I wandered again to my home in the mountain Where in youth’s early dawn I was happy and free I looked for my friends but I never could find them I found they were all […]
Labor / Media / Politics / Society
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So You’re 250. Here’s the Condition Your Condition Is In
In his 1922 book Public Opinion, Walter Lippmann asserted that we live in “pseudo-environments”—subjective, simplified interpretations of the complex, dynamic and superabundant world around us. He claimed that the decisions and actions necessary to our survival […]
Consumerism / Media / Technology
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Beyond Useful: The Dreaded Windows Upgrade
For years I feared the upgrade from Windows 10 to 11, or should I say, I feared having to fix what the upgrade would break. From past upgrades I knew that my settings, third-party apps […]
Class / Culture / Politics
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Are We in Decline Yet? The Wikipedia Page
It’s obvious that the United States is in decline. But what does decline mean? According to Edward Gibbon, it’s a loss of virtue, particularly a decay of public service and civic duty. In the case of the […]
Consumerism / Culture / Labor
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Area Consumer Thinks About Brick and Mortar
Today I went into Staples to buy a ream of paper. I immediately noticed that the store layout was identical to that of every other Staples I’d been in: the red panels and white lettering, […]
Consumerism / Labor / Politics / Technology
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Burn the Tesla Brand and Ignore the Guilt Trip
It’s all over the news. Musk trying to blame democrats for the attacks on Tesla. And republicans are humpin’ the mic, too, trying to reverse the blame, as former Wisconsin senator David Craig does in […]
Addiction / Drugs / Media / Technology
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The Children of Antimatter
Adults pissing away their mortal minutes in idle distraction is fine. But children subjecting themselves to a constant stream of idiotic nonsense is downright obscene. In the not so distant past, stimulating a release of […]
Culture / Dystopia / Literature / Philippic / Politics
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The Dystopia Files: When the Sleeper Wakes
H.G. Wells originally published When the Sleeper Awakes in 1898 as a serial in The Graphic, an illustrated London newspaper. In his preface to the 1910 edition, The Sleeper Awakes, he expressed disappointment with the […]
Class / Culture / Labor / Technology
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Temporary Life 5: Survival of the Absent
When I started temping, the personal-computing revolution hadn’t yet rescued the American economy. The Internet as we know it did not exist—it was something called “The Well,” which had to be accessed by a 96-kb […]
Class / Culture / Politics
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If It Ain’t Private, It Ain’t Republican
A few years back, when Dubya was ridin’ his wooden horse hard, I was in a bar talking to a gal who at some point proclaimed, or admitted, that she was a republican. I asked […]