The Long Trail of Posts

A friend recently gifted me a subscription to The Economist. That was a very nice thing to do. I think. The upside is that I can learn from that publication’s always-excellent, in-depth analysis of the way the economic engines that …
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* For years a mythology has accreted around Vladimir Putin. Both admirers and detractors in the West have seen him as a calculating genius, playing three-dimensional chess while everyone else was playing checkers. RIR never bought that analysis. We did …
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Putin is, of course, a kind of Great Khan and the oligarchs he has both made and sustained will substitute nicely for the lesser Khans. What unites them through time isn’t just wealth or extravagance or absolute power, it is …
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Perhaps most ominously in this interview, Hill was asked if we are on the brink of World War III.  Her answer: “We’re already in it. We have been for some time. We keep thinking of World War I, World War …
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I have never been to Ukraine, though I did stumble across some Ukrainian mail-order brides in my former profession. Called to resolve domestic disputes by their awe-struck American husbands, I can assure you I was most impressed by the tenacity …
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* The Establishment of the Empire of Nothing is losing their shit. At least that’s the way I choose to interpret the tea leaves this morning. The organism that is the neo-liberal nexus of government, Big Tech/Big Corp, and academia …
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It is axiomatic that all tactical training that is any good must involve rubber boats and cold water. If your training does not include rubber boats and cold water you cannot possibly be training for anything more rigorous than seizing …
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One of the head-scratchers that I’ve been confronting over the past two years of COVID-19 is the sudden propensity of previously skeptical folks to insist that we have to take the U.S. government at its word on everything from the …
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“I know it’s preposterous — but is it preposterous?” —  CNN host Don Lemon I pretty much gave up on CNN back in 2014, when I read an interview with then-new honcho Jeff Zucker, in which he explained that CNN’s …
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One thing I’m trying to avoid is the indignity of being wheeled into the day-room for group exercises at “Autumnal Leaves”, which is a raisin farm in Ricky Gervais’ excellent series After Life where his father—suffering from dementia—mostly doesn’t recognize …
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They are apparently incensed that Joe Rogan has bucked the system, hunts his own meat, has eaten Ivermectin and beaten Covid, has a wildly popular podcast, and discussed all of these things out loud. And also because he smoked weed …
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Oh, this country sure looks good to me But these fences are comin’ apart at every nail. — Neil Young I love me some Neil Young. Saw him live a bunch of times in some truly epic concerts— rocking with Crazy …
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Doesn’t it just seem, some days, that we are being outplayed and outmaneuvered at every turn? One wonders if the underwater cables have been tapped, the cyphers compromised, if there is a mole in every briefing room, or if we …
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Back home, of course, we have other problems, not least of which is testing the winds, sticking to the shadows, and leaning into the whispers to avoid becoming Canned Goods ourselves. There is more truth in that than many would …
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It was a meal to celebrate a series of victories–over the madding world that overburdens modern humans with regulation and minutia, crushes us under the weight of absurdity, and tries like hell to prevent us from escaping the reservation to …
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A friend of mine recently told me that he can’t handle a Joe Biden speech — it’s literally painful to watch. They’re all like that for me. I thought about it for a minute and realized that the last presidential …
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I’m not romantic about coyotes, at least not in the way that absolves them of their predatory nature, and so becomes blind to that nature and ends up doing them a disservice. I see a lot of people do that …
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We live in strange times, which I realize is something of an understatement. But given the rarity of understatements in the current climate I am now a full-bore and unapologetic campaigner for understatements wherever, and whenever, I can find them …
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