The Tech-Industrial Complex

 On January 17, 1961, President Dwight Eisenhower delivered his political farewell to the American people on national television from the Oval Office of the White House. He warned of an impending "Military Industrial Complex." He was correct.

On January 15th, 2025, President Joe Biden delivered his farewell speech. (source) He warned about a big tech oligarchy, calling it the "tech-industrial complex" and of the dangers of social media misinformation. History will show he was also correct.

Indeed, the evidence is already all around us.

Climate Change Manifestation

Scientists and policy experts have been warning us for decades.  Fossil fuel corporations knew long before that, but suppressed the data, bought off our politicians, and intentionally confused the public.

This is just the beginning of our dark future on planet Earth.  It will only improve when we collectively decide it is our absolute top priority to address global climate change.

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"The thing, again, you know, I think everyone needs to understand ... that this is going to get worse. I can see that today just as clearly as I could see how hotter and drier and more fiery Los Angeles was getting. I mean, I think, in the future, if we don’t change course very quickly — and maybe it’s even too late to avoid some of these much more catastrophic impacts, but I am fully expecting heat waves to start appearing where 100,000 people die, and then maybe a million people die, and then maybe more after that, as things get hotter and hotter, because there’s no — there’s no upper limit, right? Like, we keep burning these fossil fuels. The fossil fuel industry keeps lying. The planet just keeps getting hotter. These impacts just keep getting worse.

It’s not a new normal. A lot of climate messaging centers around this idea that it’s a new normal. It’s a staircase to a hotter, more hellish Earth. And, you know, a lot of climate impact predictions have erred on the side of least drama. It’s hard for even scientists to wrap our heads around how everything is changing right now on planet Earth. No matter where you look, the indicators — you know, when spring comes, how hot the winter is, habitats that are moving, ice that’s melting — everywhere you look in the Earth system, including, of course, ocean temperatures and land surface temperatures, you’re just on this trend towards a hotter planet and all of the impacts that are associated with it. And I don’t know what it’s going to take for us to stop all these stupid wars and come together and actually deal with the emergency that our planet is in the process of becoming less and less habitable and everything that means. We, humanity, we’ve got a real crisis here, and we’re ignoring it."

- Peter Kalmus, climate activist and climate scientist (source)

End of the Tracks: Homecoming

I'm excited to announce that my work of near future literary fiction is now available for purchase as an eBook!

$15 includes both PDF and EPUB formats and proceeds go towards distribution for upcoming audio book, paperback, and online retail sales.

This has been a year-long undertaking of mine and I hope you take this opportunity to be one of the first to read my debut novel!

Enjoy Your Last Thanksgiving

 Too political? Maybe. But it's what I've been thinking about today, so I made this.

The 2024 Gender Gap and Toxic Masculinity

It seems to me that American men are going through some things... and the pronounced gender gap in this election cycle certainly highlights it.

I cannot tell you the number of times I've been "gender policed" by other men on social media for supporting Kamala Harris. The worst of it is on Twitter/X, but there's plenty of this kind of internalized misogyny and enforced, confining, toxic masculinity on Facebook, as well.

According to these men, in 2024: Men are not "supposed" to vote for Democrats. Men are not "supposed" to vote for liberals. Men are not "supposed" to vote for women.

Though not exclusively, this trait is most acute among men without a college degree. And as the achievement gap / educational attainment gap between young men and young women in higher education continues to widen, this trend is going to get worse by 2028, not better.

The Apprentice (2024)

I went to see "The Apprentice" in theaters because no streaming service is currently willing to show this film. Donald Trump tried to stop it from being released. It's a dark, disturbing, well-crafted "origin story" of how Trump became Trump.

Set in the 1970's and 80's in NYC, the film at times feels almost like a Star Wars story, chronicling how one Sith Lord (Roy Cohn, Trump's nefarious, noxious, unrelenting lawyer and fixer) trains the next in the ways of the Dark Side. And true to form, Trump betrays those closest to him, violates them, belittles and dismisses them in their moments of great need... because that's what he learned how to do from Cohn himself.

If not Star Wars, the story arc could be among the darker works of Shakespeare.

So many of the essential moments of the film have already been verified several times over (via court documents and firsthand witnesses), thus the performances feel authentic and the chronology works effectively to chronicle the rise of Trump - often in ominous, unsettling ways - given what America under 45 has experienced (and may yet again face).

To that end, I turned to the people sitting next to me in the theater during the end credits.  I said, "can you believe someone would watch this film and think the guy would be a good choice for president?"

Concepts of a Plan: a Political Concept Album

"Concepts of a Plan: a Political Concept Album" is now available for $59.95 while supplies last! All the greatest American hits you love, dedicated to Our Great Country. Everyone is talking about it, believe me! People are saying it's really incredible what he's done, at a level nobody has seen before!

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Yeah, "they're eating cats and dogs" was unhinged Trump, but the truly damning highlight from the debate was this. It reveals Trump doesn't believe his job includes being prepared for, carrying out, or even thinking through his campaign promises.

Trump had a very long list of campaign promises from 2016 that not only weren't filled, Trump believes you don't remember them and it's not important, anyway; anger about the cost of living and paranoia about immigrants is enough to win in 2024.

This moment revealed how shallow a thinker Trump truly is, and the shallow thinking he in turn demands of his supporters to continue revering such an inept, cognitively compromised leader.