Robot Jazz

  💢💢💢 This is your reminder that we are now 203 days into the Trump cover-up of his being in the Epstein files. 💢💢💢 To the seven brave souls still reading this blog—thank you. You already know I’m a PC gaming devotee, and not just for the pixelated explosions. Like a good book or film, games can be portals into history, ideology, and the uncomfortable truths we’d rather not face. While the sticks-in-the-mud who are the Baby Boomers find this a shocking idea, Gen X and beyond know this to be true; hence, it is often video game franchises that command the type of fanatical devotion that popular movies once did (whither thou goest, Hollywood?).  As I watch this once great nation slip into authoritarianism, it is no surprise that I have been playing a great deal of my two favorite Cold War gone hot wargames, WARNO and Regiments .  As a child of the Cold War, I've always been interested in this period of history, one that I suspect, due to the lack of a major East versu...

This is your reminder that it is now 200 days since the Trump-Epstein cover-up began. 🔽🔽🔽🔽🔽 Remember that story from a few months ago where Trump suddenly started talking about how he was going to re-open Alcatraz because he thought it was a really neat place (an expected belief, seeing how he is really into cruelty)? Immediately, anyone who understood how simple-minded Trump is just knew that that bit of idiocy was the result of the couch potato-in-chief watching Escape from Alcatraz.  And, sure enough, it took only a little sleuthing to learn that, indeed, the movie was shown on television the day before he made his announcement.   I bring that up because something similar happened today. As per the New York Times:  Trump Directs Military to Target Foreign Drug Cartels President Trump has secretly signed a directive to the Pentagon to begin using military force against certain Latin American drug cartels that his administration has deemed terrorist organizati...

  At last, the heat broke!  Huzzah! Interestingly, in breaking, it shattered. That is to say, we have been running below normal in terms of temperature, even to the point of nearly sundering an all-time low temperature for August. How wonderful. 😀  Unfortunately, NOAA, or what is left of it,  is predicting a well-above normal August through October. Around these parts, that is known as an "Indian Summer", which is to say a summer that refuses to leave. It is what we had last year, too. Sadly. 🔽🔽🔽🔽🔽 Ironically, it is during these not-so-august days of August that I found myself watching a snowy Cold War thriller called Gorky Park . Of late, I have been in a Cold War mindset.  Perhaps it is due to the excellent Underground '80s music channel via soma.fm , but I suspect it really has to do with the raging hot war in central Europe, aka the Russo-Ukrainian War, combined with an American presidency that is historic not for its alleged successes as much as for i...