August 22, 2026 - Week in Review

Couple of notes on the site before I dive into the week's bounteous posts.

First, I have always hated the built in search for Ghost. It is really cursory, and it makes it stupid hard to find things I posted in the past. Basically, it solely indexes the titles and tags of posts, and none of the text.

Lame.

But I went looking for a better way, and I found a simple tool that plugs in, and uses a real index. A small (one woman shop) web developer who focuses on Ghost (https://tools.spectralwebservices.com/tools) had a simple integration, to use Algolia's search services (my quantity of content qualifies for the free tier) and it was stoopid simple to get up and running.

So, go to the web page (click the title of this) and mouse up to the magnifying glass and test the new search.

And yes, while the tool from Spectral Web Services was free, I opened my wallet to give her $5 a month. Totally worth it.

And she has other goodies. There are aids for footnotes (that is one place the Substack has it in spades over Ghost), and to insert tables of contents to facilitate navigation. Really cool, and if you are using Ghost, highly recommended.

Now, on to the posts:

Sunday, August 16: I kick off a three parter on the 1960's British spy show, The Avengers, with part 2 leading (since the second era was the Diana Rigg episodes).

M. Appeal: How Diana Rigg Invented the Modern Action Hero and Nobody Bothered to Pay Her for It

Before Emma Peel, television heroines waited to be rescued. After her, the ones who couldn’t throw a punch were the boring ones. Also, the BBC paid her less than the cameraman. Of course they did.

Sweaty's CornerGeoff Anderson

Monday, August 17: Remember the piece about the kerfuffle over teh $20 burrito, and the MAGA freak out? I turned that into a weekly installment, this time on the accident of the Great Depression, the collapse of the home finance market, and the 30 year fixed mortgage that has become an American right.

The Accident

Nowhere else on earth has the thirty-year fixed mortgage. It isn’t a market product. It’s a 1933 emergency measure nobody repealed, and it’s still holding up the roof.

Sweaty's CornerGeoff Anderson

Tuesday, August 18: Time to get back to the fun, The Avengers, part 1. The early years were a show struggling to find itself and a niche. Alas, a lot of the tape was lost to time, but it is an interesting story as to how Patrick Mcnee who was a second to the original prime became the prime, with the whole woman thing being developed.

How a Dead Receptionist and a Wiped Tape Created the Best Show British Television Ever Made

Forget the killer robots for a minute. Forget the Op Art sets and the champagne. This starts with a murdered fiancée, a cancelled crime drama, and a contract that happened to expire at the wrong moment for everyone except British television.

Sweaty's CornerGeoff Anderson

Wednesday, August 19: Remember The Oxidizer, how Trump wasn't gasoline tossed on a smoldering flame to turn it into a conflagration? In that post I mentioned a parallel to Asimov's Foundation, and how Trump was at times like the Mule. Turns out that is too convenient for the Never Trump crowd, but he is more like a Seldon Crisis, something that was predictable:

The Torch Bearer, Not the Mule

Trump wasn’t a mutation. He was the guy who showed up already carrying the right key. What that means for whoever tries to inherit the lock — and why Flake’s “fever will break” might be right for all the wrong reasons — Part Two of The Oxidizer.

Sweaty's CornerGeoff Anderson

Thursday, August 20: I close out the trio of posts on The Avengers with the post Rigg era. Linda Thorson was weak, but it really wasn't her fault that the show devolved into total camp. Also addressed is the reboot, The New Avengers, and that crime against humanity, the 1990s movie adaptation.

The Producer Cast His Girlfriend, and Other Things That Killed a Great Show

Linda Thorson never got the chance to fail on her own merits. The show had already done that for her before she read a single line. Here’s how The Avengers actually ended, twice.

Sweaty's CornerGeoff Anderson

Friday, August 21: I preempted the scheduled post on the Second Foundation and the Never Trumper's fever dream because I woke up to liddle' Scotty Bessent trying to paper over the erupting volcano in the bond market, and what that is going to do to the affordability. I almost feel bad for Scotty, he really has insufficient tools, but it is going to go badly (and between when I lept out of bed to draft it, and the final checks, Bessent's interventions had already failed. He put his (and our) credibility on the line, and the Bond traders said "no". It's gon' get bumpy folks:

The Thud

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s own notepad read: buy Japanese yen, five to ten billion. Three weeks later the same improvisation showed up in the bond market. It didn’t work there either.

Sweaty's CornerGeoff Anderson

I heard a factoid about former Senate leader Trent Lott from Mississippi, and that spurred me to draft a "This Fucking Guy" special edition:

This Fucking Guy: Trent Lott Was Never Confused About Which Side He Was On

His fraternity house got raided for a weapons cache during the Ole Miss riot. His own memoir tells that story in detail and somehow forgets the part where he led the fight to keep the fraternity segregated two years later.

Sweaty's CornerGeoff Anderson

From the Shitpost Dude, he had a wee bit of FOMO about all this Natalie Harp nonsense, and out popped this:

The Printer That Really Tied the Room Together

They put cabinet secretaries on the decoy plane so a printer could ride home safe. Then a senator said one name and the entire government had a meltdown on camera.

The Dude ShitpostsJeffery Lebowski

(in case Substack is still fucking with the reference links from Ghost, here's the raw URL: https://www.shitpostdude.com/p/the-printer-that-really-tied-the )