Dark Times – Life on the Wicked Stage: Act 3

Between a Rock and a Hard Place

At some point the rock breaks

Not many words to share. Sad. Beyond angry about the tragic events in Minneapolis today. Yet another death, yet more of the same tired lies justifying it. This isn’t the first death at the hands of this abhorrent administration. It is another. There have been several since ICE was unleashed on this country. There will be more.

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The administration is saying what you expect them to. It’s a litany we’re all too familiar with. Leaders in Minneapolis and around the country are saying what you expect them to also, another litany trying to prevent what I maintain is all but inevitable.

There is no way out of this but through it. Through it is perilous. So is standing put.

When you’re caught between a rock and hard place, at some point the rock breaks and the hard place gets harder.

You can also find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above.

I Don’t Like This Day

Remembering January 6th Drives Me Into A Rage

I don’t like this day.

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Rather I don’t like the anniversary of this day, January 6th, what it reminds me of, and all that it has come to mean.

We still live in a country where we excuse those that pretend what happened didn’t actually happen and wasn’t caused by a delusional, sadistic, power hungry pedophile and his followers.

We live in a country where we’ve just blown past the fact that he was elected president again, pardoned all of those who attacked the U.S. capitol in his name, and continues, with far too much help from his guilty cohort of cowards, to fill the airwaves and digital world with enough obvious lies to choke a million mules.

I don’t like this day.

A few men could have stopped this madness from extending beyond this day. A few men who chose not to. It was in their grasp. If American history survives this madness their names should live in infamy. I’m not sure America or American history will, but I can’t wait to piss on their graves.

And now we now live in a world, not just a country, that he’s tearing apart piece by piece just because he can, so he and others can profit from it.

I don’t like this day.

It’s a despicable, unerasable orange stain on 250 years that already bear enough stains.

It’s a day that ripped open the secret underbelly filled with the hateful and hating beasts that have always lived among us and spilled those entrails all over the myths we clung to, falsely assuming they held us together.

I don’t like this day.

It’s a day that will haunt me the rest of those I have left and leaves me sick to my stomach and trembling with rage about the future.

It’s a day that makes me contemplate doing horrible things. It’s a day that makes me hate.

I don’t like this day. Rather, I hate this day.

Sunday Morning Reading

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The world prepares to begin a new year and wakes up to an entirely new world. Or does it?

You go to bed on a Friday night with the holiday season inching to a close and wake up on Saturday morning and your country is running Venezuela after invading it and kidnapping its president and his wife. Or so the narrative on Sunday morning goes. I’m sure it will change by the time we get to midweek. Yeah, it was that kind of weekend and that will be reflected in this week’s Sunday Morning Reading along with a host of other topics.

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I’ll lead off with a few in the moment takes on what happened in Venezuela yesterday. Note that in the moment takes often fade once the moment has its moment.

First up, David Frum says that Trump’s Critics Are Falling Into An Obvious Trap. Frankly, whether you’re a critic or a MAGA hat wearing supporter we’ve all fallen for so many obvious traps, what’s one more?

Thinking bigger picture, Tom Nichols thinks Maybe Russia and China Should Sit This One Out. They need to stop laughing first.

In the wake of the news, Carole Cadwalladr sees “a mass propaganda event” about to engulf the US in her piece, The Threat From America. She’s correct.

Written before the events of this weekend, Mathew Walther’s The Strange Death of Make America Great Again may seem out of place and time as it focuses on the MAGA culture wars within itself. I would venture that it is not, so stay tuned.

Turning to more local concerns that resonate alongside the global news, the folks at Block Club Chicago including Francia Garcia Hernádez and Madison Savedra have an excellent look at How Operation Midway Blitz Changed Our City in Chicago Under Siege.

As if not to be left out of the making bad news moment, Elon Musk’s back in the swing of things with his AI tool Grok allowing users to essentially turn X into a porn machine using photos of real folks to wreak havoc. Just note that X is still the social media platform of choice for far too many. Matteo Wong has the story in Elon Musk’s Pornography Machine.

Cory Doctorow published the text of a recent speech called A Post-American, Enshittification-Resistant Internet. He continues fighting the good fight like Sisyphus with that boulder.

JA Westenberg makes The Case For Blogging In The Ruins.

And to close out the week when holiday close out sales come to an end, Jake Lundberg takes a look at The Cult of Costco. Great piece whether you shop there or not.

If you’re interested in just what the heck Sunday Morning Reading is all about you can read more about the origins of Sunday Morning Reading here. If you’d like more click on the Sunday Morning Reading link in the category column to check out what’s been shared on Sunday’s past. You can also find more of my writings on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome.

Well That Happened

U.S Invades Venezuela and kidnaps president and his wife

Invading another country and kidnapping its president and his wife is certainly one way to distract from all of the many reasons the Trump regime needs to distract us from. Given that today, January 3rd is the statutory deadline to release the Epstein files, and we now have available the long transcript and video of Jack Smith’s deposition stating that the special prosecutor had irrefutable evidence that Trump was guilty it’s enough to spur suspicions in a stone. It’s also not a great way to bring the holidays to an easy end. But then nothing about beginnings and endings have been easy for far too long.

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If you haven’t heard the news about the U.S. invasion of Venezuela be grateful for summaries. I won’t regurgitate beyond the opening paragraph of this blog post. I will say that the one piece of news in what passed for a press conference, the President of the United States says we’re now going to be running Venezuela. Watching a team that can’t run its own country say it’s going to run another strikes me as ironic, but then irony rusts in revolt at the doings of this bunch of dolts.

We’ve been on a wild ride for almost a year with the Trump regime and this will undoubtedly make it even wilder in the days ahead. I don’t believe anyone, including those in the administration, knows what it all means going forward. But we’re about to find out. Like it or not. I’m guessing we won’t like it.

The only silver lining I can possibly see is that taking these actions might possibly lead to the beginning of the end of this corrupt regime run by a child molester and convicted rapist. America historically has never been good at foreign conquest and overthrowing other governments, even when taking down corrupt evil regimes. Those past attempts have at least been undertaken with reasonably intelligent adults doing the planning and the work. That’s certainly not the case with this cast of characters acting in this Made for TV tragi-comedy.

If you listened, take anything you heard from the press conference with a grain of salt. Just like most things with this group it’s all poorly supported improv. Already the vice president of Venezuela who the Trump regime says we’re going to be working with and was gracious in her conversations is already demanding the U.S return Maduro.

Good luck to us all.

Sunday Morning Reading

Sharing thoughts about big ideas and little things

Sunday Morning Reading is back from a two-week hiatus in which we watched the grandkids while their parents began moving into what will be their new house after the first of the year. It was a big deal featuring lots of little things with the little ones. As usual the column this week presents some interesting reading and writing that I think worth sharing. Big topics side by side with little things.

As the Christmas season I knew growing up begins to wind down and everyone begins gearing up for the New Year, I ran across Matthew Cooper’s Why We Need A New Dickens. He makes a good argument, but in my experience everyone loves reading what Dickens chronicled, but somehow it never really catches on.

Keeping somewhat in the Christmas vein The Guardian View On Far-Right Perversions Of The Christmas Message: Promoting A Gospel Of Hate by the Guardian’s editorial department hits its target, but in a glancing blow that proves my point from the link above.

NatashaMH takes on The Great Wall Of Honesty with blunt truths, bear hugs, and a bit of resilience.

JA Westenberg points out that we never pay much attention to the tech folks who do the grunt work behind the scenes to keep things running in The Rime Of The Ancient Maintainer. That’s the little story behind most of the big things we take for granted.

Illustrator Lauren Martin writes On The Pitfalls Of Saying Yes To Everything. Hat tip to Stan Stewart for this one.

I don’t usually link to book reviews in this column, but this one by Dorian Lynskey of Sven Beckert’s book Capitalism: A Global History made me buy the book. Check out Capitalism by Sven Beckert Review — An Extraordinary History Of The Economic System That Control Our Lives. (FWIW there are no affiliate links on this site.)

Speaking of the little things, David Todd McCarty enjoys The Casual Comfort Of Champagne And French Fries.

This piece by Josh Marshall has been sitting in my Sunday Morning Reading queue during the aforementioned hiatus and it’s certainly lost none of its luster with time. Check out Will The 21st Century Nabobs Win Their War On Public Accountabilty?

I’ve followed and linked to a number of Denny Henke’s posts about how he’s changing his personal computing habits this year. His 2025 End Of Year Personal Computing Check-In is worth a read even if you haven’t been paying attention up until now.

Neil Steinberg notices things big and small and occasionally writes about those he hasn’t seen in a while. Check out his observations on seeing an Armored Car.

And to close out this week and this year’s Sunday Morning Reading, here’s a piece that good friend Sumocat linked to that is indeed an obituary. One worth a look even if you never noticed or took for granted what the deceased created, The Moylan Arrow. Take a look at The Inventor Of The Little Arrow That Tells You What Side The Fuel Filler Is On Has Died by Daniel Golson.

It’s the little things that make a difference in this big world. Have a happy turn of the New Year.

The Catechism of a Christmas Carol Revisited

Humbugs and humble remembrances

In the run up to the Christmas holiday I revisit this piece I wrote for Ellemeno called The Catechism of A Christmas Carol. It makes sense because for most of my life I revisited or restaged A Christmas Carol, or some other Christmas themed show each and every holiday season.

I revisit the piece hoping that things might have changed for the better and that the hard hearted might have taken some of Dickens’ message to heart. Sadly, this year I knew that wasn’t going to be the case. But as I suggest in the piece, that’s true every year. This year it is just more openly apparent. As ingrained as it is in most of Western culture, A Christmas Carol doesn’t seem to have the same power to change hearts that the ghosts Dickens conjured did with old Ebenezer.

In fact these days, I’m slightly surprised that the folks in charge of banning books haven’t focused on this one yet, given how contradictory it is to their aims and careless heartlessness.

I write this a week before Christmas Day, 2025, in what has been a frightening year that presages more frights to come. I imagine this weekend will see theatre’s filled watching A Christmas Carol, A Wonderful Life, A Miracle on 34th Street, etc… etc…. We can hope some in those audiences will take home a moment taken to heart, if only momentarily.

Perhaps one day we’ll return to a place where the momentary touching of hearts and salving of souls means something for at least the length of the drive home from a Christmas Eve matinee. There is always hope. And that’s what Christmas is about.

As Scrooge’s nephew Fred says:

“There are many things from which I might have derived good, by which I have not profited, I dare say,” returned the nephew. “Christmas among the rest. But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round — apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that — as a good time: a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time: the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. And therefore, Uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!”

I hope you’ll read the piece. Merry Christmas to all of those who celebrate.

(image from Plateresca on Shutterstock.)

Conflictions Part 2

Repeating the good while reminded of the bad

Continuing on a theme after yesterday’s post about conflicting feelings I ran across this interview with actors Colin Farrell and Jessie Buckley. The quote below from Colin Farrell reached out and touched all of those conflicted nerve endings in my body and soul I’m experiencing as I tend to my grandkids while watching the whirlpool that is the world at this moment.

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I have mad moments of joy in my life and joy in work and joy with my kids. But I’ve always felt that the common denominator in regard to experience as humans is pain. The one thing we’ve all felt, really, is pain. I put fear and uncertainty under that banner. Not everyone, sadly, has felt joy. And that’s a great tragedy. But I’m fascinated with pain. Every single act of aggression or violence has its root in pain that has become personalized.

I mostly buy Farrell’s statement. As for me, I’ve experienced both great joy and great pain. My always burning inner conflict is not letting the latter overwhelm the former.

These crazy days with the grandkids are full of that joy now that the visits more than the usual long weekend. Certainly when we view holiday favorite movies and continually rewind favorite laugh moments.

My grandson is continually asking me to identify the bad guys (he knows who they are after repeated viewings.) More curiously he’s asking why they are doing bad things or what makes them bad.

I hope like hell I’m giving him the right answers.

Confliction

Scream or hide?

So many conflicting feelings tonight after spending a few days with the grandkids and experiencing sheer joy and wonder, while in the same instance catching glimpses of all that’s happening around us.

In the wake of “waving arms at everything happening seemingly all at once” I would like to say I am appalled at horrors of humankind.

But I would be lying.

Perhaps my granddaughter portrays it best when she just stands in middle of the room and decides to scream at the top of her lungs for no apparent reason, or just goes quiet and decides to hide on the lower shelf of an empty cabinet.

Time Names Architects of AI As 2025 Person of the Year

Hype masters of the Year

There was a time when I used to buy Time Magazine’s rationale for naming someone Person of the Year. The rationale always was the person or persons chosen had the most impact during the year, whether for good or ill. I’ve changed my perspective on that, long before this year’s choice.

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This year Time Magazine named The Architects of AI as the 2025 Person of the Year.

As Time puts it:

This is the story of how AI changed our world in 2025, in new and exciting and sometimes frightening ways. It is the story of how Huang and other tech titans grabbed the wheel of history, developing technology and making decisions that are reshaping the information landscape, the climate, and our livelihoods. Racing both beside and against each other, they placed multibillion-dollar bets on one of the biggest physical infrastructure projects of all time. They reoriented government policy, altered geopolitical rivalries, and brought robots into homes. AI emerged as arguably the most consequential tool in great-power competition since the advent of nuclear weapons.

There’s no denying the individuals Time lists have had an impact. In my opinion, the list leans decidedly into the “for ill” column. You can’t argue that these folk have certainly created a new economy with all of the yet to be fulfilled promises. But, at some point there needs to be something real underneath the hype. For better or worse, and however these promises may or may not be fulfilled, I’d love to be around a few decades from now to see how the ledger balance that describes what good may have come from AI versus what bad things it left in its wake totals up.

But if any or all of the promises come true, I doubt the AI accountants will ever show us that math.

Perhaps it’s the advent of the holiday season. Perhaps it’s that I’m just not that keen on Artificial Intelligence. But I’d rather see a focus on folks who have actually done tangible good for the world rather than folks who, to this point, have only made bundles of money promising a future that may in the end turn out to be what I suspect will be just another unfulfilled promise.

While I get the intention, I also find it darkly portentous that Time includes a “Ask me anything” chatbot that follows you along the webpage as you scroll through to read the article.

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To be fair, Time does point out some of the bad things already associated with Artificial Intelligence in the article. There are a growing number of those these days, but eventually eyeballs will pass them by in the same way folks eventually look past the ever present news of gun violence. Those sitting on that girder in the photograph are counting on that.

I’m guessing future Person of the Year selections will most likely be chosen by AI, and will whitewash most of that out of the accompanying articles.

Sunday Morning Reading

Hands on with playwrights, movies, smart toilets, and a discomforting rooster

Another Sunday. More snow overnight. More shoveling later. The holidays creep closer or perhaps they’re already here, given that grandpa mode has kicked into high gear. Started writing a new play out of the blue yesterday. I have no idea why, but it just tumbled out of my brain on to the screen via the keyboard. Time to share some Sunday Morning Reading. Read as you will, even if it’s on a smart toilet.

I often save the softer pieces for later in this column, but I’ll lead today with David Todd McCarty’s Christmas Means Comfort. Tell that to the rooster.

The world lost a treasure this week with the passing of architect Frank Gehry. Lee Bray writes a nice obituary and tribute. Check out Architect Frank Gehry Who Designed Millennium Park’s Pritzker Pavillion and Foot Bridge Dies at 96.

Samuel Beckett’s Hands is a terrific piece by Rob Tomlinson about, well it’s about Samuel Beckett’s hands and how Dupuytren’s contracture may have influenced not just how, but what he wrote, given that Beckett always begin his writing with pen and paper.

While I’m sharing stories about playwrights, the movie Hamnet is garnering lots of attention and accolades. (I haven’t seen it yet.) Based on Maggie O’Farrell’s excellent novel of the same name, Hamnet mostly follows accepted scholarship that William Shakespeare wrote Hamlet while grieving the death of his son, Hamnet. (At the time, the two names were practically interchangeable.) As with most things Shakespeare, there’s generally accepted knowledge and there are always those who challenge it. James Shapiro takes a look at The Long History of the Hamnet Myth.

And while I’m sharing stories about movies, take a look at Susan Morrison’s piece on How Noah Baumbach Fell (Back) In Love With The Movies.

I linked earlier this week to a piece by Phillip Bump called There Are Limits to the Hitler-Trump Comparison. Just Ask These Historians. I don’t disagree with the thesis. I just think it stops short in the way most history usually does.

Rory Rowan and Tristan Sturm write that Peter Thiel’s Apocalyptic Worldview Is A Dangerous Fantasy. Here’s hoping this first draft of our current history proves lasting.

There’s been much talk about all things military recently given how the current administration is tossing away most of what we believe the military stands for as easy as my grandson tosses away toy soldiers. Carrie Lee says The Soldier In The Illiberal State Is A Professional Dead End. I concur. Sadly.

In the wake of the cataclysm that was Twitter, social media is essentially a messy muddle these days with users continuing to migrate from one platform to another seeking some sort of place that feels comfortable enough to share and often discomfort others. Ian Dunt writes what he calls a love letter to one platform with Thank God for Bluesky.

Smart toilets were in the news this week. I actually got to see and use one at a Christmas party last night. All I could think about while doing my business was this piece by Victoria Song called Welcome To The Wellness Surveillance State.

And to conclude this week, Amogh Dimri informs us that the Oxford University Press has chosen Rage Bait as 2025’s Word of the Year. Dimiri thinks it’s a brilliant choice. I guess it begs the question, if we’re angry enough to rage, is it really baiting?