History – Life on the Wicked Stage: Act 3

Hollow Crowns, Hollow Honor, Hollow Men

There’s nothing new under the sun

My wife and I spent the weekend watching two pieces of history. One unfolding, one already folded into folios more times than creases might allow. Separated as they are by hundreds of years, one a streaming dramatic retelling, the other a dramatic reality, they share more similarities than those distances impart.

Promotional poster for the TV series “The Hollow Crown: The Wars of the Roses,” showing the title in large white text on a dark background at left while, on the right, a group of medieval characters in armor and period clothing stand in front of misty trees and a bright, cloudy sky, with a crowned knight in full plate armor holding a sword at the front of the group.

That reality I speak of is of course the war that the United States and Israel have launched against Iran for any of the hollow rationales the administration keeps trying to fill in. The retelling is the two-season BBC series encompassing William Shakespeare’s history plays spanning the reigns of Richard II, through a collection Henrys, an Edward, and ending with Richard III called The Hollow Crown.

The title of the series is taken from a soliloquy from Richard II that always felt apt as preamble for what was to come through the period of history those plays encompass, as it has throughout human history, both before and after that bloody era.

From Richard II

…for within the hollow crown
That rounds the mortal temples of a king
Keeps Death his court and there the antic sits,
Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp,
Allowing him a breath, a little scene,
To monarchize, be fear’d and kill with looks,
Infusing him with self and vain conceit,
As if this flesh which walls about our life,
Were brass impregnable, and humor’d thus
Comes at the last and with a little pin
Bores through his castle wall, and farewell king!

The plays and our current Middle East maelstrom demonstrate the folly of humans in what we call war, civil and otherwise, and the allegiances we are taught to assign to countries, kings, and presidents. They also demonstrate the collective capacity to forget that these humans we bow down to, willingly or no, are no more or less flawed than those they govern. Even as some become monsters or others reveal that they always have been.

Shakespeare had the benefit of over 100 years distance from the events he was dramatizing before he embarked on writing the first tetralogy, (Henry VI, Parts I, II, and III, and Richard the Third,) and a few years later completing the second (Richard II, Henry IV parts 1 and 2 and Henry V.) Although taken as two parts of a whole in terms of history, the two tetralogies were written out of historical sequence with the latter years chronicled before the former.

Obviously, today we don’t have the benefit of perspective that distance and the passage of time can lend as current news swoops in like flocks of drones. In truth, we really shouldn’t need it. The only thing that really changes are the players and history’s progression of weaponry and technology that they wield. Even the rhetoric doesn’t change much.

From Henry V

Take pity of your town and of your people
Whiles yet my soldiers are in my command,
Whiles yet the cool and temperate wind of grace
O’erblows the filthy and contagious clouds
Of heady murder, spoil, and villainy.
If not, why, in a moment look to see
The blind and bloody soldier with foul hand
Desire the locks of your shrill-shrieking daughters,
Your fathers taken by the silver beards
And their most reverend heads dashed to the walls,
Your naked infants spitted upon pikes
Whiles the mad mothers with their howls confused
Do break the clouds

These are the things men say when they choose to go to war, whether they may have good reason or not. If reason itself does exist in those moments. Once you descend down that path, it becomes an increasingly greater challenge to swallow the bluster and reverse course. Honor demands, they always say, and more than not leaves its corpse on the field.

Although you have to admit, Shakespeare’s poetry, even for those not used to scanning Shakespeare, is easier on the ear than anything spewing out of the mouths of Trump, Hegseth or any of the other current day blowhards and courtiers.

Regardless of whether the war councils happen in throne rooms, camp tents, or a makeshift Mar-A-Lago SCIF, it doesn’t take much imagining to see the similarities between modern day cabinet members, and long dead peers and archbishops. The costumes may be different, but the egos, hubris and fear remain the same. The fear isn’t always as much of the opponent, but of the leader’s capricious power against those who think differently and raise their heads to speak their minds. Civilization may have advanced to the point in most regions that we don’t cut off heads at a whim, but legs and livelihoods can swiftly be cut off with a Twitter/Truth Social post.

One of the things that struck me most about the production of The Hollow Crown, was the intimacy that filming allows. The series features a cast of superstars including Patrick Stewart, Judi Dench, Benedict Cumberbatch, Tom Hiddleston, Jeremy Irons, Simon Russell Beale, Ben Whishaw, David Suchet, Hugh Bonneville, Michelle Dockery, and Sophie Okonedo among a host of others it would be tough to assemble to speak those speeches on a stage. They do so with intimacy and nuance than larger, more open venues allow without amplification.

I’ve seen each of these plays live on stage multiple times. In fact, one of the signature live theatre viewing experiences of my life was attending the English Shakespeare Company’s The Wars of the Roses at the Chicago International Theatre Festival in 1988 that presented all of the plays over the course of three days.

Both that live version and this made for TV version made cuts in the text for various reasons including length. The three parts of Henry VI are condensed into two, with the TV version omitting Jack Cade’s rebellion, and Henry V bypassing the slaying of the children managing the baggage train are examples. But both gave you the essentials of the same story.

The live stage version certainly brought grandeur and spectacle to the event. The parade of the various reigns of kings proceeded through history adorned in Renaissance costumes with weapons of the period for Richard II evolving to more contemporary clothing and weapons for Richard III, before quickly devolving to the final battle between that Richard and Richmond in full battle armor, then flashing forward again, presenting Richmond’s final speech as a press conference broadcast on TV.

The TV version suffers a bit compared to current day streaming spectacles given the obvious budget and technology constraints of the time of its filming in 2012 through 2016. Amazing how 10-15 years can make more of a difference in our storytelling techniques than hundreds of years does in how we continue to rerun the actions of those stories in real life.

But the streaming version does hold up extraordinarily well and offers new insights, due to the intimacy that the camera allows. Using the camera to focus on Shakespeare’s moments of inner thoughts in soliloquies dissects those character kings and queens in ways modern day lickspittle journalists only wish they could access. Even though Shakespeare’s words describing those thoughts are his, they have the ring of more truth than the many we hear and see through these days, certainly in moments of chaos.

And there’s the rub. In moments that strain the hearts and souls of nations, we yearn for anything approaching a morsel of truth amongst all the banquets of rhetoric we’re served. Shakespeare’s fictionalized histories, though not accurate in detail or some necessary facts, reveal the more important and enduring truths, doubts, and fears that all men and women harbor beneath the armor they don for battle as they command us to follow.

Whether watching The Bishop of Canterbury recite the litany of lineage that gives King Henry V the right to invade France, or Secretary of State Marco Rubio breathlessly trying to spin together the strands of stories this administration has spewed out as justification for our current war, the comparisons favor neither, yet reveal the time worn folly of both. And you can’t walk away from comparing the falsehoods, conniving, and deteriorating health of Falstaff to those of Donald Trump.

History catalogs facts and the myths manufactured around them. Drama reveals the humanity of those behind the history. I have said more times than I can count that Shakespeare is the greatest chronicler of the human condition and the ways we relate one to another. There isn’t a human to human interaction that he doesn’t reveal in his characters, even those who have no character.

We like to ignore, or conveniently forget that it’s all been written before. Watching our current myth makers trying to rewrite history as it happens moment to moment, it’s no wonder we yearn for any small slice of humanity to help us make sense of it all.

I’m guessing the dramatists who will reveal that to us haven’t been born yet.

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

Weird plants, weird politics, and weird tech

Winter’s back. Though less here in the Midwest than it looks to be on the Atlantic Coast. And it’s another Sunday. So time for some Sunday Morning Reading between shoveling sessions.This day of rest features a collection of writing on tech, politics, science, botany, and bots. There’s even a bit of satire. All written by humans. Not sure who hired them though.

Shutterstock 232794637. Writing satire is tough these days with the world being what it is. David Todd McCarty found a way with The Risk Of Inflation In The Age of Plutocracy. You don’t always get what you overpay for.

Speaking of overpaying, Ed Zitron takes a look at what he sees is a yet another looming financial crisis. This one is The AI Data Center Financial Crisis. It is intriguing that we haven’t heard much about how AI might help fix the rigged accounting game. I mean “fix” as in actually make the numbers resemble reality. h/t to Ian Robinson for that one.

Imagine that. A scientist has discovered a way to harvest water from dry air in the desert. Natricia Duncan takes on the discovery in ‘Reimagining Matter’: Nobel Laureate Invents Machine That Harvests Water From Dry Air. A boon to humanity if it scales. Next work on doing the same for political hot air.

Meet Strongylodon Macrobotrys. Or rather let Neil Steinberg introduce you to the botanical find and the entomological roots of this plant that has its roots in the “intersection of botany and colonialism.” It’s also an interesting story in accountability which seems as rare as that plant these days.

Mike Elgan asks Is AI Killing Technology? The headline might challenge the Betteridge Law of Headlines depending on what vibe you have about AI.

Continuing on the Artificial Intelligence beat for a beat, Kyle MacNeill takes a look at The Rise of RentAHuman, The Marketplace Where Bots Put People To Work. I’ve often said the place to start with replacing humans in the workforce is at the top.

Political winds might seem like they are shifting faster than anyone can predict these days. One thing’s for certain, neither U.S. party owns the mantle of most incapable. Mark Leibovich thinks The Democrats Aren’t Built For This. I happen to agree. But then is anybody? Because who knows what “this” is? It certainly isn’t politics. Bean bag, hardball, or otherwise.

Apple seems to want to change things up with its iPhone hardware lineup over the next few years. Of course that means changes to software as well. Matt Birchtree thinks it’s inevitable that Apple Will Kill iPadOS. I think that’s correct as far as how we think of that OS today.

Whether it’s the Olympics or any other form of competition, once you reach the top, the air is always rare. But it eventually becomes stale. David Pierce takes a look at what it means to be number one on the Apple App Store in The Biggest App In The Whole Wide World.

The Chicago Bears have turned football into a hot political potato with news that they might be moving to Hammond, Indiana. Is it a negotiating tactic or the real deal? Nobody really knows. The Editorial Board of the Chicago Tribune like everyone else is confused saying The Chicago Bears of Hammond, Indiana, Is Bad News For Illinois. But What About Chicago? Oh. In case you didn’t know, we’ve got an election for governor happening in Illinois. Fumbling will occur.

(Image from ppl on Shutterstock)

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.

Bull(shit) in the Tariff Shop

Breaking. Things continue to break.

Well, let’s see. Having previously castrated Congress, Trump is now setting out to do the same to the Supreme Court. After SCOTUS ruled against his administration’s tariffs that were levied based on made up emergencies, Trump has essentially said that he’ll just keep them in place using other authorities.

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Of course that begs the question as to why he didn’t use those authorities in the first place. Oh, and he’s going to level an additional 10% tariff on the rest of the world in addition to piling that on top of those he’s allowed to keep. But set that aside. Any way you look at the 6-3 SCOTUS decision it’s a political and legal loss for POTUS. But then, hell hath no fury like a pedophile scorned.

Sulking like a scolded child, Trump’s typical insult laden bullying remarks also went after the justices (both conservative and liberal) that did not vote in his favor, so you know he’s he’s doing that sulking like a wounded beast in a corner waiting to strike back.

So, all and all Trump is basically giving a big middle finger to the Supreme Court the same way he has the rest of the country’s institutions, as he continues to make a world that only he sees in what’s left of his delusional mind. SCOTUS may have tried to reset the tricky balance between Congress and the Executive Branch with this decision, but asking that castrated branch to get it up and act feels comically painful now that Trump is kicking them in the balls as well. Justice Gorsuch’s eunuch-like plea for a divided system of government sounds almost lullaby-like in its longing.

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Lots of words will be written and spoken about what it all means. They won’t mean much. Given the SCOTUS decision and the pouty sour grapes speech following it, no one really knows what the economic damage will or won’t be at this point. But the political wreckage is easy to see. Suffice it to say, the situation is more than a messy minefield that will take some time to find a path through. We’d probably be better off just letting this wild bullshit artist rampage through it.

Shit’s gonna need to be cleaned up anyway.

UPDATE: After stewing in whatever the juices are they feed him intravenously, Trump upped his 10% global tariff tantrum tax to 15% the day after the SCOTUS decision came down.

(image from Igor Zakowski on Shutterstock)

Sunday Morning Reading

Small Pieces Loosely Joined

Connecting the dots can be one helluva hard game when you have so many dots. The volume of dots and the plots might seem overwhelming, but, if you care to look, it’s easy to find the connective threads, thin though they may be. String them together and the picture becomes clearer. Take a look at the links shared in this Sunday Morning Reading column. If you can’t find the connections, I suggest you’re not even trying to look.

Different colored strands of yarn woven together into a strong strand. Shutterstock 504091696.

Dave Winer writes of Small Pieces Loosely Joined, what he considers the best description of the web. It fits for the web. It fits for most things.

JA Westenberg discusses Why Intelligence Is A Terrible Proxy For Wisdom. Smart.

Backseat Software. That’s how Mike Swanson sees the state of things with software that is constantly interrupting us. As he puts it, “the slow shift from software you operate as a tool to software as a channel that operates you.” Excellent read.

John Gruber thinks we should shift from calling the bad guys Nazis and facists, instead use The Names They Call Themselves. Come to think of it, not sure why it’s so hard to do so given the dictates of the brander-in-chief.

Good dots among the bad are easy to spot. Ava Berger tells the story of how A Red Hat, Inspired By A Symbol Of Resistance To Nazi Occupation, Gains Traction In Minnesota.

In the boiling battle that is Canada and the U.S., Cory Doctorow is elbows up with another of his speeches on enshittifcation. (I’m glad he publishes these.) Check out Disenshittification Nation.

If you’re looking for an antidote to all that’s flying around and at us, it’s tough. Gal Beckham says we can connect those dots through what we’re seeing in Minneapolis. She finds the right word to describe the activism, protests, political opposition, neighborism, and resistance. I won’t spoil it, but she threads them all together in There Is A Word For What Is Happening In Minneapolis.

David Todd McCarty suggests America is a dual state in Then They Came For Me.

Steven Levy says After Minneapolis, Tech CEOs Are Struggling To Stay Silent. Silence speaks volumes. So do actions. So too do “tepid free-floating empathy” memos that mean nothing. Nothing will come of nothing. Speak again.

Joshua Panduro Preston tells the story of John Carter Of Minnesota: The “Convict Poet” Who Won His Freedom.

Pro football fans, especially those in Chicago know Charles ‘Peanut’ Tillman and the “peanut punch” well. Most don’t know that after his gridiron career he became a FBI agent. Even more don’t know that he walked away from that second career after the immigration raids started. Dan Pompeo connects the dots in After Charles Tillman Transformed Football, He Joined The FBI. Then The Immigration Raids Started.

(image from RA2016 on Shutterstock)

A Dark Place

Damnable depravity

I’m in a dark place. We are in a dark place. Living with our eyes wide open in a darkness. No light needed to know what we plainly see. ICE thugs. Minneapolis. Journalists arrested. Public corruption. Wars. Corporate capitulation to evil. And “The Epstein Files.”

I have not written much about that entire depraved episode. I will today.

In what seems like a backhanded, boomeranging, and backfiring way to distract from all of the other despicable things this administration has been doing to distract us from the Epstein files, the Justice Department released about three million of those files today. Apparently there are millions more. But in some ways we’ve probably seen enough.

Or at least to my mind we probably have. At least enough to pass judgment. Some of the files, either mistakenly or on purpose, were leaked. They include descriptions of what horrible men did to young girls. I won’t post or describe the specifics, beyond saying how utterly depraved they are.

They’d get an XXX rating if those acts were included in a movie. If you want specifics you won’t find them in the government release of the files because the DOJ actually deleted the links to some of the worst, which do indeed finger the president of the United States as a participant. But I’m sure you can find them all over the Internet.

Let me say this. The fact that there are going to be people trying to brush past and brush over what we’ve long suspected but now seen makes those horrible acts of perversion almost pale in comparison. You have to be some sort of sick to try and rationalize it as anything other than evil. But I’m sure there will be too many willing to throw their souls under the bus they continue to ride on.

When and where I grew up, it was a small rural community, populated with many who had some of the same political and social leanings of those we call MAGA today. I don’t care how much of an exalted office anyone held, how much money they made, or what pulpit they preached from. If they were accused of the things mentioned in those files they would have been quietly disappeared from the earth, never to be heard from, and mostly not spoken of again.

If this crowd of criminals and pedophiles and their supporters keep talking about Making America Great Again, I assume they are referring to that period of time when I was growing up. There’s a large part of me that thinks in despicable cases like these that perhaps we should. If only to mete out punishment the way it was done then.

Treading Through the Storms

Rough weather on all fronts still ahead.

Those blobs on weather radar maps that blanketed vast amounts of the U.S this past weekend felt not just predictive, but also somewhat defining. The traditional red and blue color schemes signaling rough weather almost hinted at our political and social divisions, reminding those that pay attention that Mother Nature doesn’t pick sides when she chooses to show her wrath.

Viktor mogilat PqPorwfUJlo unsplash.

And she’s tossing a torrent in this, our winter of discontent. Weather, politics, culture and technology all seem to be conspiring to obscure our view in a swirling tempest that chills to the bone, while boiling the blood.

We’ve all seen movies where folks get lost in winter terrain during a storm and can’t find their bearings. It feels like we’re all in that movie, or maybe it’s a stultified streaming series, given how it just keeps stringing us along and clogging up the queue, long after we’ve figured out the formula.

But this is a tortuous tempest. Minneapolis murders. Booting Bovino (or not?) Now US owned TikTok being more ruthless censoring than the Chinese. The gun nuts prematurely treading all over their cherished 2nd amendment, only to retreat after the muzzle blew up in their faces with the shots they just fired. Tim Cook continuing to debase himself and Apple by attending the Melania premiere at the White House. ICE here, there, and everywhere including the Winter Olympics. Consumer confidence hitting a 12-year low. The Doomsday Clock moving closer to midnight. Greenland. Venezuela. Canada. Europe. Iran.

Billy Joel in his heyday would have a rough time chronicling all that’s currently swirling in this winter’s winds for a new version of We Didn’t Start the Fire.

I’m not sure if we’ve reached a tipping point, but it feels like we’re closer to it than we have been since these idiots started shredding all of the life preservers and poking holes in the rowboats on their version of the Titanic. (Thanks for that reference J.D. Vance.)

They wanted to flood the zone with shit so that we couldn’t keep up. By and large they’ve succeeded to this point, but you can sense that the smell may be shifting. There’s chaos all over, but there’s just as much chaos in their inner sanctums as they try to trim sails to survive the storms they’ve created. Small victories add up. Take the wins when they happen and build on that.

It’s up to us to keep the pressure on, because if you’re relying on any of those lifeboats or life preservers (Congress, media, the business community) we’re all going to freeze before we go under with them.

It’s not going to happen overnight. There will be setbacks. It’s One Battle After Another. (Talk about a prescient film release.)

No one knows how this is going to end. No one knows when it’s going to end. No one knows what will be once it does end. But certainly it will end.

Rough weather still ahead. Uncharted waters in a storm. No horizon in sight.

Bundle up. Buckle up. Trust your own compass. Follow the lead of the good folks from Minneapolis causing good trouble. As my friend, David Todd McCarty says, Stand Your Ground.

(Photo by Viktor Mogilat on Unsplash)

History Is Often Unkind To Comparisons

Time to call a spade a spade

History is often unkind to comparisons. That’s nobody’s fault. No one can grasp the fullness of history well enough to appreciate and/or distinguish all of the references we use to shortcut how we view and label the mistakes we seem hell bent on repeating as we promise to never forget. It’s tougher still when we see children being kidnapped or chemical irritants sprayed at point blank range into someone’s eyes by government employees.

As an example, we conveniently shortcut our descriptions of the current administration’s abhorrent behavior masquerading as immigration enforcement. We call them Nazis. We liken their tactics to the Gestapo. In the face of the murders, kidnapping of children, brutalizing protestors, and lord knows what we don’t know about, I happen to agree with the comparison. It’s not just apt. It’s spot on.

But it’s incomplete.

Those comparisons actually cover up AND reveal a deeper history of sins that is not only particularly American, it’s what Hitler and his murderous henchmen adopted from us.

White Americans, in Hitler’s words, “gunned down the millions of Redskins to a few hundred thousand, and now kept the modest remnant under observation in a cage”

Hitler admired America’s appetite for America’s Manifest Destiny and how it justified the slaughter and displacement of Native Americans. His lawyers studied not only our laws regarding Native Americans, but also our Jim Crow laws, using them as references to draft the Nuremberg Laws that stripped Jews of Citizenship and prohibited interracial marriage.

The forces I think are evil want to erase much of American history, but even the forces that keep trying to array against them don’t recognize the Nazi labeling lineage as history we own a piece of.

The simple point I’m making is this: As we’re coming to grips with so much in these trying days let’s not look beyond ourselves and our own history to try and turn the monsters among us, who have always been among us, into something that removes our ownership of that history. In some ways, that’s the larger fight. We’re not fighting foes adopting some foreign tactics or playbook, we’re fighting our own peculiar history that we have never wanted to come to grips with. We’ve let it fester. Fought a war amongst ourselves over it and pretended we could turn the page, only to allow it to fester again and rise back up to haunt and hurt us all. Again.

When Irony Turns Historic Symbols On Their Head

Thus Always To Tyrants

Symbols, logos, insignias always have meaning. Certainly they do for their creators. For others they hold and take on meaning over time. Those that endure rarely take on a new and different significance. Often they just blend into the background unless they represent something that becomes contentious. We’ve all seen that happen in our lifetimes. But on occasion the fickle finger of irony points in a new direction.

I was born in Virginia, though I don’t live there now. The Commonwealth of Virginia’s symbol and motto Sic Semper Tyrannis (thus always to tyrants) took on a historically ironic meaning today with the swearing in of the Commonwealth’s first female governor, Abigail Spanberger. She’s taking office in what can only be called tempestuous times brought on us all by a tyrant. And it sounds like she’s up for the fight.

The seal and motto were first adopted in 1861 at the start of the American Civil War as Virginia seceded from the Union. For those, like myself, who think we’re currently living through the long delayed continuation of that conflict that’s been simmering since the fighting concluded, the twists and turns of history featuring the same female figure of virtue standing astride a fallen king symbolizing the defeat of tyranny for a state now led by a female governor is irony just too delicious to ignore.

I note that one of Governor Spanberger’s first acts was to veto the Executive Order that enabled Virginia’s participation in the program that allowed local law enforcement to act as ICE agents.

Here’s hoping there’s more of that to come from the new governor.

I Don’t Like This Day

Remembering January 6th Drives Me Into A Rage

I don’t like this day.

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

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

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

I don’t like this day.

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

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

I don’t like this day.

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

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

I don’t like this day.

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

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

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

Sunday Morning Reading

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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