Day of the Roots, 7th of Spring, 526 M.E. (Betelgeuse): I propose that somewhere in a remote section of North Carolina's Blue Ridge Mountains, there is a colony of ants. Some of the ants claim the existence of highly intelligent beings, "humans" they call them, from somewhere outside of their nest, maybe even from beyond the mountains, but they have no proof. 

"If humans exist," the skeptical ants ask, "Why haven't they come visit our colony?" Surely, they reason, these intelligent humans would be curious about the customs and mores of the colony and would want to communicate with the ants. The believers counter that the humans would obviously want to do all that and more, but given the colony's territorial nature and the way they attacked the wasp that tried to visit, the humans are either afraid or intimidated to appear.

That's how I feel about both UFO conspiracy theorists and the Fermi paradox skeptics. The Fermi paradox is the contradiction between the high probability of the existence of extraterrestrial civilizations, based on the billions of stars and planets in the universe, and the lack of evidence or contact with any such civilizations. 

I believe that given the countless, near-infinite number of stars and planets in the universe, there is lfe out there somewhere on some planet other than Earth. Statistically, if the right combination of amino acids started life here, it must also have happened sometime, somewhere else.  The vast majority of planets are not suitable for organic life as we know it, but there are probably millions (billions?) of other planets where the spark could have started. On some subset of those planets, intelligent life may have evolved, and a subset of those planets may have developed life far more intelligent than us.

But here's the thing - if a species was so vastly more intelligent than us that they managed to figure a way to overcome the space/time challenges of traveling millions of light years, have mastered quantum physics to the point that they can harness relativity to their own purposes, what interest would they have in this ant colony Earth? We're no more capable of learning what they could have to offer than those ants in North Carolina are of translating Shakespeare form English to Chinese, or solving quadratic equations. 

Look, I'm a compassionate person and I also have a tendency to anthropomorphize animals, but if I somehow realized that the North Carolina ants were about to engage in a vicious territorial war with an adjacent colony, a war that would end badly for both, my reaction still wouldn't be to attempt to communicate with the ants and intervene in the war. No, I'd think, "Oh, so that's what they do," and that would be that. So why do we think super-intelligent extraterrestrials would want to get involved with us and stop a potential nuclear war, even if it were disastrous to this planet?

I bring all this up because today The Guardian reported that Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) institute is suggesting that space "weather" may be making radio signals from aliens hard to detect. Stellar activity, such as solar storms and plasma turbulence from a star near “a transmitting planet,” can scramble such transmissions, potentially explaining the radio silence observed in SETI's searches.

“Plasma density fluctuations in stellar winds, as well as occasional eruptive events such as coronal mass ejections, can distort radio waves near their point of origin, effectively ‘smearing’ the signal’s frequency and reducing the peak strength that search pipelines rely on,” according to a SETI press release.

They are not incorrect about those challenges, although I do wonder why they're only realizing the problem now. But I disagree with any assumption that extraterrestrial intelligence has any intention on communicating with us. Especially that they're trying to but can't get through because of those pesky plasma fluctuations. 

For all that we know (and we don't know very much), extraterrestrials have already observed us, have garnered all of the data and information they want or need, and have moved on. They may even still be here, occupying some extra-dimensional space right here in our midst. 

How would we know?

 

Day of the Fronds, 6th of Spring, 526 M.E. (Aldebaran): Oh, fun! There's another new climate-change study out! This one, as reported by the NY Times, found that previous studies of sea-level rise have underestimated just how high the water actually already is. It turns out hundreds of millions of people worldwide are already living dangerously close to the rising ocean than previously estimated.

The study, published in the journal Nature, found that coastal sea levels are, on average, eight inches to a foot higher than many maps and models of the world’s coastlines indicate.  The discrepancies are most pronounced in Southeast Asia and Pacific nations, where coastal sea levels are up to several meters higher than commonly estimated.

The study concludes that scientists have often been working from the wrong starting point when calculating what land and populations might be affected in the future. In other words, they were underestimating where coastal sea levels already are. Of course, people who are exposed to tidal floods know exactly where the ocean is.  

The problem centers on a decades-old method that compares satellite-based measurements of land elevation to what scientists call the “geoid model,” which estimates average sea level based on the Earth’s gravitational field. This method, once considered state-of-the-art and commonly taught in graduate schools, doesn't take into account factors like currents, winds, and tides, which can also influence sea levels but are not included in the geoid model. Sea levels are most accurately estimated when all factors are considered and combined correctly.

Some 90 percent of the papers reviewed in the study relied only on the method of mapping sea levels using Earth’s gravitational field. Another 9 percent of the papers, most of which are relatively recent, did use both kinds of data, but failed to combine them correctly.

In general, the findings indicate that hundreds of millions more people — particularly in Vietnam, the Philippines, Indonesia, the Maldives, and other Southeast Asian and Pacific nations — are living closer to sea level than widely assumed by Western experts and policymakers. In other words, methods of studying sea-level rise that seemed to work relatively well for coastlines in Europe or the U.S. lead to bigger discrepancies in other parts of the world.

Day of the Lamb, 5th of Spring, 526 M.E. (Helios): Welcome to Spring. And with the new season, a welcome return of the Spring avatar, the Earth Mother. 

Speaking of Mother Earth, the World Meteorological Organization confirmed that the past three years have been the hottest three-year period on record. Greenhouse gas concentrations are hitting record-breaking levels even while the planet’s carbon sinks, the natural systems that remove CO₂ from the atmosphere, are becoming depleted. The CO₂-induced warming has also been compounded by a recent drop in sulfur pollution that had provided temporary relief. 

The extreme heat in recent years was due in part to natural fluctuations such as solar cycles, volcanic eruptions, and the El Niño weather pattern. A previous period of accelerated warming was the result of the strong El Niño of 1998. The relative slowdown in warming that followed was incorrectly interpreted as evidence of a pause in global warming. The question now is how much of the current increased temperatures are the result of unforced variability (i.e., natural climate cycles).or forced responses (i.e., anthropogenic climate change).  

A recent study excluded the effect of natural factors behind the latest temperatures by applying a noise-reduction method to filter out the estimated effect of nonhuman factors in five major datasets of the Earth’s temperature. The study found that even without taking natural causes into account, global warming accelerated from a steady rate of less than 0.2° C per decade between 1970 and 2015 to about 0.35° per decade over the past 10 years. The rate is the highest since methodical measurements of the Earth’s temperature began in 1880. 

If the warming rate of the past 10 years continues, it would lead to a long-term exceedance of the 1.5° C limit of the Paris agreement within the next five years. One of the datasets, supplied by the EU’s Copernicus service, indicated the world will cross the 1.5° threshold this year if the rate of warming does not slow. Analysis of the other four datasets showed a breach in 2028 or 2029.

Global heating of 1.5-2° C may be enough to trigger near-apocalyptic “tipping points,” with the chances of catastrophe increasing at higher levels of warming. In the short-term, climate change will make heat waves hotter and allow storms to unleash more rain.

 

Back of the Driver's Neck, 4th Day of Spring, 526 M.E. (Electra): I'm 100% convinced no one would have noticed, but I made some more changes to my New Revised Universal Solar Calendar. For the record, I called yesterday the 64th day of Childwinter, and although Childwinter had 73 days, I'm calling today the 4th of Spring. 

The weather's springlike outside today. I walked an 8.4-mile Van Buren this afternoon in 78° weather wearing a t-shirt and shorts. Somewhere up in doggie heaven, Cricket is wagging his tail because the Stable Genius fired Kristi Noem today. And just about everybody is realizing that the U.S. war in Iran is purposeless with no clear goals or exit strategy. But those aren't the reasons I modified the calendar.

Following the Discordian calendar, the New Revised USC divided the year into five seasons instead of 12 months. But there are 366 days in a full year (what you would call a "leap year") and 366 isn't evenly divisible by five, so the seasons didn't all have the same number of days. 

My problem with the 12-month Julian calendar was that every year started and ended on a different day of the week. Holidays and celebrations tied to a specific day of a month would fall on different weekdays each year and even the "fourth Monday" holidays would fall on different days of the month (and don't even get me started on Easter). But a calendar of 366 days divided into 61 six-day weeks always begins on the first day of the week and always ends on the last. In the USC, at least the earlier version, Independence Day, your July 4, the 186th day of a leap year, would always fall on the fifth day of a six-day week, and would always be the 40th day of Summer. 

But a few things about my calendar still bugged me. There was that extra, "rounding error" day in Autumn, and it also felt that even the other 73-day seasons were still too long. Also, "Autumn" began too early (August 7), at least here in Georgia, as did the end-of-year winter season (October 20).

So instead of five Discordian seasons, I've revised the calendar to evenly divide the year into six 61-day seasons. I've kept Angus MacLise's terms "Childwinter" and "Hagwinter" for the seasons at the beginning and end of the year, as well as the names "Spring" and "Autumn." But in my Newest Revised USC, there are now two separate 61-day summer seasons, Midsommar, roughly equivalent to May and June and which contains the summer equinox, and Hundstage, German for "Dog Days," roughly equivalent to July and August. Yes, I took "Midsommar" from the movie (and what of it?) and the German "Hundstage" seemed to fit better with the Swedish name before it than actually calling it Dog Days. 

So the year is now evenly divided into 61 six-day weeks, and into the six 61-day seasons of Childwinter, Spring, Midsommar, Hundstage, Autumn, and Hagwinter.

Old Angus MacLise gave each day of the year its own poetic name (today's is "Back of the Driver's Neck," which may not sound particularly poetic isolated like that but it works in context, trust me) and I generally kept the names in the order he assigned them. But I noticed that there were six groups of names randomly scattered throughout the year where the names were each repeated five times (e.g., Day of the Zenith, Second Day of the Zenith, and so on to Fifth Day of the Zenith), so I moved some around so each of the six seasons had one "theme" week. 

MacLise also had some paired but not sequential names, such as "Day of Quest" and "Last Day of Quest," scattered throughout the year. I moved those pairs to the first and last days of my seasons, so that.Spring began three days ago with "Day of the Western Isles" and will end after 61 days with "Last Day of the Western Isles." Midsommar begins with "Establishment of the Dreamweapon" and ends with "Launching of the Dreamweapon." Hundstage starts with "Dog Days Begin" and concludes with "Dog Days End" (another reason that I call the season Hundstage and not Dog Days is to avoid confusion between those two specific days and the larger season). "First Day of Quest" and "Last Day of Quest"  are the first and last days of Autumn. The two winter seasons both start and end with random names following MacLise's nomenclature.  

But as I said, I doubt anyone would notice and I suspect fewer care. But long story short, I was sick of winter and that weird albino Childwinter avatar, so we're now four days into Spring in my Newest Revised USC.

Welcome to Spring.

 

The One of Mind Inferno, 64th Day of Childwinter, 526 M.E. (Deneb): In retrospect, maybe the Stable Genius didn't deserve the FIFA Peace Prize. 

 

Haste of the Avenging Hound, 63rd Day of Childwinter, 526 M.E. (Castor): I see in the news that the Stable Genius is angry that the UK, France, Spain, Canada, Australia, and other allies are not supporting the U.S. in its Iran adventure. Our black-out drunk Secretary of Defense called out “so many of our traditional allies who wring their hands and clutch their pearls, hemming and hawing about the use of force." With diplomacy like that, how could they refuse to join in? 

FWIW, you don't get to bully your neighbors, threaten to annex them as the "51st state" or seize their territory, shove illegal and outrageous tariffs down their throats while accusing them of cheating on you, trash talk their leaders, threated to tear up decades-old alliances, and then turn around and expect them to come to your aid in an illegal war of choice that you started as a distraction from the nearly 4,000 times you're mentioned in the Epstein files.

It's well documented that the Stable Genius watches a lot of Fox News on a daily basis, apparently believing every word they speak. For decades, they've been calling for military strikes on Iran. Last year, Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, and Brian Kilmeade pleaded with the Stable Genius to bomb Iran and when he finally did, they lavished praise on him, with Hannity saying the bombing would “go down in history as one of the great military victories.”

Could the encouragement by Fox News be the reason the Stable  Genius started this war? Or did it  have something to do with the increasing heat over the Epstein files? Or was it a tantrum over the Supreme Court striking down his tariffs? Or was he responding to pressure from Netanyahu or bribery from Bone-Saw Arabia? Or all of the above?

Friendly reminder that Fox News, CNN, CBS, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and the NY Post are all owned and controlled by billionaire allies of the Stable Genius. They also control Facebook, Instagram, Twitter (X), TikTok, and more. They control the AI that drives the algorithms that feed your content. With info sources like that, is it any wonder we all find this war a little bewildering and confusing?     

The stated reasons for the war keep changing. First it was to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons and then it was for regime change. Our b.o.d. DoD secretary said it was revenge for U.S. citizens killed by Iran and its proxies over the year. The Stable Genius, who's mind and worldview seems to have stalled in the 1980s, has even mentioned the 1979 takeover of the U.S. embassy in Tehran and the American hostages (who were released over 40 years ago).

Whatever the reason, our so-called leadership seems to have forgotten that the removal of Hussein in Iraq only resulted in long-term instability, sectarian violence, insurgencies, and a fragmented, often corrupt political system still struggling with democracy. 

The 20-year intervention in Afghanistan ended in failure, despite over 2,400 American deaths and  $90 billion spent in security and nation-building. The U.S. was not able to establish a stable, self-sustaining Afghan government, resulting in the Taliban’s swiftly regaining control following the U.S. withdrawal. 

Removal of Gaddafi from Libya only created a failed state characterized by prolonged chaos, civil war, and a descent into fragmentation with rival governments in the east and west, militia proliferation, and foreign interference. 

The aftermath of Syria saw a mixture of jubilation over the end of five decades of Assad's brutal rule along with serious sectarian rivalry, a major realignment of regional power with Turkey, Qatar, and the US holding increased influence, and a nation still in considerable  flux.

War is never the answer and is always a symptom of other failures. War is what happens when other things don't work. The world is broken, the Middle East is broke, the U.S. is broken, and our leadership is broken. The center does not hold, and things are falling apart.

 

The Glass Limbo, 62nd Day of Childwiner, 526 M.E. (Betelgeuse): "Stop the war on the other side of the river!”

Were he alive today, I think the Buddha would be disappointed but not surprised at the latest war going on in Iran. He would have been disappointed but not surprised by any war - now, previously, or in the future. During his own time, there were wars between the feudal states of India, and he lived to see his own tribe, the Shakyas, exterminated by the neighboring kingdom of Magadha. 

To put it simply, the Buddha did not consider man to be an inherently warlike creature. He considered human nature to be naturally kind, generous, and empathic. But greed, hatred, and delusion arise out of ignorance of our natural state, clouding our understanding of our true nature and resulting in conflict and war - war between nation-states, war between men and women, war between man and nature. The solution is neither winner-takes-all nor split-the-spoils in a negotiated treaty, but to awaken to our true generous and peaceful nature.

"Stop the war on the other side of the river" is a very short koan in the Japanese Zen tradition. "The other side of the river" sounds like "the other shore," the allegorical location which one attempts to attain in spiritual practice (before realizing, of course, that we're already there). As an English interpretation of the dhāraṇī at the end of the Heart Sutra says, 

Gone, gone, gone to the other shore

To beyond the other shore,

Having never left.

Taken that way, "stop the war on the other side of the river!” could mean to stop the war over on the unrealized shore of ignorance. It could also mean to stop the struggle to attain the other shore.

I think the meaning is more subtle than that. How can one stop a war "on the other side," be it the other side of a river? Or the other side of the world? Or the other side of one's political or religious opinions? I can't teleport over to Iraq, and even if I could, I don't think popping up and saying "Stop it!" would make any difference.

The way to "stop the war on the other side of the river" is to abandon the idea of "the other side," which is to abandon the idea of a barrier separating the sides. There's a war "on the other side of the river" only because we divide ourselves by the river, or by an ocean, or a continent, or by political beliefs, or by ethnic differences. Separation and division leads to distrust and resentment, which leads to violence and war. 

"The monks of the East and West Halls were arguing about a cat," a different koan begins, and of course they were arguing - they already differentiated themselves as "East Hall" and "West Hall." "Stop the war in the West Hall," the monks of the East Hall were saying, while the monks of the West Hall were saying, "Stop the war in the East Hall."

The Buddha would have us forget the geopolitical and socioeconomic differences and intimately recognize each other as fellow sentient humans. We all were once children who only wanted to please our parents, we all want to keep our families safe and fed, and we all want to feel secure and be free to pursue meaning in our brief lives. But the three poisons - greed, hate, and delusion - make us mistrust each other, and we retreat into territorial positions and find ourselves in conflict with each other. 

"Stop the war on the other side of the river" mean to forget the river, to drop the idea of "the other side." To stop the war in Iraq, we need to drop the distinctions separating us from each other and awaken to our common nature. Our common nature includes you and I, self and other, and everyone needs to recognize our commonality - Americans and Iranians, the Stable Genius and the current Ayatollah (whoever that may be), even the Secretary of Defense and the Supreme Commander of the Republican National Guard. 

We're all far more alike than different, but you and I can't awaken others and all we can do individually is let go of our own greed, hate, and delusion, and then with an awakened mind, practice empathy and demonstrate loving kindness to all. One person at a time, each by their own effort. 

This plan won't end the war overnight - by my estimate, it would take about a thousand years, but that's all the more reason to start right now rather than give up in despair.

 

Day of the Once Without, 61st of Childwinter, 526 M.E. (Aldebaran): Today is the trickiest part of the New Revised Universal Solar Calendar. The calendar consists of 366 days, like the Julian calendar in a leap year, so that a year can be evenly divided into 61 six-day weeks and each year will begin and end on the same day of the week. But it accounts for the Earth revolving around the Sun in 365¼ days by skipping one day in three out of four years, instead of adding a leap-year day every fourth year. You wind up in the same place either way - adding one to 365 days every fourth year, to skipping one of 366 days three of four years. 

The New Revised USC has the "extra" day on the 60th day of the year, the Fifth Twelve, which is also Leap Year Day in the Julian calendar. But since this isn't a leap year, this year we go right from Electra, the 59th day of Childwinter, to Aldebaran, the 61st day of Childwinter, without observing Helios, the 60th day of Childwinter. We "leap" from 59 to 61 three of four years, which seems to me more of a "leap year" than inserting an additional day once every four years.

You probably wouldn't have even noticed anyway, so there's that. 

Khamenei is dead, the United States and Israel continue to bomb Iran, Iran is firing missiles into the Arab states and trying to hit Israel, and still no one is really sure why. This feels a lot like how WWIII starts, but I'm not ready to think about that yet.

The Stable Genius ran on an America-First platform of ending foreign wars and regime change, but is now saying he started the war (without the Constitutionally required Congressional authorization) to effect regime change in Iran. I'm no fan of the Ayatollah or the Iranian regime, but I think flinging missiles into Tehran with Israel will make the world less safe, drive up the price of petroleum and along with it, virtually everything else, and not advance any tangible American interests.

Some say he did it because he was disappointed the recent mass protests in Iran weren't successful and didn't affect regime change. Others say he's doing it to distract the public from the Epstein files. Still others are saying it's because he hopes that a wartime President is less likely to face impeachment if the files are released and also as a prelude to suppressing or outright cancelling the 2026 elections (can't hold a fair election during wartime, amirite?).

There are those who follow the money, noting that the biggest beneficiaries of toppling Iran are probably Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states (Qatar, UAE, etc.). These are also the same players who lavishly contributed to the Stable Genius' various enterprises, including a multi-million dollar, gilded luxury aircraft, a $2B "investment" in his son-in-law's businesses, and an equal size investment into the Stable Genius' cryptocurrency scheme. And remember, the first place the Stable Genius visited during both his first and second term was Bone-Saw Arabia. Follow the money - it can be argued it's what was owed the Arabs for all their lavish "gifts," under the guise of pretending to protect and cooperate with Israel.

War is never the answer. Killing and hatred only breeds more killing and hatred, a lesson we've seen over and over again in Gaza, in Northern Ireland, in central Africa, and in the Confederate South. Iranians who might have been accepting of U.S. support for regime change are shocked and awed as the bombs drop, and every bomb is but a seed for future terrorists and jihadists. 

This isn't ending well for anyone. T.S. Eliot, who was so wrong about so many things, was also wrong about the end - the world does end with a bang, the thunderous bang of U.S. guided missiles, and not a whimper.

 

The Unspoken Vows, 59th Day of Childwinter,526 M.E. (Electra): If you're 22 or younger, you've never lived in a time when the United States wasn't in some intractable war or another in the Middle East. Your whole life. War. The Middle East.

I'm truly sorry. I hope you find peace in your lifetime. 

Last night, the Stable Genius launched a bombing campaign against Iran, an unauthorized act of war and the very kind of action he campaigned against in 2024. His team of cracker-jack negotiators, i.e., his son-in-law and a real-estate partner, couldn't complete a treaty (or as he puts it, "a deal") with the Iranians fast enough to distract from the Epstein affair, so he turned his black-out drunk Secretary of Defense loose on a sovereign nation. The first military act, reportedly, was bombing a school for girls, because if that isn't a strategic target, what is?

"Everywhere in the world they hurt little girls.” - Cersei Lannister  

The war, without congressional authorization, approval, or even notification, is obviously illegal, although to my thinking, no war is moral or justified. Today, Israel announced that the bombing has killed Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has been in power for over 35 years.

I am no fan of Iran's or of Khamenei, but if we've learned anything in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria, it's that taking out authoritarians without a clear and imminent successor in place creates a dangerous power vacuum. Despite his title, the Ayatollah was "Supreme Leader" in name only - I understand that the Revolutionary Guard really runs the country, and with Khamenei gone, I expect various generals to start competing for dominance. Warlords and regional leaders will try to seize power, and terrorist organizations like ISIS will be able to flourish in the chaos.

The Stable Genius' reckless actions will have long karmic consequences and the whole world will pay a stiff price for many years to come.

War never changes. The details are trivial and pointless, the reasons area always purely human ones. The Romans waged war to gather slaves and wealth. Spain built an empire based on its lust for gold and territory. Hitler shaped a battered Germany into an economic superpower. But war, war never changes. 

 

Broom Day, 58th of Childwinter, 526 M.E. (Deneb): Crazy pants weather. I walked today, a 7.9-mile Jackson, comfortably dressed in light sweatpants and a long-sleeved t-shirt. Two days ago, I had to wear jeans and two layers of fleece, and four days ago, it was too cold to even go outside and walk.

The high temperature today was 66° F, but four days ago the high only reached 40° and the low was all the way down to 28°. There's still 15 more days left of Childwinter, but Spring keeps giving us these tantalizing little previews even as Hagwinter refuses to loosen her grip.

My life these days alternates between walking days, when I try to get in five to ten miles per hike, and sitting days, when I meditate for 90 minutes. Since there are biggest things going on in my life right now, I hyper-attuned to the weather.    

 

 

The Crippled Vision, 57th Day of Childwinter, 526 M.E. (Castor): Of all the Venn diagrams, the overlap that I like the least is that of politics and sports.  

My twin football allegiances are to the New England Patriots (pro) and the Georgia Bulldogs (collegiate). I've been a fan of both teams, through years thick and thin, since the early 1980s. Meanwhile, my politics include a complete and total contempt for the Stable Genius. In my mind, there is no overlap, no Venn diagram, between my football enthusiasms and my politics.

The Stable Genius wanted to buy the Patriots back in 1988, and I was glad back then that his attempt failed, even before I knew anything about his deplorable racism and political views. Back then, he was the guy who lured the Georgia Bulldogs' Herschel Walker away from the NFL, and I hadn't forgiven him for that (still haven't). I didn't want his greedy hands anywhere near my Patriots and was relieved when they were purchased instead by businessman Victor Kian. 

Kian was the owner of the Remington electric shaver company and famous for the tv ads in which he claimed he liked the razor so much that he bought the company. I don't remember if he ever said the same thing about the Patriots, but it feels like he should have. In any event, the subsequent owner fter Kian, Robert Kraft, was a close, personal friend of the Stable Genius. QB Tom Brady and Head Coach Bill Belichick also had ties to the Stable Genius. But those friendships and ties weren't playing on the field and had no relationship with the Patriots' success or my feelings about the team. I don't care that Kraft donated to the Stable Genius' inauguration fund, or that Tom Brady had a MAGA hat in his locker. All that had nothing to do with my cheering for the team. There was zero overlap of sports and politics.

I moved to Atlanta in 1980, the same year the Georgia Bulldogs won the college football national championship, and got caught up in the frenzy and jumped on board the Bulldogs' bandwagon. Georgia is a red state and some associate the team with the conservative values of the fans (it wasn't unusual to see Confederate flags in the stands), but I cheered for them because of their play and the athleticism of their players, not because of the politics of their fans.

Oh, but those were simpler times. Today, it seems like nothing can't be seen through except through a political filter, including sports, including the Georgia Bulldogs. Last week, the Stable Genius, his approval ratings tanking and his unpopularity at an all-time high, held a rally in Rome, Georgia, and had both Herschel and current Georgia QB Gunner Stockton on stage with him. Apparently, he was hoping for some popularity by association. Maybe he was cynically manipulating the star players, but Stockton went on to describe the meeting as "an awesome experience" and didn't object when the Stable Genius said the football star was a big fan of the President.

To be honest, I never gave a lot of thought to Gunner Stockton's politics. He's from a small, rural town in northeast Georgia, one of the reddest areas of a red state, so it's no shocker that he's a conservative. I probably would have guessed that if asked. 

The Stable Genius called Stockton a "big star" and predicted a "big year" for him. He told the crowd that Stockton is a "great quarterback" who is "only going to get better." I totally agree, but since it was the Stable Genius who said it, cheering for Stockton and the Dawgs is now viewed by many as approval or even endorsement of the Stable Genius. He's opportunistically hitched himself to the Bulldogs' bandwagon, hoping some of the Bulldogs' popularity rubs off on him. The Venn circles have shifted, and now sports and politics overlap. 

But you know what? I still like Gunner Stockton as a QB and I'm still going to cheer for the Georgia Bulldogs. I don't care who Gunner supports politically as long as he can still complete passes and scramble for clutch first downs. I'm not going to let the Stable Genius deprive me of my Dawgs, even if he did deprive the nation from getting to see Herschel Walker play in the NFL in his prime.

And you know what? I'm still going to eat those tasty Chick-Fil-A sandwiches despite the regressive views of its owner. If I can get a better deal on something at Home Depot, I'm shopping there. But I'm not shopping at Hobby Lobby. That's where I'm drawing the line because fuck those guys and besides, I've never once in my life found myself in the market for glitter paint, crepe paper, or glue sticks.

Finally, though, I wonder how the Stable Genius' praise of Gunner and the Bulldogs is going down over in Alabama. He previously was a big Crimson Tide fan, attending Crimson Tide home games and predicting last year that the team would "go all the way" in the college football playoffs. Does he know how much mutual animosity there is between the Bulldogs and the Tide? It's like Zohran Mamdani endorsing the Boston Red Sox. And if the Stable Genius tries to play both sides and praises Alabama next year, whatever good will he generated for himself with Stockton will not only disappear, but turn into anger, just as any karma he had accrued in Alabama is probably already gone. 

tl/dr: There's nothing the Stable Genius can't fuck up.

Body of Love, 56th Day of Childwinter, 526 M.E. (Betelgeuse): I have a question about the news. Why must it be delivered to us by big corporations? Print media, television, etc. - all the news outlets are owned by mega-corporations with profit margins, growth goals, and an understandable desire to minimize loss and liabilities. 

Follow-up question: what role (positive role, that is) do those billionaire owners have in the delivery of news to the public? Just what exactly, on a more-or-less daily basis, does Jeff Bezos do at the Washington Post?

Obviously, these billionaire owners want to imprint their own personal world views on the news that's delivered to us, and as the mega-conglomerates get larger and larger, we get fewer and fewer owners and fewer and fewer points of view.

Worse, the corporations own other companies and to meet their growth goals, they have to acquire still more companies, to the point that they've gotten so big and monopolistic that further mergers require government approval and waivers of anti-trust laws, so the billionaire owners kowtow to the government and self-censor to curry favor. Instead of holding the rich and powerful accountable, they end up being mouthpieces and propagandists for the powerful due to late-stage capitalism.

There are some independent journalists out there that bravely operate on low-cost to free platforms, like Substack and other social media. But each independent can only cover one or two news stories a day, and a full understanding of current events requires following a number of issues simultaneously for context, including politics, both national and local, economics, culture, and climate. As much as I can appreciate one writer's nuanced view on the situation in Gaza, for instance, and another's on warming trends in the Arctic, it's exhausting to endlessly search through social media for a full contextual understanding of all those events. 

Interdependence: What's happening in Gaza has a bearing on what's happening in Ukraine, which has a bearing on the Chinese intentions toward Taiwan, which will affect the production and cost of microchips and development of AI, which affects energy and climate change, which causes extreme weather events and could result in the cancellation of a game in the World Series. 

But I get it (I think) - it's expensive to operate a studio, even if you're "broadcasting" only on YouTube, there are costs in assembling and publishing an on-line  newspaper, and top writing and reporting talent understandably doesn't want to work for free or for life-of-poverty wages. Enter the big corporations and their built-in biases.    

If you're waiting on me to reveal the answer, sorry, I don't have one. The situation sucks. The government could step in Teddy Roosevelt-style, all rough-riding and trust-busting, and break up the news outlets and media companies the way they broke up Ma Bell, but since they've now got the media behaving the way they like, the government has little motivation to change the status quo. Someone else will have to take the lead.

Oprah? If she's reading this, a weary nation needs her help right now.