August 15, 2026 - Week in Review

I am still on a hiatus from the dark place, where my digging in on the Civil Rights era kept leading me to worse and worse topics, people, and governments.

That shit sucks. And all this "American Exceptionalism" mumbo jumbo requires that you ignore a lot of really fucked up shit.

Let's get into the wrap up:

Saturday, August 8th: The whole fucking insanity about representative Max Miller being a wife-beating piece of human garbage, and the Republicans who are (slowly) beginning to call him to the carpet, but one person has really been odious in their response: Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson (R-closet) has really tied himself into knots to protect that Ohio seat. I have some thoughts:

Sunday, August 9th: A double post day. First up, a post for the "Guitars and Gear" newsletter, I write about my first real (meaning: quality) amplifier, the Gallien-Krueger 250ML:

The second post was intended to be a one-off, about the blizzard of shit-takes from the Conservative/MAGA ecosystem about the cost of a Chipotle burrito (burrito-gate?) but then I listened to the Secret Podcast (The Bulwark) where Jonathan Last correctly pointed out that this was really just a stand in for the true driver of the affordability arguments, the cost of housing.

I am going to be stretching this into a multi-part series of a deep look into the fuckery of the housing market, and hint: it isn't just a Red state vs. Blue state thing, it is a lot more complex. I will publish them weekly for a few weeks. These posts will be long and fairly analytical. You have been warned...

Monday, August 10: If you are in any center left/Never Trump spaces and you look at the comments, it is invariable that you will see people arguing about the Fairness Doctrine, lamenting about how life was better when it was still in effect. That is a big of hagiography:

Tuesday, August 11: A diversion. Over the weekend for date night we watched the epic Ben Hur, and that was an epic piece of film making. I had some thoughts about the Jewish/Christianity interplay (some mind-fucks) and the spectacle for the film that was filmed on actual Eastman Kodak film stock.An analysis of how much it would cost to re-create in 2026 without CGI, (my wife has a degree from USC in Film and Television Arts and she helped fill in gaps) and it really can't be done.

Wednesday, August 12: I recently posted on The Shitpost Dude about my early experience with computers, and my jonesing for a retro Atari 800 system (with a real CRT). That caused me to reflect on my uni days, and that led me to the fuckery with the California university system, the "Master Plan" of 1960, and how Reagan really took a sledgehammer to it, and altered the trajectory of public college forever.

Friday, August 14: A doublet today, I woke up to a really infuriating guest OpEd in the NY Times written by two conservative chuds, and it got my blood boiling so much that I had to dive in to researching their bullshit, and this post flowed like water over Niagara Falls:

Second up, a thought I was toying with was the belief that you often hear – particularly in the Never Trump cinematic universe – is that sure, there was some bad traits in the old Republican ecosystem, but Trump was fuel on the fire that broke containment.

Bullshit. That is Temu revisionism, and I will not stand for it. Alas, this caused me to once again think back to one of my favorites from the golden era of SciFi, and Asimov's "Foundation" trilogy. In that there was an exogent actor, the "Mule", a mutant that almost upended the whole experiment and plan.

These former Republicans would like to think that Trump is the Mule (you really should read the trilogy, and not watch that pathetic adaptation on Apple TV+) when he is really a Seldon Crisis, and one that they are still, a fucking decade later, unable to address.