Lionel Shriverhttps://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/other/writers-blocked-how-the-new-call-out-culture-is-killing-fiction Last year I wrote an entire novel set in Indian country, that vast part of Canada which is accessible mainly to aboriginals, whether Innu or straight-up “first nations”. I ground to a halt when I realized to my complete horror, that is would never pass muster in a publishing house today, especially given my regrettable (in retrospect) enthusiastic participation in the issues of the day. Which already place a decent publishing contract ...

l

Last week the NYTimes published a piece about the actress Selma Blair and her diagnosis of MS. MS is another of the mysterious illnesses into which category fall CFS/ME and Fibromyalgia. For the first while, Blair was told by doctors that her tiredness was a function of being a new mother, and barely stopped short of saying “It’s all in your mind.” Eventually, after a struggle, she was formally diagnosed and felt relief that ...

24 million people worldwide have CFS; 300 million (or 3-6% worldwide) have fibromyalgia. Last week I hied myself off to a psychotherapist on the island. Kendra, I’ll call her has 22 years of experience in Los Angeles and has treated many people with Chronic Fatigue and Hypothyroidism. This is extraordinary to me because in the 25 years I have been lugging this illness around, I have met in person no, repeat, no ...

A friend and I have been in a year-long discussion about the cable tv actress who has been elevated to Duchess-hood by marrying Harry Windsor. Megan Markle, from a broken, mixed-race family barely this side of trailer trash is notable for wanting to heal the world while wearing millions of pounds worth of couture. She is backed by the mixed-race aristocrats of the entertainment industry, and is correctly thought of as being the ...

Nassim Taleb had a hissy fit last night: Nassim Nicholas Taleb‏Verified account @nntalebFeb 3 Where I block @JordanbPeterson for violation of intellectual integrity/virtue signaling. This spat was over Jordan Peterson’s endorsement of golden rice. Patrick Moore, one of the founders of Greenpeace, is a promoter of Golden Rice, vis this in the Globe and Mail a few years ago: Two humanitarian scientists, Dr. Ingo Potrykus and Prof. Peter Beyer, used their knowledge of genetics to create Golden ...

Kamala Harris, Call-Out Star The toughest progressive we’ve seen in a long time. By David Brooks Opinion Columnist David Brooks, apparently missing the parts about no more cars, no more private health insurance, no more free market, no more guns, no more borders thinks that Kamala Harris is just the bee’s knees. First of all, she has an elite education and brilliant parents. She chose to “work for the poor” like the last progressive Brooks bought and sold to us ...

Last night Larry Correia, a fantasy writer – he hunts monsters for fame and profit – published a furious and funny screed indicting the social justice warriors in book world who harassed a new author, Amelie Zhao until she pulled her book from publication. Writing fiction had been, as it is for so many, Zhao’s childhood dream and finally she had pulled it off. Correia begins with this. First off, to know what I’m talking about, ...

Yesterday Ann Althouse wrote about the Green Reaper mascot that the Department of Energy created in 2013, a monster that was sent out to elementary schools during the Obama era.  She appends this note:   “Wow! It was designed to scare children! I remember being scared through my entire childhood by the threat of nuclear bombs. And for thousands of years, people have scared children about Hell. The fact that ...

If we learned anything this week, it is that it is virtually impossible to censor the hive on the net.  The media attempt to crucify a bunch of Catholic schoolboys was stopped by a titanic blowback by tens of thousands of unconnected individuals that only crashing Facebook and Twitter for four days could have stopped. One expects massive reordering in the media business over the next six months, as bosses figure out how to prevent ...