Three O'Clock in the Morning

Noemland insecurity

2026-03-07T03:30:00.002-06:00

The Department of Homeland Security is not a campaign ad. It is not a cable-news green room with a bigger budget, or a vanity social media propaganda app.

It is a 260,000-employee nerve center responsible for border enforcement, counterterrorism, cybersecurity, FEMA coordination, and disaster response. It is where managerial errors echo in real time.

And yet, in Convicted Felon Donald Trump’s second term, DHS has become the latest example of a governing philosophy that prizes loyalty over competence.

Kristi Noem’s tenure as secretary started out turbulent and only got worse. Immigration enforcement operations drew national scrutiny. In one widely criticized episode, victims killed in a fatal encounter with ICE agents were characterized as “domestic terrorists” before facts were established — a rhetorical leap that undercut credibility (a vanishing commodity in this administration) at a moment demanding precision.

As Noem flailed, the department entered a partial shutdown amid congressional dissatisfaction with its strategic direction, and its own inspector general accused DHS leadership of obstructing oversight work — an extraordinary charge for an agency entrusted with safeguarding constitutional order.

At the same time, morale plummeted as enforcement priorities appeared increasingly driven by headline numbers rather than targeted, sustainable strategy.

Noem was removed earlier this week. It should have been a moment for recalibration — a pivot toward technocratic steadiness, toward a leader with deep experience in national security management or emergency coordination.

Instead, the felon-in-chief signaled his intention to nominate Sen. Markwayne Mullin.

Mullin’s résumé includes small-business ownership and a Senate seat. What it does not include is executive leadership in counterterrorism architecture, intelligence coordination, border command structures, cybersecurity infrastructure, or disaster logistics — the core machinery of DHS.

Hell, his résumé doesn't even include a bachelor's degree.

The through-line is allegiance, not administrative qualifications.

Presidents are entitled to appoint leaders who share their policy views. That is democratic governance. But when blind loyalty becomes the primary credential for overseeing complex security institutions, the cost is self-inflicted vulnerability and avoidable national risk.

DHS is not built for improvisation. It requires fluency in interagency coordination, statutory limits, operational chain-of-command discipline, and crisis logistics. It demands respect for oversight, not friction with it. It demands credibility with career professionals who keep the system running long after political cycles end.

When leadership is selected for loyalty first and fluency second, agencies deform. Career staff learn that posture outweighs performance. Oversight becomes adversarial. Messaging drifts ahead of evidence. Mistakes are defended instead of corrected.

Homeland security can't and shouldn't function on personal devotion.

Noem’s malfeasance exposed the limits of appointing political allies to manage sprawling security institutions. Doubling down with another figure whose principal qualification is proximity to presidential power suggests the lesson absorbed was not “we need deeper expertise,” but “we need tighter loyalty.”

That is a dangerous substitution.

Border security, cyber defense, counterterrorism, disaster response — these are systems that either operate with disciplined competence or fail under pressure. The American public doesn't benefit from theatrical resolve. It benefits from steady, qualified leadership.

Loyalty may be useful in politics, but it's not a homeland security strategy.

The less things change...

2026-03-04T13:29:00.003-06:00

"The real power in America is held by a fast-emerging new Oligarchy of pimps and preachers who see no need for Democracy or fairness or even trees, except maybe the ones in their own yards, and they don't mind admitting it. They worship money and power and death. Their ideal solution to all the nation's problems would be another 100 Year War."

– Hunter S. Thompson, 2003
"Kingdom of Fear: Loathsome Secrets of a Star-Crossed Child in the Final Days of the American Century

Free speech lip service

2026-02-18T18:00:00.001-06:00

Talk about your absurd contradictions. There's something Onionesque about watching the Kansas GOP supermajority christen a “Charlie Kirk Free Speech Day” while simultaneously tightening the screws on actual speech and free expression in Kansas.

It would be absurdist satire if it weren’t entered into the official legislative journal.

SCR 1615, the resolution designating October 14 as “Charlie Kirk Free Speech Day,” moved through the legislature like crap through Canada goose (but not as pleasant). Republicans advanced it early. It consumed floor time. It generated speeches about liberty, the marketplace of ideas, the sacred American right to speak one’s mind without fear.

But those speeches — delivered with solemn cadence and patriotic flourish — carried the unmistakable stench of performance. Lawmakers spoke of courage and constitutional virtue, invoking free expression as if it were under siege. But for all the rhetorical bluster, the measure itself was nonbinding, symbolic, and materially inconsequential to the daily lives of Kansans.

It was a pageant of principle without policy — a moment of grandstanding that cost nothing politically and delivered nothing substantively.

The vote was decisive. The majority flexed. The calendar gained a commemorative square.

At the same time, debate inside that chamber was being managed with the precision of a soundboard operator hitting the mute button mid-sentence.

Amendments ruled not germane. Motions curtailed. Floor discussion was suppressed under procedural authority that only a supermajority can wield with such disregard for decency. Perfectly legal. Entirely within the rules.

And profoundly ironic (or should I say moronic? I guess both can be true).

Because free speech — if it means anything beyond a slogan — requires tolerance for dissent, not merely celebration of allies.

What unfolded was a kind of civic ventriloquism: a Legislature praising free expression in theory while suppressing it in practice.

The contradiction doesn’t stop at Statehouse chamber doors.

In recent years, this same Kansas GOP supermajority has advanced and enacted measures that critics argue narrow participation in the democratic process itself:

HB 2332 (2021) restricted who may return advance ballots and created criminal penalties for certain ballot collection practices.
SB 209 (2023) shortened the advance voting period and imposed new limits on ballot drop boxes.
In 2022, a new congressional map was foisted on Kansans by the supermajority. The heavily gerrymandered map was a transparent attempt at suppressing Democratic voter voices in the 3rd District.
Not satisfied, Republican leaders recently went back to the gerrymandering well to try to dredge up even more voter suppression with a mid-decade redistricting effort. While they ultimately declined a special session last November, it won't be a surprise when they try to force this measure through in the current session.

Supporters frame these laws and redistricting efforts as "election security" and "legitimate political strategy." Critics — including voting rights advocates and many Democratic lawmakers — describe them as structural barriers that reshape who participates and how much their vote weighs.

The dissonance is sharp enough to cut through the rotunda’s marble echo.

A Legislature celebrates “Free Speech” with a named holiday while curtailing debate on the floor through stifling procedural control and suppressing opposing voices with aggressive partisan maneuvering.

Speech is applauded when it aligns. Participation is managed when it threatens.

Meanwhile, Kansans are told all of this is in defense of liberty? If liberty is the banner, then it is being flown at half-mast.

Free speech isn't merely the right to praise one’s champions. It's the willingness to endure dissent — on the floor, in committee, and at the ballot box. It's messy. It's inconvenient. It lengthens debate instead of trimming it.

What we continue to see instead is far more curated: a ceremonial embrace of “Free Speech” alongside a governing style that prefers efficiency over friction, control over contest.

When you declare a holiday for free speech while cutting off debate, narrowing voter access, and redrawing districts to consolidate power, you invite scrutiny and should expect criticism.

Free speech deserves more than a resolution number.

It deserves a microphone that stays on — and a map that doesn’t mute voters before they ever speak.

Racist is as racist does

2026-02-07T10:31:00.004-06:00

There is a particular kind of cowardice that wears a necktie and speaks in complete sentences. It smells like caution, sounds like reason, and survives by never quite touching the thing it claims to condemn. Senator Jerry Moran’s response to Donald Trump’s racist AI video sits squarely in that tradition—clean, polite, and morally insufficient.

Yes, he called it racist. Yes, he said it shouldn’t have been posted. And yes, by modern Republican standards, this apparently qualifies as bravery. But let’s not confuse naming the fire with putting it out.

Moran’s statement reads like a man scolding a broken office printer. The video “should not have been posted.” An unfortunate error. A lapse in judgment. As if the President of the United States accidentally leaned on the wrong button and out popped a piece of digital minstrel propaganda depicting the first black presidential family as animals.

Oops. These things happen. Let’s all move along.

This is nonsense.

What Trump (a convicted felon, let's not forget) posted was not a gaffe. It was not clumsy humor. It was not a meme gone awry. It was a deliberate deployment of one of the oldest racist tropes in Western political history, now turbocharged by AI and blasted out from the most powerful bully pulpit on Earth. That matters. History matters. Power matters.

And when a sitting U.S. senator responds to that act with a gentle verbal wrist-tap while continuing to support the man who did it, we are no longer talking about intentions. We are talking about effects.

Here’s the part too many people want to dodge: supporting a racist and supporting racist actions is functionally indistinguishable from being racist. Not in the abstract. Not in the philosophical sense. In the real world—the only one that counts.

You can condemn the act in a press release and still enable the actor. You can say “this is not who we are” while voting, fundraising, caucusing, and aligning yourself with the very machinery that keeps producing this behavior. At that point, the condemnation is decorative. It exists to soothe consciences, not to change outcomes.

And spare me the moral-equivalence defense. The “both sides mock presidents” routine is the last refuge of people who know the line has been crossed but can’t bring themselves to say so plainly. Yes, presidents have been mocked. Cruelly. Stupidly. Sometimes viciously. That is not the same thing as the President himself distributing racist imagery rooted in centuries of dehumanization. Anyone pretending otherwise is not confused—they are protecting something.

Moran’s response tries to occupy a safe middle space that no longer exists. The ground has collapsed. You are either willing to impose consequences on racist behavior (and let's face it, other tyranical and anti-democracy behavior) from the presidency, or you are willing to live with it. There is no third option labeled “respectable disapproval.”

The old saying holds because it’s brutally accurate: racist is as racist does. And in politics, enabler is as enabler enables. When leaders draw lines and then refuse to defend them, those lines become decorations—useful for press coverage, meaningless for justice.

Senator Moran wants credit for saying the right words. History will measure something else entirely: whether he was willing to act as if those words meant anything at all.

Recent headlines as a Venn diagram

2026-01-27T11:47:00.000-06:00

A Venn diagram illustrating the overlap between MAGA, Second Amendment Fetishists, and cowards as revealed by recent events in Minnesota...

Local power still matters

2026-01-20T12:34:00.001-06:00

I live here. You (presumably) live here. We stand in line at the grocery store with city workers, teachers, dishwashers, kids in hoodies and retirees counting coupons. Kansas City isn’t a slogan or a headline to us—it’s a functioning organism.

And lately, that organism has shown a pulse. A spine. A refusal.

That matters, because the federal machinery has been circling again—quiet walkthroughs, coded language about “capacity,” the familiar smell of logistics masquerading as policy. We’ve seen what that prelude leads to. Minneapolis heard the same music before the volume got turned up and the neighborhood soundscape changed forever.

Here’s the difference—and it’s not small: Kansas City area leaders didn’t sit on their hands.

They moved.

KCMO’s city council didn’t wait for a ribbon-cutting or a press release. They slammed the permitting door and passed a ban on non-municipal detention facilities—five years of legal friction where ICE expected a smooth glide path. That’s not symbolism. That’s municipal muscle. Zoning, permits, land use—the boring tools that actually stop things from happening.

You cannot build or operate a detention center in this city without local approvals. City leaders used that leverage immediately. That’s what resistance looks like when you understand how power actually flows.

And it didn’t stop at city hall.

County officials across the metro—burned before by federal overreach and private prison shell games—have been louder, sharper, and more precise than they were a decade ago. They’ve demanded clarity. They’ve asked who pays, who oversees, who answers when something goes wrong. They’ve refused to treat “federal” as synonymous with “untouchable.”

This is the lesson Minneapolis paid for in advance: If you don’t force the questions early, you live with the consequences late.

Leavenworth learned it the hard way and then did something rare—it adapted. City officials there dragged a private detention operator into the daylight and into court, insisting on permits, hearings, public accountability. The result wasn’t a dramatic moral victory. It was better than that: a delay, a slowdown, a requirement that detention justify itself under local law instead of swaggering in under federal cover.

That fight matters. It sets precedent. It tells ICE and its contractors that the Midwest is no longer an open floor plan for human warehousing. Local governments can’t abolish ICE. But they can make expansion expensive, slow, and politically radioactive.

And that’s exactly what’s happening now.

Let’s not romanticize this. Some sycophantic state-level actors are still feeding the beast—deploying resources, signing cooperation agreements, lending legitimacy to an enforcement regime that thrives on proximity to local power. That tension is real. But it makes the city and county pushback even more important, not less.

Because when ICE expands, it does so through cracks: bureaucratic indifference, jurisdictional confusion, leaders afraid of looking “soft.” Kansas City’s leaders—at least for now—have chosen a different posture. They’ve chosen friction.

And friction can be the enemy of mass detention.

This isn’t hysteria. It’s memory. Minneapolis didn’t fall because people didn’t care; it fell because too many officials waited for certainty while the machinery was still warming up. Kansas City’s leaders appear to have learned that lesson. They’re acting while the doors are still unlocked, while the blueprints are still proposals, while the language is still evasive enough to challenge.

That deserves acknowledgment—and public backing.

Because resistance doesn’t always look like protest signs and megaphones. Sometimes it looks like a denied permit, a zoning code, a judge insisting on process, a council vote taken before dawn. Sometimes it looks like adults in public office deciding that this city will not quietly become a node in someone else’s detention network.

We should be proud of that. Cautiously. Vigilantly.

And we should keep watching—because the only thing ICE respects more than authority is persistence.

Fear and Loathing in Minneapolis

2026-01-17T14:52:00.005-06:00

Minneapolis is watching the machine do what it always does after it kills: it tightens its tie, straightens the paperwork, and tries to make the blood look like “process.” And in the last five days the pattern has become unmistakable.

First, they pushed new video into the bloodstream of the news cycle—an administration-approved angle, conveniently framed as the great exonerator.

But when grown-ups with stopwatches and professional skepticism got their hands on the visuals, the story didn’t magically become clean. Reuters’ reconstruction points to a grim, almost clinical detail: the officer’s first shots came as the vehicle was moving past him.

That’s not a verdict. It’s something worse for the people selling “obvious self-defense” as gospel: it’s doubt you can measure.

Then came the institutional tell—the part where the state’s credibility is dragged behind a truck because it’s inconvenient.

Minnesota’s Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, the outfit locals expect to investigate deadly force with at least some baseline public legitimacy, says it was cut off from evidence and interviews—effectively pushed out—when the federal apparatus decided the FBI would run the whole show. PBS and CBS local reporting, along with official statements, describe a reversal that left the BCA unable to meet its standards or the public’s expectations.

Translation: the people who fired the shots get to manage the room where the facts are sorted.

And when career lawyers inside the Justice Department’s civil-rights machinery reportedly offered to dig in—do the hard work, run down the facts, test the claim of justification—they were told, in essence, No, thank you. CBS reports the Civil Rights Division prosecutors were told they would not play a role. Then the resignations started stacking up like a flare gun going off in the fog.

That’s not “normal.” That’s a system coughing smoke.

Renee Good’s family—left to stand in the crater—has now hired Romanucci & Blandin, the same firm known for representing George Floyd’s family, to investigate and publish findings because the official channels have not inspired confidence. When a family has to rent its own truth because the government won’t reliably provide it, the legitimacy meter is already pinned in the red.

Meanwhile, the city is trapped in the cruel logic of escalation. A second incident: a federal officer shoots another person in Minneapolis, this time reported as a man wounded in the leg amid a disputed encounter. And the response from the top isn’t humility, transparency, restraint—it’s the old authoritarian jukebox selection: threaten the Insurrection Act, hint at troops, dare the city to flinch. AP and Reuters both report the President floating that option as unrest spreads.

At the state and city level, Minnesota, Minneapolis, and St. Paul have gone to federal court trying to halt the DHS/ICE surge, arguing the deployment is unlawful and dangerous. Even the existence of that lawsuit is an indictment: it says local government has concluded the federal presence is not merely controversial but structurally destabilizing.

And in Washington, Democrats have responded with an impeachment salvo against DHS Secretary Kristi Noem—symbolic in a divided Congress, perhaps, but politically diagnostic: people in power are now publicly treating DHS not as a normal agency managing a hard problem, but as a machine that has slipped its restraints.

So here is the updated reality, stripped of euphemism:

We have a killing still argued as “self-defense,” but increasingly litigated in public through video analysis and contested investigative control.

We have state investigators sidelined, civil-rights prosecutors reportedly shut out, and resignations that read like a warning flare from inside the hull.

We have another shooting, more street tension, and a White House response that leans toward force and threats, not accountability.

And we have a community and state leadership trying—through courts, through counsel, through public pressure—to keep Minneapolis from becoming a live-fire demonstration of federal impunity.

If the federal government wants trust, it knows the price: independent access, full disclosure, and an investigation that doesn’t look like the suspect running the lab. What it’s offering instead—more secrecy, more spin, more muscle—is not reassurance.

It’s a posture.

And Minneapolis, painfully experienced, recognizes it on sight.

We're putting the blog back together

2026-01-16T10:41:00.002-06:00

Well, here we are. A few years older and none the more wiser.

I thought we were pretty much over this shit, but I've come to realize that people who say "things can't possibly get worse," simply suffer from a lack of imagination.

So, I've got a few things to get off my mind and no real place to vent. I left Twitter ages ago for obvious reasons. I've been skulking around Bluesky for a while, but that platform isn't conducive to long-form kvetching (i.e., more than 300 characters... talk about your baseline shifts), and Facebook is a bit too "let's make money for Techbros" for my taste (although, I get that Blogger isn't much better in that regard).

But, to quote Frank Costanza, I got a lot of problems with you people! And now you're gonna hear about it! (I mean, not YOU specifically, I'm talking about those OTHER people).

So, stay tuned for some deep-fried, solid gold bullshit.

Perspective

2021-04-01T03:00:00.018-05:00

The story so far...

I blogged a kind of dumb parody music video during the Christmas season of 2018.

I had nothing to say the entire year of 2019, but the spammites really took over the comments sections.

Then 2020 happened. You might remember it. You were probably there. If you weren't, I can tell you it wasn't much fun. If you were, but you're trying to NOT remember... brother, I don't blame you.

Years ago, when the Inkernets was still young, a guy wrote some advice to me that I've been mulling over on occasion ever since...

No matter how great (or ungreat) you are, ultimately, NOTHING you do can change the fate of the universe (but everything you do will bring the universe closer to it's fate :). Hamlet himself, the author of "Shakspeare" (the box office hit) once said, 'Ya know, Caesar himself could be this brick in my wall...' (well something like that; I don't remember the exact wording).

The point is this: Whether the universe decides to collapse into a spec of ultra extremely gigantically ludicrously dense material, or spill out over the voids until the last solid body (and brain) evaporates into cold nothingness, you will be able to do exactly nothing to stop it, no matter how great a person you are.

I don't know about you all, but I take comfort in that.

Cheers, Inkernets...

YouTube Tuesday: Baby It's Woke Outside

2018-12-18T03:30:00.000-06:00

Yep. We need to start updating these classics. It's just the right thing to do.

Reflective Ruminations, by Fletcher Dodge

2018-12-14T12:22:00.001-06:00

Archeologists have learned that the whole "Pharaoh is a living god" thing was just a big pyramid scheme.

YouTube Tuesday: See you soon, space cowboy…

2018-12-11T09:20:00.000-06:00

I read the other day about Netflix working on a new live-action adaptation of Cowboy Bebop and immediately became stoked.

Sure, the Netflix track record for this kind of thing is a bit uneven. But in this case I'm more than willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. This genre-blending Sci-Fi/western/jazz/noir anime was pretty groundbreaking when it came to the USA back in the pre-Y2K era. And when I heard about the Netflix remake, I went back and binge-watched the series (available to stream on Hulu, ironically).

The show really holds up well, not least for its amazing soundtrack. Let's hope they get a release date out ASAP.

Dude… uh… today's already the 10th

2018-12-10T15:23:00.002-06:00

I first met George Saunders (figuratively) in the pages to The New Yorker ten year's ago or so when I read probably my favorite of his short stories, Escape From Spiderhead. It's a ripping good yarn that would be a great addition to John B.'s section on post-humanism.

What kind of crazy-ass Project Team was this?

I mean, I had been on some crazy-ass Project Teams in my time, such as one where the drip had something in it that made hearing music exquisite, and hence when some Shostakovich was piped in actual bats seemed to circle my Domain, or the one where my legs became totally numb and yet I found I could still stand fifteen straight hours at a fake cash register, miraculously suddenly able to do extremely hard long-division problems in my mind.

But of all my crazy-ass Project Teams this was by far the most crazy-assed. I could not help but wonder what tomorrow would bring.

I'm sure you've all read his recent Lincoln In The Bardo, but I wanted to take today to also recommend his short story collection Tenth of December, which happens to include the above mentioned and linked short story along with a slew of other home runs.

Here's a video of him reading an excerpt from another entry in the collection...

Bullitt List – 12.07.18

2018-12-07T15:48:00.002-06:00

Today's category: Profiles in GYAHHH!
Say what you will about the Internet. It's divisive and leads to unchecked, destructive tribalism. It's an amazing tool for communication, offering us unprecedented exposure to different cultures and a chance to draw closer as one world race. Both views, while contrary to each other, are valid.

But one thing you can always say about the Internet is that it's interesting. Well, it's been its usual shocking and gross week out there on the Internet, so proceed with caution.

Woman dies from brain-eating amoeba after using neti pot with filtered tap water
I heard that one time a brain-eating amoeba tried to attack Meesha, but it starved to death. #sickburn
Also, follow Nancy Reagan's advice and stop putting bugs up your nose.
Kona Community Hospital shuts down due to scabies outbreak
"Kona Community Hospital shut down today due to a severe outbreak of scabies, a highly contagious skin condition caused by tiny burrowing mites…"

Dudes. These are tiny mites… burrowing into your SKIN! This sort of thing is how the Justinian Plague started, right?
Asian beetles disguised as ladybugs burrow into your dog's mouth

I mean there's just way too much burrowing going on lately, amirite? I guess this might be localized to the North Carolina region, but still... I see those beetles all over during the late fall.

If I see them trying to migrate into my house this winter, I'll be sure collect them and feed them to my neighbor's crazy barking dogs (I'm kidding! I would never! I'm a dog person!).
Man coughs up bizarre blood clot shaped exactly like part of a lung

But perhaps the most GYAAHHH! story of the week comes from the New England Journal of Medicine, which reports that a dude recently died shortly after he LITERALLY COUGHED UP A LUNG!!!

Okay, it was a blood clot that looked like a piece of his lung... because it had been lodged in his bronchial tree and become a cast IN BLOOD of the inside of his fricken' LUNG!

Bullitt List – 11.30.18

2018-11-30T14:59:00.001-06:00

Today's category: Nature is not your friend

Look, don't get me wrong. I'm a big fan of Nature. There are few things I enjoy more than getting out-of-doors, out of the city, doing some hiking, biking fishing... anything really that will get me away from the soul crushing mass of humanity that weighs down on all city dwellers 24-hours a day (Not you though. You're cool. You're alright. I'm referring to all of the other humanity).

But let's face it, that fandom is a one way street. Those people who say that Nature is beautiful are only partly right. Nature is beautiful, sure. But Nature doesn't give two shits how beautiful you think it is. And Nature wouldn't think twice about sinking a cobra fang into your neck if you let your guard down for half a second.

So, Nature Boy, while you're busy thinking up your rebuttal, here are a few Bullitt Points to back up my assertion that Nature is not your friend:

Scientists Find New, Disease-Spreading Tick in 9 States
It's not cute. It's not here to save the day. It's here to spread human-killing pathogens.
New Wasp Species Turns Spiders into Zombies
Just what we need, zombie spiders. Mark my words, this is only the first step for these wasps. They're coming for you next!
New Weapons to Fight Baby-eating Snakes
"…they have even been found trying to swallow the hands of sleeping infants." Good luck with that, snake hunters.
Young Girl Gored by Deer in London Park

Yes they're magnificent creatures, so graceful and gentle... unless they're looking to get it on. Hey, if you only have a couple of weeks each year in which to get your freak on, you might feel a little aggressive at times too. Bottom line, kids: Stay away from horny deer.

Reflective Ruminations, by Fletcher Dodge

2018-11-23T03:00:00.000-06:00

Interestingly, North Carolina is the South Dakota of the Carolinas.

Reflective Ruminations, by Fletcher Dodge

2018-11-16T09:49:00.000-06:00

It seems kind of sexist to say "Antman and The Wasp" instead of "Antman and Waspwoman"…

YouTube Tuesday: The Ballad of of Buster Scruggs

2018-11-13T03:00:00.000-06:00

I gotta say, I'm almost more excited about this movie than I was about the premier of the new season of BoJack Horseman.

Anti-wonder

2018-11-09T11:53:00.000-06:00

A lot of meaning in this quote, both in its original context and in the wider socio-political context of the moment…

Nick Cave

Whatever happened between us, it saddens me that something of our individual nature has disappeared into the divide, our unique voices are being worn down and everyone is communicating within the safe and strident anti-wonder of grievance politics.

30,000 sexdecillion

2018-01-22T10:39:00.001-06:00

One of the minor Internet sensations last year was the nifty, browser-based AI simulator Universal Paperclips.

I ignored it until I got the superflu and had only the brain capacity to keep clicking a button on a dumb-but-clever web-based AI simulator.

It turned into a race to see how many paperclips my AI could manufacture before I died of influenza. Turns out, I was able to convert the entire mass of the (simulated) universe into paperclips... a grand total of a very sexy number of paperclips.

YouTube Tuesday: Too alone to be proud

2017-10-03T18:40:00.002-05:00

It's been a lot to deal with in the last few days. I think by now we all know how it feels.

Anyway, here's a little in memorium to get us by for a few minutes.

Well said

2017-10-02T19:39:00.000-05:00

I'll stand my ground
Won't be turned around
And I'll keep this world from draggin' me down
Gonna stand my ground
-- Tom Petty, 1950-2017

A day for the ages!

2017-09-27T16:04:00.001-05:00

Attention everyone!

I forgot to mention the other day that I was very appreciative of the birthday wishes the coolest of you bestowed upon me via Facebook.

Birthdays are a bit of a mixed blessing these days. One the one hand, it's always great to receive the well-wishes of such fine and upstanding people.

On the other hand… is the finger of the doctor, which goes in my butt during my annual exam around this time of year (and is it just me, or does your doctor seem to search with more and more diligence each year. I mean, you'd think I was trying to smuggle a smartphone into Ft. Leavenworth fer crissakes).

It's just the consequence of me failing to live the rock-n-roll lifestyle and dying in a helicopter crash while OD'd on smack and Jack.

I figure I'm like most people: After (and before) a certain point birthday's seem to lose their luster.

When you get past the point of "wishing" for "gifts" (I just buy myself whatever I need these days) and being surprised by "parties" (like most people, I've become anti-social in by dotage), it really comes down to spending a few hours hanging out with the family and hitting up Joe's for some ribs and beer. That really is as good as it gets... and it's pretty damn good if you ask me.

Butt on the hole (sic), we take the good with the extremely uncomfortable. I've always said getting older really sucks, but it's a hell of a lot better than the alternative (well, full disclosure here, I haven't always said that... its only been for the last 20 years or so I guess.)

So thanks again, everyone! Happy birthday to all you sinners out there.

Everybody kneeds somebody

2017-09-25T16:37:00.000-05:00

Can someone tell me just what in the wide world of sports is going on in this country? I am so confused by the news these days. Admittedly, it's likely because I don’t pay close enough attention.

But c’mon, can you blame me? It’s all just re-runs of the most generic non-reality show ever, but not as entertaining. It’s the same stuff over and over. Everyone’s offended and outraged by something someone else did. And every Offended Group, in turn, must defend their offendedness by doing something at least as offensive to the offending party.

Lather, rinse, repeat... ad nauseam.

It’s to the point where the actions are so trivial that I just can’t summon the interest to pay attention.

Don’t get me wrong. I think the issues are vitally important. Concepts of equal rights for all humans, and ensuring and defending those rights, are of existential criticality to our (so-called) republic.

But those issues aren’t really being discussed. Rather, we’re stuck on a dumb su-su-pseudo-debate about what symbols mean and whether they're appropriate for high school girls' beer pong games. I used to think symbols were really important, that they could help communicate noble ideals like Purity and Valor and Justice. But I think we’re now living in a post-symbol society. We lack the ability to decide on what a symbol represents, or once decided, to agree on what is really meant by that representation, or to acknowledge that a symbol can have different meanings to different people and just move on.

This whole NFL players kneeling thing is a good example.

For years we’ve been taught that it’s a great sign of respect to kneel in front of something. It goes all the way back to at least 2011 when the world was introduced to Wess DeRoss, king of Dragonopia on the hit HBO kids cartoon Thronger Games.
In case you haven’t seen it, the show (which is HBO’s biggest money maker since “Sopranos In the City” -- the touching tale of a Mafia man looking for love in New York) follows the life of a little boy and his pet dragon, Puff Daddy, as they navigate the tricky politics of their fantasy world.

It’s full of hilarious hijinks and poignant moments of honesty. But one recurring theme through all 16 seasons has been that you show respect by “bending the knee” to your liege lords. Failure to bend the need, in fact, is a sign of disrespect bad enough to get you dragon-torched!

But now The Internet is in a monkey shit fight about whether kneeling is disrespectful. It’s as if they’ve never even heard of Degeneras Cardigan, Breaker of Winds and Mother of Dragsters, whose magical unicorns head-spear anyone who doesn’t bend the knee.

I mean, get with the program, The Internet.

If you ask me, we all need to follow the example of Noble King Geoffrey Bratlian, The Kind. He never had a bad word to say about anyone. He always tries to see every issue from every perspective. Check out this quote from Season 6, episode 12 “Death of a Mockingjay”

Noble King Bratlian, The Kind

First of all, if you can learn a simple trick, Scout, you'll get along a lot better with all kinds of folks. You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view … until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.

Now that’s the kind of understanding we need more of on The Internet.

So, I guess the solution is for everyone, including NFL players, to go back and read all 12 volumes of the “The Ballad of Fire and Ice” and report back to me whether John Frost ever made it all the way to Chirstmastown.

Nambia exambia

2017-09-22T15:38:00.001-05:00

Say what you will about Pres. Trump. His ego is brobdingnagian. Of civil rights, he’s no champion. And as for leadership, well it’s clear his managing is more like mangling.

But I can tell you from personal experience that his endorsement of the health care system in Nambia shows great pansophy.

I’m not from Nambia myself. But I grew up in neighboring Pambia. As you know, the two countries have been close ever since The Nambia-Pambia Alliance Treaty of 1836. And I well remember as a young Pambian rambling through Nambia on autumnal visits to my Auntie Annie (herself a life-long Pambian). We would spend afternoons ambling around the expanding hamlets, and scrambling among surrounding brambles. We’d pass the P.M. with her prized pet panda, handing him samplings of salmon and jam.

Tramping back to her mansion, which had a commanding view of a babbling rapids in which I liked to do some angling, we’d spend a quiet evening chatting about things like traveling, gambling and her dazzling career in acting. One summer I even managed to scavenge some scaffolding and tackled the challenge of renovating her paneling.

Sadly, those days have passed. The housing crisis cramped her finances. No matter how much ranting and haggling she did, she couldn’t wrangle a way into withstanding the bankruptcy. She ended up abandoning and later dismantling the mansion.

But I’ll still have longstanding and everlasting admiration and gratitude for the mind-expanding understanding I gained from my time in Nambia. I hope nation’s leaders can channel the same compassion.