Josh Petty has landed the bag, and he's only in college

Books book review Small Town Horror: The Dark We Know by Wen-Yi Lee A review of Wen-Yi Lee’s new young adult horror novel. By Alex Brown | Published on August 14, 2024 Comment 0 Share New Share Isadora Chang left home two years ago. She’d grown up in an oppressive, small mining town in the middle of nowhere, but after two of her friends died by suicide, she fled. Fled the deaths that haunted the town going back decades. Fled the mother that wouldn’t talk to her and the father that abused her. She thought she escaped, that art school got her out for good. But even that has turned sour. She’s so broke she’s crashing on the couch at her part time job, and she’s at risk of failing out of her art program if she can’t complete her portfolio. Thing is, she did actually finish it, she just doesn’t remember doing it. Her pieces are horror shows, all twisted figures in grotesque positions, people from back home dying in terrible ways. And then her own father dies. And then Isa has to return to Slater. And then things get worse. Back home, her mother has spiraled out of control and sealed all the windows shut, and her older sister, Trish, is sleepwalking more than ever. Slater is ruled by the Vandersteen family, who helped found the town and now run the local clinic, fund pretty much everything, and always get their way. Two years ago, Isa was friends with Mason, Wren, and Zach. When Mason was blamed for Wren’s death, Isa wasn’t there to help him. Now here he is, begging her to listen to him when he says a monstrous spirit is killing kids and only the two of them can do something about it. Because he’s not wrong. Their shared trauma connects them not just to each other but to the darkness at the heart of Slater as well. And that darkness has its eyes on Isa. We’re in a veritable golden age of YA horror right now, and it takes a lot to stand out from the crowd. You’ve got to have an interesting premise, compelling characters, and a strong grasp on the craft. Wen-yi Lee handles all three well. We don’t get much small town horror in YA, real small town, not just a suburb or a small city. Lee set The Dark We Know in a dried up mining town in the middle of winter, when everything is cold and dreary and dead. Slater is the kind of place where everyone is all up in everyone else’s business and the only places to hang out are the local diner and the woods. The plot unfolds slowly (perhaps a little too slowly), before ratcheting up in intensity and fervor until it’s got you hooked. While I remain unconvinced by the handwaving that goes on to explain what’s actually happening in the town, the confrontations with the monstrous being are entertaining and chilling.  Buy the Book The Dark We Know Wen-Yi Lee Buy Book The Dark We Know Wen-Yi Lee Buy this book from: AmazonBarnes and NobleiBooksIndieBoundTarget As for characters, some work better than others. Isa is a rich tapestry of nuance and frustration. She’s trying so hard to not be the person she was when she left Slater that she doesn’t know who she is when she finally returns. She denies her friends and family thinking it’s what they (and she) deserves only to realize just how wrong she’s been. I appreciated how Lee allowed her to grapple with her abusive childhood and all her father took from her while also trying to figure out how to build something new out of all that rubble. There are a lot of teens who need to see someone else go through that journey to help them as they navigate their own journey. Mason, too, has a troubled past he’s trying to sort out. He’s learning where the line is between rebellion and troublemaker and what he thinks about the new identities he’s discovering in himself. Trish, Otto Vandersteen, and Isa’s mother get less development, to their detriment. Others are vital to the plot but wholly forgettable as characters. Because they’re so underdeveloped, they feel more like plot devices than people.  One thing that pleasantly surprised me was the lack of romance. While relationships happen in the background—Isa had a failed date back at art school, Mason dated Wren and kissed someone else—romance isn’t a subplot. In young adult fiction nowadays, romance is everywhere. Romance is so predominant that platonic relationships can feel like a rarity. I spent much of the novel waiting for that inevitable moment when Isa caught feelings for one of the secondary characters, but it never came. This really is a book about the two main characters having a platonic relationship! The power of friendship will save us all. It’s not that I don’t like romance in my fiction, it’s more that it’s nice to have some variety. Teens need to know that they have the option to date outside the compulsory heterosexual social norms, but they also need to know that they don’t have to date at all and that you can in fact just be friends with someone you might otherwise find attractive. Wen-yi Lee’s The Dark We Know is a visceral, atmospheric young adult horror novel. Like the monster haunting the town, this novel will get its claws into you. Readers who like social horror, small town horror, and stories about queer teens confronting their traumas should pick up this engrossing novel. [end-mark] The Dark We Know is published by Zando/Gillian Flynn Books. The post Small Town Horror: <i>The Dark We Know</i> by Wen-Yi Lee appeared first on Reactor.

Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of the accompanying video from professor Peter St. Onge. Another domino falls for recession as job creation turns negative for small businesses, which employ nearly half of all Americans. In the past year, payrolls for companies with under 50 employees plunged by nearly 100,000, while job trends were flat for midsized businesses up to 500 employees. The only bright spot was big businesses—which might be changing, given recent layoff announcements, including 2,500 at Chrysler, 4,000 at Cisco, 12,000 at Dell, and 15,000 at Intel. Paramount and the left-wing Axios both cut 10% to 15% of their workforce. Economics writer Mike “Mish” Shedlock reports the numbers, adding that he’s “seen enough” and thinks the recession has already begun—possibly starting last October. The media have been saying recession’s impossible because unemployment is low and there’s still production, but Shedlock notes that recessions typically start during periods of low unemployment and positive industrial production. Because the employers and producers don’t yet know it’s a recession—that’s the whole point—they keep chugging along, straight off the cliff. Incidentally, part of the reason they’re blindsided is specifically because the thousands of Ph.D. economists at the Fed and Treasury are specifically instructed to hide bad news. They call this “forward guidance,” and you’ll recognize it from those late-night press conferences when [Fed Chairman] Jerome Powell and [Treasury Secretary] Janet Yellen tell us everything is fine. Meanwhile, Shedlock notes that even that low unemployment may be an illusion, since he expects a potentially million-plus jobs revision—780,000 from three quarters of 2023 alone. This is coming from the infamous—well, infamous among labor statisticians—“birth-death model,” where the Bureau of Labor Statistics guesses how many companies are creating jobs and pretends it’s real. Note this million-job gap is different from the gap with household surveys—where you actually ask people if they’ve got a job. There, my colleague E.J. Antoni estimates jobs could be overcounting by 2 million or more. So, what’s next? Jobs are the single most important economic indicator after inflation, not only because jobs are life-or-death for voters, [and] people who lose their jobs become single-issue voters. But also because jobs are a near-perfect predictor of recession. Once you start to lose jobs, you’re essentially guaranteed a recession. To illustrate, in the last three normal recessions—1990, 2001, and 2008—the recession started either the same month or within two months of unemployment rising, but they didn’t officially recognize the recession until nine to 12 months after it began. In other words, don’t bother listening to the official numbers. Even they admit that jobs always call it first. That’s also why it’s so tempting for the government to lie on jobs numbers; for example, counting part-time gigs as full jobs, not counting people who’ve given up looking for work, or just old-fashioned statistical adjustment. If history’s a guide, going by jobs, we’re on the edge of recession, they’re just waiting until after November to admit it. We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post Recession Fears Loom as Small Business Job Numbers Tank appeared first on The Daily Signal.

I’ve spent a lifetime trying to better discern Jesus’ great parable on the organic tension between God and mammon. I am always smitten with Jesus’ admonition that shrewdness matters profoundly in the navigation of life. Having lived my professional life in Washington, D.C., this tension between the world and Providence seems to come to the fore more often than any other single pressure point, and none more so than in our contemporary era. Plato, the founder of Western philosophy, wrote 25 timeless texts. Among his nuggets of gold: “The measure of a man is what he does with power.” Plato was imagining measurable power over the lives of others. I suspect the Greek philosopher also was thinking about the power each of us has over ourselves, the idea of self-mastery—and not merely power over others. An observation often attributed to another great man in the public square, Abraham Lincoln, but probably not written or said by him, has a cogency that rings true: “Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.” Presidential historian Tevi Troy, a prolific and lyrical writer, has written a delightful new book examining the organic relationships between U.S. presidents and captains of commerce and industry during various vicissitudes of public life. Troy was a White House colleague of mine in the Bush-Cheney administration. For tourists and other visitors in Washington during this shank of summer, where presidential history seems to lurk around every corner, his book “The Power and the Money: The Epic Clashes Between Commanders in Chief and Titans of Industry” (Regnery History) is precisely the right book to pack in the suitcase. “The Power and the Money” helps us better understand how presidents and businessmen and businesswomen have navigated the endlessly fascinating dance of power and influence. Making more than cameo appearances in Troy’s book: Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, J.P. Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, and a couple of Henrys—Ford and Luce. This is a page-turner to be sure, and 12 other outsize business personalities charm its narrative. A writer for The Jerusalem Post observed: “What readers will find fascinating is the increasing entanglements of big government with big business, neither of which is popular with the American people.”  Troy effectively negates and dispels much of what we think we know about this so-called bipartisan entanglement of business and politics. Which is to say that in the American experience, this relationship has been going on from early in our republic. And the author rightly demonstrates that it is a series of relationships that often redounds to the benefit of the public—not the opposite—across nearly 150 years of fascinating American history. I am particularly interested in how faith infuses or suffuses the relationships between presidents and business leaders. Troy memorably evokes two of these. The founder of Time magazine, Henry Luce, was born in Penglai, Yantai, China, and raised there by Christian missionaries. Luce was bathed in a deep faith from boyhood. Decades ago, Luce famously gave voice to how Christian faith informed not only his business practices but his high profile in the public square: “I am a Protestant, a Republican, and a free enterpriser, which means I am biased in favor of God, Eisenhower, and the stockholders of Time Inc.—and if anyone who objects doesn’t know this by now, why the hell are they still spending 35 cents for the magazine.” A corollary is the so-called Golden Age of Hollywood. The Warner Brothers, Henry and Jack, were of Jewish faith and their religious tradition was directly related to their pro-American films. The Warners loved America deeply, and their studio’s films reflected that infusion of faith and patriotism. The famous movie director Billy Wilder once said: “Studios had faces then. They had their own style. They could bring you blindfolded into a movie house, and you opened it and looked up and you knew.”  It is refreshing that an important presidential historian does not ipso facto join the conventional narrative that businesspeople are often up to no good and are only or mostly self-interested when it comes to interaction with the political class—and especially our presidents. Troy gives us ample examples for good and bad, to be sure. But what is so nourishing and refreshing about this fine new book is that Troy shows the measurable benefits of having keen business minds involved in the dance of public policy, where the tension between God and mammon is as timeless, depthless, and roiling as ever. We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post Presidents, Power, Faith, and the Boardroom appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Judge to UCLA: Campus Can't Be Allowed to Become a 'Jew-Exclusion Zone'

Kamala's 'Day 1' Is Too Late for the Biden-HARRIS Economic Damage Being Done Right Now

Iranaway? Terror Coalition Reportedly Falling Out Over Non-Retaliation

When NBC’s Late Night host Seth Meyers decides to not do a “Closer Look” segment where he turns his show into MSNBC, one possible routine he does instead is to bring out show writer Amber Ruffin for “Amber says ‘What?’” where she naturally says “what” in various tones and voice inflections. On Tuesday’s show, Ruffin responded to GOP vice presidential nominee JD Vance by claiming she is a proud “childless sociopath” who has “unlimited free time” and told the Vatican to “shut up” over its concerns over the Olympic opening ceremony that featured a drag queen recreation of Leonardo da Vinci's “The Last Supper.” Ruffin recalled how “JD Vance called adults who don't have children sociopaths, and I was like, ‘What?’ Just kidding. I felt nothing. For I am a childless sociopath.”     She added, “I am an ageless sociopath with unlimited free time and disposable income. Besides, it would be irresponsible for me to have babies because you know that breast milk is 90 percent margarita. Aw, how cute would a little drunk baby be though?” Meyers then interrupted to add, “Yeah, you should definitely not have any kids,” to which Ruffin replied, “Yeah, you right.” Earlier in the segment, Ruffin took on the Olympic Opening Ceremony, “Then, there was this beautiful ‘Last Supper’ scene and I was like, ‘What?’  Then the Vatican got mad, and I was like, "What—did the Vatican get mad about?" Was it one of the terrible things they've done? Was it the fact that the pope had said more slurs recently than a stand-up comic from the 80s? Was it the fact that they preach about helping the poor but the pope has a golden bathtub? They better shut up.” On one hand, you could argue that Pope Francis is an advocate of a simple lifestyle and has suspended bishops for extravagance. On the other hand, you could tell people to shut up because the facts are not on your side. Ruffin also thinks bringing out nearly naked Smurf Bacchus at The Last Supper is “beautiful,” but the downfall of Roe v. Wade is so solemn, it would be irresponsible to joke about. Here is a transcript for the August 13-taped show: NBC Late Night with Seth Meyers 8/14/2024 12:43 AM ET AMBER RUFFIN: Then, there was this beautiful "Last Supper" scene and I was like, "What?"  Then the Vatican got mad, and I was like, "What-- did the Vatican get mad about?" Was it one of the terrible things they've done? Was it the fact that the pope had said more slurs recently than a stand-up comic from the 80s? Was it the fact that they preach about helping the poor but the pope has a golden bathtub? They better shut up. … 12:49 AM ET RUFFIN: Then JD Vance called adults who don't have children sociopaths, and I was like, "What?" Just kidding. I felt nothing. For I am a childless sociopath. I am an ageless sociopath with unlimited free time and disposable income. Besides, it would be irresponsible for me to have babies because you know that breast milk is 90 percent margarita. Aw, how cute would a little drunk baby be though? SETH MEYERS: Yeah, you should definitely not have any kids. RUFFIN: Yeah, you right.

Walt Disney Studios confidently released a trailer for its live-action "Snow White" remake over the weekend, only to be derailed once again by its woke leading lady, Rachel Zegler. Zegler, the actress who plays the titular Snow White and starred in the failed relaunch of "The Hunger Games" franchise last year, took to X this week to express gratitude for those watched the new trailer for Walt Disney Studios' next potential tax write-off. At the time of publication, the trailer on YouTube had over 6.3 million views, 65,277 likes, and 478,811 dislikes. "I love you all so much! thank you for the love and for 120m views on our trailer in just 24 hours!" wrote Zegler. "What a whirlwind. i am in the thick of rehearsals for romeo + juliet so I'm gonna get outta here. bye for now." Zegler, who stars in the film opposite Israeli actress Gal Gadot, could not resist the temptation to issue one more tweet, writing, "And always remember, free palestine." 'People are making these jokes about ours being the PC Snow White, where it's like, yeah, it is — because it needed that.' While the Hispanic actress appears to have been taking her own advice to actively advocate "for a ceasefire, for a free palestine, for no more lives lost" ahead of pro-Hamas protesters' return to school, the Times of Israel highlighted that Gadot was simultaneously facing an onslaught of criticism online by anti-Semites over her ties to Israel. Zegler's tweet was immediately seized upon by critics, not only as a dig at her colleague but as further evidence both of Disney's ideological capture and its one-way tolerance for employees' expressions of political views online. While Zegler's tweet is likely to create a headache for Disney, it is far from the only scandal plaguing the "Snow White" remake. Early in development, the notion that Disney might provide dwarf actors with gainful employment and screen time in a global blockbuster infuriated actor Peter Dinklage, who is himself a dwarf, as well as other activists. Blaze News previously reported that Dinklage condemned Disney over its "f**ing backwards" plan to remake the film, stating: I was a little taken aback when they were very proud to cast a Latina actress as Snow White — but you’re still telling the story of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Take a step back and look at what you're doing there. It makes no sense to me. You're progressive in one way, but then you're still making that f***ing backward story about seven dwarfs living in a cave together? Following Dinklage's inaccurate remarks — the dwarfs lived in a idyllic cottage together as opposed to a cave — a Disney spokesman revealed in 2022, "To avoid reinforcing stereotypes from the original animated film, we are taking a different approach with these seven characters and have been consulting with members of the dwarfism community." Last year, photographs taken on set revealed that the seven "magical characters" who replaced the dwarfs were men and women of various races, all of an average height except for one actor, who looked the part. This move generated controversy all its own, prompting the company ultimately to digitally replace the seven with the computer-generated dwarfs seen in the trailer — a costly and time-consuming endeavor. That Park Place reported that Disney's efforts to spare "Snow White" from the fate of its other box-office bombs required extensive reshoots, which one anonymous source indicated costed more than $30 million to execute. Disney had on set not only a dwarf problem but a Zegler problem. Zegler, who some critics suggested was an odd casting choice to play the "fairest of them all," stressed from the start that the remake would be politically correct, telling Vanity Fair in October 2022, "People are making these jokes about ours being the PC Snow White, where it's like, yeah, it is — because it needed that. It's an 85-year-old cartoon, and our version is a refreshing story about a young woman who has a function beyond 'Someday My Prince Will Come.'" In another interview, Zegler emphasized her disdain for the original's straight love story, noting, "We have a different approach to what I'm sure a lot of people will assume is a love story just because we like cast a guy in the movie." Zegler's repeated characterization of the film as a woke remake drove various critics and potential viewers to swear off watching the film. Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

A former police chief who once apparently professed that his department would be "vindicated" for conducting raids on the home and office of a small-town newspaper owner in Kansas has now been charged with a felony in connection with those raids.Gideon Cody is the former police chief of Marion, Kansas, a city of fewer than 2,000 residents about 60 miles north of Wichita. A year ago, he led raids on the office of the Marion County Record and the home of its owner, Eric Meyer.Now, Cody has been charged with felony obstruction of justice in connection with those raids after he allegedly asked a female business owner and potential witness to delete text messages that may have persuaded investigators to believe they had a romantic, rather than strictly professional, relationship.Last August, Cody secured search warrants from Marion County District Court Magistrate Judge Laura Viar to seize computers, cell phones, digital communications, servers, hard drives, and all documents and records connected with Kari Newell, a Marion resident with a prior DUI conviction who may have previously driven on a suspended license but who nonetheless was trying to get a liquor license for her business, as Blaze News previously reported.'We want the whole story. We don’t want part of it.'At the time, Newell slammed Meyer and the Record, claiming that they had uncovered the information about her past through "illegal" means. Meyer admitted that he received a tip about Newell's past but didn't print a story about it because he feared Newell's estranged husband had leaked the information in hopes of sabotaging his wife's efforts to obtain a liquor license.Newell's information was also a matter of public record, Meyer indicated.As soon as word about the raids broke, critics from across the country immediately decried the apparent attack on the press protections provided by the First Amendment.All five members of the Marion Police Department, including Cody, as well as two sheriff's deputies reportedly participated in the raids on the Marion County Record and Meyer's home. Meyer's 98-year-old mother and co-owner of the Record, Joan Meyer, who was at Meyer's home while officers executed the search warrant, died of a heart attack the day after the raids.Footage from the raids further showed that Cody apparently seized the opportunity to peek at the files Meyer and his outlet kept about him.Despite the appearance of impropriety, a statement from Marion PD, issued shortly after the raids and ostensibly written by Cody, insisted the raids would eventually be "vindicated."Special prosecutors assigned to investigate the incident ultimately disagreed. In a 124-page report released earlier this month, prosecutors instead cleared Meyer, concluding that Meyer had not committed any crime in investigating Newell's past.Furthermore, prosecutors alleged that Cody conducted an "inadequate investigation" that led him to provide Judge Viar with faulty predicates for the search warrants associated with the raids. However, they stopped short of accusing Cody of deliberately misleading the judge.Cody, who resigned from the Marion Police Department in October, now faces what KSHB categorized as a "severity level 8 nonperson felony." If convicted, he could serve up to 23 months behind bars, though he has no prior criminal record, making the maximum sentence unlikely.District Court Judge Ryan Rosauer has been assigned to preside over Cody's case. When Cody is next expected to appear in court is unclear.And now, Meyer is the one celebrating vindication. "We are gratified that we have finally, officially been vindicated," he told VOA News.Still, Meyer believes that Cody has been scapegoated for a debacle perpetrated by several officials and agencies. "We want the whole story. We don’t want part of it," Meyer claimed."We’re just being basic journalists here."Meyer has previously filed multiple lawsuits in connection with the raids, including a wrongful death suit, as Blaze News previously reported. He estimated that the damages could exceed $10 million, a seemingly insurmountable sum for a city with an overall annual budget of just $9.5 million."The last thing we want is to bankrupt the city or county," Meyer said after filing the first lawsuit back in April, "but we have a duty to democracy and to countless news organizations and citizens nationwide to challenge such malicious and wanton violations of the First and Fourth Amendments and federal laws limiting newsroom searches."Special prosecutors stated that officers conducting the raids committed no "gross deviation" of protocol regarding executing search warrants.Blaze News reached out to Meyer and the Record for comment but did not receive a response.Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!