Clunk! Arrrrrrrgh! Splash! And into the drink I went.
For reasons we do not understand, when we jumped the yard or so from the Waterproof to the dock we badly missed, hit the edge thigh first, and face planted in the water; mucky, brackish water. Honestly, we got off easy. If that had been our knee or face....
Life is imitating Israel Strikes: War of the Red Sea, as the Israelis are announcing the first of what will in the long run be several peace treaties with the Gulf States. Can anyone else say Nobel Prize? So for 25 years the professional diplomats tried and failed and failed and failed to make a diplomatic breakthrough in the Middle East. Trump sends his son-in-law, moves the embassy to Jerusalem, and does it in three years. Tell us again about the importance of training and expertise. And please, enough Kushner bashing. One day we'll learn there was some serious kabuki here. Iran and Hezbollah are having a bad, bad year. Here's a great thread by Drew Holdon on the matter.
Trump is already slamming Kamala Harris. Good. Whatever one is thinking about Harris, say it. Make the point. Hold nothing back, and think about Sarah Palin while you're doing so, a woman who succeeded on her own, and not with the help of the man with whom she was currently sleeping. We're going to paraphrase Kurt Schlichter: Harris is the woman who looks down on you at the office Xmas party for having three kids and staying home, while hitting on your husband to get ahead; which she got by giving it.
Freeze the target, personalize it, polarize it. Their rules, not ours. Reap, reap. Sow, sow.
We spent yesterday exploring another obscure but interesting aspect of post nuclear war America: libraries. These are going to be crucial as places of gathering, information and entertainment. So what's going on in them? We envision people coming there for the President's weekly speech, movie nights, maybe even school and daycare. We also see people scrounging libraries in dead towns for the books they'll need going forward, a theme Pournelle an Niven explored in multiple books.
Sales coming back again. We have no idea why. Our best theory is people are starting vacations and looking for a well written and edited book with exciting plot lines and actions on every page. If there was more reason behind the ebb and flow of book sales and the vagaries of advertising, well, we'd understand the incomprehensible. Remember, 50% of your advertising will be a waste. Selling books is an art, not a science.
Strong sales mean delayed release and it's possible we'll push the short story comp back to 15 September. To be honest, we're not expecting strong sales from that one. We plan, god laughs. For as it is written, we plan, god laughs.
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