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TELLING THE STORY

The A.I. voice is familiar as the narrator sets up the story. They only use 3–4 voices. The visuals are what we might see driving 30 mph on an attractive suburban boulevard: trees, a hillside, nice homes, a few other cars. We’re moving at a steady pace. Where are we going? What does this have to do with the story? We are in constant motion, though. I keep expecting the car to crash.

The voice begins:

My name is Joshua Wells. I am 41 years old, in good health, and thought that I had done all the right things on my path to success. I am an architect, and proud of my work.

The “Institute of Creative Solutions”

For a hot minute a few years ago, I was part of naming the future, and defining the “Future Human.”

I was to design an “Institute” which would give students from Kindergarten through High School experiences they would likely face in the future. The jobs they may have do not exist today. Where we had been teaching students to read a map, they now had to create their own map.

We wanted to be sure our plans could accommodate a post-millennial mindset. We had not yet heard of Artificial Intelligence. We had no examples to work from, no people who embodied the “Future Human.”

In the 1995 film Waterworld Kevin Costner grew gills behind his ears as an evolutionary adaptation to

The line in the sand seems to have been crossed. The military has been deployed in Los Angeles. It’s time.

They crossed the line.

When something happens that is so apocalyptic every cell in our beings is on fire, we simply cannot go on without putting up a fight. 

Sometimes the answer to the question: would you die on this hill? — comes as a surprise. Maybe I could die on this hill. This is that bad.

American Abomination

On June 9, the line was crossed, and we entered the era of the American Abomination.

Let’s go back a bit.

In late February, the White House ambush of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelinsky was a sad spectacle. Ukraine had been under siege by a ruthless aggressor for years,

“War does not spring full-blown from an inhuman hardscape of unshakable reality; nor can it be stopped by the one weapon stronger than the enemy’s. War, unfortunately, springs from the heart of man, and is evident in everyday moments of judgmental indifference, competitive cruelty, vindictive payback and the ungenerous casual interactions that mark our days. Building on this, we move into group agreements and actions, and soon we have governance structures, led by those vetted through processes of fear and tribal rage, that lead us to kill for that to which we have pledged our allegiance. The question of going to war was decided long before the first shot was fired or the first provocation was interpreted. We are set up for it. A gun in the first act always goes off

Donald Trump won the 2024 American presidential election four years ago when he lost the 2020 election, casting himself as a martyr, a victim of a conspiracy to steal the election. That belief remained fully intact among a core of zealots.

None of the outrageous things Donald Trump did or said during this campaign could sway this electorate in 2024: felony convictions, obscene gestures with a microphone, awful debate performance – none mattered. Ukraine, Putin, Gaza – minor background issues.

Some analysts are using this victory as proof that 2020 was a corrupt election. Look at the results across time. 2020 was an outlier, clearly won through cheating.

Myth-Making in the Post-Truth Era

Donald Trump represents somethi

Much of America these days exists as small pockets of like-minded people living in proximity to one another, and this goes for both urban and rural areas. This is known as The Big Sort, a phenomenon that began in the 1980s and now has become frequent behavior among families and individuals who are able to exercise choice as to where they live. Five years ago I moved from a large city to a rural community of about 18,000; our entire County is about the size of my former urban neighborhood. The rural population is spread out over nearly 1,000 square miles, while the city compresses that same number of people into 6 square miles – 160 times more dense.

I worked for the public schools in the city, and was closely involved with the arrivals, departures, pr

The famous fanatsy writer is accused of sexual misbehavior that borders on the criminal. The New Zealand police have not charged him, so the podcast team from the UK’s Tortoise Media have brought the issue to the public. Is this the new methodology of sexual justice? False Neutrality

I am not a fan of the literary work of British fantasy writer Neil Gaiman.

I am going to analyze the media reports on the sexual controversy that surrounds him these days — the topics are sexual consent within relationships, older men who seduce much younger women, law enforcement inadequacy, life-partners who may a

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