. If he is, or ever was, an extremist, nobody has discovered any evidence of this. Youngkin is Mister Clean, a calm and level-headed businessman without scandals in his past, and this is why the only way the McAuliffe campaign can try to attack him is by playing the “Orange Man Bad” card.

It should not be necessary for McAuliffe to attack Youngkin at all. A former governor, McAuliffe has near-100% name recognition in Virginia, while Youngkin is a little-known political newcomer. Virginia has been trending “blue” for the past 15 years; Hillary won Virginia 50%-44% in 2016, and Biden won the state by a 10-point margin last year.

Terry McAuliffe would have been cruising toward a November landslide, were it not for the disastrous failure of Joe Biden’s presidency. Since early August, Biden’s job-approval number in the RCP average has dropped about 7 points, while disapproval has risen by 9 points. Biden has been “underwater” in the polls for six weeks and, now that Americans are increasingly concerned abourt shortages of basic consumer goods because of the supply-chain issue, there is little hope of recovery.

There are real policy issues in Virginia — particularly the controversy surrounding Critical Race Theory, which McAuliffe has bungled — but the toxic cloud looming over the gubernatorial campaign is the stench of Biden’s failure, as even McAuliffe himself acknowledges:

Virginia Republican Glenn Youngkin holds less than a one-point lead over former Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) in the state’s gubernatorial race, according to a Trafalgar Group poll released Friday.
The poll, conducted October 11–13 among 1,095 likely voters, shows Youngkin with 48.4 percent support compared to McAuliffe’s 47.5 percent support, giving Youngkin a 0.9 percent edge.
The remaining respondents are split, 1.3 percent in favor of a third party or write-in candidate and 2.8 percent undecided. The third party candidate on the ballot, Princess Blanding, identifies as a Liberation Party member and will primarily serve as an alternative for Democrat-aligned voters. The poll’s margin of error is three percent.
Of the last three Trafalgar polls, this most recent one marks the first time Youngkin has led McAuliffe in the blue-leaning state. The last poll, taken at the end of August, showed McAuliffe with a slight edge over Youngkin, 46.6 percent to 46.3 percent. The one before that, taken in early July, had McAuliffe up by close to two points, 46.8 percent to Youngkin’s 45 percent.
McAuliffe said this month in candid remarks during a virtual rally with state Democrats that President Joe Biden, whose approval rating is hovering at record-low levels, is causing his campaign “headwinds.”
“But we’ve got to get Democrats out to vote,” McAuliffe said, per a clip of the event. “We are facing a lot of headwinds from Washington, as you know. The president is unpopular today unfortunately here in Virginia so we have got to plow through” . . .

Which is why Democrats are now saturating the TV airwaves with commercials depicting Youngkin as a Trump puppet — which might actually backfire, if you stop to think about it. After all, there must be a certain number of Biden voters who now feel “buyer’s remorse” over their role in electing this senile incompetent as president, so telling them that the Republican gubernatorial candidate is a Trump clone? No, that’s not necessarily going to make them want to vote Democrat again.

UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers! And speaking of Virginia, perhaps you’d care to read the biography of a great Virginian.

Category: Election, Virginia

Late Night With Rule 5 Sunday: Kate Upton

Posted on | October 18, 2021 | Comments Off on Late Night With Rule 5 Sunday: Kate Upton

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley esse delendam.

Whatever one may think about the Astros, it would be very hard to argue that stud pitcher Justin Verlander is not the league leader in babelicious baseball wives, since he’s married to the voluptuous and seemingly always cheerful Kate Upton. Here we see Mrs. Verlander as a guest on some late night talk show not hosted by Greg Gutfeld.

This might almost have been worth tuning in for.

Ninety Miles From Tyranny: Hot Pick of the Late Night, The 90 Miles Mystery Box Episode #1505, Morning Mistress, and Girls With Guns.

Animal Magnetism: Rule Five Lying Liars That Lie Friday, and the Saturday Gingermageddon.

EBL: Aggies Beat Alabama, Queenpins, Midnight Mass, Oats Studios, Alessia Cara, Killer Cop In Lesbian Love Triangle, The Oyler House, Live By Night, and MAGA: Trump Calls Out Lying Media

A View From The Beach: Stargirl – Brec Bassinger, Fish Pic Friday – Savannah Muse, Stones Cave, Tattoo Thursday, Southern MD Alligator Continues to Escape Authorities, More Wednesday Wetness, Marylanders Invade Pennsylvania, TSA Still at Work Despite Risk of COVID, Bay Watch Babe Goes Off the Sauce, California to Ban Gas Passers, The Monday Morning Stimulus, The Straw That Broke the Restaurant’s Back, Palm Sunday and Child Star Adds to Vaccine Muddle.

Thanks to everyone for the luscious links!

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Category: Rule 5

FMJRA 2.0: Neuronengesang

Posted on | October 17, 2021 | Comments Off on FMJRA 2.0: Neuronengesang

— compiled by Wombat-socho

No joy in RFK this week. My Senators lost two out of three to the Indians and then went To Shea Stadium where they ran into Steve Carlton and Tom Seaver back-to-back. Hoping to break the four-game losing streak against the Braves at the Launching Pad.
Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley esse delendam.

My field of dreams – RFK Stadium in Washington DC

Rule 5 Sunday: Carol Cleveland
Animal Magnetism
Ninety Miles From Tyranny
A View From The Beach
EBL
Proof Positive

‘Smart Takes’ = Too Clever By Half
Bacon Time
357 Magnum
EBL

Alabama … LOST?
EBL

FMJRA 2.0: Mindphaser
A View From The Beach
EBL

Patriots Win Ugly
EBL

The Annual Admiral Of The Ocean Sea Appreciation Post
357 Magnum
EBL

Terry Wary
Sig is Scary
Next Month’s Vote
Might Not Carry
357 Magnum
EBL

‘Let’s Go Brandon!’
357 Magnum
EBL

In The Mailbox: 10.12.21 (Afternoon Edition)
357 Magnum
A View From The Beach
EBL
Proof Positive

MBD’s Trump Problem, and Mine
357 Magnum
EBL

In The Mailbox: 10.12.21 (Evening Edition)
357 Magnum
A View From The Beach
EBL
Proof Positive

Biden Begging for Lower Fuel Prices?
357 Magnum
EBL

In The Mailbox: 10.14.21 (Morning Edition)
357 Magnum
A View From The Beach
EBL
Proof Positive

Lesbian Love Triangle: NYPD Cop Murders Ex-Girlfriend’s New Lover
357 Magnum
EBL

In The Mailbox: 10.14.21 (Evening Edition)
357 Magnum
A View From The Beach
EBL
Proof Positive

Who Killed Sir David, and Why? UPDATE: ‘Somali Heritage,’ Motive Unknown
A View From The Beach
EBL
Proof Positive

In The Mailbox: 10.15.21
357 Magnum
A View From The Beach
EBL
Proof Positive

Top linkers for the week ending October 15:

EBL (17)
357 Magnum (12)
A View From The Beach (8)
Proof Positive (7)

Thanks to everyone for all the links!

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Category: FMJRA Award

‘Containergeddon’: California Emissions Law Caused the Supply Chain Crisis

Posted on | October 17, 2021 | Comments Off on ‘Containergeddon’: California Emissions Law Caused the Supply Chain Crisis

What’s causing the supply-chain crisis? One word: California.

Sundance at Conservative Treehouse has a long article explaining this: California passed an emissions law that required trucks to meet standards that the majority of trucks in America can’t meet. Basically, about half the truckers in America are banned from operating in California. Because California ports — specifically Los Angeles and Long Beach — are the most convenient for shipments from Asia, this policy created a transportation problem that major importers tried to solve by diverting shipments to other ports. So then you had ships from Asia going through the Panama Canal to reach ports in New Orleans, Tampa, Jacksonville, Savannah, etc. However, the necessary infrastructure (especially cranes to offload cargo containers) to handle the increased loads at those other ports could not be created overnight. Thus, the bottleneck in California (caused by that state’s stringent emissions laws) led directly to bottlenecks at every other port in America.

That’s a brief thumbnail summary, and you can read all about it at Conservative Treehouse, but the point is, WHY ARE AMERICANS ALLOWING CALIFORNIA TO WRECK OUR ENTIRE ECONOMY?

The Constitution clearly allots to the federal government the authority to regulate interstate commerce, but California’s law — one Democrat-controlled state’s “Green New Deal” — is clearly having a disastrous impact on this commerce. Donald Trump would have put a stop to this, but Biden got 64% of the vote in California, and Biden would very much like to impose those job-killing policies on the whole country.

Expect to hear more about this next week.

Category: California

Joe Biden’s Supply Chain Disaster

Posted on | October 16, 2021 | Comments Off on Joe Biden’s Supply Chain Disaster

Suppose that you were in the food service business, and suppose that you wanted to order those little packets of mayonnaise. Good luck getting them, at any price, these packets (which most of us take for granted) being just one of many items that have become scarce as a result of the Biden administration’s supply-chain crisis:

Maybe you’ve seen the pictures of queues of cargo ships strung out in the Pacific trying to get into American ports to unload their containers. You will hear the scene described as part of something called the global supply chain, but that intentionally understates what it actually is. What you’re looking at are America’s supply lines. At this point, we’re effectively an outpost totally dependent on a faraway headquarters for the things we need to live. Here’s what it looks like:

REPORTER: Why so many empty shelves? US ports are backed up.
REPORTER: Take a look at this. Cargo ships sitting in the sea waiting to pull into port. It’s causing major US retailers like Walmart, Home Depot and Costco to charter private cargo ships in a rush to fill shelves for the holiday season. On the roads, there’s a shortage of truck drivers
REPORTER: The White House says it’s addressing the issues fueled by COVID 19, a labor shortage and increased demand.

Suddenly, for the first time in generations, Americans are having trouble buying basic necessities, the things they need. A new poll by Rasmussen found that 62% of Americans said they have shortages in stores where they live. The things they can buy are suddenly much more expensive.

REPORTER: The Labor Department reporting Wednesday meats, poultry, fish and eggs increased a combined 10.5% since September 2020, but it’s not just food prices skyrocketing, the consumer price index shows overall prices are up 5.4% from a year ago. More pain at the pumps The national gas price rose a dollar since last year, AAA showing the average price per gallon, up from $2.18 in 2020 to $3.29 this year. The Social Security Administration says inflation is why nearly 70 million Americans receiving Social Security benefits will see a nearly six percent increase in payments next year, the highest increase in four decades.

There are no signs that fundamentally any of this is going to improve any time soon. In fact, on Wednesday, the administration acknowledged that you’re heating bills are likely to jump by more than 50% this winter. Those are the kind of things that people actually notice. It hurts when you get poorer and many people are getting poorer.

Peter St. Onge explains why the Biden administration’s excuses for this disaster are wrong, insofar as they are not simply lies.

Category: Economics

JAPANESE HIGH SCHOOL GIRLS IN TROUBLE!

Posted on | October 16, 2021 | Comments Off on JAPANESE HIGH SCHOOL GIRLS IN TROUBLE!

— by Wombat-socho

~~(A Bronkowitz Films Production)~~
Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley esse delendam.

Higehiro in a nutshell.

Salaryman Yoshida gets turned down by a woman at work and takes it hard – he promptly goes out and gets trashed in a local bar. On his way home, he finds Sayu, a runaway teenager sitting on the curb who offers to sleep with him in exchange for being allowed to stay at his apartment. Yoshida is revolted by the idea of taking advantage of Sayu and makes a counter-offer: she can stay at his pace, but she has to work. And no sex! Our hero is determined to get Sayu’s head screwed back on straight, but his problems are just beginning – his protégé at work seems awfully interested in him (and not in a professional way) and the woman who rejected him is having second thoughts. Higehiro is the manga version of a successful light novel series, and shows quite a bit of promise.

Komi Can’t Communicate, on the other hand, is up to its 15th volume, and our heroine is making slow but steady progress towards her goal of making 100 friends – no easy thing for a girl that can barely manage to hold a conversation with her closest friends and communicates with most people by writing on her notepad. Her icily standoffish classmate Kiyoko is running for class president – will supporting her get Komi another friend – or a bitter enemy? I am enjoying this series tremendously, because I remember very well what it was like to be socially awkward in high school, and also because the slowly developing Komi/Tadano relationship is just so darn cute. Highly recommended.

She may not be a Japanese schoolgirl, but Richard Sharpe’s lady Teresa is in more trouble than usual – the fierce Spanish partisan “La Aguja” (the Needle) is trapped inside the French-held fortress of Badajoz, the object of Wellington’s attention, with her daughter by Sharpe, and the prospect of being in a city stormed by the British Army isn’t a pleasant one, even for the armed and very dangerous Teresa. As if that weren’t bad enough, Lieutenant Sharpe’s gazette to Captain has been denied, and his old enemy Sergeant Hakeswill has shown up with the South Essex’ new colonel and a captain who’s bought Sharpe’s position as commander of the Light Company. Still, this is Richard Sharpe, and you know in the end that the South Essex’ Light Company will be, as it always was, Sharpe’s Company. This is one of the better books in the series by Bernard Cornwell, and full of juicy historical tidbits from the Napoleonic Wars.

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