machination.org

I thoroughly appreciate old time radio podcasts (and their progenetors — old time radio broadcasts, like WAMU’s “The Big Broadcast”). Today I am enjoying Duane Old Time Radio’s “The Complete Orson Welles” and the latest posting of an Adventures of Harry Lime, “Too Many Crooks.”

I am beginning to remember life in DC that wasn’t about the pandemic or about work. Getting outside helps—always has. Keep moving. Sleep hard.

Trying not to fall into the trap of too much woe-is-me drama and our COVID-isolating household. But I do wish the not-yet-3-year-old would somehow maintain a schedule for himself so the rest of us could get some work done or at least have energy to catch-up after he went to bed reliably at a reasonable hour.

There.

I hear the tiny violins already.

I’ve been saying trite things, but I am just heartbroken over the Buffalo and Uvalde mass shootings… and the massive sucking noise of our civic and governmental failure.

“Cheese toastie” is not a thing. Don’t listen to your mother kid, it’s a grilled cheese.

Trawling through 20 year old emails and mourning missed opportunities. Maybe, finally, learning some lessons…

The trillions of dollars in “profits” of the fossil fuel industry are really just a high interest loan with the rest of us as collateral.

“You paid us more than if you had been telling us the truth, and enough more to make it all right.” — Bogie as Sam Spade, and the motto of the giants and certain niche mercenaries of the PR industry.

A whisky in hand and Bogie on the biggest screen in the house.

So far it all jibes. It’s fucked, but it jibes.

Currently reading: The Ministry for the Future: A Novel by Kim Stanley Robinson 📚

…reminded its been on my list for a couple of years now with a very specific news article in the New York Times, which closely matched the opening pages I had sampled previously.

Finished reading: Termination Shock: A Novel by Neal Stephenson 📚

Appreciated this, and many of his past works, I think as shallowly and as deeply as needed but was prompted to consider that with the latest On The Media.

Amen… er, Solidarity.

~ 10:52 EST — There are many other angles, but I buy the analysis that Putin’s ego and attempting to exploit Soviet-era World War II pride and shame (if not subsumed into it himself)) is part of it.

When I visited my sister studying in Moscow the most common question we were asked by Russians was if we were related to a famous WWII General with the same family name.

That sister and another now live in Vienna, Austria.

I’m reminded that Slovakia — between them and Ukraine — is not a large country. With missiles falling in Western Ukraine, they’re as close as if they were on the far North side of the Adirondacks back home and bombs were hitting Northern New Jersey or so.

This doesn’t put them in the middle of it, and isn’t meant to imply any personal ownership or intimate knowledge or expertise with regards to the Ukraine conflict, but my knowledge of that geography as well as our home geography reminds me of the privilege of sense of scale and remove that I and most of my fellow US citizens have. That said: With the news that Russian and Ukrainian forces are battling over Chernobyl, and the worries that artillery hits might disturb and spread radioactive dust over the region, suddenly Vienna doesn’t seem far enough away.

~ 1200 EST — From a friend who lived in Russia in the early aughts: “There’s all this talk about going after the Russian oligarchs. I’m certainly for it, but I think we should strike the modifier ‘Russian’ and go after all oligarchs.” Amen. (Later I was reminded this friend and Putin were once in the same room together, along with George W. Bush, in St. Petersburg. Nothing high-powered; simply because of a program he was involved in, he became part of an obligatory audience and backdrop for them.)

~ 14:00 EST — I’m reminded my mother visited the Soviet Union as part of an extended student tour, and her visit included Kiev and “the Ukraine” at that time. (I’m surrounded by family and friends with various Russian and Soviet life experiences, echoes of the cold war influence on the boomer generation in various ways and not deep hereditary ties, really.)

I remember when the BBC News web site was dense (text dense) and full of often dry but fascinating news from all corners of the world. Now it is barely smarter than CNN (which hasn’t gotten smarter) and even less dense.