Elections, Government Shutdowns and Other Quick Thoughts

Can dangerous actions continue to outstrip broken politics?

Just a few quick thoughts.

Without question I have to say I’m very pleased with the Democratic election victories across the country last night. Both the winners and the size of the margins in the headline races for governors, NYC mayor, and redistricting in California. I’m even more pleased to see some of the down ballot races yield Democratic victories as well.

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Especially in my home state of Virginia where the Democrats took enough seats to have quite a majority in the House of Delegates. Here’s hoping that yields very positive results for the newly elected Democratic governor.

Obviously everyone is going to parse all of these election results and find ways to celebrate, castigate, and even dismiss what’s obvious. People are pissed off. They need to remain so.

Today also sets a record for the longest government shutdown in American history. Real people are being affected by this and that will only continue and get worse as long as the shutdown does. Of course when you have one house of Congress refusing to gavel into session and also refusing to swear in an elected member, who knows how long things will last.

In so many ways, the GOP and Trump’s tactics have been the biggest act of self-mutilation and self-humiliation by a political party I think the world has ever seen.

They will never acknowledge that.

Voters sure did.

Meanwhile the evil continues in Chicago and other places as ICE keeps ramping up its horror campaign. That’s not going to abate soon. I heard this morning that yesterday they were checking people’s IDs at the entrance to my local grocery store’s parking lot.

Perhaps those digging these holes that they will someday bury themselves in will keep ratcheting up their insidious actions to a point where events continue to outstrip the usual to and fro of politics. That’s a weird and painful thing to hope for, but it might just be our best hope at the moment.

And on we go.

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.

Slide Over In iPadOS 26.1 Returns Just In Time

Glad to have this multi-tasking tool back.

Since I don’t run betas on any of my devices, I’ve been somewhat anxiously waiting for the release of iPadOS 26.1 which returns the Slide Over multi-tasking feature to the iPad. It got here just in the nick of time.

iPad OS 26.1 arrived yesterday afternoon, about 2 hours before rehearsal began and I quickly set things up for the evening’s rehearsal, using Notes in Slide Over to quickly jot down notes as rehearsal went along.

I use an 11 inch iPad Pro in my theatre work as my primary device. It contains the script I’m working on and ever since Slide Over was available I would use that multi-tasking feature to keep one or more apps tucked away for quick access conducting rehearsals.

New Shareshot.

I do question why Apple only allows one app in this returning version as opposed to multiple apps as it did before. It was always handy to keep multiple apps available throughout rehearsal, given that I prefer to have my script open full screen on the 11 inch iPad Pro.

As a side note, I’m not a fan of the Liquid Glass border around the window in Slide Over. It waists screen real estate, almost begging you to look at the feature. Even switching Liquid Glass to the new Tinted version, now also available in iOS 26, doesn’t erase or lessen that border or its distracting impact.

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In fact, setting the border aside, switching back and forth I don’t really see any significant difference in the apps I’m currently using between the Clear and Tinted versions of Liquid Glass. I won’t call that a complaint, but I will say it might all be much ado about nothing. At least on the iPad.

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.

Sunday Morning Reading

No tricks. No treats. Just thoughts and reading worth sharing.

The frights of Halloween have passed us by, but real life horrors remain and expand. Never had more gut wrenching emotions this weekend than spending it with my grandkids costumed in their bountiful innocence, avoiding what’s out there in a life they’ll one day have to face, but in the present doesn’t exist beyond the edges of any joyful moment of wonder and exuberance they can conjure. This week’s Sunday Morning Reading won’t touch on too much of that, but then again, I think it just did.

David Todd McCarty thinks amidst it all We Can Be Heroes. Making my grandkids laugh uncontrollably makes me feels damn close.

Adam Gropnik visits the home of the poet Wislawa Szymborska and returns with How To Endure Authoritarianism.

Will Bunch says It Didn’t take A Reichstag Fire To Burn Down Congress. He’s correct. It didn’t even take a match.

Some interesting writing on Artificial Intelligence and the Internet this week that’s worth your while, first up Cory Doctorow tackles When AI Prophecy Fails.

Will Douglas Heaven explains How AGI Became The Most Consequential Theory Of Our Time.

Tim Chinenov wonders Who’s Creating The Rage Bait That’s Radicalizing You?

Decidedly not on the Internet Friday night while trick-or-treating with my grandkids, though not in my besieged town of Chicago, I witnessed not only kids howling with fun, but adults who joined in on the fun with their own costumes and decorated homes, some elaborate, some not so, all with love and honoring a tradition I’ve never seen in the communities I’ve lived in. Many families set up in their driveways, some with small fire pits, some with tents, tables full of food (and candy), welcoming all comers to their Halloween semi-tall gating front yards. I also noticed the adults who just sat in their cars and slowly followed their children down the block. The entire experience reminded me of this piece from the summer in which Joan Westenberg says every creator pays a tax while the rest stay spectators in The Unbearable Lightness of Cringe. Pay the tax.

And closing out this week, kudos to both the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Toronto Blue Jays for an excellent World Series, which the Dodgers won. Both teams played a splendid series and provided an incredible Game 7 finish to one of those contests you never want to see end, but know it must. Grown men over compensated for incredible talent, playing a kid’s game like kids, thrilling and heart breaking in the same breath. Too bad we don’t have any great, or even good, baseball writers to chronicle the moment these days.

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.

Late Arriving Fall Color in Chicago

Color me curious

Two things everyone in our circles are talking about. ICE raids and a late arriving Fall. As far as the usual colors we get every Fall, this year most of our leaves haven’t turned yet. We’re about to turn the calendar from October to November and most of the foliage is still quite green.

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Many of the early turning golden leaves are gone and filling the gutters, and there’s the occasional burst of red among the green. But all feels late. It will be interesting to see how this season progresses.

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DeValuing The Myth of Anything Super

Grammarly rebrands as Superhuman

Super.

It used to mean bigger, better, bolder, somehow special. At least when it referred to humans, as in superheroes.

Now that we’re busy replacing humans with Artificial Intelligence, the rush to brand AI innovations as somehow superior or “super” is doing more to devalue the concept of anything “super” since the comic books and their movie spinoffs started examining all the collateral damage their superheroes caused in their efforts to save worlds, galaxies, universes and multi-verses.

Long time proofreading service Grammarly acquired the AI-native email app Superhuman this past summer and has now announced a sort of unusually reversed rebranding that rolls out these bundled services under the subsumed Superhuman brand.

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You have to laugh at the decidedly and very human super-ego sized slug line that claim the new effort gives you “the power to be more human.”

The newly christened Superhuman certainly isn’t alone as Artificial Intelligence purveyors have been defining pursuing super intelligence as their goal for quite some time, which has always had an ironic appeal, even if chatbots and the like don’t understand irony.

In my opinion the entire thing is all very silly, far too easily unmasked as unhealthy hubris, yet also very dangerous. The promises continue to fall short, yet the hype continues to feed economic fires that will eventually burn out, even as AI invades everything associated with technology and business.

Super may have a definition that sets anything following the prefix as special and somehow superior to the ordinary. But it is also slang for supernumerary, which in show biz traditions means extra, unwanted, or unimportant.

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.

Review: A House of Dynamite

Shear terror in the face of madness

When you live in Chicago, a city under siege by ICE, I’m not sure, but I guess it a strong bent of masochism to watch a movie where your city gets nuked by an unknown enemy. That’s sorta how I felt when my wife and I cued up the excellent Kathryn Bigelow film, A House of Dynamite over the weekend. We debated back and forth, and decided to give it a go. I’m glad we did.

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It’s certainly not an easy movie to watch, regardless of where you live. Yes, a city gets nuked. But that’s not the strength or the point of this movie. Nor should it be a spoiler at this point. The strength lies in watching otherwise steely individuals wither when their shields of confidence dissolve into vulnerable realizations as a horrible what-if scenario becomes all too real to contemplate, yet alone live through, even though they’ve contemplated them over and over again in training.

We don’t get the disaster movie special effects explosions and carnage. They aren’t necessary for this film to work. What we do get is far more terrifying. We get holes ripped through the souls of the characters we’re allowed to meet as they do their jobs. We get belief in systems and protocols developed by smart people shattered, leaving us all wondering if any of it was worth it in the end. It’s a parable of the moment.

It’s certainly not a Halloween movie, but I can’t think of a scarier film to watch as it strips away every possible security blanket and myth we might have become just too comfortable imagining, and realize just how much we’re in the hands of human beings just like us when horrible things unfold.

That’s more than frighteningly true with an utterly incompetent administration running the U.S at the moment. Noah Oppenheim’s script subtly, deceptively, and brilliantly lays that out as it carries us deeper into unfolding and inevitable danger that may be too horrible to watch, but is certainly more terrifying not to.

Bigelow and Oppenheim’s characters all seem more than capable of the sensitive jobs they hold. The filmmakers dispense with the tropes typical of these kind of disaster flicks that feature the usual array of martinets, incompetent and insufferable fools, and even heroes, sung or unsung. Sure, we see some of the personal traumas and trivia some may be dealing with as they come to work on the morning in question. But we initially watch each of these men and women of strong character knuckle down to perform when the unthinkable moment presents itself.

We then watch as they ultimately come face to face with that horrible moment of realization that there is nothing they can do to stop the inevitable. We watch as the enormous personal toll alters their breathing as they have no choice but to carry on with psychic wounds bigger than any smoldering crater before the missile even hits. Bigelow’s camera work and the cast’s strong acting gives us searing glimpses into those moments of horror and devastation as she catches her characters when each crushing realization occurs.

In three parts and an epilogue, the movie repeats the same horrible 18 minutes or so from missile detection to impact, presenting the scenarios in different government locales and viewpoints. We see a missile interception station in Alaska communicating with the White House Situation Room, the STRATCOM headquarters in Nebraska, FEMA headquarters as they have to pull out the plans for the inevitable, and the president who is attending a basketball camp event and then whisked away, while his aides work to inform him from the White House.

Those parts overlap using much of the same dialogue presented from these different points of view via video or audio conferences as the government tries to formulate its response. The repetition of dialogue serves as a better tension builder and reminder of the time before impact than any of the countdown clocks we might see on the screen. As does the sudden departures of those who need to be taken to secure locations as events unfold.

Bigelow’s cast includes some big name actors in a cast headed by Idris Elba and Rebecca Ferguson, that also includes Anthony Ramos, Gabriel Basso, Jared Harris, Jason Clarke, Greta Lee, and Tracy Letts among a host of others. Some of that host provides some of the most telling reactions on the periphery of the action as they watch their bosses try to handle the situation.

To my mind, nothing procedural happens that we haven’t seen or read about in countless Cold War thrillers of the past. With one exception. I was left with the same sort of existential dread after viewing A House of Dynamite as I was when I first read Tom Clancy’s Sum of All Fears and realized the weapon was going to explode. The only difference is that there was a hero in the Clancy novel to pick up the pieces and help us move beyond the horror.

In A House of Dynamite there are no heroes. Only humans. Trying to do their best. Not failing. But having to face the reality that sometimes your best is simply not enough in the face of madness.

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.