Books Indie Press Spotlight Can’t Miss Indie Press Speculative Fiction for September and October 2024 Cooler weather brings cosmic horror, alternate histories, dystopian fiction, and more from independent presses this fall. By Tobias Carroll | Published on September 20, 2024 Comment 0 Share New Share There’s something about the early days of autumn that brings indie press titles into the foreground. Maybe it’s the proximity to Halloween putting uncanny storytelling in the spotlight; maybe it’s just that cooler weather nominally means more time for sitting somewhere cozy and losing yourself in a great read. Here’s a look at some of what you can expect to see from independent presses in September and October. File Under: Cosmic and/or Canadian Horror  Few writers tap into the truly disquieting elements of horror as well as Laird Barron. He’s been writing critically acclaimed cosmic horror for a while now even as he’s expanded his oeuvre to include crime fiction. (Don’t sleep on his Isaiah Coleridge novels.) Barron’s new collection Not a Speck of Light is his fifth collection of short stories to date, and looks to be the perfect thing to keep you unsettled late at night. (Bad Hand Books; Sept. 10, 2024) Does the idea of a new anthology featuring horror tales from the likes of Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Camilla Grudova, Premee Mohamed, Richard Gavin, and David Demchuk interest you? Editor Michael Kelly has brought their work together with a host of other talented writers for the collection Northern Nights, perhaps the most unsettling Canadian stories since the issues of Alpha Flight where Scramble, the Mixed-Up Man descended into villainy. (Undertow Press; October 2024) In an interview earlier this year, Christine Morgan detailed her approach to writing. “I just like to write what’s fun for me to write, and let it fall where it may,” she said. As the title of her new collection, Around Eldritch Corners, suggests, this one finds her cranking the cosmic horror up to 11 and taking readers to mind-expanding places. (Word Horde; Sept. 16, 2024) When Gianni Washington’s collection Flowers From the Void was published in the U.K., Washington addressed her themes of choice in an interview. “I’m super interested in how we perceive our own experience of living versus what we think others experience,” she said—and it’s little surprise that that divide could lead to memorable works of horror. (CLASH Books; Sept. 3, 2024) File Under: Humanity and Consciousness There’s an almost certainly apocryphal story floating around New England about a Vermont community that would freeze and revive old and sick residents during the winter. With his new novel Black Days, Jackson Ellis riffs on this legend to tell a thrilling story of medical breakthroughs, unsettling secrets, and the border between life and death. (Green Writers Press; Oct. 22, 2024) Normally, a new work by Brian Evenson would be filed in the “cosmic horror” category, but some of the stories in the new collection Good Night, Sleep Tight show off a different side of Evenson’s work. Specifically, there’s a lot of reckoning with what makes someone human here—and what it might do to an intelligence to learn that it’s something else. In many ways, this feels like a thematic followup to Evenson’s novella The Warren, which is both unexpected and very welcome. (Coffee House Press; Sept. 10, 2024) Set in the middle of the 21st century, Michael Keefe’s novel All Her Loved Ones Encoded focuses on technology that allows people to upload their consciousness into a digital space—even as this becomes grounds for crises both personal and political. The resulting narrative sends the novel’s protagonist on the run and reckons with her sprawling family history as well. (Running Wild Press; Sept. 11, 2024) In the new collection from Tara Isabel Zambrano, Ruined a Little When We Are Born, Zambrano explores familial tensions and connections that sometimes extend into the supernatural. That includes on story in which, as Emily Webber notes in her review, “[e]xtra hands and her mother’s words spill forth from the girl’s body.” It makes for a compelling blend of the familiar and the unexpected. (Dzanc Books; Oct. 15, 2024) File Under: Stories About Storytelling File this one under “genre-adjacent works of nonfiction.” There’s a long tradition of writers exploring deeply personal issues through the prism of fantastic fiction; Amanda Leduc’s Disfigured: On Fairy Tales, Disability, and Making Space is one excellent example. This fall sees the release of K.J. Aiello’s The Monster and the Mirror: Mental Illness, Magic, and the Stories We Tell, in which Aiello explores their own experience of mental illness through a genre-infused lens. (ECW Press; September 2024) Juan Martinez is an excellent author in his own right, but he’s also begun working as an editor with Jackleg Press—and among the books he’s brought there is Joachim Glage’s collection The Devil’s Library. Martinez described it as “feral and funny and deeply weird and like nothing you’ve seen before.” That sounds promising indeed. (Jackleg Press; Sept. 16, 2024) Bram Stoker Award-winning author EV Knight returns this September with the magnificently-titled The House on the Cover of a Horror Novel. As the title suggests, it’s about a disquieting house that winds up on the cover of a scary book, and turns out to have malevolent secrets of its own. (Raw Dog Screaming Press; Sept. 12, 2024) Subtitled “A Collection of Experimental Fiction,” Rachel Rodman’s collection Mutants & Hybrids blends formally inventive stories with narratives that transport the reader into the strange and miraculous. Rodman’s work draws upon fairy tales and reimagines them in beguiling new ways, making for a memorable combination of old and new. (Underland Press; Oct. 8, 2024) Whether she’s writing immersive and imaginative fiction or tracing the history of a genre, Nisi Shawl’s work is never less than compelling. Her new novel The Day and Night Books of Mardou Fox combines these aspects of her work, drawing on the life of Beat poet Alene Lee to tell a story of literary dynamism and otherworldly visitations. (Rosarium Publishing; Oct. 15, 2024) What happens when disquieting films begin to bleed through into a fractured reality? That’s the question at the heart of JM Tyree’s The Haunted Screen, about a film scholar pulled deeper and deeper into an uncanny mystery. Tyree knows his way around both film history and compelling fiction, and this should make for a thoroughly compelling combination here. (Deep Vellum; Oct. 1, 2024) File Under: Alternate Histories PM Press’s Outspoken Authors series abounds with concise collections of work by a number of interesting writers. What’s almost as interesting as the series roster itself is seeing what different writers have done with volume. In the case of John Kessel, the answer involves—appropriately enough, given that it’s an election year—fictional heads of state. The stories in The Presidential Papers encompass alternate histories and space opera; it’s an impressive display of Kessel’s range. (PM Press; Oct. 22, 2024) You don’t read one of Robert Kloss’s books as much as you immerse yourself in it. His latest book bears the haunting title The Genocide House, and takes readers on a tour of landscapes that are familiar and landscapes that never were. Apparently there are secret histories and ill-fated rockets in there as well, which makes for a compelling whole. (Bridge Books; Oct. 15, 2024) Meg Ripley’s novel Necrology—the first in a new series—uses the Salem Witch Trials as the starting point for a radically different vision of American history. Here, Ripley imagines a very different landscape, one where magic-using women and the nonmagical populace remain at an impasse and bodies transform in unforeseen ways. It’s a promising debut. (Creature Publishing; Sept. 24, 2024) Margaret Tabor’s 1980 novel Unity Penfold was first published in the U.S. two years later under the title Nightmare Street. As the latter title suggests, this is a book that sends its protagonist to an unsettling place—specifically, an altered reality where her place in the world has radically changed. This new edition brings together the endings of both versions of the book. (Valancourt Books; Sept. 17 2024) File Under: All Things Ecological In recent years, the work of Eugen Bacon has begun to gather a host of high-profile award nominations, including a Philip K. Dick Award nomination for Danged Black Thing and a British Fantasy Award win for An Earnest Blackness.  Up next for Bacon is a collection, A Place Between Waking and Forgetting, including the World Fantasy Award-nominated story “The Devil Don’t Come With Horns.”  (Raw Dog Screaming Press; Sept. 19, 2024) It’s been two years since the publication of Kay Chronister’s novel Desert Creatures, which blended eco-fiction and a heady dose of the surreal. Chronister’s new novel The Bog Wife keeps that earlier book’s connection to place but does so in telling a more fantastical, gothic tale—in this case, a family steeped in strange rituals and unsettling sacrifices. (Counterpoint; Oct. 1, 2024) Do you like your fiction with a combination of environmental awareness and the potential for optimism? Metamorphosis: Climate Fiction for a Better Future, an anthology from the nonprofit Grist contains an introduction by Sheree Renée Thomas, as well as the winners of the organization’s Imagine 2200 fiction competition. (Milkweed Editions; Oct. 22, 2024) The Sapling Cage is the first book in a planned trilogy from the great Margaret Killjoy—who I suspect is the only writer on this list who’s also in an anti-fascist black metal band. In telling the story of a young trans witch looking to protect her home from supernatural forces, Killjoy puts a new spin on the quest narrative—and if that has your attention, you can also read an excerpt here. (Feminist Press; Sept. 24, 2024) Pasha Malla’s previous novel ran dying malls through the lens of horror. What’s next for this talented writer? In this case, wellness resorts. The publisher of All You Can Kill has compared it to a blend of White Lotus and Shaun of the Dead, and—you know what? That’s an elevator pitch that I can get behind. (Coach House Books; Oct. 8, 2024) File Under: Welcome to Dystopia The latest book in the Radium Age series of genre reissues comes to us from Francis Stevens, also known as Gertrude Barrows Bennett, who wrote in the early 20th century and anticipated much about where the genre would go. The collection The Heads of Cerberus and Other Stories includes six stories, including the title story about a group of people transported to a dystopian 22nd-century Philadelphia. (Radium Age/MIT Press; Sept. 17, 2024) Rivers Solomon called [sarah] Cavar’s Failure to Comply “a striking and fresh examination of life under boot of hegemonic corporate society lovingly and ecstatically told,” which is an enticing endorsement if ever there was one. Cavar’s writing is both formally inventive and thematically rich, and their literary interests are wide-ranging—all of which makes for an enticing combination here. (featherproof; Sept. 24, 2024) I’ve written before in these pages about the work of the writer known as both Manuela Draeger and Antoine Volodine. The latest book of Draeger’s to appear in the U.S. comes in a translation by Lia Swope Mitchell and is titled Kree: A Post-Exotic Novel. It follows the title character as she travels through a host of harsh realms, both in the here and now and in a series of disquieting afterlives. (University of Minnesota Press; Oct. 22, 2024) The story behind this new edition of Irish writer Margaret O’Donnell’s dystopian novel The Beehive is a fascinating read in its own right. O’Donnell’s book is set in a near future in which a reactionary government has placed restrictions on the lives and freedom of women; the resulting read—appearing in the U.S. for the first time—is a disquieting speculative inquiry. (Valancourt Books; Sept. 24, 2024) File Under: Strange Investigations There’s a long tradition of science fiction that’s incorporated elements of crime fiction and mysteries into its DNA. Marie Howalt’s novel The Wenamak Web is the latest entry in this storied tradition, and it adds a terrific concept that blends both: extraterrestrials capable of detecting lies through scent. (Spaceboy Books; September 2024) Jordan Rothacker returns to the world of his earlier book The Death of the Cyborg Oracle to put that book’s investigators on a new case; the result is the impressively-titled The Shrieking of Nothing. Set in a futuristic Atlanta where both the climate and the treatment of religion and belief have radically changed, this is a thrilling book both for the ideas at its core and the mystery at its heart. (Spaceboy Books; Oct. 22, 2024) “I like taking innocent things and giving them a sinister twist—sometimes darkly funny, but always dark,” Sorora Taylor said in a 2020 interview. That sense of turning the quotidian into the uncanny comes through in Taylor’s new book, the novella Errant Roots, which chronicles a young woman’s disquieting foray into her own family history after she becomes pregnant. (Raw Dog Screaming Press; Oct. 15, 2024) File Under: Weird Spaces Beth Castrodale gives haunted house narratives a new spin with her novel The Inhabitants. Its protagonist moves into an architecturally distinctive home only to learn that something is very amiss there—all the while also embarking on a mission of what Castrodale terms “revenge-by-painting.” (Regal House; Sept. 9, 2024) The fiction of Camilla Grudova has been acclaimed in these pages before, including praise for her collection The Doll’s Alphabet and her novel Children of Paradise. This fall sees the U.S. release of her collection The Coiled Serpent, which blends surreal happenings and a textured sense of place, and has already received fine reviews across the Atlantic. (Unnamed Press; Oct. 8, 2024) To read Brian Keene’s unsettling fiction is to be transported to another world—sometimes one that resembles the one outside your door, sometimes one far more bizarre. It’s the latter sensibility that’s at work in Island of the Dead, which finds Keene in full-on epic fantasy mode. A barbarian soldier far from home doing battle against legions of zombies? That sounds eminently page-turning. (Apex Book Company; Oct. 22, 2024) The French writer Jean Lahougue has been publishing books since 1973, but K. E. Gormley’s English translation of his novel Vacated Landscape is the first of his books to appear in English. It’s about an editor on the increasingly complex trail of a writer, an errand that takes him to the streets of a bizarre and surreal city. (Wakefield Press; September 2024) What happens when the traditional elements of a Western are used to tell a story about a community facing something uncanny? Perry Meester’s The Flesh Inherent addresses that very question. Also, Meester has also said that “[i]t’s definitely a book about being horny in the desert”—so that might be of interest as well. (Ghoulish; Sept. 10, 2024) File Under: Other Realms Earlier this year, S.M. Beiko was a finalist for an Aurora Award. Now, she’s back with the followup to her 2023 novel The Stars of Mount Quixx, The Door in Lake Mallion. This one’s about a young man who faces a violent attack and winds up transported to another world via the titular portal, where he makes an unlikely connection with unexpected consequences. (ECW Press; Oct. 8, 2024) If there’s a frequent motif in the fiction of David James Keaton, it’s in the way Keaton turns familiar things, from films to guitar cases, into something thoroughly strange. Keaton’s new novel Shallow Ends, about a group of revelers celebrating a birthday on a converted fire truck whose journey transforms into something supernatural. (Podium Publishing; Sept. 24, 2024) “I love to get into the heads of kids who are getting in a little too deep. Kids trying to figure out why life already seems to be skidding off the road, and they don’t know how to recover,” Josh Rountree said in a recent interview about his new collection. Death Aesthetic—his third collection of short stories—explores unexpected transformations and journeys into the self, rarely leaving his characters where they began. (Underland Press; Sept. 3, 2024) [end-mark] The post Can’t Miss Indie Press Speculative Fiction for September and October 2024 appeared first on Reactor.

Author of The Dark Secrets of SHTF Survival and the online course SHTF Survival Boot Camp Note: This is an excerpt from Selco’s best-selling book, The Dark Secrets of SHTF Survival. To read more of this sobering reality check, you can get it in paperback here.  When the SHTF, there might not be army outside shooting at you, but there might be gangs who prey on you to get your supplies. Being under siege feels like someone takes the ground away you walked on. Nothing is like it was before. When you defend your home, you need to have a mindset change. Home is not a cozy secure place anymore. Home is the place you chose to defend yourself and loved ones. You will feel very different about the place you used as a defensive base forever. To stay protected or to try to protect against firing and shelling required some skill, knowledge and in a lot of the times good luck. The violence was shocking. I can say that in the beginning, people acted very brave. But on the other side that was not courage, it was more like a lack of knowledge of how easily a man can be killed. People went out like kids with water pistols only that getting wet might be own blood or blood of friend on you. I watched few times a man attacking another guy who is hiding behind some cover. The attacker is just running towards the guy behind cover and constantly shooting. The other guy behind cover just leans forward for a second, gets the timing right, and kills the foolish attacker. When you have a bunch of civilians with a lot of weapons, some strange situations can occur. Remember I am talking about civilians. Most of them did not know too much about war, fighting, tactics, and everything else. We did not have some smart philosophy of street fighting, especially not in the beginning. But as time goes by, some of the obvious things get figured out or learned if you like. If somebody wanted to attack someone who is inside a house, the most usual way was to use RPG or hand grenades on some of the openings to shock people inside and create some shrapnel flying around. Quite often, guys used human shields to get to the house. A lot of people got killed because they thought it was not OK to kill some poor prisoner in order to defend the house. Imagine that three bad guys come towards you and they push two older women in front of them. Terrible situations. And after some time, most shot at everything that looked suspicious… no matter what. Most of the fighting in the city was like shoot and hide, fight while moving. It was like fighting with shadows, they are everywhere, and each shadow can kill you. You often fight people who you do not even see good, so to walk or run lightly was the key. Often you do not see the enemy and shoot at whatever. Sounds bad but in a lot of the situations very good thing was to shoot at anything that looks even close to suspicious, and in most of the situations, not even stop later to check. You never know how well you hit. Just grab your stuff and move. Move… Move… Move… I remember that. Always on the run. Psychology in urban warfare Fear was one of the greatest allies of fighting, so if one of the groups wanted to kill or expel another group from some street, position or building, the usual method was to talk to them for hours over the megaphone device. Maybe from this perspective looks ridiculous but if you listen for hours or days for one and same story how you are gonna be treated good if you surrender yourself, after some time a lot of folks are gonna start to believe in that. Or in another case, you may listen for an hour what that guy gonna do to your family and you if you do not surrender yourself. It’s hard to imagine how wrong things can be. After watching a video of Syria and the people there, some memories came back. Some dark memories that usually hide deep inside of me. Not easy to get to them. But this is one that came back. My friend got caught with his buddy in one house, actually, two of them are left something like behind enemy lines, in the basement of a destroyed house. An enemy group, some 150-200 men were doing a sweep through that street, robbing and killing civilians who had not had time to run. He said to me that they spend two days in the basement, covered with all kind of junk, watching outside through small opening. A few meters from opening was a corpse of a little girl, maybe 10 years old. In order to see if somebody was coming to their basement, one of them needed to be constantly at that small opening, watching. He said he managed to watch the atrocities that those people did to civilians and somehow push that deep inside his brain, over time, to put these memories away. But to stare at a dead kid all that time, with her eyes wide open and her blond hair, he almost lost his mind. One of them had a pistol and a few bullets, other one had a rifle, 30 bullets and a homemade grenade (made from unexploded tank grenade). They make an agreement that if they see the enemy is coming to the basement, they gonna fire everything and blow themselves with that grenade. Nobody came into their basement, though. A burned house was not interesting for other guys. After two days, the enemy group just pulled back. They survived the war, both of them. One of them became a drug addict, lived very fast for a few years, and died from an overdose. The other man is still my friend. He is in his mid-40s, prepared, armed, strong, skilled. He has two kids, a boy and a girl, teenagers. Both of them know how to shoot, and how to defend themselves. Everyone handles it differently. The reality is different from anything you can read. I can only write stories here. The reality is a whole different thing. Once things turn ugly, some things can feel so wrong they cannot be understood or processed with a normal mind. Actually, there is no way to deal with that. Sometimes with friends, we can speak about these things. Sometimes we laugh. Other times some of my friends are quiet for days. I have periods like that too. I think none one of us is dealing too good with that, maybe pushing it away from time to time, I have, for example, some periods when I am too aggressive, easy to explode. It happens rarely now, but I still have those times. I hope we all never have to go through this again. But if the time comes, I’m ready and you should be too. About Selco: Selco survived the Balkan war of the 90s in a city under siege, without electricity, running water, or food distribution.  In his online works, he gives an inside view of the reality of survival under the harshest conditions. He reviews what works and what doesn’t, tells you the hard lessons he learned, and shares how he prepares today. He never stopped learning about survival and preparedness since the war. Regardless of what happens, chances are you will never experience extreme situations as Selco did. But you have the chance to learn from him and how he faced death for months. Read more of Selco’s articles here. Buy his PDF books here. Buy his #1 New Release paperback, The Dark Secrets of Survival here. Take advantage of a deep and profound insight into his knowledge by signing up for his online course SHTF Survival Boot Camp. Learn the inside story of what it was really like when the SHTF with his online course One Year in Hell. Real survival is not romantic or idealistic. It is brutal, hard and unfair. Let Selco take you into that world. The post SELCO: What It’s Really Like to Live in a City Under Siege appeared first on The Organic Prepper.

We don’t want to be dependent on foreign oil, and we should invest in diverse forms of energy. That’s what we heard from sitting Vice President Kamala Harris in the most recent debate spectacle. Her exact words: “My position is that we have got to invest in diverse sources of energy so we reduce our reliance on foreign oil.” Now let’s be fair. If she wants to persuade people to spend more money on “diverse” energy sources, then this is a clever angle. If you’re one of those stubborn contrarians opposed to scaring people about the climate, then perhaps you’ll join up in the spirit of American independence. Renewables are not just about being green—they’re about freedom from the stranglehold of foreign powers. And with people wising up to the not-so-green realities of wind and solar, we would be prudent to find an alternate virtue to which we can appeal. Independence. Very clever. So much for fair. Now let’s be accurate. If your goal is to avoid dependence on foreign oil, then we can simply use American oil. Our country is flush with the stuff, and we are quite good at getting it out of the ground, thanks especially to the fracking boom. Ever since 2018, the U.S. has been the world’s largest oil producer—a title previously held by Saudi Arabia and Russia. Among countries well-positioned for oil independence, ours is head of the class. But that’s not a complete picture. It’s one thing to have the oil (geologically speaking). It’s another to extract it, transport it, refine it into usable products, and get those products to the consumer. Thanks to human ingenuity, we have the science and engineering to do those things in a largely safe and responsible manner. (The dramatic reduction in methane emissions is a good example.) Accidents are far less frequent than even just 20 or 30 years ago. But even with responsible industry behavior, we face a persistent obstacle—government behavior. The reasons are a topic for another day, but it is a plain fact we have government officials and agencies who raise themselves up as fierce enemies of our friend, the hydrocarbon. So, they do things like shut down pipeline projects. And they arbitrarily raise the cost to drill on public land while simultaneously cutting the cost for producing “renewable” energy on the same land. And they impose exceedingly aggressive limits and thresholds that threaten grid reliability. And the pièce de résistance: They team up with media friends to inundate the citizenry with alarmist messaging until we’re all convinced we must quit our addiction to fossil fuels or risk our own destruction. If your friends from the oil and gas industry look tired, this is why. I should point out this sort of obstructionism does not fully permeate our government at all levels. There are pockets of reasonable thinkers who make some effort toward smart decisions about energy policy. But the anti-hydrocarbon religion has been sufficiently evangelized so as to hinder what ought to be one of our most revered industries. It is certainly the most valuable, existentially speaking. As we say in The BEN Declaration, energy independence is essential to American independence. In this regard, we agree with Harris: We don’t want dependence on foreign oil. But her solution as advertised is disingenuous and defies fundamental logic. Very recently, I wrote a blog post where I employed the metaphor of a horse race, the horses being various energy sources. The article ended with the notion that someone might be throwing rocks in the path of the lead horse. And then I watched a presidential debate where one of the candidates implied that the lead horse from our own country cannot finish the race. So, naturally, she would like us to shoot that horse and put our “investment” elsewhere. Say, there’s a nice palomino over here with a beautiful gold coat and a lovely white mane. Unfortunately, it only has three legs. Originally published at RealClearEnergy.org We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post Kamala Harris’ Non Sequitur on Energy Independence appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Last week, The New York Times featured an article headlined “How the Last Eight Years Made Young Women More Liberal.” According to every poll, since 2016 there has been an unprecedented political/social gender gap between young American women and men. Here is how the Times reported it: In 2001, young men and women had similar political ideologies. … Then, around 2016, something shifted, a new analysis shows. Women ages 18 to 29 became significantly more liberal than the previous generation of young women. Today, around 40% identify as liberal, compared with just 19% who say they’re conservative. The views of young men—who are more likely to be conservative than liberal — have changed little. … Sixty-seven percent of women 18 to 29 supported Vice President Kamala Harris in a New York Times/Siena College poll in six swing states last month, compared with 40% of young men. Fifty-three percent of young men in those states backed Donald J. Trump, compared with 29% of young women. And why did this massive leftward shift of young women occur? [Because] the race became in part a referendum on gender—[Hillary] Clinton running to be the first female president, Mr. Trump calling her a ‘nasty woman’ and bragging about sexual assault on the ‘Access Hollywood’ tape. … Seeing someone like yourself in office can spur political involvement, political scientists have found, especially for young women. If these reasons for young women moving to the left beginning in 2016 are correct (abortion is not mentioned; this was six years before Roe v. Wade was overturned), America has a generation of many unimpressive young women. Let’s analyze the three big reasons: 1. “Seeing someone like yourself”—meaning women seeing a woman running for president and then seeing her defeated. It is hard to imagine a more primitive reason to support a candidate for president (or any other office) than the importance of their looking like oneself. Yet this is one of the most frequently offered left-wing arguments for the need to elect more women and blacks. To begin with, it is simply dishonest. Does any woman on the left prefer a woman with conservative views to man with left-wing views? Does any black person on the left prefer a black with conservative views to a white with left-wing views? So, then, if values and positions are far more important to women and blacks than whether a person is a man or woman, a white or a black, what does it all mean? It means nothing. All it means is that emotions dictate left-wing women’s and left-wing blacks’ votes. It means that the left-wing argument for having people in political—or corporate board or any other— positions who “look like America” is pure emotion. Is “looking like America” important in sports? Do white fans care whether the players on their favorite basketball or football team look like them? Have we seen any diminution in fan support for the NFL, given that more than half of NFL players are black and only a quarter are white? Have we seen any diminution in fan support of NBA teams given that three-quarters of NBA players are black, and only 17% are white? Is it important in movies? Are blacks more likely to watch a film with a black lead actor, or whites more likely to watch a film with a white lead actor? Or do both groups want to see stars—whether it’s a white Tom Hanks or a black Denzel Washington? In fact, according to YouGov, three of the five “most popular all-time actors/actresses” are black: Morgan Freeman, Samuel L. Jackson, and Denzel Washington. Do whites care? Is it important in medicine? How many patients needing surgery ask for a surgeon of their own sex or race? There is one other fact of life worth noting. Having more of your own group—blacks or women—in politically powerful positions has no positive effect whatsoever on your group. None of the black governors, senators, representatives, or mayors have done anything that has specifically benefited black Americans. And the same holds for women in power with regard to helping women. Meanwhile, Asian Americans have become the most successful ethnic group in America with virtually no Asian Americans in positions of power. 2. Trump called Hillary Clinton a “nasty woman.” That this is one of the three major reasons for the 2016 left-wing shift of young American women is truly pathetic. It is further proof of the title of a column I wrote two years ago, “Feminism Has Weakened Women.” One suspects that women of my mother’s—pre-feminism—generation would have been able to handle a male politician calling a female opponent a “nasty woman” far better than the current generation of young women, the products of three generations of feminism. They were also less traumatized by men’s boorish sexist comments. There’s a wild inconsistency here as well: The whole point of feminism, according to feminists, is to have society treat men and women as equals, and equally. Yet feminists simultaneously insist that men treat women with a dose of chivalry or they’re “sexist.” That same year, 2016, Trump called Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., “Little Marco.” Did any short men become leftists as a result? Apparently, short men are considerably stronger than feminized women. For that matter, who isn’t? 3. Trump “bragging about sexual assault on the ‘Access Hollywood’ tape.” The third reason given for young women’s embracing leftism in 2016 was a recording made in 2005 that came out in 2016. In a private conversation with “Access Hollywood” host Billy Bush, Trump said: “When you’re a star … you can do anything. Grab ’em by the p***y. You can do anything.” Those comments were made 11 years earlier and in a private conversation with one person. Trump did not say them publicly. Here is a moral rule of life: You cannot judge a person by comments made in private. We are to judge people by comments made in public, and by actions, whether done in private or public. Virtually every person has said awful things in private. It doesn’t matter. One purpose of private conversations is to let off steam. It is a testament to the lack of wisdom of our age that we think we can know people—let alone judge them—by what they say in private. And it is a testament to the lack of wisdom among a majority of America’s young women that these three foolish reasons propelled them to vote for the ideology that is destroying our country. COPYRIGHT 2024 CREATORS We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post Reasons Young Women Embrace the Left Don’t Reflect Well on These Women appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Who wants Turkey Tacos for Thanksgiving? Me! I love Turkey tacos. Thanksgiving is like Tacogiving for me. When I've leftover Turkeys, I'd usually make it into tacos for midnight snacks. But do you know the secret in making this Mexican dish? It's the taco seasoning, right? So, let me show you how to make your own homemade taco seasoning – fresh and simple. Homemade taco seasoning is very easy to make and much more beneficial as well. Whip it up with spices that you probably already have  in your own kitchen. Plus, homemade taco seasoning just tastes even better than pre-made. Image via dishesanddustbunnies Easy Homemade Taco Seasoning For Delicious Turkey Tacos One of my favorite spice mixes is taco seasoning. However, many seasoning packets purchased in stores contain preservatives, along with fillers and artificial flavor enhancers. That’s why I have thought of giving homemade taco seasoning a try. It's so easy to make and taste a lot better than the prepackaged ones. In just 3 minutes, we could make our own seasonings with ingredients we have on hand. Now, are you ready to give it a try?   YOU’LL NEED: Airtight container Measuring cup/s Small bowl/s 1/4 cup and 1 tablespoon chili powder 1-1/4 teaspoons each of garlic powder, onion powder, crushed red pepper flakes, and dried oregano 2-1/2 teaspoons paprika 2 tablespoons and 1-1/2 teaspoons ground cumin 1 tablespoon and 2 teaspoons black pepper 1 tablespoon and 2 teaspoons sea salt   INSTRUCTIONS: Measure out all spices in a small bowl. Mix all the ingredients together. Taste and adjust the spices according to your liking. Finally, place it in an airtight container and store until ready to use.   Want to see how this homemade taco seasoning made? Watch this video from The Former Mrs Jones: Don’t limit this homemade taco seasoning recipe to just regular tacos. Scrambled eggs, soups, chips, dips and salad dressings will all benefit from a sprinkle or two of this homemade taco seasoning! Your taste buds will surely thank you. You can also try it on our Oyster Mushroom Recipes and see how these recipes benefit the body as well as your taste buds!   So, are you going to give this homemade taco seasoning a try? Let me know in the comments below ! Follow me on Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest and Facebook!  

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Qanats were invented around 3,000 years ago and many have been lost to time.