Dark Times – Life on the Wicked Stage: Act 3

Sunday Morning Reading

Reading is a gateway drug. Get your buzz on.

Sunday Morning Reading is about…well, it’s about reading. In my personal opinion some don’t read nearly enough. Read. Read those you agree with. Just as important, read those you disagree with. Stretch those reading muscles and stretch your mind.

I linked to a Rose Horowitch piece earlier in the week entitled The End of Reading Is Here. It’s controversial. I don’t agree completely. But that’s the point of reading. If that’s still a thing.

Follow that piece up with Sonny Bunch’s R.I.P. Attention Span. Closing his essay he says “The end of reading may be here. But so too might be the end of watching anything that lasts longer than the time it took you to read this sentence.”

In an age where some are eager to ban books (surprised we haven’t seen any book burnings yet) Mendel Uminer chose to move rather than reduce his collection of books after his landlord complained. Check out Alex Vadukul’s story Too Many Books.

You know that reading can satisfy curiosity. It can also raise it to new levels. Neil Steinberg’s Etymological Field Notes tells such a tale. Do you flânuer?

And for those who tell you not to believe everything you read, here’s John Semley on The Fanfare Around The Band Geese Actually Was a Psyop.

In the wake of all of the seemingly unending horrible daily doping of bad political news, (some about wakes to be, some about wakes possibly delayed), James L. Bruno writes The “Last Best Hope On Earth” Crashes & Burns.

With the act and art of reading being in question, especially when it comes to the news, the click matters more than the content now that most of what we’re presented isn’t worth being displayed in a supermarket checkout line tabloid rack. Or does it? According to Pete Pachal when it comes to the news Speed Still Matters In News, But The Prize Is No Longer The Click. Maybe there never was a prize.

Speaking of prizes. Winning isn’t everything. Unless it is. JA Westenberg reminds us that A Battle Won Is A Terrible Thing.

Rob Urie tells us Why AI Doesn’t Think, Cannot Reason, Isn’t Intelligent and Will Never Achieve Consciousness. It’s not magic.

(image from the author)

Thanks for reading. Feel free to subscribe if you want. It’s free. 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. This site does not use affilate links.

The Myth of Character

There’s nothing new under the sun

I’m a pretty good judge of character. My profession as a theatre director trained me to understand a character in a play’s dramatis personae from reading a script. I hear you. That’s life on the stage. That’s make believe.

Shutterstock 1782039683.

Here’s the secret. No character on a stage ever appeared for the first time in a play. They debuted in life and someone described them in words and brought them to theatrical life. Playwrights don’t create characters out of whole cloth. They, like poets and writers before them, write characters as they have experienced them in the real world, or borrow them from those that have written them before. We are a decidedly unoriginal species.

If you live long enough and pay attention to the world, you develop the same skills as writers and theatre directors. You quickly come to realize that there are indeed a limited number of character types around us and they are easily identifiable. There are apparently a finite number of molds we’re baked in.

Hell, dogs recognize good and bad characters much like humans. Often faster. So do children, but something happens as we mature that dulls that instinct.

Writers for the page, stage and cinema people their stories with recognizable types, not for lack of trying, but as recognition that we don’t really change that much through the ages. In the theatre trade we call these easily identifiable types “stock characters.” Stock, as in picking them down off of a shelf.

Aristophanes and Theophrastus for the Greeks, and Plautus for the Romans get most of the credit for this. Although most consider Plautus to have simply borrowed the concept. Later, Commedia dell’Arte became famous for its stock characters, and also the masks created for them. The humans behind the masks became less important to the story than the costume. That should tell you something.

Supposedly the first time the term “stock character” appeared in the English language was in the 1860’s. Other cultures had and have their own versions of stock characters. Asian and African forms of storytelling also developed their own easily recognizable familiar characters.

When it comes to literature and entertainment there haven’t been that many new characters recreated from life’s observances since antiquity. “Good” characters have a flaw or two or three. So do the “bad.” That’s what makes them human. Even the dramas written in the days of multiple gods featured those beings as flawed. Without flaws there is no conflict, no drama, no comedy.

In today’s highly charged political atmosphere, with villains currently holding winning hands here and abroad, looking for perfect characters to defeat them is a fool’s errand. And yes, there are more than plenty who fit the character mold of fool.

When a person creates a role behind a mask representing good character or one on a path of redemption, that’s an age old character trait also. Those characters always get their comeuppance in the end when the flaws are exposed. It’s only recently in the history of literature that we’ve forced happy endings that include the irredemable into the mix. It’s a sad and unfunny joke that people keep trying the trick. Audiences, like dogs, sniff it out.

When someone says a man or woman is of good character it doesn’t mean they’re perfect, pristine, or pure. We might like it to, but that’s wish casting. Flaws will always emerge. Otherwise the story generally sucks.

I wish we’d stop looking for those mythical creatures and recognize that the good and bad ones that populate our real life off the stage are just copying what came before and mirroring the life most of us lead.

(Image from mariesacha on Shutterstock)

Thanks for reading. You can subscribe to this blog if you care to. 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. This site does not use affilate links.

The End of Reading?

Let’s not make it so. At least until you read this piece.

File this one in the “Depressing If True” category. Rose Horowitch has written an excellent piece for The Atlantic entitled The End Of Reading Is Here. Yes, you read the title correctly. Unless you’ve already given up on reading you should give the piece more than just a look. If you have given up, try to remember how.

I’m not sure I’d agree completely that we’ve reached or are nearing the end point of reading, but I have to admit that we sure seem to be rushing headlong to cliff noting, bullet pointing, and summarizing everything to a point that it’s far too easy for some to break the habit and shy away from reading as a way to discover knowledge, new ideas, and well…advance ourselves and civilization while understanding from whence we came.

An excerpt:

Reading has never been natural. Humans have no innate cognitive machinery designed to string letters into words and connect them to their real-world analogues. To read, people had to repurpose regions of their brain used for speech and object recognition. The practice first emerged 6,000 years ago in Mesopotamia.

Horowitch traipses through the history of the written word hitting the high and low water marks, many easily recognizable, some not nearly as discernible, pointing to an age when Marshall McLuhan predicted we would become “post-literate.” He predicted that in 1962. She marches on from there.

The usual, and occasionally unusual, list of the enemies of writing and reading make their appearance on her march through the ages, but Horowitch lays them out, dare I say, in only the way a writer could. And yes, AI makes its appearance on that list. For it is not just reading, it’s also the writing of the words we read that is under threat.

Another excerpt:

The written word is fundamentally different from oral language. Writing detaches the message from the messenger, allowing for a more dispassionate spread of information than was possible in oral societies. Because writing a phrase takes longer than speaking it, writing forces the author to slow down and reflect. Written language tends to employ more complex sentence structures and vocabulary than spoken language. And unlike speech, it doesn’t disappear into the ether.

In her conclusion Horowitch reminds us that in our digital age we have the capability to read much more than at any point in human history.

When the Library of Alexandria disappeared, the knowledge inscribed on its scrolls was lost forever. We can only guess what else Eratosthenes and Euclid might have written. The text turned to dust. That won’t happen today; all of the words in the great library could be stored on a single computer chip. Nowadays, even the most obscure academic monographs are scanned and digitized. Google Books and the Internet Archive represent libraries of unfathomable proportions. We can navigate to them with a few keystrokes, not a perilous journey across the Mediterranean. There’s little risk of their texts succumbing to humidity or mice.

But the threat of apathy remains. What we’re losing is the ability and inclination to read those texts. An astonishing wealth of information and wisdom has been bequeathed to us. What we’ll do with this inheritance is up to us.

That makes it all a choice, does it not?

I won’t question the assumptions, nor the excellent way she has written them. I will add that if we are indeed reaching the end of reading, the logical next step is the end of thinking.

The piece is more than worth your time, should you have in the inclination to read it. I hope you do. It might actually make you think.

Sunday Morning Reading

Words, words, words…

Meaning. It means so much. So do the words that deliver it to us. But remember, there was meaning before we constructed words into language. This week’s Sunday Morning Reading comes on the final day of a weird and wacky 4th of July weekend in the U.S when an often mean Mother Nature reminded us who is really in control no matter which words we choose or manipulate to pretend we are. It was kinda fun to watch. There’s also a few interesting pieces about America’s founding, and the myths and the meaning behind it all.

Kicking it off is a short piece from JA Westenberg asking Remember When Words Had Meaning? What comes first the distortion of language or the devaluing of the culture that employs them?

Speaking of meaning, Jack Loftus gives us The U.S. Constitution Is For Simple Folk Still Burdened By The Belief That Words Have Meaning. You can argue it was always thus, but we sure do spend an awful amount of time, energy and money arguing the opposite.

In this age of WTF, it has become an accelerating trend to see pieces disemboweling many of the myths we assign to the founding of America around the 4th of July. We used to share common myths more than we did a common history, but now even the myths get mangled. So it’s no surprise when the powers that currently be toil to rewrite both. Noah Berlatsky‘s The Constitution Sucks is a good example of how we can forever flip the coin looking for the right result, ignoring the edge.

T.H. Breen takes a look at some of the too often un-heralded folks and local movements during America’s revolutionary war period in It Wasn’t Just The Founders.

John Warner offers up For The Fourth, 9 Books For Your Sense Of Patriotism, saying “I’ve come to (personally) understand patriotism as a not a fan-like allegiance to a team, but a responsibility to understand the country’s history, warts and all as we pursue the illusive promise of life, liberty and happiness for all from the Declaration.” The key is knowing we all “come” to understanding.

Will Frivolous Charges Be Brought Against Future Ex-POTUSes? That’s Okay Too by Josh Marshall offers up an excellent piece on how we can twist and morph words in a legal context that shift the ground under most mythical mountains like “no man is above the law. “

Speaking of words and meaning, the bad guys seeking to survive a legal onslaught ahead of what they fear is a political tsunami coming for them are trying to rekindle old fears about communism and socialism as their latest talking points. Not sure those old saws will cut the same way they used to, but it demonstrates just how limited the dictionary is. David Todd McCarty takes a look behind the hooting and hollering in Democratic Socialism: Keeping The Great American Experiment Alive.

And in a quasi-hysterical look at shifting meanings and changing words, Rogé Karma is wondering Why Everyone Is Suddenly Talking About ‘Universal Basic Capital’. The quasi-hysterical part is that it’s coming from the AI market masters and a few politicians substituting the word “capital” for “income” following the words “universal basic.” Language is hard. When you can say anything to get what you want.

And in another word substitution, Doc Searls suggests we shift from an “attention economy” to an “intention economy.” Check out The First Source Of Personal Intent. I’m not sure the meaning changes with the substitution.

(Image from Alexandra on Unsplash)

Thoughts Swirling On This 4th of July

Celebrate who we want to be, not who dark hearts keep reminding us we are.

The 4th of July hasn’t felt the same to me in quite some time. The country I was born in doesn’t feel the same as it once did. Yet it does. In ways I wish I could ignore. Those are obvious observations many share, I’m sure. To me they are painful ones. Very painful.

I’m not one who ever believed that this country (or any country), given the way governments and people work, was divinely founded or inspired to do what is right. Humankind is too arrogant, too selfish, and too human to think that doesn’t spill over into governing and social intercourse any more or less so than it does into any other field of endeavor. The American musicalized version of our founding is indeed powerful and seductive, but it mostly hides the sour notes, even if at times it reveals truths it often obscures.

In this last decade plus it’s become excruciating to watch centuries-old hatreds arise from wounds once thought closed and healed, unleashed by a madman able to turn others just as mad. Insidious infections have popped through the surface and festered anew, revealing that far too many have no understanding of or desire to understand the bonds we share as humans on a rock orbiting a star, divided by arbitrary borders and divisions, assuming we can somehow control the chaos we continue to create.

Yes, the Declaration of Independence broke new ground in humankind’s advance, but in our current moment, it’s challenging, bordering on disingenuous, to say it altered the course of its continuing evolution.

For those who say that this 4th of July is for celebrating our 250th anniversary as a country, I’d offer this. Kinda yes, mostly no.

The years before and immediately following the Declaration proved just how close we came to not seeing those grievances become more than bold and dangerous statements on a piece of parchment. Yes, we won the American Revolution that sprung from the Declaration. But there were as many on this continent who were quite content to remain under the rule of a king, as those who revolted against it.

The men who wrote and signed that document were willing to hang for their actions. I don’t see too many (or enough) willing to do the same today.

In the 250 years since, we’ve had other close runs at seeing it all rent asunder. The Declaration in and of itself opened a door, it didn’t build as firm a foundation as many thought and hoped, or a country. That came later.

We’re living through another close run at tearing it all down, somehow finding too many of our fellow citizens content, as many of their forbearers were, to putting their lives in the hands of a king-like ruler once again. It will take decades to overcome this era, not because rulings and laws can’t be changed. They can. Surprisingly we’re finding they are also easy enough to ignore. We’ve given new life to dark and sickened hearts that will poison not only themselves and that which they touch, but the generation or two that comes after them.

The Declaration of Independence and the country that came after were never perfect. Proving that neither are we, neither are those who preceded us, and neither will be those who will succeed us. It was actually an acknowledgment of humankind’s imperfections. It was a promise, and it was a start, following a shot heard round the world. We’re still running the race that shot started, against the same headwinds of our own making, the promise still unfulfilled.

The act of reaching the Declaration of Independence is indeed worth celebrating, even if we keep extending the play by adding repetitive acts that keep rehashing the same plot points that made it necessary.

The 4th of July is also worth celebrating for all of the Americans, past and present, who think it is still worth pushing back against those who don’t care for what it has meant, flawed in its creation or no, and only see in its imperfections and the constitution that followed years later, other tools for self aggrandizement and enrichment.

Celebrate who we want to be, not who dark hearts keep reminding us we are. Castigation is all they deserve.

A Flopping Turkey In Washington DC

Sad spectacle in Washington DC

I’ve directed a few shows in my time that were flops. Small audiences. Empty theaters. Never fun. Always embarrassing. Always a loss. We called flops and turkeys. I don’t think any of those experiences compares to the big show currently flopping in Washington DC as America tries to celebrate its 250th Anniversary under an extremely unpopular, flailing pedophile and adjudicated rapist still pretending to be president.

It’s one thing to give your all for a play or a musical and have the public not be interested, regardless of the quality of work. It’s another thing entirely to fail with egg on your face celebrating the biggest anniversary in the country’s history to date, simply because folks don’t bother to show up.

We always joked about a flop by saying the public stayed away in droves. From all of the photos and live coverage from DC, it looks like the droves are in on this joke. Oh, there are other celebrations around the country, but the public sure seems to be ignoring the big one put on by the big guy. You’d think someone so obsessed about ratings would take the hint.

The myth is that Benjamin Franklin wanted the turkey to be our national bird and not the eagle. Turns out we’ve got a real turkey of a 250th celebration on our hands. And this one is no myth.

Resilience Is Our Strength But Also Our Weakness

Time to break a few things

There are two big conversations popping around the political universe these days. Both seem to miss not only the larger point, but the stakes.

The first is how the Democratic Party is trying to still figure out what it wants to be in the wake of progressive victories in recent primaries. The centrists are appalled. The progressives are ecstatic. The people are pissed off. The politicians are clueless. This post isn’t really about that fight, only to say that it provides some context to the second.

The second conversation takes place on the larger battleground heading into the midterms and beyond. No, that’s not the inevitable mud fight between what was once the Republican Party and the clueless Democrats. It’s yet another intra-party scrap on the Dem side.

There are those who think we need to restore to what we had before. Achieve some sort of balance again. There are those, like me, that think playing that game is not only equally clueless, but is trying to pretend we can put all of the dismantling and destruction aside and find some sort of way forward in some semblance of what we used to call unity. As I said, I’m not buying into that myth. Reconstruction didn’t work the first time around. It won’t this time either.

The reconstruction and balance crowd makes a sadly profound observation about the electorate. As pissed off as most people are, the movers and shakers are counting on the resilience of the American people. Sad fact, the bad guys now in power and trying to desperately hang on to it out of fear of retribution, continue to count on that same resilience.

Resilience doesn’t always mean a stiffer spine. Many times it means hanging in and taking care of the immediate business of living day to day. When that daily struggle is the focus, it’s no surprise the bigger picture gets lost, or muddled up over passionate issues that in the larger scheme of things mean less than those that take advantage of them push like dope.

Yes, we are a resilient people. We can withstand a lot. But that resilience also makes us far too compliant, hoping that the next election, or some court decision will change things the way they always have in American politics. Those legal and civilized ways of bringing change have often, albeit slowly worked, but we’re finding that given everything that is broken, those same legal and civilized tools can be used to quash that progress at a quicker pace.

While we haven’t yet launched into a full-blown shooting Civil War, the damage that has been done since the Confederacy rose again and took over the federal government under the leadership of a Queens, New York conman and pedophile (something that strikes me as ironic and on the surface just damn funny) is in many ways just as damaging as was the end of the first Civil War, if not more so, because many of the institutions and norms that helped the Union survive have been and continue to be dismantled.

At the conclusion of that war in 1865 there was a great debate about how to handle the states and its leaders that formed the Confederacy. One side wanted retribution and punishment, the other not so much. Equal to our resilience is our capacity for compassion and our compunction to think that dark hearts can be changed. The compassionate side largely won out in an attempt to heal the nation’s wounds. Sad to say, here we are again.

The difference this time around is that on top of the fight for freedom, civil rights, and equality, we’re fighting a government that’s largely owned by a handful of billionaires. Many of which were on the other side of things not too long ago. Money talks and bullshit walks. They’ve largely made their haul, so the only reason I can see for them to continue what they’r doing is they’re also afraid of retribution.

In a brief conversation earlier today with friend David Todd McCarty after reading a new piece of his called The Quiet Truth, I remarked that his citing of the quote from Confucius about a willow that bends being stronger than the mighty oak that breaks in the storm, got me thinking. Those willows are indeed resilient. That same story appears in many cultures, proving its own resilience. But I’ve come to believe the only way out of this mess we’ve allowed ourselves to be in is going to require some breakage. Breakage that must require building something new, not restoring the old.

We made that mistake after the American Civil War. The country literally broke in two. In attempting to heal it, we proved our resilience as a people, but unfortunately left two many places for the losers to hide and lurk in the resilient reeds. They have resurfaced a few times since in our history, but have always been beaten back. Each time accepted back into the fold with that same practical compassion and resilience.

They’ve been openly enjoying breaking things. We might not enjoy it, but we need to break a few things with equal desperation and energy, before too much more is broken.

(Image from Halinskyi Max on Shutterstock)

Sunday Morning Reading

Comings and goings as life goes on.

It’s a Sunday, so it’s time for a little Sunday Morning Reading. As usual, I’m sharing a collection of links and once again they somehow touch one upon another. Funny how that happens. Some point to big issues. Some about the comings and goings of life. Some about its shifts. Take a look. Take a read. Happiness is a choice.

a bronze statue depicting a young boy sitting on a stone ledge and reading a book. He sits cross-legged, leaning slightly forward, with a large open book resting on his lap. Perched on the open page of the book is a small, detailed bronze bird looking back toward him. The boy's right arm rests on a stack of four large bronze books piled beside him on the stone ledge.

David Todd McCarty’s On Being Good At Life talks about abandoning the quest of success, fame, fortune, and just being better at life. Deciding how one defines life is always the first obstacle.

If you read one piece among those shared this week, read Josh Marshall’s Google, AI, Oligarchy and the End of the ‘Open Web’. I’ve been writing about Google’s recent moves and how they will change the web as we know it. Josh nails it better than I ever did. Some think we’re ready for this. I’m not one of those.

We lost a one of the good ones this week when Om Malik died. By all accounts a great human being and a giant in tech for so many years in so many spheres. Om’s writing has been featured in this column many times. As a human he was so much more than just his achievements. Two great pieces about Om that you should take the time to read. John Gruber’s simply titled Om, and Mathew Ingram’s Om Malik 1966-2026. Sail on, good sir.

Tom Wellborn takes a look at The Art of the Fail. You can guess his target. You should read his piece.

JA Westenberg takes on the pursuit of optimization and the cult of the extreme in The Extreme Is The Easy Way Out. Choosing a middle path is also not necessarily easy.

Mike Masnick tells us How The Internet Became A Tool For Domination and Control Instead of Liberation. Joke’s on us. I’m not laughing.

Ken White’s not laughing either. Or maybe he is. There’s always some kind of fracas happening in social media, regardless of the platform. When you step back, it’s weird that we designed something to explode and exploit that kind of chaos. Weirder still that we think we can control what people say or social media or anywhere else by banning them. Ken White of PopeHat fame was recently suspended from Bluesky and writes about his thoughts in A Bit of Tedious Drama At Bluesky. The piece is much more than just about those circumstances and worth your time. You are what you think and say. Ken defines it well.

A tip of the hat to Dwight Silverman who’s retiring (again) after a terrfic career writing about tech. I have always enjoyed Dwight’s work because he kept the focus of his tech adventures on the user, while having a firm grasp of the bigger picture. Check out The Grand Finale (for real this time): My 30+ year column ends, It’s exit heralded by AI, and also his thoughts about his retiring on his personal blog. I’m guessing (and hoping) we haven’t seen the last of what Dwight has to say.

More Thoughts On Apple’s Price Increases: The AI Tax

The AI Tax is about more than the cost of a computer

Now that the dust is settling a bit after Apple unsurprisingly announced price increases across its hardware lineup, I have to say that I’m quite bemused to see the pocket book hit being called the AI Tax.

I wasn’t clever enough to use that descriptor when I posted about the news shortly after the announcement, but I had been paying enough attention to immediately point the finger of blame at the costs associated with Artificial Intelligence. I think Jonny Evans was the first to coin the phrase AI Tax. For what it’s worth, I hope the phrase AI Tax sticks. Sticks hard and deep. And twists the knife. Because it’s going to affect much more than just the cost of MacBooks, iPads, Apple TVs, and other gear designed in California.

While other tech companies had already started raising prices due to the AI Tax, (talk to anyone in the gaming market) Apple’s announcement is one that brought real shivers and shakes to consumers, the stock market, and boardrooms around the globe. Whether mostly myth or prescient business practices, Apple’s reputation for being ahead of the curve when it comes to purchasing large supplies of chips to withstand market pressures is and was such that tech companies in other sectors often found themselves facing sold out inventories or higher prices when it came time to make their orders. The “Apple Tax” extended far beyond the high cost of Apple products.

That rep and Apple’s stock took a dive on the news. Apple recorded its second biggest market drop in its history, dragging the NASDAQ down with it. Heading into the weekend there’s consternation brewing about all of the chip releated businesses going forward. (Hint: that’s most businesses these days.) But then again, the stock market is not much more than a wild ride in an aging prediction market, so who knows how that will unfold as a holiday week begins on Monday.

Word came via The Financial Times Friday night that Tim Cook was calling in some chits on chips with the Trump administration, attempting to circumvent chip bans balled up in the trade war to and fro with China. If successful, that would allow Apple to buy banned chips that the Pentagon is hesitant about, given that they are built by state controlled Chinese companies. According to the report this lobbying had been going on for a month or so prior to Cook’s first warning a week before the price hike announcement on Thursday.

The timing hints at a bit of public hardball lobbying from Apple. (Note that the price increase announcement wasn’t a Friday news dump after the market closed. However, The Financial Times article came after no known action from the administration post Apple’s announcement.) Shake the markets and try to wrest the attention of the administration fighting losing battles of its own making with bodies of water in the Middle East and in its own backyard. I’m almost surprised Apple hasn’t been called a vandal yet.

As I said earlier, this is going to have far reaching implications beyond the consumer gadget markets. Chip capacity has to increase, or the demand for higher bandwidth memory has to decrease before any of the predictions that this will subside in a few years. (There’s a good read on this from Imran Valiani here.) On the current trajectory, fueled by still increasing hype to combat building blowback, I don’t see that timeline materializing. This news might bobble the bubble, but I don’t think it’s ready to pop.

Costs are going to rise across the board. It’s not just consumers that purchase computers who will take the hit. And it’s not just the purchase of computers that will drive an inflationary spiral. Yep, that’s the I-word that no one likes to hear, especially politicians. Everything is a computer these days, or at least has some form of chip in it. And, in my opinion, too many companies have jumped on the AI bandwagon far too soon to understand the long term ramificatinos. All of those costs will be passed down the line to consumer pocket books.

I also don’t think we’re going to see these price pressures subside to pre-AI Tax levels. I’m old enough to remember when new cars used to have price ranges well below $5,000. That obviously makes me prehistoric, but I can remember watching The Price is Right featuring cars as the grand prize with contestants guaranteeing at least their first guess was accurate by chosing the number two for cars that would be priced at $2995. That’s a memory that doesn’t require a chip. Although streaming those old shows does.

Like it or not, Apple’s success since the launch of the iPhone, has been a key piece of U.S and global economic growth with much of the tech sector following along and prospering in its wake. Apple’s recent announcements are probably one day going to be viewed as just as big a marker going forward as the release of that first iPhone.

It feels to me that we’re entering into a price curve trajectory for computing on all levels that will follow a similar trajectory as the automobile market. The financial markets will find ways to love it as financing will become a key driver to cover costs while the markets get used to price points for signature hardware starting much higher than the $1000 price point today. There’s got to be a way for the bankers to cover all of the borrowing associated with the build out of data centers.

Over the years the myths of Apple being doomed have largely been just that. Myths. Apple always found a way. This turbulence probably won’t change that. But the AI Tax will change things for all of us in ways that we’re just beginning to understand. Inept global political and corporate leadership easily taken advantage of by hype-masters and hucksters have paved the way to this moment.

And all of this for a still largely unproven technology.

Trump’s Name Finally Comes Off The Kennedy Center

May his named be erased from so much more.

Well, that happened. Finally. Trump’s desecrating name was finally removed from The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts after a judge ruled to make it so.

Photo of worker removing Donald Trump's name from the Kennedy Center by AP photographer Cliff Owen

It took a while, thanks to some legal cry-babying from Trump’s legal bunglers trying to soothe his injured and fragile ego. The act didn’t quite meet the June 12th deadline, but eventually under the cover of darkness and behind a curtain, the name came down after the public, via live streams on the Internet, got lessons in erecting scaffolding. The photo above was captured by Cliff Owen of the Associated Press and so far is the only one I’ve seen with a worker’s hands removing one of the letters.

The Kennedy Center has told the judge that all references to name have been removed from the building, website, and printed materials.

Of course the pedophile-in-chief’s name should have never been put there in the first place. It was a perversion. The removal is a small victory. Even if largely symbolic in a wellspring of atrocities. There’s no telling how long it will take to rebuild the damage he’s done to the Kennedy Center as an institution and the rest of what he’s destroyed.

But it is a bright moment in all of the darkness and hopefully breeds more anger and anticipation for ripping to shreds any of the other atrocious marks this less than human, but very real human monstrosity has visited on all of us.

The facade certainly looks better.

As Neil Steinberg of the Chicago Sun-Times reminds us:

I want to live long enough to dance in the street when that happens. Let there be bonfires to light the night skies.

Update: The photo above of the facade with Trump’s name removed is from pre-Trump days. Apparently the tarp that covered the removal is still there and may be for some time.