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Empire Overreach
One of the most intractable problems of the American empire has been that it was hard to see the overreach because, as everyone knows, empires simply don’t overreach. Not ever. Not in the long, groaning history of human civilization has any empire—be it Roman, British, Mongol, or otherwise—stretched itself too thin, spent beyond its means,…
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American invasions of Mexico to go after bandits always go well
Well, here we are again, ladies and gentlemen. Another round of America’s favorite geopolitical drinking game: Invade Mexico, Why Not? Our perennial fixation with turning our southern neighbor into a glorified shooting range has been resurrected by none other than Donald J. Trump. Yes, the man whose diplomacy skills rival those of a raccoon raiding…
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Waiting for the Flood
Boomers have plenty to say, but let’s be honest—if it’s a video, you’re watching it at 1.5x speed, and if it’s a Substack or a PDF, you’re skimming it at 2x. It’s the only way to bear it. Millennials and Zoomers? You don’t bother—most of them still need to season a bit before they say…
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The Ralph’s Doctrine:
Groceries, Geopolitics, and the End of Civilization by a Drunken Lunatic with a Cart Full of Frozen Burritos Power is unequally distributed, but it’s not supposed to be this obvious. Walk into any Ralph’s supermarket at 11:45 PM on a Tuesday and you’ll see what I mean: exhausted cashiers managing checkout lines longer than a…
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Apocalypse Warm-Up Tour
In the sweaty corridors of Washington, there’s a palpable unease. The clock ticks louder in the Situation Room, and the tension feels thicker than a barroom floor after a two-for-one night. The problem, you see, is not just the impending doom of World War III—but where it starts. Ukraine’s got the spotlight for now, but…
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Polostan
I just finished reading Polostan by Neil Stephenson and I have the same feeling I always have with him. He is a great neo-Victorian. So there’s always the veneer of sci-fi and technology but it’s all seems to me like build on a 19th century Victorian novel or early 20th century Edwardian that has just…
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Veni, Vidi, Vichy
I came, I saw, I folded like bad origami. A handshake under the table, fingers crossed behind the back, the perfect alibi for treason wrapped in the flag of survival. Opportunists slip through cracks, greased by the fat of the land they betray. One moment they’re fighting for freedom; the next, they’re filing your chains…
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NPCs
An NPC, the non-player character, the digital ghost in the machine, a ledger of actions, transactions, and transient histories. Each pixelated husk a monument to overwrite—a forgotten thing replaced by consensus, a network-dreamed figment, rewritten without memory. You see them standing there, loop-bound, shuffling through canned dialogue, placeholder souls for a system too busy grinding…
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Dancing in the Panopticon
Somewhere between the last cigarette of the night and the first hit of morning regret, a meme appeared—a meme that hit like a bad trip laced with too much truth. “I would go to clubs if…” it begins, and already we’re hooked, because we would. Oh, we absolutely would. Clubs, after all, are temples to…
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Pure, Uncut, Imperial Lunacy
The new breed of tech cowboys, high on venture capital and zero-interest loans, are suddenly feeling the heat, and it’s terrifying to watch. These clowns have been riding the free-money carousel for so long they’ve forgotten what it’s like to sweat. Now, the moment the cash dries up, their first instinct is pure, uncut imperial…
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