History – Life on the Wicked Stage: Act 3

Sunday Morning Reading

Searching for normal in abnormal places

Time for a little Sunday Morning Reading. Sharing good writing is a normal thing to do. Maybe that’s abnormal. Don’t know. Don’t care. Defining normal is a tricky subjective thing. But then trying to define most things these days feels, well…almsot abnormal.

Just be normal. Is that a “new normal” or last week’s “old normal?” Do we crave normality? Does it matter? Normally, I’d have more to say, but instead check out JA Westenberg’s Just Be Normal About Things.

Mathew Ingram takes on the subject of consciousness, one of the latest discussions bopping around the bits and bytes surrounding AI, with his piece, Is Atlantic Writer Ted Chiang Conscious? How Do We Know? If you ask me, that fact that this is being discussed calls whatever the idea of consciousness is into question. Doesn’t feel normal. For that matter doesn’t feel abnormal either. Just weird.

Mike Masnick states the obvious in CEOs Who Think AI Replaces Their Employees Are Just Bad CEOs.

David Todd McCarty calls his piece The Slow News Moment. I like his description better. “How we became terrorized by the 24-hour news cycle and what we might do to combat the charade of exigency.” Perhaps less is more normal.

“We are being robbed by the worst people in the world,” says Kelly Hayes in The Heist State. Spot on, given that blatant thievery is the new normal these days.

Everywhere you look life is a scam. That is indeed far too normal. Neil Steinberg takes on one that targeted him and other writers in We Love Your Book! Now Give Us Money. Funny stuff.

Protect The Weird, Slow and Inefficient. Natasha MH thinks AI might one day become as invisible a tool to the process of writing as the typewriter did in its day. But look again. The tools don’t matter as much as the desire.

(Image from Justin Simmonds on Unsplash.)

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.

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.

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.

Sunday Morning Reading

The art of dancing on the line that separates and defines humanity

It was a good week for reading good writing. It’s a better week for sharing what popped up. A variety of topics, spanning art and the making and selling of it, technology — which these days is more about the selling than the tech — the humanity, or lack thereof, behind it all, and…well to continue a list would sell it all short. Here’s hoping you enjoy the links shared in today’s Sunday Morning Reading as much as I enjoy sharing them. Yia Mas!

An overhead, first-person perspective shows a person lying on their back on a teal couch, holding open a large book to read. The person's head is closest to the foreground, with long, blonde-streaked hair spilling downward. They are wearing a deep maroon, long-sleeved sweater and light grey sweatpants. Image from Matias north v8DSLoY80Xk unsplash.

Om Malik wrote one of the best things I’ve read in quite some time. We Are Living In Pinocchio’s World is about lying. It’s about AI. It’s about a pen. But it’s about so much more.

Cory Doctorow’s Refining Humanity takes on our propensity for explanation, personhood for machines, and that line we seem to want to dance with defining just what makes us human in the midst of it all.

Meanwhile Martyn Berlin of Martyn’s Random Musings finds himself an outcast in To Have A Moral Stance On AI Is To Be An Outcast, And It Sucks.

At what cost art? Natasha MH wonders and writes about it in Sold At A Premium. At what cost, anything?

Mike Masnick thinks it’s not about whether technology is inherently good or bad, liberating or oppressive. You could argue the same could be said about most aspects of human endeavor. But then that’s the point. Tech is just another in a long line. Check out Enshittification, Despotification, And The Open Internet.

“The only conviction worth having is the kind you could lose tomorrow and survive it.” JA Westenberg warns us not to take a pill, regardless of color in Be Thou Not Pilled.

Mathew Ingram wonders Have Investors In AI Companies Lost Their Minds? I’m not sure we can call them investors any more. As to their minds? No comment.

Two interesting takes on what’s going on the business of making movies in Hollywood that occasionally and almost accidentally is about making art. M.G. Siegler talks about how YouTube Beats AI To Disrupting Hollywood. Meanwhile Sonny Bunch takes a look at The Thoughtlessness of AI Filmmaking.

Word came down this week that a restaurant was finally going to fill one of the retail spaces in the Trump Tower in Chicago, after they had all sat empty for seventeen years. Neil Steinberg asks Will Chicago Happily Eat Dolmades And Drink Roditis In Trump Tower?

To close, click through the popover on John Gruber’s post This Is A Dickover, and give the post a read. You know what a Dickover is. Now you have a name for it.

(Image from Matias North on Unsplash)

Sunday Morning Reading

Wandering through the Internet, disregarding along the way

We live in interesting times. I’m spending a lot of my time being interested in watching my grandkids develop, and watching everything around how I thought they might grow up change. In my opinion, change not necessarily for the better. They won’t know what things changed from necessarily, unless they choose to look into it. That assumes they’ll be able to do so the way we can now. I have my doubts about that. Regardless, that’s tomorrow. Here are some links to share in this edition of Sunday Morning Reading.

A close-up photograph captures a bronze statue of a young boy sitting on a stone bench outdoors, absorbed in reading a book.

Terry Godier says the Internet is dying. I’m not sure if it’s dying, morphing, collapsing in on itself, or just in the midst of growing pains, but I take the point. Check out The Boring Internet. (That’s a link to the text version. There’s also an animated version here. Quite nicely done.

JA Westenberg believes Nobody Is Destined For Greatness. I happen to agree. Shakespeare gave his greatest comic villain, Malvolio, lines about being born great. I wish I could label our current day villains as comic. Perhaps one day.

Derek Sivers reminds us that Geography Is Four-Dimensional. How true. There’s a reason Shakespeare more often than not capitalized the word “Time.”

Stories about religion occasionally get shared here. Mostly they are stories about how it’s really not religion, but a cover for grift and abuse. This is one of those. He Remade The Southern Baptist Convention In His Image. Then Came The Abuse Allegations by Robert Downen chronicles yet another of those tales we seem to hear far too frequently these days.

For another take involving religion, check out Neil Steinberg’s Being Formed By Christians Does Not A Christian Make. He quotes Thomas Jefferson’s “It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.” I’m not sure we can say either of those things any more.

There was a bit of a funny fracas after Google’s all in on AI announcements this week at its annual I/O conference. Apparently for a short time after Google announced big changes to Search, you could not Google the word “disregard” and expect the usual quick definition. Google quickly fixed that. The root of the problem? “Disregard” is an AI command that you have to put in a prompt to keep the AI demons from you know, making a mistake. Check out Russell Brandom’s quick story, You Can No Longer Google the Word ‘Disregard.’

Speaking of Artificial Intelligence, the talk is all about agents. (Actually that’s been the talk for a while, the volume is just increasing.) Hayden Field thinks If Google Can’t Make AI Agents Useful, Maybe No One Can. FWIW, I think Hayden is spot on.

In an article The Economist credits as anonymous, someone thinks Vladimir Putin Is Losing His Grip On Russia. Perhaps that’s true. I don’t know about you, but I’m as tired of hearing about autocratic oligarchs losing their grip as I am about hearing all of the promises about generative AI and autonomous driving being just around the corner.

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.

Sunday Morning Reading

Looking beyond and beneath the words on the page

Good writing is good writing. But underneath the surface or the subject matter of good writing, you find subtext, perhaps buried, that surprises beyond the words on the page, the summaries, and the top lines that often reduce more than broaden. That’s the case with this week’s edition of Sunday Morning Reading. Read on, dig beneath, and enjoy.

An over-the-shoulder view of a bronze statue depicting a young person with short hair sitting on a stone bench and reading a large open book. A small bronze bird is perched on the top right corner of the book's pages. The statue is situated outdoors in a paved park area with grass visible in the background.

First up, is a piece by film critic Sonny Bunch, discussing The Weird Right-Wing Freakout Over ‘They Odyssey’ Yes, it’s about casting and race and history and myths and all those things. On the surface a tired argument. Dig below the controversy, and you might find a morsel or two worth chewing on, but in reality only being upset about if you believe in exercising or conjuring demons through outrage. Maybe someday we’ll all eventually end up back where we started from. But like Odysseus, the homecoming might feel as hazardous as the journey we’re putting ourselves through to get there.

Things are certainly screwed up in U.S. Politics, but we’re not alone. In fact, we’ve got more than enough company. Great Britain is having its moment as well. Ian Dunt’s piece There Is A Light That Never Goes Out is one heckuva piece of writing that beneath the stormy surface of British politics, points to the problems far and wide and far below, regardless of what flag your ship might be flying when it sinks.

The trial between Elon Musk and Sam Altman over OpenAI and whatever the hell all of that means, sounds like a circus where the clowns won’t leave the center ring. M.G. Siegler takes a look at some of the shenanigans in Take Me Down To The “Amateur City.”

Rex Reed was, if nothing else, a show into and of himself as a film critic. I always found him both entertaining and I occasionally agreed with his acerbic criticism. For better or worse he set a standard that presaged much of what passes for criticism today. He passed away this week. Merin Curotto has written quite a remembrance piece that’s so much more than about the one man. The Rex Reed I Knew (1938-2026) is worth a read even if you weren’t a fan or don’t have any sense of who Rex Reed was.

Alessandra Ram explores what happens when you might be married to a man who is smitten with AI in Meet The Sad Wives Of AI. I think this could also apply across any way the genders choose to partner. I’m sure there’s a promise out there somewhere that AI will fix all of this. Right?

Chicago baseball is having a moment with both of its major league teams doing reasonably well and playing each other in the Crosstown Classic. There were and are great expectations for the Chicago Cubs, not so much for the Chicago White Sox, which is why the exciting level of play on the South Side is capturing some of the North Siders glow. In the midst of all of that, this week marked the passing of Sam Sianis, the legendary owner of the Billy Goat Tavern, who placed a curse on the Chicago Cubs back in 1945 when the owner wouldn’t let him bring his goat into the stadium. Paul Sullivan has a great write up on the history, the myths, and the lore. Check out Sam Sianis And The Curse Of The Billy Goat Remind Chicago Fans Why We Love Baseball And It’s Myths.

When you do look beneath the surface of a moment, a life, an obituary, or perhaps even the remains of what’s left, sometimes you find more than you might have imagined. Archaeologists Find Egyptian Mummy Buried With The ‘Iliad’ by Franz Lidz tells such a tale. Homer says, “the sort of words a man says is the sort he hears in return.”

I’ll add, the sort one reads to that as well.

(Photo by the author)

Sunday Morning Reading

Sometimes a pear is just a pear.

Another Sunday dawns, so it must be time for Sunday Morning Reading. An interesting collection of pieces to share this week. On one hand it seems like any other week. On the other, this week’s edition offers a few nuggets worth chewing on. Don’t over think it. Enjoy.

Leading off, I’m highlighting an excellent series from The Baffler called The Profession That Does Not Exist. The Baffler bills itself as “America’s leading voice of incisive and unconventional left-wing criticism”, for what that’s worth. I find it an excellent source of good writing. Each of the pieces in the series that has the subhead “writing won’t make you a living”, is worth your time, but I’ll highlight two.

A Pear Is Just A Pear by Timmy Straw. Making your way in a crazy world you can find that sometimes a pear is just that. A pear.

Bertrand Cooper’s ISpyForGood recounts his experience as a social media investigator, a job that allowed the possibility of stepping out of poverty that entailed examining how others often scammed their ways to do the same.

Apparently the ruling class in Silicon Valley are worried that folks don’t take too kindly to their products or their ruling. David Wallace-Wells takes a look in A.I. Populism Is Here. And No One Is Ready. I guess when you threaten to turn the world upside down folks do get a bit antsy.

Open your arms and wave at just about anything happening around and to us and you can’t miss the obvious. Tom Wellborn takes it all on in The Frequency At Which Accountability Cannot Reach. Sometimes a pear is just a pear.

JA Westenberg says Outrage Is Letting Someone Else Set The Frame. Westenberg also offers up The War Between Fast And Legitimate Is Here. I suggest getting out of these messes we’re in calls for new frames or new acceptance of coloring outside the lines. Oh, wait. All the lines have been blurred.

James O’Sullivan thinks We’ll Soon Find Out What Is Truly Special About Human Writing. I suggest we’ll “rediscover” rather than finding out, but his point is spot on.

Meanwhile, Will Gottsegen says Sam Altman Wants To Know Whether You’re Human. It appears Altman and his ilk are looking at the problem through the wrong end of a telescope at a tiny mirror reflecting back.

On another front, Marianne Dhenin takes a look at The Small Wisconsin City That Defeated A Giant Data Center. I don’t think the robots will ever be able to muster this kind of civil action.

You, like I, may be overly tired of hearing anything having to do with the Epstein Files. Even so, I encourage you to take a look at this excellent piece from Gabrielle Glancy. I Grew Up With Epstein In Brooklyn. Our Neighborhood Held Dark Secrets not only tells a tale that should frighten, but one that I guess more might share than most ever want to acknowledge.

Happy Mother’s Day to all our mothers out there and all to come. Sometimes a pear is just a pear.

(Image from Tijana Drndarski on Unsplash)

Civil War Revisited

Hard times have come again

Twice a week, every week, I post the following on social media.

A Mastodon post from Warner Crocker that says, Your twice, now continuing, weekly reminder that we're still in a Civil War.

Set aside for the moment the arguments that some toss back at me that we’re not in a Civil War because we’re not fighting with guns and bullets. I find that argument naive, even if there’s a degree of truth about it. That said, it’s my contention that much of what we’ve been living through for the last decade is not only a continuation of the American Civil War that we thought ended in 1865, but an out in the open fight over the same issues. Denying that, I do find naive.

Yes, it’s about race, and yes, it’s also about so much more. But so was that conflict that’s bubbled and boiled since the founding of this country that finally spilled over into a conflagration at a time that men thought was the only way to solve that large of a disagreement. The question may have been called on the battlefields, but the larger questions were never settled.

I do find it ironic that a New York hustler and pedophile is leading the South’s charge this time around. The South could never rise again on its own, it appears.

But then as playwright Lanford Wilson says in his play, Talley’s Folly,

…there is New York City, isolated neighborhoods in Boston, and believe me, the rest is all the South.

The recent U.S. Supreme Court decision, Callais v. Lousiana, essentially dismantling the Voting Rights Act of 1965 by declaring that we’re so over racism that we don’t need voting rights protections any longer has ratcheted up the fight and placed it squarely in the halls of state capitals. Given how the U.S. Congress has abrogated any real responsibility on and off for generations, it seems fitting and also ironic that the power will now reside in the states.

The new battlefields in those state capitals are all about redistricting and gerrymandering with states rushing into special sessions to cut out voters of one party or the other in some meaningless attempt to control who has the majority in that same inept U.S. Congress. I say meaningless, because that’s body that has essentially fought back and forth on this since the fighting ended in 1865.

However any and all of these redistricting battles turn out, and given the current number of states controlled by the forces that somehow still call themselves Republicans, what happens in Washington DC will be pre-ordained long before the swearing in of each new Congress takes place.

As long as states can continue to fight using political cartographers and gerrymandering pens as their weapons of choice, things might ebb and flow a bit, but not enough to radically alter the picture or turn back the clock for at least a couple of generations.

Of all of the terrible things that have happened since 2016, I think this just might be the worst of it. I hope I’m wrong. I doubt I am. Stephen Foster’s 1854 song that pleaded for relief, Hard Times Come Again No More, might just become popular again.

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.

Artists Show The Way With Guerrilla Art In DC

Tell the stories

I’ve been attempting to hightlight artists that are standing and speaking up against the trauma being visited on us by the Trump regime, so this piece is worth pointing out even if it is in The Washington Post.

Image 4-22-26 at 16.21.png

Phillip Kennicott writes that Guerrilla Art Is Flourishing In Trump’s Washington. He highlights several artists and their efforts.

One day artists will tell the story of what we’re living through,including the artists standing up and using their art to speak out in the moment.

For those upset at The Washington Post’s complicity in these traumatic times, the link above is from the web archive.

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 Wrecking Ball Comes For The Theatre Building

End of an era

A friend and fellow theatre professional, Walter Stearns, took this sad photo today. It marks the end of an era, the end of a theatre (multiple ones under one roof), and the closing of a chapter in my life.

The Theatre Building, later Stage 773, and even later WHIM, has finally come under the wrecking ball.

If you were a theatre practitioner in any of its disciplines, I’m betting you worked on one of its three stages. Big name stars worked there before they were big names, just like many others less famous doing their thing.

If you think of what has become known as Chicago theatre, The Theatre Building was one of the venues that made theatre in Chicago, Chicago Theatre. I was privileged to produce and direct shows on each of those three stages, was a tenant, worked on staff for a period of time, and helped manage a major renovation in the 90’s.

We’ve known this has been coming for a while now, but seeing this photo of the demolition sharply marks the end. The site of so much theatre magic and home to so many Chicago theatre companies will now be developed into residential units.

Here’s a link to a Chicago Tribune article from last summer announcing the impending final curtain.

I’d take a drive by today, but feel I would be too emotional. Instead I’ll commiserate with some theatre friends tonight when we see Walter’s latest show in another part of town.

Sad day for many.

Sunday Morning Reading

A basket of good writing to share

For those who celebrate Easter and Passover, and all who do not celebrate either, may you find some bit of peace on this Sunday morning, however you see yourself and the world. I’d like to say this week’s edition of Sunday Morning Reading is filled with Easter eggs, but instead it’s just the usual basket stuffed with links to interesting topics and stories that I like to share. Enjoy.

It’s good to be seen, certainly the way you see yourself. When seen by someone who doesn’t know you, that’s eye-opening. Check out Natasha MH’s The Taxi Driver Knew.

The war that isn’t a war in Iran continues. Whatever that story is, it is still being written. Given that this might be heading to the culmination of a conflict that has simmered, and occasionally boiled over, for decades if not longer, there are a few stories out there that offer preface. He Helped Stop Iran From Getting The Bomb by David D. Kirkpatrick is one worth reading.

JA Westenberg’s The “Passive Income” Trap Ate A Generation of Entrepreneurs is also one heckuva a read. There’s nothing passive about this take.

Seva Gunitsky takes on The Incel Global Order. Somebody needs to.

As the technology we use advances, in some spheres some are stepping back. Joshua Cohen takes a look in Sweden Goes Back To Basics, Swapping Screens For Books In The Classroom.

Social Media is under the microscope again after two recent court verdicts against Meta. Chris Castle takes a look with The Social Media Verdicts Are In. Now Ask The Hard Question: Where Was The Board? Counting the money, I imagine. Hat tip to Stan Stewart for this one.

In the category of no easy answers, Mathew Ingram also examines what’s going on in social media with Social Media May Be Bad For You But The Remedy Could Be Worse.

On the Artificial Intelligence front there are always interesting topics cooking as the AI purveyors cook the planet. I wrote about two fascinating pieces yesterday, and today I’m highlighting Angela Fu’s An AI Company Set Out To Fix News Deserts. Instead, It Copied Local Journalists Work. Something tells me we’re going to be seeing more of this going forward.

Apple is, I assume, winding up its week celebrating its 50th Anniversary. So much has been written on that topic because there is indeed much to celebrate and much history to contemplate while looking ahead. Here are four pieces that caught my eye, the first three primarily because they are more personal than historical, the fourth is a look ahead.

John Moltz gives us Missed Connections: Me and Apple.

James Thomson is one of my favorite Apple developers. His Apple At 50: Gonna Be, Gonna Be Golden is indeed a personal journey.

Adam and Tonya Engst have been writing Tidbits since 1990. I started reading it shortly thereafter. What Apple’s 50th Anniversary Misses is certainly different than most, but one that mirrors the thoughts of many on this anniversary.

And Marco Arment, looking ahead, has penned A Letter To John Ternus, the guy everyone assumes will don the CEO mantle in the future.

Baseball is back. And every team and their fans are dreaming of a championship. David Todd McCarty spins a bit of fiction that’s baseball adjacent, but rooted deep in dreams in The Taste Of A Dream.

To conclude this week, this story by Audrey Pachuta very much sums up the contradictions we’re living through at the moment. Check out A Student Set A Goal To Run Every Street In Chicago And Inspired A City. Now He Must Leave The Country.

May you find peace however you can.

(Photo from the author.)