History – Page 8 – Life on the Wicked Stage: Act 3

When ‘Shock and Awe’ Turns Into ‘Aw Shit’

Put on your waders. Shit’s getting deep.

Shock and Awe! Shock and Awe! Yes, we’re all shocked but I think there’s more of an “Aw Shit” response than there is any real ‘awe.’ At least I hope so. If that’s not the reaction, then you’ve been holed up like a groundhog or in some fantasy of your own creation for far too long. 847a798f f09a 4cfe aa65 e19a439daf13_w1080_r0_s.jpg.

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Of course I’m referring to all of the insane stunts that are happening during these early days of the end of the American Experiment. Don’t blowback on the use of the word “stunts.” People get hurt doing stunt work all the time. Some have died. Both are going to happen at some point in our future. But make no mistake, these “shock and awe” stunts are literally intended to do real harm while overwhelming any attempt to impede them. It’s designed to create chaos. Sadly, it’s working. To say the Democrats are in disarray is to spit out a bad cliché like a rotten sunflower seed. To say whatever used to be the GOP has surrendered everything except their daughters to Trump is also old news. That last part might also be premature. To say the fourth estate is complicit misses the point completely. Ask yourself where the cameras were during all of Elon Musk’s frat boy takeovers this weekend. Perhaps if a plane had crashed into the Treasury building they would have been there. To say the oligarchs and tech bros are the real winners is watching a trailer for a comedy action thriller that leaves out the spoiler in which everybody dies in the end. Josh Marshall has two good pieces about this that are worth reading here and here. They both reveal that we’re cascading down a series of rapids, without a paddle, heading towards a waterfall without a life preserver. One line stands out “The point is that you do ‘shock and awe’ when you don’t actually have the power to pull the job off.” He’s mostly correct there, leaving out only the important part about also having the smarts. Just remember how shocked and awed we were when the bombs dropped in Baghdad. Also remember how much of a shit show we turned that into. You can 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.

Sunday Morning Reading

Bogus science, finance, politics, and tech dominate this Groundhog Day edition of Sunday Morning Reading.

Here we go again. If it feels like Groundhog Day that’s because it is. Happens every year, but the things going on in this country feel very similar to, yet even more dangerous, than they did eight years ago. It’s a movie we don’t want to revisit, but are living through. Live through it we must. Enjoy today’s Sunday Morning Reading while we try to avoid repeating the same mistakes, or at least dodging them.

With trade wars now needlessly underway most of the big news ahead this week will be in the financial markets. John Lanchester has an excellent piece with excellent context about finance and what he calls “its grotesquely outsize role in the way we live now” in For Every Winner A Loser. Meanwhile as the world focuses on trade wars, Elon Musk and who knows who else is rampaging through the federal government in ways that sound more than illegal. Josh Marshall asks Who Can Stop Elon’s ‘Team’ Wilding Its Way Through The Federal Government? I don’t often link to Wall Street Journal pieces in this column unless they are about tech related topics. This one by The Editorial Board is worth a read and definitely worth the headline: The Dumbest Trade War In History. Seems like Murdoch and his scribes got what they wished for. Again. On the tech front, running parallel to our political misfortunes is a river of thought on Artificial Intelligence, most of it negative these days, but also thoughtful. Alex Kirshner interviews Ed Zitron and came away with One Of Big Tech’s Angriest Critics Explains The Problem. Audrey Watters tackles the issue and says “In this AI future, there is no accountability. There is no privacy. There is no public education. There is no democracy. AI is the antithesis of all of this.” I fear she’s correct. Check out AI Foreclosure for her piece, but also the excellent collection of links on the subject she provides. Whether it’s the science of tech or the science of finance, there’s science. We ignore it at our peril. But what happens if some of the science is bogus? Frederick Joelving, Cyril Labbé, and Guillaume Cabanac tell us that Bogus Research Is Undermining Good Science, Slowing Lifesaving Research. In this day and age going viral is the equivalent of getting that infamous 15 minutes of fame. Both are fleeting. Joan Westenberg says Trust Me. You Don’t Want To Go Viral. NatashaMH writes about a woman finding meaning in memoirs in Drowning In Sobriety. And, as we enter Black History Month in the U.S., check out Deborah W. Parker’s piece on Belle da Costa Greene in The Black Librarian Who Rewrote The Rules Of Power, Gender and Passing As White. 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. You can also find more of my writings on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. You can also find me on social networks under my own name.

This Is A Must See: QuestLove’s Video Tease of 50 Years of SNL Music

One helluva a teaser for the retrospective of 50 years of SNL music.

Hands down. Stand up. Let your head spin. This Questlove video mix of 50 Years of SNL Music is a must watch for fans, non-fans, or anyone who has a heartbeat.

The clip above teases the upcoming Ladies & Gentlemen…50 Years of S.N.L Music airing on January 27th. If you’re not teased I don’t know what else could do that for you. As if the memories of the performances in this tease aren’t enough, the editing is something to be in awe of.

Just sit back. Watch it. I’ve archived it everywhere I could. You should too. I’m looking forward to the full show. How could you not be?

Then New York Times has a write up on the piece and interview with Ahmir Light (Questlove) by Alan Light you might also want to check out.

FYI: You may have to find the video on YouTube. The Watch on YouTube link above appears to work sometimes and others note.

You can 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.

Sunday Morning Reading

Good reading and good writing is just a heartbeat away in this week’s Sunday Morning Reading

What do Aristotle, Katherine Hepburn, Garth Hudson, beautiful minds, and ugly hearts have in common? They all make an appearance in this week’s Sunday Morning Reading. Or at least writers doing their thing and writing about them do.

Hearts can be ugly things, yet they draw our poets, songwriters, and story tellers like moths to a flame. NatashaMH flutters around the heat in The Beautiful Mind Of An Ugly Heart. Speaking of ugly hearts, quite a few of them are on appearing on shirt sleeves alongside all the chest thumping and Nazi salutes going on here in the U.S (and elsewhere). We’re only a week into the victory laps and lapses of humility, yet already writers are wearing out keyboards with words of resistance. Ian Dunt has penned How To Resist The Tech Overlords. In this new and hot category of writing, let’s hope none of this seems like fiction down the road. Another way to resist the tech overlords is to just say no when they overreach. Microsoft overstepped by raising everyone’s Office 365 subscription prices on the inclusion, wanted or not, of its Microsoft 366 Copilot AI features. There’s a way to avoid the price hike written up by Mark Hachman on PC World. You might want to check that out. For a good read on the entire Microsoft situation, Ed Bott chronicles the story of Microsoft’s latest AI unintelligent move in The Microsoft 365 Copilot Launch Was A Total Disaster. Meanwhile the Chinese might have found a way to fight the AI money grab and spend long before we reach the cash out stage. Zeyi Yang lays it out in How Chinese AI Startup DeepSeek Made A Model That Rivals OpenAI. The sexy stories about TikTok might be taking a back seat to this one. Alex Himelfarb tells us The Politics of “Common Sense” Is Making Us Meaner. He’s right. Joan Westenberg takes it all on in Clash: Power, Greed, And The Fight For a Fair Future. If you’re concerned about what the tech side of all of these moments of madness we’re living through might mean, remember it’s not the tech and it is. Check out Nina Metz’s review of the Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy flick Desk Set. As Ms. Metz puts it, This Movie With Katherine Hepburn And Spencer Tracy Anticipated Anxieties About The Internet And AI. Oh, also check out the flick. You won’t be sorry. There really is nothing new under the sun, including cribbing and cropping from the work of others. Massimo Pugliucci takes a look at Ayn Rand’s Objectivist theories and her claims to be influenced by Aristotle. As he puts it well, “one can hardly imagine what possible points of contact the two might have.” Take a look at On Ayn Rand and Aristotle. These are indeed challenging times and often they feel quite dark. Alexander Verbeek gives us the always needed reminder that When Darkness Returns, Art Exists. And on that note, and since we lost one of the greatest musical artists of my generation, Garth Hudson, this week, Check out Amanda Petrusich’s Remembering Garth Hudson, The Man Who Transformed The Band. Remember many of Hudson’s and The Band’s creations came in another turbulent era in our history. A beautiful musician and beautiful mind. 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. You can also find more of my writings on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. You can also find me on social networks under my own name.

Bible Thumping, Baptisms, Softball and Preachers’s Daughters

Putting the pit in the pulpit.

These days religion ain’t old time and it’s a gimme that too much of it is departing from anything I’d call spiritual. Shutterstock 1765366676.

I wrote a bit on my thoughts and some of mh history walking down and away from church aisles that formed those thoughts in the publication Ellemeno on Medium. The piece is called Whatever Gets You Through The Night. Yes, you can thank John Lennon for the title, actually you can thank John Lennon’s inspiration for the title, the Reverend Ike as well. As I say in the piece:

The rules matter until they don’t. The stories matter until they don’t. The questions always matter. Especially the ones we can’t answer.

I hope you check out Whatever Gets You Through The Night. You can 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.

Add ‘Good Night and Good Luck’ To Your Streaming Cue

Worth a watch or a re-watch.

Last night after a rough, though totally not surprising day, I posted the following on social media:

Certainly it was how I felt and was indeed an homage to Mr. Murrow and what he stood for. I didn’t go immediately to bed after posting that “good night” message. Instead I re-watched the excellent film containing Murrow’s famous sign-off, “Good Night and Good Luck.”

As we all go through what we’re going to continue to go through (and who really knows what that is), I’d recommend watching or re-watching the film again. It’s on most streaming services so it’s easy to find.

There are and will be pressures all the way around and certainly a dramatization of any kind compresses events to create that drama. Given that we may never hear about any of the recent conflicts that I can only hope happened inside corporate media headquarters before they folded up their tents to march willingly in step with the new administration, the story of taking on McCarthy, while also relevant to our current moment, is really just the stage for the one behind the scenes that impacts what we see or don’t see on our screens of so many sizes.

This isn’t some moment of nostalgia for a time gone by. It is a recognition that where we are now is a place we’ve been before. This time around those that control the media and messaging have, for the moment, much more control than they did in Murrow’s day. Make no mistake, they had some control then, but now it’s more pervasive and the Murrow’s, Friendly’s and Paley’s are fewer in number.

You can 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.

Sunday Morning Reading

History has its layers and facts might be damned, but that’s what myths are made of.

Tick. Tock. Or is that TikTok? Regardless, it’s the last Sunday Morning Reading column before things take a drastic turn here in the United States. Plenty to be concerned about, but Sunday Morning Reading will sill keep chugging along until they turn out the lights. That said, quite a bit of today’s chugging focuses on that messy intersection of tech and politics, because, well, you know, that muddled mess of things is what attracts my attention. They are no small things.

Speaking of small things, David Todd McCarty suggests that when we get too overwhelmed perhaps it’s time to get small. Check out Let’s Get Small.

There’s A Reason Why It Feels Like The Internet Has Gone Bad is actually a short interview with Cory Doctorow by Allison Morrow about a term Doctorow coined that I think fits much (and not just on the Internet) of what we’re already living through and what we’re in for: enshittification.

George Dillard wonders why modern business tycoons are like their forbears in Nerds, Curdled.

Jared Yates Sexton has some thoughts on dealing with what’s coming in Back Into The Breach: Thoughts On The Second Trump Presidency. Good read.

The toadstools salivating to use government to dismantle government no longer grow in shadowy, dank places. Joan Westenberg takes on Silicon Valleys’s Secret Love Affair With The State.

John Gruber highlights and expands on an article by Kyle Wiggins at TechCrunch that hit amidst the growing chaos this week when Google announced that’s its ever declining search product would now require JavaScript in order to use Google Search. Check out Google Search, More Machine Now Than Man, Begins Requiring JavaScript.

Joseph Finder takes a look at The Russian Roots Of American Crime Fiction—And The O.G. It’s not that the characters created by Dostoevsky and Gogol were Russian. They were merely human.

We love stories, but we love our myths more. Neil Steinberg takes on The Myths of Telephone History. The lies we agree upon might just be the most pungent of them all.

To close things out, NatashaMH reminds us in Chestnut Roasting On An Open Fire that some say that “the strength of a superhero is determined by the strength of his villain—the greater the adversary, the mightier the hero.” We’re about to find out if that’s true 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. You can also find more of my writings on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. You can also find me on social networks under my own name.

The Farce of Ritual

The ritual games cowards play.

We’re a bunch of cowards. Mostly. And we take cover behind rituals, ceremonies, and traditions.

I’m sure at some point in your life you’ve attended or participated in a wedding which you knew was doomed. Yet, when the officiant asked if you were willing to support this union you went along and agreed. I’m guessing you never spoke up when given the opportunity to do so either. You later danced with the bride or the groom, wished them well, went back to your beverage and whispered into the ear of your plus one that there was no way the marriage would last.

Their choice. Their life. Their bad.

Perhaps at some point you’ve participated in a meeting of the PTA, or some other local body, or a social organization with an elected structure. Or perhaps you’ve been both lucky or unlucky enough to perform public service in a government organization of some sort.

Regardless of the situation, the mission, or the efforts of those involved, if you’ve done any of the above or similar, you know just how much of a farce the rituals we hide behind in these circumstances don’t really offer much cover, because if those you’re working with don’t see through the thin veneer of the farce and the roles they play, eventually someone watching catches on.

Yet we perpetuate them. We don’t rock the boat out of some misguided quest for comity, community, or conviviality.

We’re doing that on a national and global scale these days as the U.S prepares to descend into a maelstrom that everyone sees coming, and like that moment in a wedding ceremony when the rolling waves make us a bit queasy, there’s no stomach for stopping the proceedings.

Certainly there are folks sounding the alarms about what’s to come politically, socially, and economically in the coming days. Those voices unfortunately are drowned out by a chorus of congratulations, traditions, and a fear of sticking necks out.

When a marriage ends in the failure you knew would happen and did nothing to try and stop it’s easy to take comfort in the knowledge you were right all along. Smug self-righteousness and reliance on traditions isn’t going to be worth much when this shotgun wedding comes to an end.

Watching the ritual confirmation hearings that accompany the change of administrations confirm my view that we prefer farce even when it presages a tragedy we can all see coming. Better to just surf along with the current and not make waves large enough to capsize the ship of state. Eventually those waves crash home and nature’s rituals wash away those we’ve built.

For the record, nobody ever says bad things in public about the deceased at a funeral either.

You can 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.

Name Games On The Internet And In Life

Real names matter. Why is that so unreal?

I wrote a little something for the publication Ellemeno on Medium about names and anonymity on the Internet. Take a look at What’s In a Name?

Prompted by a new display name policy adopted by the publication, this is something I’ve been thinking about for quite some time. I always publish my writing and anything I do on social media under my real name. It’s the same way I conduct my professional life as a theatre director, always using the moniker I was given.

Certainly there are reasons folks adopt other names, handles, and nom-de-plumes and I don’t judge anyone negatively for doing that in an increasingly dangerous world. That said, I’ve always believed the world would be a better place if we all had the courage to conduct ourselves under our real names. But that’s perhaps naive.

Obviously there’s a lot more to say in the piece. I hope you take a few moments and read it.

You can 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.

Sunday Morning Reading

A nod to Billy Joel, a little Faust, a little Shakespeare and the cycle of life keeps turning.

We may not have started the fire. In the words of Billy Joel, “it was always burning.” Still we can always try and fight it. I’m not sure how that’s working out but it does seem to be our lot. Sifting through smoke and ashes, here’s a little Sunday Morning Reading to share.

Kicking things off is David Todd McCarty’s Looking for God, Sitting in Hell. Summed up nicely, “we get so lost in semantics that we forget the important parts.” Indeed.

David Sterling Brown tells us What Shakespeare Revealed About the Chaotic Reign of Richard III – And Why The Play Still Resonates In The Age of Donald Trump. The only thing I question is the word “still” in the headline. There’s not a moment of being human that isn’t contained in the stories and characters of Shakespeare. We haven’t invented a new way of being good, bad or indifferent in quite some time.

And while we’re on the literature beat Brian Klaas give us Faustian Capitalism. Again, there’s nothing new under the sun here as we watch this country’s wealthiest men bend their knees in supplication, but there’s some small comfort in knowing we’ve been this selfishly stupid before.

John Pavlovitz hits a nail on the head with The California Fires Are a Disaster. The American Cruelty Is A Tragedy. It may be beyond our capacity to comprehend devastation, but as the previous two entries show, it shouldn’t be beyond our ability to know we keep repeating the same mistakes. Or maybe that’s really just the hell we’re living?

Speaking of Faustian bargains, Mike Masnick lays out The Good, The Bad, And The Stupid In Meta’s New Content Policies.

This piece should scare you, but again, its subject is as old as humankind’s penchant for inhumanity. Stephanie McCrummen shines a bit of light as The Army Of God Comes Out Of The Shadows.

Derek Thompson takes a look at The Anti-Social Century and how our reality is changing as we spend so much of our time alone.

Perhaps one of the keys to being less alone and less anti-social is choosing your friends wisely. Natasha MH says that “To survive this life, it’s crucial to discern which friends are worth keeping and which aren’t. You are the guardian of your own peace of mind” as she lays out The Optimist’s Dilemma In A Pessimistic World.

And finally, Ian Dunt offers A Little Bit Of Hope After A Terrible Week, in what he calls a survival guide for the next four years. Ian says “History has no direction.” He’s correct. It’s a circle, a cycle, a carousel.