For many years, Michel Houellebecq was patronized by the French literary establishment as an upstart, what with his background in agronomy rather than literature, his miserable demeanor, his predilection for science fiction and his gift for unyieldingly saying the unsayable, especially about relations between the sexes.
That’s all changed now. He won the Prix Goncourt in 2010 for The Map and the Territory and in 2019 was elevated to the Légion d’Honneur. The Nobel cannot be long delayed, the committee after all having honored the equally ornery V.S. Naipaul and J.M. Coetzee.
Houellebecq’s new novel Anéantir, published in January in a luxury edition of 300,000 copies, was a quasi-official event in France, heralded by a reverential two-part interview in Le Monde in which he confided that he was a bit of an alcoholic and quite the tart, since he wrote not for money or applause but to be loved.
Some 736 pages long, Anéantir begins as almost a spy thriller, set around the upcoming election, but then morphs into a study of the treatment of the old and helpless, followed by a harrowing account of fatal illness, alleviated only by the return of conjugal love to a couple long estranged. Houellebecq being Houellebecq, it is specified that the dying man enjoys a dreamy blowjob lasting three hours — but the novel is otherwise chaste and grave, Houellebecq signing off by saying it is time
Yet although widely translated in Europe already, no English version seems yet to be scheduled. That’s a pity, not only because it will appear after the period in which it is set, but it was the enthusiasm of English-language readers that did much to compel French critics to acknowledge that Houellebecq was, whether they liked it or not, their writer with most impact internationally. …
Kurt Schlichter contends (correctly) that losing to today’s Left would be simply too disgraceful.
Have you noticed the absolute freakshow quality of the people who want to keep us in chains? Perhaps it’s one thing to be repressed by people who are at least nominally badass, like Romans or Mongols. But these geebos who make up the Democrat Party’s loudmouth wing? The sexually hopeless toads outraged because other people who might someday know the loving touch of another human can’t whack their babies? No. Not only does their tyranny fail the freedom test, it fails the aesthetic test.
We simply cannot allow ourselves to be serfs toiling in the fields of a bunch of people who, in any just and sane society, would spend their lives living in fear of getting wedgies for being so bizarre.
Look, I’m not saying that our society should bring back bullying nerds. I am simply observing that when nerds were busy trying to avoid swirlies in the boys’ room, they did not have the time to devote to getting their groomer allies access to Kindergarteners. If Melvins and Pointdexters living in fear is the price of little kids not getting chatted up by pedo-adjacent strange-os, I say that’s a bargain.
All leftists are insufferable, but this current crop is insufferable in many diverse ways. It’s not just the ones who defile or mutilate themselves to get their parents’ attention. It also includes ones that don’t tatt up, who appear normal until they open up their kale holes. Think Nina Jankowicz. On the surface, she looks like any other childless, middle-aged Chardonnay-guzzler who is pushing 40 but has failed thus far to earn the love of a man. But when she starts talking, yikes. And just look at the antics of that fascist disinformation girl. She sings show tunes. She’s into Harry Potter – non-threatening sensitive and magical boys are sooooo dreamy. She’s also eager to shove you into a train car headed to a gulag, and as it pulls away from the station she’ll be shouting at you ruffians to use your inside voices.
That’s right – the mediocre girl who played the lead in your high school’s production of “Hello, Dolly!” – which you skipped to go pound Buds with your pals like normal people – is the harbinger of tyranny.
Ugh, that’s so sad. Tyranny is intolerable even if you are facing a worthy foe. But tyranny by this kind of over-credentialed, shame-free dork? No way. Never.
And that’s true of the rest of the salty commie crew. Pierced beings with blue hair. Fat-positive behemoths in spandex. Daddy-issue goofs of all genders who can’t do a push up. If we are going to lose our country and our freedom, it can’t be to this gallery of goblins. At least with proper enemies – like, say, the Hessians – you could get some satisfaction shoving a bayonet into their guts. With these weebles, you fail to call them by their bespoke pronouns and they collapse into a sobbing heap. Where’s the challenge?
We simply cannot lose to these people. It’s undignified.
And it’s unnecessary. The only way they win is if we let them win. They can’t take a punch, and the whole caste of them – which probably numbers a couple million across the country – collectively probably has access to about as many guns as the average Trump voter. The only threat they pose is to fetuses, and pretty soon only in Moloch-friendly states like Cali and New York. They talk big about revolutions and insurrections, but they have neither the cold steel or the upper body strength to pull it off.
What are they going to do – pester us into submission? Yes, that’s actually their plan. They really think that if they call us “racist” enough, if they moan enough about patriarchy, if they bleat enough about how us saying what we think is “unsafe” we will simply give up.
Tired of having to collectively stress about what explosion of hate crimes is happening bc some billionaire with an ego problem unilaterally controls a massive communication platform and skews it because Tucker Carlson or Peter Thiel took him to dinner and made him feel special
Of all the hysterical leftist reactions to Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter on Monday, MSNBC host Ari Melber’s was easily the most revealing.
“If you own all of Twitter or Facebook or what have you, you don’t have to explain yourself,” he gravely intoned during his show Monday evening. “You don’t even have to be transparent. You could secretly ban one party’s candidate or all of its candidates, all of its nominees, or you could just secretly turn down the reach of their stuff and turn up the reach of something else, and the rest of us might not even find out about it ‘til after the election.”
You don’t say. This was in fact the way the left used social media to win the 2020 presidential election. They even admitted it openly in a stunning yet largely forgotten February 2021 article in Time magazine entitled “The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign that Saved the 2020 Election.”
“For more than a year, a loosely organized coalition of operatives scrambled to shore up America’s institutions as they came under simultaneous attack from a remorseless pandemic and an autocratically inclined President,” wrote reporter Molly Ball. “Their work touched every aspect of the election.” Read the rest of this entry »
The Arkadiko Bridge or Kazarma Bridge is a Mycenaean bridge near the modern road from Tiryns to Epidauros on the Peloponnese, Greece. Dating to the Greek Bronze Age, it is one of the oldest arch bridges still in existence and use today and the oldest preserved bridge in Europe.
The corbel arch bridge belonged in Mycenaean times to a highway between the two cities, which formed part of a wider military road network. It has a culvert span of ca. 1 m and is made in the typical Mycenaean manner of Cyclopean stones. The structure is 22 metres (72 ft) long, 5.60 metres (18.4 ft) wide at the base and 4 metres (13 ft) high. The width of the roadway atop is about 2.50 metres (8 ft 2 in). The sophisticated layout of the bridge and the road indicate that they were specifically constructed for use by chariots. Built in the late Late Helladic III (ca. 1300–1190 BC), the bridge is still used by the local populace.
Amazon leadership held a session for employees dealing with the “trauma” of Matt Walsh’s book becoming a best seller and dealing with his trolling. They strategize on how to demote it on their site and claim he will get people killed. @MattWalshBlog broke them. pic.twitter.com/AKH8ihO0iV
Drones for Ukraine has a unique fundraising tool: Donate $1,000 or more to their effort to procure modern drones to defend against the Russian invasion, get a genuine piece of aircraft skin from a downed Russian jet fighter.
“Have you always wanted a Su-34 ‘Fullback’ strike fighter?” the Twitter pitch goes. “But $50M is a little bit pricey?”
As a matter of fact, $50 million is a little pricey. I’ve got two boys, and you should see our monthly food bill.
But: “Just donate $1000+ to support Ukrainian army and we’ll send you this tag recycled from a downed Russian plane (it’s literally a piece of it with little engraving).”
“Made in Russia, Recycled in Ukraine” is a pretty gutsy tagline, too.
“Your donations will help us supply the defenders in Ukraine with modern drones and equipment to counter the invasion,” according to the website. So your donation in exchange for a piece of a shot-down Russian jet might just help Ukraine shoot down another one.
The Su-34 is Russia’s top-of-the-line fighter/bomber, a modernized and (very) upgraded strike version of the Su-27 Flanker. The Russian Air Force (VVS) took delivery of the first Flankers from Sukhoi in 2006, and they’ve seen combat in Syria, (probably) Georgia, and (of course) Ukraine.
The two-seat, twin-engine jet is roughly equivalent to an American F-15E Strike Eagle and is generally considered one of the more capable fourth-generation fighters.
Only 129 Fullbacks are known to have been built for the VVS, seven of which are believed to have been shot down or otherwise lost in Ukraine.
