Life Has No Factory Reset

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It’s not uncommon when a relationship has become terribly strained and stressed for one of the parties involved to suggest that they ‘start over’ but such a step, short of a fantastical memory wipe, is impossible. We carry our histories inside us and the weight of all the past words and actions press us inevitably forward. This is also true outside of the romantic realm.

There are some current and former members of the Republican Party who long for a return to the party that they remember, often this is from a very distinct and fenced off recollection of the party, usually centered on the ‘Reagan Revolution’ discarding the party before that time. Such dreams are pure fantasy. The population, both inside and outside the party, carries the history of all the words and actions and hurt that has been visited upon this nation and this world by the GOP of the last quarter century. You cannot unwind history. This is not a malfunctioning iPhone that can be restored to factory settings and reloaded with fresh applications.

The people killed and injured by handing the nation’s health systems over to a conspiratorial nutjob cannot be made whole again. The international relations cannot be mended with mere words. The brilliant minds denied entry or chased away will remember their treatment for decades and will remain wary.

A startling fact I learned this morning is the number of physicians looking to leave this country. Over the same period in 2024, 71 doctors applied to become licensed in Canada, for 2025 that number rose to 615! Now we are the subject of a global ‘brain drain’.

If a massive health event were to take the principal instigator of our nation’s pains from this mortal coil the damage will have already been done. The dark period of rebuilding and constructing of a new Republican Party would be shortened but not eliminated. There are terrible times ahead and the next century may not be America’s.

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Andor: Final Thoughts

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I have finally finished watching the Star Wars inspired television series Andor, which follows both the character of Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) introduced to audiences with Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and the growth of the Rebel Alliance as they struggle against the Galactic Empire.

Disney Studios

Andor is quite simply my favorite Star Wars inspired media that I have encountered, unique in that it avoids tales of mysticism and chosen bloodlines for a more complex view of people in crisis. While it repeats the phrase ‘Rebellions are built on hope’, it also depicts that rebellions, vast criminal conspiracies, are often riven with conflict, competing power centers, and a willingness to do terrible things for their ultimate objective.

I refer to it as ‘Star Wars inspired’ and not directly as Star Wars because I do think the difference is immense. Star Wars is the collection of stories centered on the Skywalker clan and their associates. Those tales focus on noble bloodlines, characters born ‘better’ than the masses, and have much more in common with fairy tales than the lives of ordinary people living through difficult times facing terrible decisions. In Star Wars the fascism of the Empire is an abstract thing, shown here and there with its casual cruelty to principal characters of the story but otherwise something that we need not actually see. In Andor, the fascism is the day-to-day experience of the people, and we live it not only in the arbitrary ‘justice’ system that dispatches people to labor prisons for minor offenses but also in the bureaucratic nightmare of its security services as talented dedicated officers are hamstrung and eventually crushed for their initiative.

I applaud Andor for its multifaceted depiction of the Alliance, from politicians deluding themselves that politics and policy can still save them, through idealists writing their manifestos while running from the law to fanatics blinded to the suffering and the evil that they do by their need to win.

Andor which began with Cassian leaving a brothel where he had hoped to find his sister and killing a pair of police officers that tried to shake him down is not ‘realistic’, but it echoes our world and its corruption.

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Staycation

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I’ve been absent from the online spaces here because I took a little staycation break over the Memorial Day weekend. Having secured five days off in a row, I lounged about the house, visited the zoo, Balboa Park, and Riverside Park with my sweetie-wife while working on absolutely nothing.

That last phrase is not quite true. A writer’s mind doesn’t seem to be able to turn off completely and while shopping Monday evening I did manage to solve an issue with my 80s themed cinephile horror novel in progress, something that will end act 2 and propel things into act 3.

In addition to video games and laziness, I completed a couple of television seasons. With my sweetie-wife, we finished off Season 2 of Andor, that simply fantastic and amazing show set in the Star Wars universe but divested from space wizards, knights, and princesses with an approach that is closer to real-world revolutionaries. A complex tale of shadowy worlds where compromises are required for victory and one’s opponents are not kept incompetent to save the plot. As you can tell, I loved it.

On my own I finished watching season one of Severance. While I enjoyed the series  and the mysteries provided enough interest to draw in for a completion it did not hook me the way Andor or The Pitt did. It is interesting, and I will undoubtedly watch season two, but it is not a need but curiosity that draws my interest.

This morning, I return to my desk at the day job, with no question that a ton of emails are waiting to be quickly scanned, sorted, and most deleted and then back to processing and fixing Medicare Advantage enrollments. I will also get back to actually writing my horror novel and working my way towards that scene that will propel the next major section of the story.

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I Must Be Dreaming

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No, I am not referring to some sudden and terrific news I have received but rather to a classic refrain from characters in film, television, and prose that has always struck me as a bit false.

Characters suddenly finds themselves in some implausible situation, transported to a second-world fantasy or such and all too often they will insist or mutter or ponder if they are dreaming, because this simply can’t be real.

Here’s my problem with that. Dreams, no matter how strange and defying of conventional reality, always feel real. During the dream you don’t question them or their breaks in any rational logic, you always just accept them.

Yeah, I was at work talking to a co-worker, turned the corner of the hallway and now I’m back in high school and stuttering in front of a cheerleader. The transition from one reality to the next happens and you don’t question it.

So, a character opening their eyes and finding themselves surrounded by elves and the like isn’t likely to go off asking if this is a dream because that’s not how dreams work. Not only is the question clearly so overused to have become a cliche but the incongruity of the character asking that question breaks for me suspension of disbelief.

Joss Whedon, apparent scum that he is, I think really nailed the logical and illogical absurdity of dreams in the final episode of season 4 of Buffy The Vampire Slayer. As we follow the characters through their dreams, being stalked by a supernatural entity to give the story some stakes, the world around them shifts and changes in the span of an edit but the characters do not notice. They do not question that the college has suddenly become the high school, that the back of the ice cream truck leads without a break into a basement. That is how dreams work and as we dream them, they feel right, they feel true.

I would advise to excise any mention of a character thinking that the fantastic environment that they find themselves in questioning if it is all a dream.

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False, Fixed, and Unshakable

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The other week on YouTube I came across Doctor Elliot’s channel. The doctor is a psychiatrist practicing in the United Kingdom, and I stumbled on his channel following doctors reacting to The Pitt and its medical accuracy.

In one of the videos Dr. Elliot swung into precisely how delusion is defined by modern psychiatry, that it is a belief that is false, fixed, and unshakeable.

A little epiphany lit up in my head.

As someone who has stood against Trump since before he came down that escalator, (I have never liked the man or any of his public appearances and never watched the damned show that propelled him to an office he is wholly unfit for.) his supporters have diagnosed me with Trump Derangement Syndrome. Their accusation of ‘derangement’ costs me not one moment of sleep. I know that I have not elided any of my core principles to stay acceptable to the mob.

What did light up for me was thinking about those Republicans old enough to have been supporters and voters as far back as Regan. The ones who proclaimed loudly and with such apparently firm conviction that their political positions did not arise from grubby self-interest but rather solid and well thought out philosophies. The supporters who now have spun their deeply held convictions into support for a philandering, greedy, corrupt, man of such low character you would not trust him to watch your wallet while you visited the restroom.

Why?

Because they are deluded that the Democratic Party is always the worse option. It is their fixed, false, and unshakable belief that the Democrats must always be the wrong choice that traps them with Trump.

This is not true for every single person that voted for Trump in 2024. Many voted because they were unhappy with conditions as they experienced them in the two years leading up to the election. Some tried to argue with these people that it wasn’t really that bad, using charts and numbers and data to prove their point but they missed that the motivation wasn’t empirical but emotional. There’s a reason why the Trump coalition had a larger share of infrequent voters than Harris’.

Some voted for Trump because he was exactly what they wanted, a cruel racist man promising to make the lives of those for whom they shared contempt for tough and unpleasant.

Some voted for Trump because there were goodies to be had, taxes to be cut.

But there remains that segment deluded with the belief that the Democrats are always the wrong choice, firm in the fixed, false, and unshakable convictions which are in actuality bereft of any actual convictions.

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So, I Finally Started Severance

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Despite the second season having already completed its airing, (airing strikes me as grossly incorrect in the age of streaming) I only began watching the series Severance this past weekend.

Apple TV +

The series is a science-fiction program centered on the ‘severed’ workers at the mysterious Lumon corporation. ‘Severed’ is a mechanical/surgical procedure that causes memory formation and retrieval in those altered to be spatially controlled. In the case of these workers while on the ‘severed’ floor they have no memory of their lives outside of the work area and when off that designated floor they have no ability to recall anything that occurred during their working hours. Each worker lives two lives, one where work is their entire existence and one ‘normal’ outside of their shift on the ‘severed’ floor.

 

 

The show’s protagonist is Mark (Adam Scott) a man who in his regular life is dealing with crushing grief and at work who has recently been promoted to a supervisory position which now includes a new hire, Helly (Britt Lower). Things become complicated when a ‘severed’ worker, Petey, approaches Mike in his outer life with information that Lumon is hiding the truth of their work and that being ‘severed’ is actually reversable.

Severance is executive produced by Ben Stiller and his company Red Hour Productions, (Stiller is a noted Star Trek fan as his production company indicates.) and Stiller directed the first two episodes.

I have heard since the series’ release of season one that this was an interesting and challenging show with surprising twists and reveals but it has been only in the last few days, I made time to start watching. Right now, I can’t say if I am completely sold on the series.

I have watched two episodes, and the world building is interesting, the concepts are fascinating, the acting is quite good, but the show hasn’t managed to set a hook that forces me to come back for the next episode. Comparing my reaction to Severance with another show I recently started watching, The Pitt, produces a striking contrast.

The Pitt is a medical drama with no genre conventions, normally the sort of series that would provoke little interest from me and it was only doctors praising the accuracy that caused me to watch the first episode, and I was utterly hooked. From the very first show I had favorite characters and those who I disliked, and I had to watch more. I burned through the entire series in about two weeks, skipping only one night when I was still so mad because my favorite character had been physically attacked.

Severance has produced no reaction like that. It is interesting, the world building with the people who live outside of the company have valid and interesting reaction to such technology, and there are mysteries to be uncovered, puzzles to be solved, but so far nothing that is emotionally compelling. The series is prompting curiosity but not much more. That is not to say I will stop watching; I will give it a few more episodes but unless something changes it could fall into a well of disinterest where I simply watch other things and fail to return not from dislike but simply not caring.

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The Pointless Hypocrisy Canard

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There is a tendency in the Anti-Trump resistance for some people to deploy the rather obvious charge of ‘hypocrisy’ when Trump, his administration, and his allies perform crude and obvious actions that they have deeply and loudly criticized among their political opponents.

The list is nearly endless and stretches back decades to the Clintons, through Obama and Biden. Money donated to the Clinton Foundation, was in reality monies going directly to them, proof of their ‘corruption,’ however billions washed through Trump’s various crypto schemes are unworthy of any thought. Still images of Obama nose in the air peering down at someone solid proof of the man’s narcissism, egotism, and arrogance. Trump’s display of nearly clinical malignant narcissism, merely proof of his opponents ‘derangement.’

The reason the charges of hypocrisy are pointless is that they miss a fundamental truth, every single attack is not launched in anything approximating ‘good faith.’ These people care not one iota for the truth of the matter but only for the effectiveness of their attacks. The point isn’t about what really happened but only to win the ‘news cycle’ and drive down their opponents’ support. The moment a particular tool or weapon ceases to be effective it is discarded.

It is a waste of time and resources to answer any of it with ‘hypocrisy.’ That merely invigorates the charges, often patently false, providing Trump and his allies with even more opportunities for attack.

Weakly bound voters I think are more likely to be swayed with attacks that simply go directly at the man and his administration’s criminal and authoritarian actions without reference to any hypocrisy. His solidly committed voters, motivated by racism, or self-interest and simply the delusion that a Democratic politician is always the wrong choice cannot be dislodged with this charge.

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64 Circles and I am Dizzy

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So, today is my birthday. The Earth has circled the sun some 64 times since I arrived and this morning I was gifted with a moderate migraine when I opened my eyes.

Luckily, I had already arranged to take today and tomorrow off from the day-job, but back on Friday, so nothing is expected of me.

The migraine subsided after lunch, and I even managed about 900 words on my 80s cinephile horror novel bring the total to just over 19,000. That’s anywhere from one quarter to one fifth done depending on how it shakes out. The story has seen two ‘on screen’ deaths, one off-screen and a good friend corrupted by a released evil. Yeah, in other words, a good time.

Writing a novel set in a time period I remember but also one that is a little fuzzy is interesting. I was just about to have a character comment on Ted Turner colorizing classics, evil, evil man, but a bit of quick research showed that did not really break big for another 4 years.

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That Elon Conspiracy Theory

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There are those who question why Elon Musk, the wealthiest man on the planet, put so much time and effort as a special employee of the government into the ludicrously conceived ‘DOGE.’ He was never, much less easily, going to find 2 trillion dollars in waste and fraud in a federal budget of about 6.8 trillion dollars. What he has cut is funding for things he did not approve of and that seemed to threaten him in some way. (See which Inspectors General were fired.) Tesla stock and sales for the current calendar year have severely fallen with some markets seeing declines in car sales for nearly 80 percent. the actions taken by Elon do not seem wise for someone wanting to hang on to their wealth.

One theory, backed with no real evidence, is that gaining access to so many sources of data from within the government was Musk’s real goal. Musk’s entry into the A.I. space with ‘Grok’ is a little behind his competitors and the theory suggests that such a vast trove of data would be an asset in Musk catching up.

Along those lines I have seen one curious data point.

Last year before Musk had access to the data, such as from the Library of Congress, I asked Grok to summarize the plot of my novel Vulcan’s Forge. I have done this with several A.I., some created lies, inventing plots while others responded with answers that they did not access to that information. None have ever actually provided a synopsis. Grok in 2024 invented a plot that had absolutely nothing to do with my novel.

This year, in the last few weeks, Grok now provides a short synopsis with not inaccuracies, getting plot, characters, and themes correctly.

Did Grok get my full manuscript from the library of congress?

I have no real evidence of that, but it certainly gained access to the text, which I never authorized.

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Why did John Carpenter’s ‘The Thing’ fail at the Box Office?

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June 25th, 1982, witnessed the release of The Thing a remake by horror icon John Carpenter of the classic Sci-Fi film The Thing from Another World, both inspired and adapted from the short story Who Goes There by famed writer and editor John W. Campbell Jr. Despite Carpenter’s successful track record of feature films such as Halloween, Escape from New York, and The Fog this movie crashed at the box office, making less than 20 million on a 15 million estimated budget, considering prints and advertising that a movie that lost money. Reportedly Carpenter for decades felt bitter about the movie terrible run even after the film became a classic beloved by millions and considered a masterpiece of modern horror.

1982 was far from a year of depressed box office receipts. Many films scored enormous financial successes that year including such genre fare as Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn, Poltergeist, and E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial but along with The Thing another movie that is now considered extraordinary died at with audiences in 1982 Blade Runner.

Blade Runner, I believe, suffered from both studio interference and audience expectations causing its failure to find the success it would eventually discover once alternate edits became widely available, but The Thing is a different story. That film has not been re-tooled, edited, or significantly altered from its original theatrical release. The version hailed as a masterpiece is the same one I watched in 1982.

The film did not change, the culture around it did. The decade prior to The Thing’s release was one of deep cynicism and anti-heroes. The 1970s brought forth films about failure, systems crushing heroes and the futility of trying. Even when heroes won victory it often came at great costs or produced pyric wins. By 1982 this cultural mood had been swept away with ‘morning in America’ and a renewed sense of manifest destinty. Following that massive success of Star Wars and its first sequel The Empire Strikes Back the cultural zeitgeist was one that demanded happy endings, clearly defined heroes and villains, and unbounded optimism. The Thing stood not only in contrast but stark opposition to all of that. It’s heroes were deeply flawed the mood darkly cynical and the ending so ambiguous as to provide no sense of closure for any audience.

We can never know for sure, but I believe if The Thing had been released in 1976 it would have found an audience on that release but for 1982 it simply marched to a beat so different that few could actually hear it.

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