This Compact essay written by Jacob Savage in 2025 continues to get attention.
Long before I wrote Pilate's Magician, I encountered a "white male" problem with another manuscript.
Visit the websites for major agents and publishers. Check out the biographies of the agents and screeners.
You'll begin to see a pattern.
So here, finally, is my thesis: I believe that what progressives want most of all is to fail. They are most comfortable being against things. They are most comfortable campaigning for purposes that will never come to fruition. They are so dependent upon the perpetuation of social ills such as racism that in a pinch they will invent "microaggressions" undetectable to the naked eye; starved of racism, they will make racism up. For progressives, a proper utopia, with nothing and no one left to denounce, would be hell.
- Lionel Shriver, "What do progressives really want?" in The New Criterion, November 2026.
Files. Journals. Drafts. Books. Reports. Correspondence. Photos. Receipts. Invoices. Calendars. Tax records. Postcards. Certificates. Diaries. DVDs. Plans. Lists.
Material for storage. Bags for the garbage.
New items for the next year.
And, amid all of it, learning how to think anew for new times.
The video at Cultural Offering is painfully accurate to Texans, Floridians, and Arizonans.
I live in an old and charming part of Phoenix which, although not directly bordering the desert, is occasionally explored by coyotes, foxes, and raccoons.
There has been one report of javelinas, but I have never seen them.
Coyotes are the biggest worry for people with small pets. They usually visit neighborhoods at night although early morning is also a good time to catch them on patrol.
Many of the critters of my youth are no longer nearby. No desert tortoises or horned toads. No garden snakes and, thank God, no rattlesnakes. Those tend to stay on the outskirts.
When I drive out to visit clients in the farming communities, it's easy to spot turkey vultures, hawks, and white egrets. The egrets fly in when the fields are irrigated and they can easily feast on rodents and frogs.
Fortunately, we don't get visits from mountain lions. They tend to stick to northern Arizona.
Some ranchers keep donkeys in with their cattle in order to fend off coyotes, but a nearby homeowner who keeps cattle also has emus, possibly as livestock guardians.
Which is a reminder of the famous geese of Rome.
[Photo by Grace Anne Bobadilla at Unsplash]
Today, I'm teaching a workshop on Equal Employment Opportunity. It has long been one of my most popular classes, possibly due to a mixture of fast-paced case examples, humor, and low expectations.
I've built an entire career on the last item.
Bear with me. I'll be back soon.
"I haven't read a book in forty years."
"We never watch black-and-white movies."
"Who was Spencer Tracy?"
[Photo by Sean Benesh at Unsplash]
A quiet pleasure takes place in Arizona when we hear that the rest of the nation is changing its clocks.
The Sovereign Professional has an important reminder from Steve Pressfield.
My older brother could have used that approach the other day as heavy rain caused floods in Central Arizona.
His pastures were filled, the cattle were out in the water, and all of his neighbors left for higher ground.
But he stayed and outlasted the storm.
The most fundamental fact about current AIs is that they are grown, not crafted. It is not like how other software gets made - indeed it is closer to how a human gets made, at least in some important ways. Namely, engineers understand the process that results in an AI, but do not much understand what goes on inside the AI minds they manage to create.
- Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nate Soares, If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies: Why Superhuman AI Would Kill Us All
