The amazing thing about the era of filmmaking that ended with "Wonder Woman 1984" is that a script that dumb and joyless could get past dozens of people without anyone pumping the brakes before a firehose of funding was sprayed over the project.

A Biden win would decisively hand the 21st Century to China. I think it's very important to prevent a fascist superpower from ruling the world. Funny how so many self-professed "anti-fascists" seem untroubled by the prospect.

Time once again to demonstrate that "presidents have no mandate to wield power after close elections" is a scam directed solely and entirely at Republicans. By any objective standard, Biden has less of a "mandate" than anyone in memory, but no one in the media will say that.

The "mandate" narrative is silly as a matter of constitutional law. Nowhere is it written that a president's authority is diminished if the election was close, or people who didn't vote for him think his victory was illegitimate. But that's all we heard for years after Trump won.

Of course, not a single such complaint will be leveled at Biden. No one in the political/media class will insist he has an asterisk after his name and should be prevented from exercising the full powers of office, and then some.

Biden won't have to worry about "resistance" bureaucrats sabotaging his administration from Minute One or crazy Hawaiian judges stalling his policy agenda. If anyone tries it, the media will absolutely savage them, instead of cheering them on. Their very lives would be in danger.

As a matter of politics, it's fair enough to suggest that policies should be crafted with due recognition for the feelings of the opposition, and if the election was razor-close, extra care should be taken to recognize the divided electorate.

For most of my lifetime, people on the Left focused on the perils of Big Business while ignoring, or actively embracing, the menace of Big Government. A great deal of the Right did the reverse. Both Bigs are perilous, especially when they fuse into a combined threat to liberty.

The growth of both government and corporate titans was inevitable, especially after a century of industrial and technological revolutions. Technology makes it possible to have larger endeavors, both public and private. Economies of scale bring enormous benefits.

Industrial advancements meant government had to get bigger to handle even its most basic responsibilities, like national defense. The World Wars erased the model of a tiny central government handling a few key elements of defense. Every war became a clash of industrial titans.

After the wars, people - not just voracious political opportunists, but many average voters and nearly all of the intelligentsia - fell in love with the notion of using the power of industrialized warfare to address domestic issues. Every crisis became "equivalent" to war.

People expected more of government, so it grew - and then it exploded. Meanwhile, Big Business was growing too, and it delivers tangible benefits that would be impossible to achieve with only small, decentralized local companies. There is an inescapable logic to corporate growth.

The U.S. central government grew relentlessly larger, richer, and more powerful during the decades that every problem faced by Americans got worse. Why does anyone think making the government even bigger would *solve* any of those problems instead of making them even worse?

This is not just a matter of government ineptitude and corruption, although both of those are major factors. Our problems get worse as the government gets bigger because the Leviathan State and its clients have a vested interest in making them worse.

One of the biggest lies of statism is that government and its employees are utterly selfless and immune to the incentives that drive people in the private sector. This is absurd. Every government agency seeks to increase its "business" and "profits," just like corporations.

The key difference is that government increases its "market share" by giving BAD service and FAILING to provide value for money. Its "revenues" grow through coercion, not customer satisfaction. Agencies go out of business if they succeed too well at their tasks.

Time is money and money is time. The more of its time and money a nation pours into the fundamentally corrupt and inefficient engines of the State, the less it has for the private enterprises and VOLUNTARY cooperative endeavors that could actually resolve society's problems.

One problem with the GOP's inability to understand or process populism is that it gets walloped by the all-populist all-the-time Democrats. Another problem is that when Republican populists do appear, they tend to be rather unfocused and undisciplined.

Political focus and discipline are very hard to come by. It takes a huge organization that spreads across both the political and private spheres to harness popularity and convert it into effective policy action. The Left spend decades building and refining its machinery.

The Left's machine spots populist talent early and begins guiding it toward politically productive ends. Detailed plans are made to move the country toward the populist's goals across multiple election cycles. Money and media influence is lined up to achieve concrete goals.

Achievable goals are important, because without them - and a serious political/financial/media machine dedicated to achieving them - populist crusades usually end in disappointment, resentment, and unfocused anger. "What was all of this FOR?" furious or dejected supporters ask.

Many of the Left's endless populist crusades seem kooky or utterly unrealistic at first, but they've got a serious political machine that usually manages to come away with SOMETHING to show for it. If nothing else, they end up with more power they can invest later.

an amazing thread of my favorite writers

; my bub i love you sm and your work is amazing! i always say this but your writing makes it feel realistic and a feel of emotion that amazes me. you are an amazing writer and inspiring (inspired me) please teach me your ways legend🤧

; ana bby, you are amazing! i was just a reader loving your work and how amazing you write and you are one of the many writers that inspired me to write and give it try! ily💗

; you are amazing and don’t let people tell you otherwise. i love your work you are so precious and you are a babie🤍

; i love your writing, your ideas are so amazing💗💗!

Many readers have asked me "why do so many pulp covers feature women in ripped red blouses standing in swamps while a man fights off an unusual animal attack?"

The answer is artist Will Hulsey...

Will Hulsey was the undisputed king of the animal attack pulp cover. You name it, he'd paint it attacking you in a pool of stagnant water.

Very little is known about Will Hulsey, but he worked on a number of men's pulp magazines in the 1950s and early 1960s including Man's Life, True Men, Guilty, Trapped and Peril.

Their audience was ex-GIs: during WWII the US Council of Books in Wartime had given away over 122 million books to American servicemen to read; this led to a post-war surge in paperback and magazine sales amongst these newly enthusiastic readers.

As a result the 1950s saw a raft of men's pulp magazines being published to tap into this market - almost 200 different titles!

One of the most Monkey's Paw things about my life is my relationship to books. When I was a teenager, I read all the way through the school and public libraries, spent everything I had on books, and still couldn't get enough and dreamt of more.

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Today, as a reviewer, I have more books than I can possibly read, huge, teetering mountains of books that I'm desperate to read, far beyond my ability to ever get through them. Periodically, I declare "book bankruptcy," sweep away the backlog and start over.

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Even then, my eyes are bigger than my stomach: I keep back a few books that I can't bear to part with and promise myself I'll read them someday. Usually I don't, but I just did, and boy did I ever make the right call with @TheUniverse's BROAD

I have read a LOT of histories of computing, and I had a front row seat for a lot of the events depicted in this book - people I worked with, people I worked against - and yet I was surprised over and over again with details and perspectives I'd never encountered.

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For example, for some reason, my ninth grade computer science course included lengthy readings on ENIAC, Univac, the Mark I and the Mark II, but none of those mentioned that they were all programmed exclusively or primarily by women.

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