Dance the pain away*

Temperature: a snowy -5/23 degrees. It was a cold January and it's been a cold February with snow for once.

Eating: Maybe later.

Drinking: Maybe a caipirinha over the weekend in celebration of the carnival season?

Listening: Like I said, it's almost carnaval, so what do you think? Time to dance the pain away, the physical, the emotional, the existential.

Watching: Wuthering Heights ASAP.

Reading: @FrenchResponse yet? Not without risks, this tactic. Then again, you have to fight your corner. Chapeau !
 
Writing: Now that this is all just training data for AI, are you thinking Inception yet? Shouldn't we TED it at every turn, only write ideas worth spreading? Keeping it classy and truthful, maybe even artful? We are, after all, the originals, and AI is the glorified copy-paste machine, and there is no shortage of shit slinging enshittifying the mix so it desperately needs a counterbalance.

Thinking: The more one reads on the Epstein case the more it looks like a if-you-go-down-I-go-down mutually assured destruction construction of blackmail, extortion, info and intel gathering, manipulation, money laundering, sex slavery and human trafficking, and who knows what else, and it makes the FBI look like the Federal Bureau of Interception, and prosecutors either corrupt, really bad at their jobs, or both, and it raises more questions than it answers, starting with if no one managed to help these teens and children and stop these crimes and these criminals after all that came to light ages ago then what the hell were they doing sitting on their hands, at whose behest, and why. And if you're thinking that the things coming out prove they can't be true because they are just too crazy, too sick and depraved to be true, people tasked with investigating these crimes will tell you that there is no limit to the sick and sadistic things some will do to adults, teens and children as young as newborns. (These investigators need therapy because of the nature of their work, and their therapists need therapy in turn, and not all therapists will work with these investigators because they do not want to carry detailed accounts of violence done to children, violence that sometimes leads to death.) And if it's true, where are the whistleblowers? Well, we have the original whistleblowers, the victims, who have either not been listened to or believed in the first place, or who have been silenced after speaking up, or who were turned into accomplices before coming forth (and what a diabolic move of coercive control that is, turning your victim into your partner in crime) and the few prosecutors who tried to act were told to sit down and shut up because we got this (and what did Epstein get for his crimes? a sweetheart deal), and we have investigative journalists trying to break into a fortress protecting those who deserve no protection or leniency, and this work can sometimes radically affect your life expectancy if you don't stop what you're doing or take back what you said. The last whistleblower hides inside this circle of predators, someone who has witnessed these crimes, maybe even taken part, someone whose conscience isn't one hundred percent dead. Will they speak up in an attempt to save themselves when all evidence supports the assumption no one will protect you, no one will save you if you do? Because even after he became a registered sex offender Epstein just picked up where he left off, and people still cozied up to him, sought him out, and the chumminess is beyond creepy and disgusting, and doesn't it just say it all that these monsters would rather protect one another than the victims of their crimes.

Feeling: Every choice we make is at its heart a moral choice. Every choice either strengthens or weakens our core and ultimately defines who we are as humans. Imagine losing touch with that core. Imagine being so dead inside that even the most defenseless, the most vulnerable, become objects, things, disposable. That is the definition of evil and that evil is real.


*A most carnivalesque video to accompany a most danceable tune with the most delicious 80s synths and drum machines by Haute & Freddy.

Mergers and acquisitions

Since plain English isn't getting through, with all undue respect, please do bugger all the way off.

Brought to you by Europeans Who Just Want to Live Their Lives Without Being Blackmailed, Threatened or Harassed by Dictators, Oligarchs, or Technocrats.

Determined Martin Luther King Jr. Day, dearest denizens!

Champagne kisses

 ...and New Year wishes, sweetie darlings!

The Vienna Philharmonic is playing, the sun is out, there is snow on the way, it's a beautiful day.

Io Saturnalia! ✨

Temperature: https://arctic.noaa.gov/report-card/report-card-2025/

Eating: Still setting the menu for next week.

Drinking: Can we save that for Christmas? Just had a toast or two to celebrate our silver wedding anniversary, which sounds impossible, twenty-five years, I mean. Then again, get married in your twenties and you've been up to quite a lot by the time you hit fifty. 🥂

Listening: to...you have exactly one guess to get this right.

Watching: cheesy Christmas movies.

Reading: on the fun Romans used to have this time of year makes Christian Christmas celebrations look suspiciously like cultural appropriation. Add to that all the Persian and Jewish and Latin American influences and it's quite a colorful quilt you get.
 
Writing: digital holiday messages. Oh I still send out cards in the hopes of receiving them, but with the old guard taking leave...not that many cards and letters arriving these days. And that's a pity.

Thinking: it's life according to Dickinson, as I am out with lanterns, looking for myself, trying to decide which possible future course has legs. Good thing Santa Lucia stopped by on Saturday to light the way as we have not a single flake of snow. Oh well, there's light and colors aplenty indoors, so I think we'll manage.

Feeling: I need a little Christmas, right this very minute... And the syncretistic version is fine by me. Happy holidays, sweetie darlings, wherever you are. 💝

Thanksgrieving

Temperature: a rainy 7/45 degrees. 

Eating: falafels.

Drinking: gingerbread coffee.

Listening: to a jazzy Christmas playlist curated by my youngest. I most certainly am, less than four weeks to go, that's nothing!

Watching: Generation X creatives take a beating. Good thing we're a resilient, resourceful bunch, children of a string of recessions, never any certainty about anything. Some would say cynics. I say we're realists. And thankful we had the optimism and opportunity to pursue careers in arts and media, academia and culture, giving the world the best of our skills and talents.

Reading: the US-Russia peace proposal was like reading Kremlin's wish list to Father Frost. What a bunch of immoral and illegal BS.
 
Writing: condolences and other messages of support and sympathy. 

Thinking: Just like no one came to the aid of the blue-collar worker when manufacturing jobs were redistributed, no one is coming to shield creatives from the devastation caused by AI. I hear new jobs are on the horizon, but no one seems to know what these new jobs are and how many openings there will actually be. We don't have time to wait, or waste, we need to keep moving. Where to, now that is the question.

Feeling: Sure, I have a horse in this race and as much to lose as any of my friends and colleagues, but that's not all I'm apprehensive about. Don't you feel uneasy when AI companies would rather not talk about the monstrous environmental footprint they produce and what that means for the climate and all of us? Or how refining language models so far as to make people believe that what these programs produce is actual, factual, carefully deliberated thoughts and answers leads people to use these programs in their daily lives and decision making, wholesale? When in fact, after racing to gather and input as much data as possible, racist and sexist and all manner of toxic thinking and language is now as integral a part of these programs as say Wikipedia or the Encyclopedia Britannica. Or how mercenary their piracy-based business model is? Are you okay with this, all of it? I'm not.