Steve

We’re Going to Italy!

May 10, 2025 Steve Comments 0 Comment

I’m really excited to announce that Aileen, Tiernan and I will be taking a trip to Europe in the second half of this month. We’re flying to Paris on May 17th, and from there touring by bus to Italy by way of Milan, and onward to Cinque Terra, Tuscany and Rome. It’s a trip of a lifetime for me, as I’ve always wanted to see the iconic sights of these destinations, and to steep in their ancient and medieval history. I have been to Spain and the south of France, but never to Paris or to Italy. Aileen has been to these places, but she’s a sweetheart and wants me to get the chance to experience them, too, so was willing to repeat the trip. Tiernan says he doesn’t care about where he is; he just likes being with us.

In addition to the enticement of visiting well-known touristy locations, seeing the ruins of the old Roman Empire, and enjoying delicious cuisine and wine, I am excited about the fact that our itinerary more or less overlaps with a famous expedition in military history. This would be the route taken by the French King Charles VIII when he invaded Italy in 1494, kicking off what are known as the Italian Wars.

*Map is from this site: https://jostwald.wordpress.com/tag/italian-wars/*

These wars were pivotal in military history, as they marked the transition from the medieval to the modern era in warfare, when gunpowder weapons started coming into common use, replacing the old way of fighting with muscle and steel. They introduced what is called a “revolution in military affairs,” which caused a significant shift in the balance of power. When Charles VIII invaded, it was clear to all that advancements in the development of siege artillery (cannons) had made the medieval castle, long dominant in European affairs, suddenly obsolete. This completely undermined the power of nobles to resist their kings, in time ending the feudal system of the Middle Ages and bringing about the early modern age of absolute monarchy.

This watershed moment in the evolution of politics has been identified as the dawn of the modern “state” – understood to be a political abstraction that exists independently of the people who comprise it. The state arose from the necessities imposed on the wealthy Italian cities caught up in these wars. In the face of military advancements, they now needed extensive new defensive constructions and large, reliable armies – and the fiscal apparatus to maintain these. They needed permanent ambassadorial legations in one another’s courts, and espionage networks to keep up with shifting alliances. In the course of this evolutionary process, sovereignty shifted from the person of the ruler, where it had resided in the medieval conception, to the bureaucratic state constituted to serve the ruler.

A seminal figure of the time period was the political philosopher Niccolò Machiavelli. His famous work, The Prince, is often interpreted as an apology for tyranny. According to Philip Bobbitt’s excellent book The Garments of Court and Palace, Machiavelli’s real argument was to distinguish between a ruler’s personal and governing ethos. In other words, in the context of ruling the state, in the interests of the society for which it was constituted, a ruler should not be expected to behave according to standards of personal morality, as codes of honor had demanded of medieval princes. A new political era had arrived.

In the democratic revolutions that came in later centuries, the concept of sovereignty shifted even further. The state evolved, from an entity that served as a tool by which the prince’s will was exerted, to a formal representation of the will of the people. It was no longer ruled by a monarch, but rather administered by representative officials – at least in theory. But in the course of this evolution, the thorny problem of how the state can serve its constituent’s needs and also avoid moral transgression remains unsolved, as testified by the killing fields of modern times.

Yes, these are the thoughts inspired in me by taking a trip to Italy. On the path followed by the invading forces of a French king in the 15th century, many Renaissance-era structures still stand in the 21st century. For example, the city of Lucca, where we’ll be staying at one point, retains the walls that were constructed starting in 1504 – part of the wave of defensive fortifications that sprang up in the aftermath of Charles VIII’s campaign.

I’m bringing along a copy of The Art of War in Italy by F. L. Taylor, considered a classic in the field of military history. As I read it, I will be looking for signs of its lessons in my surroundings.

I will have my smartphone with me, but not my laptop, and probably won’t post much for a few weeks.

Wish us a bon voyage!

Wrapping up My Top 10 Games

May 5, 2025 Steve Comments 0 Comment

This post wraps up my top 10 games list, as I have completed the GeekList about the top 10 games on my BoardGameGeek user profile. As already mentioned, I have created this list as part of a project to capture for posterity details of my board gaming life. This includes digitized versions of beat-up old customized rules and accessories, much of it up on my personal gaming site: A Real Live Gaming Workshop. Presumably these sites on the Internet will outlive me, at least for a little while.

Here is the final GeekList: My Top 10 Games.

And here are the last two entries not yet published on this blog:

#1: Terraforming Mars

If you know me, you’re not surprised to see this game at the top of the list. You might think this is the only game I ever want to play! I was hooked the moment I first played it at a convention, which I’m pretty sure was on the year it came out (2016).

Terraforming Mars hits all of my favorite board game marks. It has a rich science-fiction theme. It’s super-crunchy with lots of calculating for optimization. It has patient engine-building in the early game that pays off in the later game without the game rushing to an end, as so often happens with engine-builders. It has a huge deck of cards where every card is unique, possibly my favorite feature in a game. And it also has a board with fiddly bits, and tile layout with a modest degree of pattern matching.

I think the game plays great with every expansion; they each add extra dimensions of game play, and also new unique cards for the deck. I also like that you can pick and choose which expansions to use, and have a good game with any combination. And I think the game plays well with any player count, including 2-player and even solo!

I own all the official expansions, and some fan-made ones as well (though not all the fan-made ones). I own the ‘big box’ upgrade which has a larger game box and 3D printed components to replace the original cardboard ones. It’s somewhat absurd how much I’ve invested in this game, but what can I say except that a hobbyist needs no excuse?

I’ve played solo a lot, and I’ve found that solo games make for great storytelling session reports; here’s one of my favorites: “You nuked Mars!” – a solo session with Aphrodite that begins with negative points.

I also will note that as much as I enjoy this game, I do not think there is a future for the human race in terraforming the red planet. The challenge is extraordinary and there is no payoff for the insanely high costs. I enjoy the idea as science fiction, but like all science fiction it is not realistic. It is space fantasy.

Here’s another way to think about it – if it’s worth it to terraform Mars, why haven’t we put in the effort to “terraform” Antarctica? Surely that would be much easier. Antarctica is so much less hostile an environment than Mars. For that matter, so is the ocean floor. But we don’t have any colonies in those places.

#11: Through the Ages

That’s right, my top 10 list goes to 11.

Through the Ages is a medium-to-heavy weight game with a theme of advancing civilization from ancient to modern times. I wouldn’t say that it’s my favorite civilization game; I prefer one’s like Avalon Hill’s version (already on the top 10 list), because they actually have a map of the world where your civilization spreads out and comes into contact with other players. This game is a bit more abstract in its implementation.

I will say that it has a very elegant design, with exactly enough complexity for its theme. It has a limited deck of unique cards, but they interact in so many ways that each game plays differently. You’ll often see new combinations of effects you haven’t seen before even if you’ve played scores of times already. I have a lot respect for the designer, Vlaada Chvátil – all his games are good. Even if you are not a big gamer, you might have encountered one of his more popular designs – Codenames.

Through the Ages game makes it onto the list because it has a special place in my board game biography. Ever since the pandemic back in 2020, I have had fewer opportunities for in person gaming than in the past. But some of my old friends and I have been playing this game online, more or less continuously, for four years. So I get to scratch my itch for a medium-heavy game, even though it’s really hard to actually get one to the table these days. Czech Games Edition‘s online version lets you play with no time limit on the turns, so it’s very casual playing with trusted friends.

I have spent countless hours of my life playing board games. And while not as many hours in the current stage of my life as in my past, I do have this ongoing digital game to keep me connected to the hobby, and to my good friends who share it with me.

Continuing to Count Down the Top 10 Games

April 30, 2025 Steve Comments 0 Comment

It’s been a while since I’ve posted a top 10 game. I’m getting close to finishing my list. This is one that might be a bit obscure to non-gamers, but I think it’s a brilliant design and have always enjoyed playing it.

#2 Age of Empires III: The Age of Discovery

This game is loosely based on a real-time strategy video game and has the same theme of New World colonization. It even borrows the branding and art from the video game (at least in the edition I own), but otherwise doesn’t play like it at all.

Rather, it is a worker placement game which includes area control on a central board and tableau building in front of each player. If you’re wondering what all those terms mean, well, they describe game mechanics common to board games in the modern style that has taken off this century.

In other words, it counts as a Eurogame, even though it was designed by an American. It has indirect player interaction, no player elimination (though there is a limited warfare option), and multiple paths for scoring victory points. It’s on my list because it’s one of my favorite board games of all time. It has a very competitve worker placement mechanic which creates lots of tension, brinkmanship, and tough strategic choices.

I own a copy of the original edition (there was a reimplementation with a new name that dispensed with the video game branding) and also both expansions. My copy is well worn from many, many plays. It’s also slightly pimped out, with extra cardboard bits and alternate turn order markers based on the country flags. Maybe some day I’ll paint the minifigures.

I played this game a lot in the late 2000s/early 2010s time frame, when I was in some very active gaming groups. Recently I’ve only played it once or twice at conventions. I was intrigued to learn about a sci-fi themed reimplementation, which I would also happily try out.

Here’s a fun session report that gives a feel for the game play: Militant rice merchants of the new world.

On Mindfulness

April 18, 2025 Steve Comments 0 Comment

In spiritual practice there is the concept of mindfulness, meaning awareness of the present moment and one’s thoughts, feelings, and bodily sensations in that moment, as they are being experienced. A goal of mindfulness is to achieve a calm acceptance of one’s circumstances, so that one is not living in a state of continuous mental and emotional turmoil.

A state of inner turmoil is sort of a baseline mode of operation for human beings. It comes about because of negative conditioning, which causes regrets about the past and anxiety about the future. This manifests as troubling thoughts and feelings which preoccupy one’s attention and take away one’s focus from the matter at hand, which only further complicates one’s existence.

I’m sure you are familiar with the experience, as well as with many pithy sayings that address the problem. “Don’t worry about what you can’t control, don’t hold on to the past,” and so forth. Easier said than done! Keeping one’s focus in the moment requires intention, even discipline. It actually takes an effort!

One suggestion is to practice meditation, which can be done by simply sitting calmly and putting one’s attention on one’s breathing. If you try this, you will find that thoughts pop up in your mind uninvited. Your mind is like a bubbling spring from which thoughts are constantly erupting.

When this happens while meditating, just let the thoughts go. Pay them no heed. They are just objects of experience – subtle mental objects as opposed to gross physical objects, and thus even less permanent. They dissipate like mist. Let them pass, and keep your attention on your breathing.

As you keep your attention focused, you will become aware of the stillness of the present moment. You will become aware of the inner light of consciousness, which is the ground of being. All of the objects of experience, which include your roiling thoughts, manifest within the field of consciouness.

Even time itself! It is true what they say, that all we have is Now. There is no reality to the Past or the Future, so how can they trouble you so?

If you learn to stay in the present moment, and not be distracted by worries about the past and the future, you will lead a fuller life. And you will be able to accomplish more.

The point isn’t to forget the past – it still has lessons to teach. Nor is it to forsake the future, and live as if there is no tomorrow. It is to be in the present, which after all is where we are.

Think of it in this practical sense: in order to ensure the safety and prosperity of yourself and your loved ones, you need to perform well at your job, yes? But if, as you do your job, you are only worrying about paying bills and planning the evening’s activities, you will hurt your productivity, right? At worse, this could lead to you losing your job, and how will you pay those bills then?

So mindfulness, if it keeps you rooted in the present, can benefit your future. That is the whole of it.

Mindfulness can help you navigate the troubled waters of times, even in times as troubling as these.

Behold!

The buddha bear is wise!

My Triumphant Return to the Stage

March 28, 2025 Steve Comments 0 Comment

In a little over a week, Aileen, Tiernan and I will be performing together in a play. I haven’t acted since Aileen and I were in high school in the 1980s, when we were in the Drama Club together.

Yes, that’s right, I will be making my triumphant return to the stage, after a 40 year hiatus!

Aileen and Tiernan, of course, have been doing theatre together for as long as I’ve known them both – though always with Aileen directing and Tiernan acting, so this is the first time they will be together on stage. Aileen has been doing theatre since she was 3 years old, and used to put on plays in her back yard when she was a child.

The show we are in is Arsenic and Old Lace, a classic from the 1930s. It’s been adapted to film, and you may be familiar with the story. I will say nothing more – no spoilers!

My return to the stage is the logical culmination of my shared lifecourse with the vagabond girl.

First, we reconnected at our high school reunion. We built up our friendship long distance, and after a couple of years I moved up to where she lives. We have a lot of interests in common, and it was natural for us to form a partnership.

She was even willing to play board games with me and go to gaming conventions with me! And I was willing to be absorbed into her theatre life. I helped her with Arts Bubble productions, and I joined her as an adjudicator for the Philadelphia Independence Awards. It was inevitable that I would eventually join her for an audition, and it was our good fortune that we were both cast in this production of a show she has always wanted to do.

I’m pretty sure this has been her long term plan for me all along. 🙂

If you are a reader who lives anywhere near Reading, Pennsylvania, perhaps you could come see our play? It’s only two performances – the evening of Friday, April 4 and a matinee on Saturday, April 5. Tickets are available here:
https://fleetwoodcommunitytheatre.com/tickets.html

Book Review: America’s New Map

March 18, 2025 Steve Comments 0 Comment

As promised in my last post, here is a review of the new book by Thomas P. M. Barnett. It is called America’s New Map: Restoring Our Global Leadership in an Era of Climate Change and Demographic Collapse.

The subtitle is sort of ominous and optimistic at the same time. Ominous because it acknowledges an absence of global leadership in the face of drastic and potentially dangerous change in the near future. And optimistic because it suggests that America’s global leadership can be restored.

The book consists of many small chapters, over 40 in fact, grouped into seven sections called “throughlines.” The chapters in each throughline have a common theme, and each is fronted by a compelling pencil illustration. Often the chapters are introduced by citing another author’s work, after which Barnett expounds on some key concepts from the other author. In some ways the book is a synthesis of these other ideas.

As with his earlier work, Barnett presents a novel perspective on global affairs, inviting the reader to think outside of what might be considered the conventional narrative on current events. From this perspective, one sees long term outcomes that are not discernible when focusing on ongoing political turmoil or a looming Third World War. His throughlines are thus like paths being blazed through the undiscovered country of the future. I’ll try to summarize the view from his stratosphere, so to speak.

In his earlier work, also reviewed on this blog, Barnett identified the United States as a global Leviathan, the most militarily powerful of the “Core” states which comprised a globalizing world. Other “Gap” states, which were not integrated with the global economy, were the source of insecurity (“Terror” was the declared enemy). Integrating these nations (“shrinking the Gap”) was the logical strategic mission of the United States.

In his new book, Barnett acknowledges that the U.S. failed in that mission. Instead, we turned inwards, obsessed with fighting our Culture Wars to the bitter, bloody end. Globalization is a dirty word now, but as Barnett sees it, the dynamic is locked in. A huge new global middle class has arisen, primarily in the countries outside of the original grouping of “developed” states. We can start all the Trade Wars we want, but they will keep trading with one another, and we will become less and less the world’s “indispensable nation.”

Barnett also dismisses the idea of World War III. Conventional warfare among Great Powers was made obsolete by nuclear weapons, in his mind. Proxy wars like the one in Ukraine are what’s left, and even those are becoming less tenable because of advances in the deployment of cheap, unmanned weaponry.

The real strategic threat comes from climate change, and how it forces population movements. The middle latitudes around the equator are becoming less viable for human life, while the northernmost latitudes (and southernmost latitudes, but there isn’t much land area there) are becoming more habitable.

On top of climate change, we have demographics creating another pressure. The so-called “Global North” is the wealthier part of the world, and consists of aging populations with low fertility rates. Meanwhile, the “Global South” is just the opposite. So, in the decades to come, the bulk of the world’s working age population is going to be living in a part of Earth that is becoming less desirable to be in, looking northward to a part of the Earth that is becoming more desirable to be in (climatewise), and is also in need of workers.

One can easily see the conflict that these combined pressures will create. Barnett argues that this demands a new “vertical” orientation in strategic thinking, so that the United States can accomodate the restless population to its south. The new strategic mission is “North-South” integration, to replace the “Core-Gap” integration of his previous thinking. His dream is that we actually add new states to the union; why, he wonders, after adding new states decade by decade, did we stop at 50, just before he was born?

Arguably, the recent political history of America, including the current administration’s withdrawal from postwar strategic alliances and its preoccupation with the southern border, implicitly recognizes this strategic reality. Likewise with the administration’s unprecedented threats to conquer Canada and Greenland. There’s a logic to these “policies,” but we’d be better off with an approach that’s more intelligent and diplomatic, more accepting of the shape of modern society. Unfortunately, we are stuck with some real backassward political leadership, thanks to older generations living in the past, and trying to resurrect a long dead social order.

All five of the world’s superpowers – by Barnett’s reckoning, that’s the United States, the European Union, Russia, China and India – face this same strategic imperative. He describes a “superpower brand war,” in which each power comes to the rest of the world with its particular model of integration. Currently, the bellicose approach of the U.S. is losing ground to China’s more direct approach of simply trading infrastructure development for access to markets (look up “Belt and Road Initiative”).

It’s not too late for us, Barnett argues. We still have a popular brand, thanks to our global cultural dominance, and – recent troubles notwithstanding – to our American ideal of a truly equal society. We also have geographic advantages simply from being in the Western hemisphere, protected by oceans and rich in resources. It makes sense for the Americas (plural) to become more integrated. In the last few chapters of the book, Barnett presents alternate futures of American acceptance or American apartheid. He clearly believes the former to be preferrable (yes, he voted for Harris).

In summary, I found that this book got me thinking in new ways, and helped orient me in understanding current events – the same as with the author’s “Pentagon’s New Map” series in the early 2000s. I’m subscribed to Barnett’s substack, which has a steady stream of content, as he loves to write. His style is frank, often humorous, and peppered with pop culture references. His perspective is long term, realistic from his understanding, sometimes unsettling, and always eye-opening. I recommend it.

As usual, there is an abridged version of this book review on goodreads.

Barnett Breaks Down the Mump* Revolution

March 6, 2025 Steve Comments 3 comments

In a post last year, I mentioned that I had rediscovered Thomas P. M. Barnett on substack. I just finished reading his new book, and plan to review it here soon. But first, I wanted to mention this recent post from him about the nature of the “Trump revolution” – the radical and destructive change that this administration is bringing:

Trump’s quadruple-decker sandwich

He lists out four specific revolutions:

1) Trump seeks to detach America from virtually all of its security obligations across the Eastern Hemisphere and focus on a truly aggressive drug cartel war in our hemisphere.

2) Trump seeks to re-negotiate America’s trade relations with the entire world through trade wars.

3) Trump seeks to trigger a Cultural Revolution inside America that simply defines all sorts of “undesirables” out of existence (e.g., Two sexes only! No DEI because zero racism! No foreigners because we only speak American here!).

4) Trump is dismantling the USG with no hint of what is going to replace all the discarded functions and roles and responsibilities.

He then points out how these revolutions dangerously combine, since there is no plan or forethought involved. Here’s two examples; click through to the post for more:

1+4: You hamstring our military and intelligence community in your destruction of the USG and HOPE Putin doesn’t take advantage as you seek to dump Ukraine. Putin keeps his word, right? He’s famous for it, plus he and Trump were similarly traumatized by Russia-gate!

1+2: You want allies to step up and pick up the slack created by America’s withdrawal from the world and you’re attacking their economies at the same time!

This is why I like Barnett and subscribe to his substack. He just gets to the point directly and frankly. Also the pop culture references. So Gen X!

*”Mump” was coined by Timothy Snyder to describe what I have called the current diumvirate. Hey, this is an era of reinvention!

2025 State of the Coup

February 27, 2025 Steve Comments 1 comment

After January 6, I wrote a post about the “state of the coup.” As I saw it then, the fury of the MAGA crowd had broken against the valiant defense by law enforcement at the Capitol, and the MAGA faction was in retreat. I linked to a video that explains how coups work: they require the support of “keys to power” in business, the military and the police, which Trump’s faction did not have. All the way back in 2021, he had been banned from Twitter, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff had issued a statement affirming their loyalty to the Constitution. Without allies among these key elements of society, Trump could not succeed in overthrowing constitutional democracy, and it looked to me like he and his movement were sidelined, hopefully to expire. I really thought we were going “blue zone!“

My, how things have changed.

Since 2021, Twitter has changed ownership and transformed into an alt-right platform. With the help of that platform and other right-wing media, MAGA has seized control of all branches of the United States Federal government. After the reelection of Donald J. Trump by a popular plurarity (probably), the country’s billionaire overclass was quick to bend the knee. They read the writing on the wall.

That’s one key down.

With the help of a partisan and willing Senate, the President has installed loyalists in top government posts in the military and law enforcement. His white Christian nationalist pick for Secretary of Defense has already purged the Joint Chiefs of Staff of its members who were not white men (“DEI hires” is the code word). The Director and Deputy Director at the F.B.I, as well as the Attorney General, are all Trump loyalists, and will likely weaponize their departments as tools of political enforcement.

There go the other keys.

The new regime is openly white supremacist, complete with Nazi salutes. It is also nakedly authoritarian, ignoring constitutional constraints. The President has granted the billionaire owner of Twitter, who possibly did the most to help him get elected, the privilege to loot government data and terrorize federal workers, all in the name of “efficiency.” It’s plainly a tit-for-tat favor to let him lock in government contracts for his businesses and end the multiple investigations against them. The MAGA base, obsessed with Culture Wars touchpoints and easily fooled, plays along. It would be positively Orwellian if it weren’t so blatantly fraudulent.

The Musk-DOGE takeover or “billionaire coup” is an attempt at state capture under the cover of eliminating waste, fraud and abuse. First, get rid of all officials actually preventing waste, fraud and abuse (Inspectors General). Then, weaken the agencies with demoralizing attacks and bullshit memes that the MAGA base laps up. Finally, steer all that taxpayer money into your own companies. Coup achieved!

If the courts try to stop you, that’s where you pull out your “unitary executive theory,” a.k.a. “Trump is King.” So now you have an authoritarian regime with a conservative agenda and total control of the government, in lockstep alliance with powerful business interests. This is just fascism, right?

I’ve been getting a lot of my info from substack lately, since it seems to be where all the intellectuals are hanging out these days. I was struck by a post from John Ganz, because of the insight it gave me into the coup event. The post looks into an academic book on the fascist movements of the early 20th century, which has as a thesis that (I quote Ganz) “fascism arose out of situations in Europe where there was dense civic association combined with a weak political class, unable to exercise hegemony – national political leadership.” To quote more from the post:

Fascism, a political project aiming to establish a new relationship between the nation and the state, can be expected to emerge where social elites fail to develop hegemonic political organizations in the context of rapid civil society development. The fascist political project arises as an attempt to redress this problem of hegemonic weakness by creating an authoritarian democracy: a regime that claims to represent the people or nation but rejects parliamentary institutional forms.

I’d say that describes the MAGA movement pretty well. I mean, millions of people voted for Trump to be King, it seems. Precisely because they wanted to redress the “hegemonic weakness” – that is, percieved ineffectiveness – of the existing political system. As a narrative it fits well with what is expected in a Fourth Turning or Crisis Era: changes in the social order outpaced the political order, which became unable to adapt, and is now being torn down and rebuilt.

It’s traumatic, to be sure, and it sucks that some real dipshit a*holes are going to be prime beneficiaries. It sucks that thousands will die needlessly from piss-poor social policies. That, sadly, is the price we pay for MAGA winning the 2024 election.

Last year, when it became clear during the primaries that Trump was rising up like some undead lich lord, seemingly immune to all the “lawfare” waged against him, and that the MAGA movement was alive and well, I warned about the red zone’s greater solidarity, and the need for the opposition to rally to counter them. We needed the same “group feeling” that MAGA has, but sadly we couldn’t match them.

The opposition now seems demoralized and leaderless. The resistance is much more muted than it was in 2017, with smaller numbers of protestors taking to the streets, and most blue zoners like me simply venting on social media. Does this mean the red zoners have won the Culture War, and are now going to consolidate their power?

I wouldn’t jump to that conclusion just yet. While MAGA loyalists will be willing to endure the pain of Trump 2.0 (that’s also part of the Fourth Turning dynamic), there will be plenty of seething discontent for the opposition to exploit. Sooner or later the Trump-Musk diumvirate will overplay its hand.

Meanwhile, we should continue to champion our righteous causes: women’s liberation, equal rights for LGBTQ, rights for immigrants, social welfare. We absolutely should be calling our representatives and letting them know what we stand for, and expecting them to answer to us. We still have our Constitution, threatened though it may be, and as citizens we should assert our rights within its framework. And go ahead and assert your consumer power as well, by boycotting where you can, or particpating in Economic Blackouts like the one on February 28. I know I will be.

*An upside-down U.S. flag, a sign of national distress, hung by fired workers at Yosemite National Park*

Welcome to “Black Mirror”

February 20, 2025 Steve Comments 0 Comment

Or, When Life Imitates Sci-Fi

As a sci-fi fan, it always fascinates me when events in the real world look like something out of a science fiction story. This happens because the authors of science fiction are paying attention to trends and making rational projections about what the future will be like – and sometimes they get it right. They also get it wrong a lot. As I’ve noted in a previous post, sci-fi has been way too optimistisc about one particular trend: the extent of human space exploration. And sci-fi authors in the cyberpunk genre way overestimated how stylish and cool our near-future dystopias would turn out.

I thought it would be fun not fun to list out some stories from recent and recent-ish sci-fi television and film, and then find examples in real life of their speculations about technology actually coming true. I will start with Black Mirror, the dystopian anthology series from Netflix, and go episode by episode. Black Mirror pretty obviously gets a lot of story ideas from how tech currently intersects with our lives, so it’s not surprising that I found so many examples.

NOTE: I’m including synopses of the episodes which might be spoiler-y.

Black Mirror episodes

S1: E3 The Entire History of You: In the future, everyone has a device in their head that records their experience. A couple quarrels over suspicions of infidelity, and the recording provides the proof. The idea of having a device implanted in your brain or eye that records your life experience was also explored in the 2004 sci-fi film The Final Cut, which I like, if only because it stars Robin Williams. While we are nowhere close to achieving implants that record subjective experience, we do carry around records of our lives with us wherever we go. I’m talking, of course, about the feeds on our smartphones. Our devices pester us with “memories” of what we were doing one, two, or ten years ago, and scrolling through our social media profiles and chat histories reveals a lot about who we are and what we’ve been up to. Show me that phone in your pocket, baby!

S2: E1 Be Right Back: A woman purchases an android replica of her deceased husband, crafted to look just like him, with a personality created by scrubbing his online profile. We certainly don’t have anything like natural-looking humanoid autonomous robots; at best we have utilitarian bipedal bots, and human-like robots that are deep in the uncanny valley. But we do have the ability to digitally recreate people! Deepfake technology, using artificial intelligence, can create passable images, videos, and even audio imitating a specific person. The potential for abuse and fraud is frightening. And AI models can be trained to mimic individuals, just by interviewing them for a couple of hours. So you could clone your loved ones, if only in text conversation form.

S3: E1 Nosedive: A young woman’s social climbing aspirations are thwarted when her social rating plummets in a spiralling series of mishaps. How do you think you would rate on a 5-star scale if everyone around you constantly rated you and the ratings averaged out? Think you would get into the high 4s because of how awesome you are, or get stuck in the mid-3s because you’re basic? You probably wouldn’t act like a jerk all the time and let yourself sink below a 3 – like what happens to the main character in this episode. Luckily, you don’t have to worry about the value of your social rating – unless, that is, you live in China. In China, the government has implemented a social credit system that monitors its citizens, and yeah, your social credit rating affects things like what housing and services you have access to, and where you can travel. Think about that the next time you use an app that hosts its servers there.

S3: E4 San Junipero: A dying woman explores a simulated reality where she can exist after death, in a kind of virtual afterlife. This is actually one my favorite episodes, because of its poignant love story and its 1980s nostalgia. But I don’t have a match for it in real life, because I don’t believe that it’s premise is at all realistic. It is not possible to “transfer” consciousness because consciousness is not a property of the human brain that can be extracted or copied – it is the fundamental ground of reality within which our brains and minds exist. This is a philosophical point which I bring up because so many Black Mirror episodes feature consciousness created by simulation and that is just not a thing. But those episodes are fun, because sci-fi is still fun even when it’s way off the mark. Also, if you like this premise, you might enjoy the show Upload on Amazon Prime Video.

S3: E6 Hated in the Nation: A disgruntled tech guy programs a bunch of miniature robot bugs to fly around and kill targeted people using facial recognition technology. This is a scary one to have come true, and I’m afraid I have to report that it has. The Israeli army has been using artificial intelligence and machine learning to build target lists of Gazans who are deemed likely to be Hamas operatives, and then using those lists to direct their bombing campaigns. The project pre-dates October 7, but it has been used extensively in the current Gazan war. The algorithm is fed all kinds of data, not facial images, and the Israeli strikes aren’t as precise as killer bees, but the carnage is just the same.

S4: E5 Metalhead: A small group of possibly burglars encounters a robot guard dog at a warehouse and are relentlessly hunted down by it. You might have heard of Ukraine’s extensive use of drones in their current defensive war against the Russian invaders. There was actually a battle in which the Ukrainians used exclusively robotic and unmanned equipment, meaning not a single one of their personnel was at risk. This is the future of warfare right here, so you probably won’t have to worry about the draft coming for your boys – so long as you’re not from Russia or North Korea.

Her

Her is a Spike Jonze film from 2013 about a man who develops a relationship with an artificial intelligence, inspired by the AI chat technology that existed then. Now, the ability to have a text conversation with a computer program actually goes way back. A chatbot called ELIZA was created in the 1960s, intended to simulate a therapist, and is famously the first program to be able to attempt the Turing test. In the movie Her, the main character falls in love with the AI, whom we presume by the film’s premise is an actual sentient being. Real life AI chatbots are not sentient; rather, they are computationally intensive algorithms that regurgitate passably human conversation, and may well be able to pass the Turing test. And – here’s the tie-in – you can have one for a girlfriend or a boyfriend if you’d like, thanks to a plethora of sites that offer that as a service. I am not comfortable linking to any of these sites, but a web search will quickly uncover them.

Minority Report

In the 2002 film Minority Report, based on a Philip K. Dick story, a “Precrime” police department uses precognitive psychics to identify crimes just before they happen, then intercedes and arrests the soon-to-be perpetrators before the crimes actually occur. It’s an interesting premise that raises legal and moral questions, which we probably won’t have to deal with since we don’t have reliable psychics to work with in our world. But wait – we do have AI, and wouldn’t you know it, they’re working on using it to predict when crimes could be imminent, based on behavioral and environmental factors. You could also think of this trend as yet another job (security guard) eventually being replaced by AI.

The Peripheral

In this book by cyberpunk pioneer William Gibson, sinister corporate powers from a far future use a kind of time travel to influence a near-future timeline for their own nefarious purposes. The book inspired a TV series that is only kind of faithful to the story, and doesn’t quite capture the enormity of what they are doing (maybe just because it was canceled after one season). When these time meddlers influence the past, they create a branching timeline, and so are unaffected in their own timeline by what they do. They use their advanced knowledge and tech to wreak havoc on the world economy, essentially crashing civilization in an alternate reality just for a small advantage in their own reality. Wait – does that sound anything like what’s going on now with Musk and DOGE? Could he be from another timeline? Yikes! This post for entertainment purposes only.

Recipe for a Constitutional Crisis

February 13, 2025 Steve Comments 2 comments

Unless you’re living under a rock, you know that the current administration has handed unprecedented power to a private citizen who is not an elected official or even a vetted official, and is acting outside of the legal framework defined by the U.S. Consitution. Another way to put it: he is acting illegally. As Timothy Snyder puts it, this, of course, is a coup.

The ongoing actions by Musk and his followers are a coup because the individuals seizing power have no right to it. Elon Musk was elected to no office and there is no office that would give him the authority to do what he is doing. It is all illegal. It is also a coup in its intended effects: to undo democratic practice and violate human rights.

Just read through this ProPublica story about the dismantling of USAID for a long litany of privacy rights violations, breeches of trust, and end runs around Constitutional safeguards.

“It’s very hard not to see what’s going on as a constitutional crisis,” said Peter Shane, a law professor and one of the country’s leading scholars on the Constitution.

Well, yeah. It’s clear that the President does not intend to be checked by either the legislature or the courts. If no one stops him, the Constitution is a dead letter, and our status as citizens of the United States is in jeopardy.

Now one has to wonder why, with Congress in the hands of the Republicans, the party doesn’t simply undertake to rejigger the Federal bureacracy through legal, Constitutional means. Heather Cox Richardson argues that it’s because the deep cuts the President wants are unpopular, and Republicans in Congress prefer to distance themselves from responsibility for them. By doing that, of course, they are surrendering their role in government and their power.

But permitting a private citizen to override the will of our representatives in Congress destroys the U.S. Constitution. It also makes Congress itself superfluous. And it takes the minority rule Republicans have come to embrace to the logical end of putting government power in the hands of one man.

But I have to wonder – could it simply be that this administration sees doing anything by Constiutiional means as too hopelessly complicated and process-bound? Neither of the two members of the diumvirate (if that’s what it is) is temperamentally inclined to ask for permission to do anything. They might see their election victory as a mandate to implement their agenda by any means necessary, rules be damned.

How did we get here? When I look back over my political posts over the years (many of which seem so pathetically naive now), the path is pretty clear.

For decades, our Federal government has been gridlocked by hyperpartisanship, following a takeover by the Boomer generation (the infamous “Gingrich revolution” in 1994). From then on, it was effectively hobbled by its system of checks and balances, combined with the nearly 50-50 split between the partisan factions. The Boomers were more interested in arguing than in governing.

Along comes a paticularly nasty Boomer, who sees an opportunity to exploit popular discontent with this state of affairs and offers himself as The Guy Who Can Fix It. He’s clearly a con man, he’s reckless and he’s lawless, but that doesn’t deter a significant percentage of voters. Despite his lawlessness, indeed possibly even because of it, he wins a second term to the Presidency after a disastrous first term followed by a respite.

Who could see lawlessness as a qualification for holding office? Well, how about the generation that brags online about how they were raised without boundaries and stalks your social media feed with mocking laughing emojis? You know the one I’m talking about:

I stole the graphic above from self-identified Gen X substacker Jon Miltimore. As he puts it in a post about our generation and the election:

We played outside all day without adult supervision and rode bikes without helmets. We’re anti-snowflake. We believe in morals but we shun moral preening. We have little tolerance for the speech police, laugh at off-color jokes (even when we’re not supposed to), and are almost impossible to offend (unless you say “that’s offensive.”)

Am I generalizing? Of course. People are individuals, and not everyone in Gen X embodies these traits. But Gen X, as a whole, does—and it might help explain why Gen X put Donald Trump back in the Oval Office.

Trump’s vulgarity and coarse language, which offends so many Baby Boomers and Millennials, is less likely to bother people in my generation. Hell, for some, it’s what they love about him. He’s the Happy Gilmore of politics, the boisterous upstart the fans love but the elites despise.

The argument is simple here. The Gen X attitude is: if the laws don’t work, then fuck ’em. Just ignore them. That’s how you get to where we are today, with a government that ignores the U.S. Constitution.

Can the Constitution be restored? Rebuilt? Or is this a Humpty-Dumpty scenario, like trying to unscramble an egg? It’s possible that, after the colossal failures and depredations that are bound to come with the new administration, some semblance of the old ways can be brought back. Perhaps altered to accomodate all that has changed in the interim.

Another substacker (one of my favorites), Thomas P. M. Barnett, sees it too. He gets the generational angle, though he doesn’t treat it as rosily. He recognizes the danger were in, and the fact that we’ve created a Terror State – what you always get with authoritarian rule.

That deeply-but-evenly-divided electorate wasn’t changing, resulting in change election after change election (stretching back to 2006) with no real change ensuing even as the general angst and anger of the electorate ballooned over time.

As much as the Left wants to blame Trump’s win on his duplicity (like denying Project 2025 right up to the vote and then immediately implementing it upon inauguration), the scarier truth is that the majority of Americans are open to letting this Trump smash! dynamic unfold.

It’s so Boomer, right? One last crazy, self-destructive “revolution” by that generation?

He is spot on with the Boomers being a destructive generation. They burned down the college campuses in the 1960s, and now they’re burning down the halls of Congress in the 2020s. Gen Xers, their accomplices in government, are happy to stand back and watch the fire. It’s a dangerous combination of generations to be in charge, but unfortunately we’re stuck with them – at least for a while. Younger generations will get their chance eventually. At that point, we can probably say we’ve made it through the Crisis Era.

In The Zeitgeist

Chronicling these changing times

Browsed by
Author: Steve