Growing ever more tired at being sent ads for books written by podcasters, TV producers, influencers, and others without a shred of training or real expertise in the subject matter, whether it be history, science, medicine, finance, or just living day to day. I don’t need or want your vibe writing.
January 30, 2026 at 6:58 PM
Growing ever more tired at being sent ads for books written by podcasters, TV producers, influencers, and others without a shred of training or real expertise in the subject matter, whether it be history, science, medicine, finance, or just living day to day. I don’t need or want your vibe writing.
I don’t follow many people here. Two of them were celebrating someone’s death today. I have to say it feels very good to have unfollowed them. Spiking the ball metaphorically because you’re alive and someone else is dead is just chilidish. And you’re not worthy of any more of my attention.
January 13, 2026 at 6:05 PM
I don’t follow many people here. Two of them were celebrating someone’s death today. I have to say it feels very good to have unfollowed them. Spiking the ball metaphorically because you’re alive and someone else is dead is just chilidish. And you’re not worthy of any more of my attention.
For fun, I asked AI to identify the exact source of a phrase I’d once used on a blog I kept. It told me the phrase was from last year’s film “The Conclave.” I doubted that seriously. I double checked on Google, and the quote wasn’t in the film. I told the AI it had hallucinated, and it admitted it.
December 31, 2025 at 8:16 PM
For fun, I asked AI to identify the exact source of a phrase I’d once used on a blog I kept. It told me the phrase was from last year’s film “The Conclave.” I doubted that seriously. I double checked on Google, and the quote wasn’t in the film. I told the AI it had hallucinated, and it admitted it.
“Happiness” at my age seems to be little more than a fake concept. It’s a *decision* to think that you feel a certain way, not an externally produced state. Instead, I’d recommend younger people methodically eliminate sources of what they perceive of as stress, paying whatever it takes to be free.
December 20, 2025 at 6:03 PM
“Happiness” at my age seems to be little more than a fake concept. It’s a *decision* to think that you feel a certain way, not an externally produced state. Instead, I’d recommend younger people methodically eliminate sources of what they perceive of as stress, paying whatever it takes to be free.
Politics is the realm of fanatics and ambitious lamebrains, followed by equally ambitious and usually clever commentators called journalists who cynically agree to treat the politicians as the most important people. If the former had any inherent worth, they’d be off running a business or such. 1/2
December 9, 2025 at 7:07 PM
Politics is the realm of fanatics and ambitious lamebrains, followed by equally ambitious and usually clever commentators called journalists who cynically agree to treat the politicians as the most important people. If the former had any inherent worth, they’d be off running a business or such. 1/2
What it’s about in U.S. politics — a hierarchy.
1. Power/money (like energy and matter, functionally equivalent)
2. Race tribalism
3. Religion tribalism
4. Other tribalisms (ideology, age, gender, regional/state identities)
Note the absence of class. Marx couldn’t be more absurd now.
1. Power/money (like energy and matter, functionally equivalent)
2. Race tribalism
3. Religion tribalism
4. Other tribalisms (ideology, age, gender, regional/state identities)
Note the absence of class. Marx couldn’t be more absurd now.
December 1, 2025 at 8:24 PM
What it’s about in U.S. politics — a hierarchy.
1. Power/money (like energy and matter, functionally equivalent)
2. Race tribalism
3. Religion tribalism
4. Other tribalisms (ideology, age, gender, regional/state identities)
Note the absence of class. Marx couldn’t be more absurd now.
1. Power/money (like energy and matter, functionally equivalent)
2. Race tribalism
3. Religion tribalism
4. Other tribalisms (ideology, age, gender, regional/state identities)
Note the absence of class. Marx couldn’t be more absurd now.
Couldn't care less one way or another about the #CrackerBarrel logo, but I did think this piece of 1930s wall nostalgia I photographed in one of their restaurants 15 years ago was thought provoking: "Will Goering Bring Peace" and "The Private Life of J. Edgar Hoover."
August 24, 2025 at 6:18 PM
Couldn't care less one way or another about the #CrackerBarrel logo, but I did think this piece of 1930s wall nostalgia I photographed in one of their restaurants 15 years ago was thought provoking: "Will Goering Bring Peace" and "The Private Life of J. Edgar Hoover."
#College
When I started college at a flagship state university many decades ago, tuition and fees there were $1,894 per semester (in inflation-adjusted dollars). At that same university now, it's about $6,000. I seriously doubt the education is three times better. This is a fraud and a disgrace.
When I started college at a flagship state university many decades ago, tuition and fees there were $1,894 per semester (in inflation-adjusted dollars). At that same university now, it's about $6,000. I seriously doubt the education is three times better. This is a fraud and a disgrace.
December 14, 2024 at 6:08 PM
#College
When I started college at a flagship state university many decades ago, tuition and fees there were $1,894 per semester (in inflation-adjusted dollars). At that same university now, it's about $6,000. I seriously doubt the education is three times better. This is a fraud and a disgrace.
When I started college at a flagship state university many decades ago, tuition and fees there were $1,894 per semester (in inflation-adjusted dollars). At that same university now, it's about $6,000. I seriously doubt the education is three times better. This is a fraud and a disgrace.
#Jackal
It’s been impossible not to root for “Charles Calthorp” or “Alexander Duggan,” alias The Jackal. This in spite of the fact that he’d remorselessly slit my throat if I innocently got in his way during a job. I just wish he’d be more selective about his targets.
It’s been impossible not to root for “Charles Calthorp” or “Alexander Duggan,” alias The Jackal. This in spite of the fact that he’d remorselessly slit my throat if I innocently got in his way during a job. I just wish he’d be more selective about his targets.
December 14, 2024 at 12:39 AM
#Jackal
It’s been impossible not to root for “Charles Calthorp” or “Alexander Duggan,” alias The Jackal. This in spite of the fact that he’d remorselessly slit my throat if I innocently got in his way during a job. I just wish he’d be more selective about his targets.
It’s been impossible not to root for “Charles Calthorp” or “Alexander Duggan,” alias The Jackal. This in spite of the fact that he’d remorselessly slit my throat if I innocently got in his way during a job. I just wish he’d be more selective about his targets.
Keep a thorough diary here in the US starting now, and you’re guaranteed to have a more historically accurate account of the decline and fall of a world empire than Edward Gibbon’s. It’s a collapse enabled by those who thought, for selfish reasons, that they were saving an imperium from barbarians.
December 13, 2024 at 7:35 PM
Keep a thorough diary here in the US starting now, and you’re guaranteed to have a more historically accurate account of the decline and fall of a world empire than Edward Gibbon’s. It’s a collapse enabled by those who thought, for selfish reasons, that they were saving an imperium from barbarians.
Question after watching “The Day of the Jackal” (2024). How does the old safe full of fake passports do an operative any good in this age of digital records and international cooperation among immigration officials? Every phony passport would have to have a corresponding fake digital record.
December 10, 2024 at 11:52 PM
Question after watching “The Day of the Jackal” (2024). How does the old safe full of fake passports do an operative any good in this age of digital records and international cooperation among immigration officials? Every phony passport would have to have a corresponding fake digital record.
Amazed at what happens when you free yourself from the temptation of looking at #Threads’ algorithmic feed by moving the app off your home screen. No more time wasted with what you unwittingly trained it to offer you. As a result, I still check #Bluesky far too often, but I’m learning to slow down.
November 27, 2024 at 6:40 PM
If we didn’t already know it, we’ve been banged in the head with a reality we all should have internalized decades ago: nothing (NOTHING) matters beyond the subjective mood of the electorate. How does one regulate a mass dysthymia or produce a mass euthymia? This is the essential election question.
November 26, 2024 at 5:34 PM
If we didn’t already know it, we’ve been banged in the head with a reality we all should have internalized decades ago: nothing (NOTHING) matters beyond the subjective mood of the electorate. How does one regulate a mass dysthymia or produce a mass euthymia? This is the essential election question.
In the coming days, weeks, and months, please don't credit the notion that something simply isn't possible. Anything is possible. We should've known this from learning the history of the 20th century, but I also know from history that when alleged impossibility accords with self-interest, we forget.
November 19, 2024 at 8:24 PM
In the coming days, weeks, and months, please don't credit the notion that something simply isn't possible. Anything is possible. We should've known this from learning the history of the 20th century, but I also know from history that when alleged impossibility accords with self-interest, we forget.
Need an unmistakeable sign that it's time to emigrate? When perpetrators of regime-supported violence are exempted from judicial accountability. January 6 may or may not count, but if new violence is not met with equal justice under law, you'll have a sure sign.
November 15, 2024 at 10:28 PM
Need an unmistakeable sign that it's time to emigrate? When perpetrators of regime-supported violence are exempted from judicial accountability. January 6 may or may not count, but if new violence is not met with equal justice under law, you'll have a sure sign.
The gradual Italian acquiescence in Fascism (1922-1926) may be more instructive than the lightning German submission to Nazism in 1933. Or we might get something in between, since the new US government will, with Senate cooperation, (1/2) ⬇️
November 15, 2024 at 8:13 PM
The gradual Italian acquiescence in Fascism (1922-1926) may be more instructive than the lightning German submission to Nazism in 1933. Or we might get something in between, since the new US government will, with Senate cooperation, (1/2) ⬇️
Once you’ve accepted these cabinet appointments, it’s easy to be silent about the far worse things to come. Senate Republicans have a single chance to assert themselves, now, after which they will be useless adornments to be cast aside when the dictator desires. And the masses will celebrate.
November 15, 2024 at 7:58 PM
Once you’ve accepted these cabinet appointments, it’s easy to be silent about the far worse things to come. Senate Republicans have a single chance to assert themselves, now, after which they will be useless adornments to be cast aside when the dictator desires. And the masses will celebrate.
“For something like three weeks now the depression of the reactionary government…I shall record my embitterment, greater than I imagined I was still capable of feeling. It is a disgrace, which gets worse with every day that passes. And there’s not a sound from anyone… (1/2) ⬇️
November 15, 2024 at 7:37 PM
“For something like three weeks now the depression of the reactionary government…I shall record my embitterment, greater than I imagined I was still capable of feeling. It is a disgrace, which gets worse with every day that passes. And there’s not a sound from anyone… (1/2) ⬇️
“Now I see a little better how Nazism overcame Germany — not by attack from without or subversion from within, but with a whoop and a holler. It was what most Germans wanted — or, under pressure of combined reality and illusion, came to want. They wanted it; they liked it; and they got it.” (1/2) ⬇️
November 15, 2024 at 7:30 PM
“Now I see a little better how Nazism overcame Germany — not by attack from without or subversion from within, but with a whoop and a holler. It was what most Germans wanted — or, under pressure of combined reality and illusion, came to want. They wanted it; they liked it; and they got it.” (1/2) ⬇️
The original sin of the North American experience was cheap labor. All manor of crimes against humanity (slavery, indentured servitude, exploitation of cheap migrant labor) have occurred in pursuit of this fever dream. The U.S. Constitution is there to guarantee that the dream will never die.
November 15, 2024 at 7:24 PM
The original sin of the North American experience was cheap labor. All manor of crimes against humanity (slavery, indentured servitude, exploitation of cheap migrant labor) have occurred in pursuit of this fever dream. The U.S. Constitution is there to guarantee that the dream will never die.
The first step in all of this is getting us used to the idea that we don’t have even an electoral democracy (much less an actual rule of the people). The solace will be, for a decent interval, the appearance of freedom of speech. Self-censorship will have already begun eroding this alleged freedom.
November 15, 2024 at 7:20 PM
The first step in all of this is getting us used to the idea that we don’t have even an electoral democracy (much less an actual rule of the people). The solace will be, for a decent interval, the appearance of freedom of speech. Self-censorship will have already begun eroding this alleged freedom.
“With fearful menace the state demands that the individual give up his friends, abandon his lovers, renounce his beliefs and assume new, prescribed ones. He must use a new form of greeting, eat and drink in ways he does not fancy, employ his leisure in occupations he abhors, make himself…” (1/x) ⬇️
November 15, 2024 at 7:07 PM
“With fearful menace the state demands that the individual give up his friends, abandon his lovers, renounce his beliefs and assume new, prescribed ones. He must use a new form of greeting, eat and drink in ways he does not fancy, employ his leisure in occupations he abhors, make himself…” (1/x) ⬇️