Bots and Ads and Pop-Ups, Oh My!
Who’d a thunk late-stage capitalism would bring on a new Dark Age by restricting access to information to those who can afford to pay for it?
Tuesday Bag o’ Chorizo
One of Tucson’s attractions is its abundance of carnicerías, Mexican butcher shops, each with loyal customers who swear by their favorite shop’s hand-made chorizo. We buy our chorizo at Safeway, philistines that we are, but the brand they carry actually does come from a local carnicería, and that’s what we had for breakfast this morning, scrambled with eggs, flour tortillas […]
Tuesday Bag o’ Sound & Fury
Are you watching the state of the union speech tonight? Yeah, me neither. I can’t stand listening to Trump’s unfounded boasts. I can’t stand listening to his schoolyard taunting of anyone not named Putin. I can’t stand listening to him take credit for things another president accomplished, or his constant denigration of that president. I can’t stand listening to him take […]
Stampede String
I wonder how many riders and drivers have crashed due to temporary sun blindness. It was a huge issue flying fighters, especially in a visual engagement, and I often wished for three hands: one for the throttles, one for the stick, and one to put between my eyes and the sun.
Shades of Gray
It’s the week when, in folklore, nothing happens; the quiet peaceful interlude between Christmas and the new year. In actuality, the world keeps on turning: we’ve merely turned our attention inward, away from genocide, starvation, war, terrorism, slavery, mass shootings, corruption. We pretend it’s a season of tolerance and love, and maybe it is … […]
And Your Little Horse, Too
I’m enormously gratified to see Doug Jones win over the odious Roy Moore in yesterday’s Alabama special election. Values beat tribalism, but it was a squeaker. It shouldn’t have been as close as it was; if all Alabamians had turned out, Jones would have won by ten or more percentage points and there’d be no talk of recounts.
Air-Minded: The Hell You Say
Stag bars and strippers went away over 40 years ago. Women have been flying USAF aircraft since the 1970s, and flying fighters since the 1990s. Does this guy seriously think Trump or Mattis is going to reverse time? Or that treating women as property and sex objects makes leaders?
Friday Bag o’ Remorse
Remorse, yes; major-sin remorse, no. More like mild feelings of guilt for neglecting the blog, and you, my reader. I knew this would happen when I took on a competing writing task, my memoir, which creeps along in the background, one painfully-extracted sentence at a time. The day before yesterday I sent out a Paulgram newsletter. One of the […]