I wanted to post this quote from Bothelford’s Gone. In this scene, Jack, a teenage British boy, visits a local abortion clinic:

Jack felt like he was visiting a foreign dictatorship with grey but clean streets, and that he had gone and entered the massive prison system that enabled those streets to remain clean in the first place. This clinic, Jack felt, was the place that ultimately made all the club nights in Bothelford possible, all the accidental products of one-night stands, marriages, and other sexual pairings, followed by more play, more partying, rather than an accounting of sorts. It was interesting in its own way. How would he put it if he had to give a presentation on it in class? The clinic was a secondary contraception in case the pills, condoms, and IUDs failed. The disintegrating sense of fun that the bars and nightclubs bred instead of children relied on the of this bland, hidden core. It was filled with unhappy people and, supposedly, a few rooms above, all kinds of surgical tools.

Edward McLaren, Bothelford’s Gone

Just so you are prepared, this is one of the lighter, less emotionally draining part of the novel. Not because there’s anything cute about the industrial-scale abortioneering it describes but because the rest is even harsher.

There’s been a clarification on the question I answered yesterday:

OK, now I get it, thank you. Yes, there’s a large amount of literature that’s downright political messaging with no additional value. Think poetry by Amanda Gorman. It’s bad, there’s not a spark of talent in it but she gets promoted because it’s politically useful.

In what concerns novels, I want to mention The Deluge by Stephen Markley. He is the author of one of the best novels of American literature of this century, Ohio (2018). I had high hopes for him but then he went full-on propagandist and came up with the unreadable The Deluge. Such a waste of great talent.

Joyce Maynard, who was quite talented in her younger years, also has gone psycho propagandist in the past decade. I can’t even read the garbage she has been churning out.

Overall, just grab the list of the Oprah Book Club, and you’ll see the emanation of the leftist spirit on full view.

UK PM Keir Starmer:

Europe is a sleeping giant. Our economies dwarf Russia’s, by more than 10 times over. We have enormous defense capabilities.

Europe has more than 20 types of frigates, around 10 types of fighter jets, over 10 types of main battle tanks. Meanwhile, the US… pic.twitter.com/NFRjmBJY3d

— Open Source Intel (@Osint613) February 15, 2026

Reminded me of an old Soviet joke. A Communist apparatchik is delivering a report on the successes of the Tula Region.

“Comrades!” he says. “Under the leadership of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, we achieved extraordinary successes. Before the Bolshevik revolution, there was only one writer in the Tula Region. It was Leo Tolstoy. But today, thanks to the brilliant policies of the Politburo, the Tula Region has 14 writers!”

I remember when the British were famous for their sense of humor but, clearly, no more.

I have this weird age-related development where, if I go to bed late, I wake up feeling like I’m severely hungover. I can sleep for 6, 8 or 10 hours, it doesn’t matter. It’s not about sleep duration but solely bedtime. I wake up feeling like a bloody wreck. It’s exactly like a bad hangover. Exactly.

But I figured a way to avoid this. And it’s the same as how you avoid a bad hangover. If I stay insanely hydrated all evening and all through the night, I don’t experience this state.

I wish I knew enough about chemistry or biology or whatever to understand how this works. Why do I experience going to bed late like being drunk? This is particularly obnoxious because I was a late-night person my whole life until this started happening. My entire identity is being taken away from me.

This is what it looks like:

Russian "Z-bloggers" published a video by Denis Kolesnikov, junior sergeant of 1435 regiment of the Russian army. He described the scale of crimes and lawlessness in the "SMO zone".

According to Kolesnikov, the Russian army has turned into a gang where soldiers are executed,… pic.twitter.com/15mI1KuvKv

— Anton Gerashchenko (@Gerashchenko_en) February 15, 2026

Markets in everything; every aspect of existence is monetized; it’s all a gamble; complete lawlessness, etc.

I was asked in the Q&A to name some great writers with leftist sensibilities.

Rafael Chirbes is my absolute favorite. If you are not reading the gay Communist genius that he was, you should.

Juan Goytisolo was another gay Communist genius.

Gabriel García Márquez was, of course, famously and even obnoxiously leftist. The entirety of contemporary Latin American literature with the lonely exception of Mario Vargas Llosa is lefty. It’s great literature, and I sincerely recommend it. Of course, there are talentless Commie propagandists like Elena Poniatowska but there are also real geniuses like Carlos Fuentes.

None of this is very recent because there’s no longer any leftism in the sense that Chirbes or Goytisolo were leftist. That’s all gone. Now there’s only neoliberalism, which is leftism for sex-obsessed people. Almudena Grandes, Paulina Flores, Guillermo Arriaga, Sara Mesa. All mega talented. All writing about very neoliberal people with their extremely neoliberal problems.

If you want some Anglo names, you have Richard Russo, Barbara Kingsolver, Zadie Smith, Toni Morrison.

I’m not sure why this is an interesting question. Obviously, during Stalinism, it was easy to get published if you were a Stalinist. Establishment authors encounter no difficulties. Right-wing authors are working against the establishment. We have to scour the world for them because they are silenced and in hiding. Leftist writers are all on the awards lists and in the NYTimes book reviews.

Carl's answer was pretty bad, but the idea that something isn't real unless you can define it and it has clear-cut boundaries is sophistry. Plenty of things can't be defined, Wittgenstein famously used the example of games to make that point, but nobody doubt they're real. https://t.co/UmcgmDnBDb

— Philippe Lemoine (@phl43) February 14, 2026

Jeremy Carl couldn’t answer the question about how he defines white culture because he doesn’t want to live in fear for his life and for his family’s life. All of this insane prattle about fuzzy boundaries and complex definitions that the Right has been putting out for days now is extremely dishonest.

Carl is simply scared. Like everybody is of this subject. And instead of at least vanquishing the fear enough to point this out, we engage in a week of discussions of whether there is a clear definition of a sandwich. As if defining a sandwich led to the same devastating consequences as using the expression “white people” outside of an entirely negative context.

People are unhappy about getting reassigned to other departments. I’d murder to get reassigned. Not because I don’t love my colleagues at this department. I do. They are wonderful, lovely people. But I’d greatly enjoy some newness.

The propaganda never ends:

Every 3 seconds, a girl is married somewhere in the world.

Child marriage is a human rights violation that denies girls the chance to reach their full potential.

This #ValentinesDay, join @UNFPA in speaking out against this form of gender-based violence: https://t.co/UyRhZUcH6G pic.twitter.com/tm0PkNDDYU

— United Nations (@UN) February 14, 2026

A single friend of mine turned 40 and she decided to go get her eggs frozen in case she wanted to have children in the future and she got really upset when she was told “Hunny, you should have had this done years ago” by a person at the clinic. I think women were really…

— Lisa Britton (@LisaBritton) February 14, 2026

This happened to N’s sister. She decided she was finally ready to have children, went to a clinic, and was told she’s in menopause. It’s tragic but it’s absolutely the result of cultural messaging that denies biology.

Human hubris wants to believe that there won’t be any limitations on its desires but reality always comes at it with a vengeance.