In which Research Goblin Mode is engaged

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We’ve binged KotSK this weekend, and now have only the finale.

It occurs to me that it fills a role in the greater GRRM universe that is analogous to the role the “street level” MCU shows filled in the larger MCU.

The large-scale shows Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon are the giant tentpole productions here, like the Avengers movies, but the MCU also includes the smaller-scale “street level” stories told mostly on TV, like Jessica Jones and Daredevil.

That’s where A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms sits. It’s down at a lower level, with more or less regular people, and almost no geopolitical intrigue. Now, we all know Egg ends up on the throne, but at this particular time he’s the 4th son of a 4th son and is WILDLY unlikely to get that job.

After the show was over, I had questions.

First, how DID Egg end up on the Throne?

Second, who is Egg to the familiar faces of the original HBO show?

Third, who is Egg to the somewhat less familiar faces of House of the Dragon?

And so I went looking.

Where are we with Knight of the Seven Kingdoms?

At the time of the show (the year 209), Daeron II is king. He’s Egg’s grandfather.

Egg’s father is Maekar, Daeron’s 4th son after Baelor, Aerys, and Rhaegel. (Here casting misses the mark a little, since Maekar’s hair reads as aged-white and not Targaryen white, while his elder brother Baelor’s hair is dark. This makes it easy to misread their birth order, or even believe that there are two sons BETWEEN them.)

Egg is also a 4th son; he’s preceded by Daeron, Aerion, and Aemon. The asshole who lanced a horse in a joust is the second eldest brother Aerion. He also has an older sister Daella (who appears in the show briefly), and a younger sister Rhae (who does not).

We see Daeron early on, but he isn’t initially identified; he’s the drunk in the tavern that Dunk meets in the first episode. In Ashford, his identity is clearer; he’s also the one who has the prophetic dream about Dunk.

Aerion is the sadistic asshole in the fancy helm who insists on the Trial of Seven.

Aemon is offscreen, already studying to be a maester; he surfaces again as a very old man in Game of Thrones, where he’s the maester at Castle Black who reveals his identity to Jon Snow. That’s a great reveal, but it’s even better now that we know who Jon is (it’s skipping ahead, but: Jon is his great-nephew).

Now, what’s nuts and misleading is the degree to which discussions of this show about “preparing Egg for the throne” and whatnot, but that’s bullshit. Nobody in this show has ANY expectation that Egg will ascend.

When the show begins, Baelor is the clear heir, and already has children. Before the Trial of the Seven, Egg is TENTH in line to the throne.

King: Daeron II the Good

  1. Baelor (Daeron’s 1st son)
  2. Valarr (Baelor’s 1st son)
  3. Matarys (Baelor’s 2nd son)
  4. Aerys (Daeron’s 2nd son)
  5. Rhaegel (Daeron’s 3rd son)
  6. Maekar (Daeron’s 4th son)
  7. Daeron (Maekar’s 1st son)
  8. Aerion (Maekar’s 2nd son)
  9. Aemon (Maekar’s 3rd son)
  10. Egg (Maekar’s 4th son)

To compare with another popular monarchy (ha), this puts Egg at the same position as Sienna Mapelli Mozzi in the UK. Right now you’re asking “who the fuck is that?,” and precisely. (The answer, btw, is “Andrew’s oldest grandchild.)

Now this DOES shift quickly. The first big problem is that Bealor dies in the trial — but no problem, right? HIs children should be in line, right?

Well, about that: later in the same year as the tournament (209 AC), there’s going to be a spring plague. And it kills a LOT of people, including both of Baelor’s children as well as King Daeron II himself. Oops.

But hey! Even then, Egg’s waaaaay down the line. The revised list, under newly crowned King Aerys I:

  1. Rhaegel (the possibly mad 3rd son of Daeron)
  2. Maekar (the 4th son of Daeron)
  3. Daeron (Maekar’s eldest)
  4. Aerion (Maekar’s 2nd son)
  5. Aemon (Maekar’s 3rd son)
  6. Egg (Maekar’s 4th son)

So even by the end of 209 with all that turmoil, it’s still fantastically unlikely that Egg will ever achieve the throne. To continue in Windsor terms, 6th in line in the UK is Harry’s oldest child Archie.

Now, it IS known that Rhaegel (whom we haven’t seen) is a bit mad, but Aerys is healthy and married; it was assumed that the line would continue from there.

Except, well, Aerys I was apparently Ace, and so that never happened. And he reigned until 221.

That put the spotlight on Rhaegel, obviously, who despite his condition DID marry and have children — a fraternal pair of twins who later marry each other (Targaryens gonna Targaryen) and, later, a daughter. That inserted another party in the line (Rhaegel’s son Aelor), so Egg dropped to 7th.

Ah, but this is Westeros. In 215, during Aerys’ reign, Rhaegel chokes on food and dies. This brings Egg back to 6th, but Rhaegel’s son is still there… until he dies in a mishap with his sister-wife just two years later.

So as of 217, the line is like this:

King Aerys I

  1. Maekar
  2. Daeron (Maekar’s eldest)
  3. Aerion (Maekar’s 2nd son)
  4. Aemon (Maekar’s 3rd son)
  5. Egg (Maekar’s 4th son)

In 221, Aerys dies, and Maekar ascends, and Egg is still fantastically unlikely to get the hot seat: he’s 4th in line, behind his 3 elder brothers. People in that position don’t end up kings normally.

King Maekar I

  1. Daeron
  2. Aerion
  3. Aemon
  4. Egg

Maekar would rule until 233, and during that reign both of his eldest sons die. Daeron is said to have passed form a pox caught in a house of ill repute, and dragon-mad Aerion (he of the broken lance stunt) became convinced that, if he drank wildfire, he’d become a dragon (again, Targaryens gonna Targaryen).

So that put Westeros in an odd position: the throne was empty, and the obvious choice (Aemon) has taken his Maester’s vows to foreswear the throne.

The now 33-year-old Egg would be next, but he was distrusted by much of the nobility precisely because of the affinity for smallfolk he learned squiring for Ser Duncan.

There WERE some other claimants, including those on behalf of Aerion’s infant son who would have notionally had a superior claim — except everyone knew Aerion was batshit, so there was legitimate worry about the child inheriting that trait. Obviously & additionally, an infant king would require a very long regency, which is inherently unstable.

And so the council crowned Egg as King Aegon V Targaryen in 233; he was known as Aegon the Unlikely for obvious reasons.

So who is Egg to the familiar faces on GOT?

Good question. GOT basically starts the year Robert Baratheon dies, which is 298 AC. The Ashford Tournament that is the stage for KOTSK takes place, as noted, in 209 AC.

Aegon would rule wisely and well until 259, when he perished in a fire attempting to hatch dragon eggs (even good Targaryens gonna Targaryen). Also killed in the fire were Ser Duncan, who by then was the commander of his Kings’ Guard, and his eldest child also named Duncan.

Aegon’s second son Jaehaerys would rule then from 259 until 262. Jaehaerys, contrary to his father’s far wiser preferences, hewed to the old Targaryen practice of incestuous marriage. He wed his sister Shaera instead of the Tully bride arranged for him (Targaryens gonna Targaryens). Their child was Aerys II, the so-called Mad King, who ALSO married his sister (Rhaella). (Do I have to say it?)

Aerys II had eight children, but after his eldest Rheagar — who, despite a double helping of incest, was somehow both handsome and honorable — FIVE were either stillborn or dead inside a year. Only then did the youngest pair arrive: Viserys, whom Khal Drogo “crowns” with molten gold, and Daenerys later called Mother of Dragons.

Anyway, Rhaegar went to a tournament, and laid eyes on Lyanna Stark, sister to Ned from season one. And this kinda starts the war. See, Lyanna was promised to Ned’s BFF Robert Baratheon, and then Rhaegar ABDUCTS HER!

Oh. Wait. While it’s still ambiguous in the books, the show’s version of events gives us a clear story. As related by Bran the Raven, there was no abduction. Rhaegar and Lyanna were in love and eloped. Rhaegar’s arranged marriage was annulled, and a maester properly wed the pair. Only then was their child born. Lyanna would die in childbirth, but begged her brother Ned to protect her child. Ned took the babe back to Winterfell to raise him as a bastard called Jon Snow who was, in reality, the trueborn son of Rhaegar and thus the heir to the Iron Throne (and also Daenerys’ nephew, technically). Robert would kill Rhaegar in battle.

Egg is the Mad King’s grandfather through his son Jaehaerys II, and is thus the great-grandfather of Daenerys and great-great grandfather of Jon Snow via Daenerys’ brother Rheagar.

**But what about House of the Dragon? **

Another great question. HotD‘s events take place starting, roughly, in the year 129 AC, so 80 years before the Ashford Tournament. The king at the start of the show is Viserys I, who ruled from 103 to 129.

Egg’s father was Maekar I.

Maekar I’s father was Daeron II, who ruled from 184 to 209

Daeron II’s father was Aegon IV (172-184), who was called the Unworthy and was basically the Westerosi version of Henry VIII

Aegon IV’s father was Viserys II (171-172)

Viserys II’s parents were Daemon and Rhaenyra Targaryen, and uncle-nice pairing we see happen in season one of House of the Dragon. Daemon is played by Matt Smith; Rhaenyra is played by Emma D’Arcy. Neither held the throne.

Ergo, the Matt Smith/Emma D’Arcy couple in House of the Dragon are Egg’s great great great grandparents.

Bonus: What’s the sequence of rulers between House of the Dragon and Knight of the Seven Kingdoms?

I’m including this because it’s kinda nuts — the throne jumps back and forth down generational lines a little before settling.

Viserys I, as I said, ruled from 103 to 129. He’s the one who married his daughter’s pal Alicent and created the succession mess that drives the action of House of the Dragon. Alicent and Rhaenyra end up on opposite sides of the Dance of Dragons civil war.

Initially, Alicent’s claim “wins” for a bit; her son Aegon II rules from 129-131. (The dates are a little weird b/c the textual sources have Aegon and Rhaenyra closer in age.)

Aegon II doesn’t live long. When he passes, the other claimant party — his nephew, who is also Daemon and Rhaenyra’s son, and is also named Aegon (yes, there was drama about this) ascends as Aegon III. His reign is substantially longer (131-157 AC).

Aegon III’s eldest son Daeron I succeeds him in 157, and will only rule until 161 when he was killed in battle.

Aegon III’s next son Baelor I rules for about 10 years, until 171, and was quite popular (the Great Sept of Baelor is named for him, though it was built after his death). Baelor was also absurdly pious, even to the point of having his marriage annulled, and died without issue.

This takes the line of succession back up a generation, to Daemon and Rhaenyra’s son Viserys II, brother to Aegon II and uncle to Daron and Baelor. Viserys rules for only a year, until 172, at which point his eldest son Aegon IV took the throne, as noted above.

Aegon IV’s eldest son is Daeron II, who is Egg’s grandfather and the king at the start of KOTSK.

So, the tl;dr is that:

EGG is the grandfather of the Mad King, and great-grandfather to both Daenerys and Jon Snow.

Going the other direction, Egg’s great-grandfather was Aegon IV.

Aegon IV’s father was Viserys II, who was the 2nd-born son of his father Daemon. Daemon is the character played by Matt Smith in House of the Dragon, so we have Egg’s Great-Great-Grandfather in HotD, and Egg’s great-great grandchildren driving the action of GOT.

January 11, 1992

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I don’t have a diary about it, but I know roughly where I was, and what I was probably doing. I lived in Tuscaloosa, rooming with my pal Brad, but spending a ton of time with the girl I was dating (whom I’d move in with by the following summer).

We didn’t watch a lot of TV, but we made a point of setting the VCR for SNL. Even bad episodes were worth 30 minutes of laughs on Sunday, and you could fast forward through the cringy bits and commercials. I can’t swear where we were exactly on this particular Saturday night, but the odds are it was the Houndstooth, Egan’s, or the Chukker.

I remember watching this the next day, with Brad and Cassie. We were big Northern Exposure fans, so Rob Morrow hosting was the big draw — but Nirvana was already exploding. The album Nevermind had been released the previous September, and “Smells Like Teen Spirit” was a surprise hit, aided in part by heavy rotation on 120 Minutes and, eventually, every possible format of rock radio. Geffen had trouble keeping up with the demand for the album.

So anyway, we watched the show. I don’t remember any of Morrow’s sketches, but I remember this performance. We were stunned by it. And here it is again, 34 years later, thanks to Reddit. Enjoy.

Yes, we knew what we were getting. We’re just getting more of it than we initially planned.

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Our first winter in North Carolina is, uh, kind of overdelivering.

I write this on the 30th of January 2026. Here’s what that looks like at Weather Underground:

Screenshot 2026 01 30 at 8 52 47 AM

If you compare almanac data, the first 3 weeks of the year were pretty normal, modulo those wildly warm days on the 7th and 10th. A Durham January, at least according to histoyr, means cold overnights, with freezes not unusual, but daytime temps reaching the 50s. Some wetness is possible.

Now look at what we’ve had for the last week.

We were last over 40F on Friday, 23 January. On Saturday night into Sunday the 25th, of course, we got our first real winter storm. It was mostly freezing rain, but we got enough snow to make it pretty. Here’s what we woke up to on the 25th (8:25AM):

IMG 1523

Now, the good news is that Monday got to the mid-30s and included no small amount of sunshine. Our cul de sac looked the same at 0800 Monday, but by 11:49AM we had this:

IMG 1536

And an hour later it was this:

IMG 1537

Again, peak air temp was still only about 36F, but the sun is very useful. By the end of the work day I thought nothing of taking the car to the grocery store to grab a thing or two.

Now, we’ve had no additional precipitation all week, so the white stuff is nearly all gone from anywhere the sun hits — BUT. That’s a big caveat. The driveway just out of frame at 9 o’clock in those pictures gets just about zero sun, and so it’s still as iced over TODAY as it was on Sunday. Why?

Because Durham hasn’t been out of the 30s for over a week, and we won’t get there until maybe next week. (Incidentally, that same problem has kept my motorcycles in the garage; there’s a patch of ice in our driveway that won’t quite go away, and we lack the equipment to banish it more actively.)

OH, and we’re supposed to get up to 6″ of snow on Saturday. But snow won’t stick around like the ice from last weekend, not least because the forecast for Monday is 40, and Tuesday will hit 48.

All this is super weird to me. I’m not exactly complaining. I knew I was getting real seasons here. I knew cold snaps could happen. But at the same time I’m kind of agog, because I am 55 years old and this week represents the longest period of time in my ENTIRE LIFE I’ve spent south of 40F.

Carry on.

Dept. of Poets

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35 years ago, I saw Cornelius Eady read at Alabama. I have a signed copy of one of his early books as a result. In my senior poetry workshop, we had an assignment to write a poem after some poem we admired; I chose his about jazz musician Hank Mobley, and wrote about Jaco Pastorius. It wasn’t my best work, but it was a fun exercise.

And now he’s reading at Mamdani’s inauguration, which is cool.

“A few things to know before stealing my 914”

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This is excellent.

Also, n.b. that this guy knows a thing or two about charming little cars:

Norman Garrett was the Concept Engineer for the original Miata back in his days at Mazda’s Southern California Design Studio. He currently teaches automotive engineering classes at UNC-C’s Motorsports Engineering Department in Charlotte, North Carolina and curates his small collection of dysfunctional automobiles and motorcycles.

I was more excited when I thought the “influencer” screening was a more literal copy, but this is still cool

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Influencers Will Have to Complete a Long Walk to See ‘The Long Walk’:

This Saturday, August 30, Lionsgate has invited a group of press and influencers in Los Angeles to see The Long Walk. Only, there won’t be chairs in the theater. There will be treadmills. Treadmills that measure your speed. Viewers will have to maintain the same 3-mile-per-hour pace as the characters for the duration of the film. If they can’t keep up, they’ll be taken from the theater and will be unable to see the rest of the movie.

Books of 2025, because I’m still mad about it

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More than 20 years ago there was a lot of press for this book that ticked many boxes for me — literary thriller! Written by a professor! Good pre-publication press! I meant to get around to reading it, and just never did.

Then, in June, LitHub‘s crime & mystery spinoff CrimeReads did a big about great coastal mysteries and right there on the list was Stephen L. Carter’s The Emperor of Ocean Park, and I remembered.

We were on the verge of our move, so I FIRST sought to get it from the library — but that seemed fraught, given our impending 1300 mile move, and in the end I surrendered and paid Amazon for a $9.99 Kindle edition. Fine.

The book starts slow. This is fine, I thought. The problem is: it STAYS slow. Honestly, the whole thing is an intensely navel-gazey SLOG by a guy who spends more time complaining about culture and judicial confirmation than anything else. The plot is full of unearned twists, and only barely resolves. The spurts of action feel deeply out of place in this ruminating, long-winded book. And yet: Carter got a multimillion dollar advance on this thing.

Coming finally to the Wiki article, I find a number of the quoted negative reviews to be entirely spot on:

In an episode of the Newsnight Review for the BBC, novelist Ian Rankin said he thought the book was “very well written but badly constructed” due to the conflation of a number of thriller cliches, and that the over-complicated plot obscured a great story. The A.V. Club suggested Carter had a tendency to overwrite…

Others said that the writing was at times clunky, and the extensive social commentary detracted from the narrative flow. In a negative review for the London Review of Books, critic Lorin Stein described the book as “long-winded [and] shoddily put together”, and discussed why many American reviewers paid deference to what he thought was a high-toned airport novel.

There are reasons this book is an important milestone culturally, of course — Carter is African-American, and his protagonist is a thinly veiled version of himself, at least in setup: also a law professor at a school very like where Carter himself teaches (Yale). The families involved are wealthy African Americans in New England, a tribe of folks not well represented in American letters. That’s good. But goddamn if I just wish the book wasn’t better.

Dept. of Kitchen Technology

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So. We moved. We’re renting for a year while we sell our Houston place, and ascertain just where in the Durham area we’d want to set roots, and that comes with, well, a rental house kitted out as a rental house.

It’s a nice enough property, in an owner-heavy neighborhood, but the fit & finish isn’t equal to what we left behind in Houston. The biggest sinner is the kitchen, and the biggest problem there is the deeply anemic electric range/cooktop. I have NO fucking idea how you do real cooking on electric burners, and here the problem is compounded by the fact that these just kinda suck. The only way I could keep pasta water boiling the other night was to keep the pot covered, for example. That was NOT a problem on our JennAir back in Houston.

Well, it’s also 2025, and there are Modern Solutions to Bougie Problems. Turns out, stand-alone portable induction burners are NOT expensive; the Wirecutter pick was only $120 (made by Duxtop). I’d been wanting to try one, but the last time I looked into it they were much pricier — plus, well, in Houston we lacked for kitchen space, so it would’ve been a hard sell.

Folks also seem VERY enthusiastic about the new breed of carbon steel pans, which are basically perfect for induction cooking. Since I also wasn’t entirely sure which of our pans were ferromagnetic enough to work on induction, I also picked up a modestly priced (but preseasoned) pan to go with it (made by the hilariously named Merton & Storck).

Total spend: about $160?

Both were deployed for breakfast today.

  1. HOLY SHIT the pan is hot like IMMEDIATELY — within seconds. Obviously it didn’t come up for sausage and eggs, but the scenario where you turn on the pan, pour in oil, and THEN chop the onion for saute would have to be reversed here unless you wanted a kitchen fire.

  2. This burner has two modes: simple lo/med/hi style, and then an actual TEMP mode, so you can set it to (say) 340F and it’ll stay there. Seems like you shot too high? No prob; turn it down 20 degrees. Also, there’s a “boil” mode that goes immediately to THERMONUCLEAR FULL TILT BOOGIE that I’m kind of anxious to try.

  3. This is more of a “induction + carbon steel” thing, but making a 20 degree adjustment has immediate effect. You wouldn’t get that with cast iron on the induction, but it’s an upside for the CS pans/induction burner combo. The “done cooking, keep it warm” scenario also comes to mind.

  4. Less of our cookware is induction-friendly than I would’ve thought. Obviously the cast iron all works, and the AllClad saucepan, but the fancy early-90s RevereWare set that’s been my go-to for 30 years won’t work on it at all, nor (somewhat obviously) will the famously-aluminum Calphalon. If you go this route, my advice is to get the pan AND the burner, honestly.

  5. Finally, despite it being my first foray, I ruined no food in the preparation of my breakfast. But I feel like it was a near thing.

  6. What can I cook in it for lunch?

Dept. of Heathen Updates, Jazz Edition

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Four and a half years ago I pointed y’all to this excellent cover of Radiohead’s “Packt Like Sardines In A Crushd Tin Box” by piano phenom Robert Glasper. Go ahead and watch again; I’ll wait:

I don’t think this version is available outside the Youtube clip, but around the same time it was recorded (2013), Glasper released an album called Covered that contains another Radiohead track (“Reckoner”, from In Rainbows). Last year, Glasper released Keys to the City Volume One, which contains another very different cover of “Packt” that is probably also worth your time; it’s much more trip-hoppy. Keys is exclusive to AppleMusic / iTunes.

What I did NOT note at the time, though, is that the beatboxer in the clip is Taylor McFerrin. His dad is kind of a big deal.

Dept. of Sales Data, Motorcycle Division

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A while back I saw a story noting that Royal-Enfield, the Indian manufacturer of excellent and inexpensive motorcycles, sold slightly more than 1,000,000 motorcycles in their fiscal 2024. That sounds like a lot, and it is INDEED a large jump for Enfield since just 10 years ago they were on about 300,000. But where does that put them with respect to the other big brands?

That’s where I got a shock. The article has the spoiler in the last paragraph for everyone except Triumph, whose recent explosive success is covered here.

Here’s the dope, from low to high. All figures calendar 2024 except Enfield, as noted above, who uses a fiscal 2024.

  • Triumph: about 135,000, itself a huge jump over 2023
  • Harley-Davidson: just under 150,000
  • Kawasaki: just under 500,000
  • Royal-Enfield: 1,009,900
  • Suzuki: 2.1 million
  • Yamaha: 4.8 million

The curve here is CRAZY.

Screenshot 2025 07 03 at 10 26 02 AM

But we’re not done, because we haven’t talked about Honda. In 2024, Honda sold 19.6 million motorcycles, which is apparently about 1/3 of all bikes sold worldwide. Let’s add them to the chart.

Screenshot 2025 07 03 at 10 27 30 AM

The only number here that isn’t a surprise to me is Triumph. I assumed they were small. I definitely assumed Harley was bigger, and certainly also would’ve told you that the Japanese brands were closer to peers — but holy shit are they ever NOT AT ALL THAT. Honda is at 4x its closest domestic competitor, and 40x Kawasaki. There are literally no “peer” relationships here except Triumph and Harley, who are only about 10% different.

A few footnotes:

  • Ducati sold 54,495 in 2024 link.
  • BMW: 210,408 link
  • MotoGuzzi and Indian are hard to measure b/c their parent companies appear not to break out motorcycle sales, but they’re quite small.

Late Edit: KTM sold 292,000 in 2024.

Dept. of Nested Tomfoolery

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Thirty-odd years ago, on my “study tour” of the Soviet Union, a common souvenir was a political matryoshka doll of nested Soviet leaders. The sellers would call them “Gorbydolls”, since Gorbachev, who led the USSR from 1985 to 1991, was the current and thus outermost figure.

The most common variety went from Gorby directly to Brezhnev, then Khrushchev, then Stalin, and then Lenin — but savvy students of history (well, back then it was current events) knew that two men served as General Secretary between them.

Brezhnev looms large in Soviet history, since he led the country for longer than anyone other than Stalin: a bit over 18 years, from 1964 until 1982. The first forgotten man was Yuri Andropov, who held the means of production for only about 15 months from November ’82 through February ’84.

The Supreme Soviet then tapped Konstantin Chernenko, who had even worse luck: February of ’84 until March of ’85.

Only THEN did wGorby come to power.

I had an opportunity to get an actual correct doll in Moscow, but I didn’t clock to how rare they’d be, and as it was the first stop on the tour I demurred to avoid toting it for the rest of the trip. More fool me, though, as I never saw another correct example. (I did please a number of black marketeers by even KNOWING about the two missing leaders, though, which was fun.)

Anyway, years later, my pal Lindsey went over, and brought me an updated doll. Sadly, this one’s missing the short timers, too, but it has something else to amuse: it’s two-sided, with the Russian leaders on one side paired with American ones on the other. I had entirely forgotten this aspect of it until I took it off the shelf it’s lived on for 20+ years ahead of our big move.

Sounds fun, right? And it starts reasonably enough, unless you scratch the surface: It’s Putin on one side and Clinton on the other.

Except Clinton was done by January of 2001, whereas Putin took over in May of ’00, and remains in charge. OTOH, they were both “current” at the time, and so get the outer position. Fine.

But let’s look at doll #2: Boris Yeltsin and George H. W. Bush. Yeltsin led from 1991 until 1999; Bush was in office, famously, for only a single term ending in January of 1993. But they were contemporaries, at least for a time, so this makes some sense.

Moving on, at Doll #3, we find Gorby and Reagan. Here we have the strongest correlation, since Reagan served from ’81 to ’89, while Gorby was in office from ’85 to ’91. And, famously, Reagan addressed Gorby in his famous “tear down this wall” speech, so they’re historically linked.

Now we revert to form, as Doll #4 is Brezhnev (who led from ’64 to ’82) and Nixon (’69 to ’74). Sure, pairing an 18 year leader with a disgraced 5-year-man is questionable, but OTOH you gotta pick SOMEONE, right? (I might’ve picked Johnson.)

Doll #5 probably makes the most sense since Reagan and Gorby: it’s Khrushchev (’53 to ’64) and Kennedy (’61 to ’63).

Now we go OFF THE RAILS, though, because Doll #6 is necessarily Stalin. Stalin led the Soviet Union from 1924 until 1953; to borrow a phrase from a popular musical, no one else looms quite as large. So whom did the doll designers pick for the American side? You guessed it! Abraham Lincoln, US President from 1861 to 1865.

Doll #7 gives us a very, very tiny V. I. Lenin, who despite his iconic status led the USSR for only a year and 22 days (December of ’22 through January of ’24). That’s less time than either of the forgotten early-80s men. But: founder, so obviously on the tiny American side we find a very small face I presume to be George Washington (1789 – 1797).

POSTSCRIPT: It is only in writing this post that I discovered another forgotten man in the Soviet list: in fact, the Soviet leadership didn’t go directly from Stalin to Khrushchev. Georgy Malenkov held power for like half a year, but things were messier then.

Wheeee!

Banks are Parasites

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Oh, banks.

We recently paid off our house. This triggers the lender — Chase — sending us the balance of our escrow account, which they sent me by check.

This is weird, because I also bank at Chase. I can see my accounts and my (former) mortgage in the same web UI.

I darkly thought, upon opening the envelope, that the whole reason it came as a check was to allow Chase to hold the money longer. Surely not, right?

Yeah, turns out? I deposited the check yesterday, and Chase is now telling me the funds are “on hold” until the 20th.

A check drawn from their own accounts, at the same bank.

Banks are parasites.

Anderson Evaluation Redux (2025 Edition)

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In 2023, after being disappointed by ASTEROID CITY, I wrote this post wherein I ranked Andersons’ films.

Last night we saw THE PHOENICIAN SCHEME, which is a reasonable time to publish an amended list; n.b. the only edit is the insertion of the new film between Dogs and Rocket:

  1. Moonrise Kingdom (2012)
  2. Rushmore (1998)
  3. The French Dispatch (2021)
  4. The Royal Tenenbaums (2001)
  5. Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009)
  6. Isle of Dogs (2018)
  7. The Phoenician Scheme (2025)
  8. Bottle Rocket (1996)
  9. Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)
  10. The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004)
  11. Asteroid City (2023)
  12. The Darjeeling Limited (2007)

Mostly, the last two outings have just made me want to watch other films of his again (e.g., anything in the top half of the list).

One Weird Streak

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Billy Joel had a hit in 1980 with “You May Be Right,” and shortly thereafter I bought my very first music: a copy of Glass Houses on 8-track.

In the last 45 years, I’ve bought a LOT of other music — a few others on 8-Track, a bunch on cassette, and then starting in 1988, a WHOLE LOT on CD. I didn’t start buying vinyl until about 20 years ago, and since that coincided with DRM-free digital and then all-you-can-eat streaming, vinyl collecting never reached the fever pitch of CD buying.

In all that time, though, the transaction was only ever “music to me, money to record shop.” There’s been attrition and loss, but I never sold anything.

Some of my college pals would occasionally sell one-hit wonder CDs or whatever, either because they didn’t want them cluttering up the collection or (more often) because they needed money. I never did, though. I still own award-worthy CDs like the second Blow Monkeys release, from 1986 (2.5 stars at Allmusic!). Whatever pittance the local shop would’ve given me for it wasn’t sufficient to forever lose the opportunity to hear “Diggin’ Your Scene” again, at least back in those scarcity-driven days.

I say “I never,” but of course the point of this message is that it was only “I never” until about 20 minutes ago, because I accepted $155 from Cactus for the culls from our vinyl collection.

It’s not that I don’t want to have those, and it’s not that we need the money; it’s that I don’t want to pay Mayflower to MOVE them.

Having received our first pack-and-move quotes, we are getting MUCH more aggressive about the pre-move purge.

And so: sic transit gloria mundi, eh?

The Past: Just a bit more Past today

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Back in 2011, I noted here the surprising fact that 10th US President John Tyler (a man born in 1790) had two living grandchildren: Lyon Tyler, Jr. (b. 1924), and Harrison Ruffin Tyler (b. 1928).

This is, of course, only possible because President Tyler had many children between two wives; his oldest schild was born in 1815, but his youngest wasn’t born until 1860. The surviving grandchildren are sons of Lyon Gardiner Tyler, his fifth child from his second wife. Lyon Sr. was born in 1853 — when Tyler the elder was about 63.

Further, Lyon Sr. had these surviving sons quite late as well: he was about 71 and 73 for their arrivals. But that’s the kind of age spread you need to have living people with grandfathers born during the Washington Administration.

Lyon Jr. sadly passed away only about a year after that post, and just now I read that Harrison died this past weekend at the age of 96.

Over at Kottke’s site, he has a page devoted to The Great Span — cases where the scale of consecutive human lives put us in closer mental proximity to the events of the past (like, say, when we realize Tyler still had living grandchildren until last week). It’s a good read. On post, about The Betty White Timeline of Human History, discusses how far back certain events were using White’s lifetime (99 years) as a unit. For example, the fall of the Roman Empire was only 16 Bettys ago. We’ve only been writing for about 52 Bettys.

This same page points out the story of Daniel Smith, a DC area man who was the son of a slave and yet was profiled in the Washington Post in 2020.

Yes, the rumors are TRUE

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We’re leaving Houston. For me, it’s after 31 years. For Erin, it’s “only” 23. But who’s counting?

Many of you knew this was something we were considering; in truth, it’s been an idea for about 4 years after a vacation in New Mexico, when the idea of “shit, we could live out here!” took root. After all, my job is portable and Erin’s skillset is marketable.

Then the climate really started to wear on us — Houston’s always been hot, but it feels like the last several summers have been even more brutal than ever. And then Governor Hotwheels and his cronies started being stupidly punitive towards Harris County’s big blue dot, and the confluence of political climate plus ACTUAL climate came to a head for us. And we started saving searches on Zillow.

But I hear you’re not even GOING to New Mexico!
TRUE! Turns out, the whole of the west is going to have a serious water crunch in the coming years, and we figure trading Houston’s flooding for its opposite wasn’t the best play. So we thought about other places.
Like where?
Well, California was on the list for a while, but living near friends in SoCal would involve a drastic rejiggering of household budgets. Seems like living well out there means spending WAY more of your money on real estate than we’re used to in plain ol’ Houston, and so we dismissed the idea (despite how attractive it is).
So not Cali. Fine. What else?
The Pacific Northwest is LOVELY, and we know some folks out there, and the climate absolutely agrees with us, but there are some issues that made it ultimately a nonstarter.
PNW DQ, Pt 1.
The PNW is, not to put too fine a point on it, kinda at the other end of the melting-pot diversity stick from Houston. Houston’s diversity has all sorts of benefits, not the least of which being “meeting different sorts of people is good for you.” Kidding on the square, though, a massive influx of immigrants from every corner of the globe is how Houston became an insanely good food town. You’re not gonna get that in a place without similar levels of inbound immigration.
PNW DQ, Pt 2
My mom’s 85 next month. Erin’s mom is 75 this year. All her family is in Florida; my sister is in Philly, and my mom is in Jackson, Mississippi. Going that far away started to feel unwise.
And then: the epiphany
Moving somewhere random at 25 is scary, sure, but at 25 finding your people is easy because all the other 25 year olds are ALSO trying to find their people. We have no illusions about our middle-aged status; the other 55 year olds are in bed by 9. It therefore occurred to us that picking a place where we already knew a ton of folks would probably be smart.
Enter Durham
Longtime Heathen Co-Conspirator MAD has lived in the area since the 20th century. He’s been low-key trying to get us up there for a while, and he’s not our only pal there. Turns out, our Crimson alma mater spat out no small number of seeds who took root in Tarheel country — two of Erin’s college roomies are in the area. At least a couple former members from the honors dorm I lived in are there. A pal or two from the English department and the literary magazine I helped found in 1990 are there, too. And, wouldn’t you know it, there’s at least one or two folks from my hometown there, and they’re in the set of “hometown people” I wouldn’t mind seeing again.
Aren’t you leaving someone out?
Yup. See, I moved to Houston in 1994 after having attended a friend of a friend’s birthday party here that summer, at Eric’s urging. Thomas became a friend of mine, too; his girlfriend at the time was actually one of my first roommates here. They eventually moved to Austin, married, and now have three kids. Oh, and last August? They moved to Raleigh. I can’t tell if that’s a Sign or a Portent, but it’s definitely one of them.
But Durham’s in NC, and NC was red last time!
True, but Durham itself is far bluer than Houston, and North Carolina is a state that’s legitimately purple. Texas, god bless her, only has aspirations of purpleness.
What else?
CLIMATE. Yes, Durham is still the south, and it will get warm there, but not Houston warm. (I mean, they THINK it’s hot, but they’re adorable. They’re also adorable when they talk about traffic.) They have actual seasons, but none of them are trying to kill you (vs summer in 713, or winter in the midwest). The humidity gap alone is enormous. We flew home yesterday, and the temperatures were about the same there and here — but there was a 22 point difference in humidity.
There’s more.
Currently, it’s 81F feeling like 89 in Houston; in Durham, it’s 74, and feels like 71.
Sure, Chet, but it’s springtime! It’s nice everywhere.
Fine. The real proof is summer. In August of 2024, Houston was over 90F all but 5 days, and over 95F for all but 9 days. Houston dipped below 80F at night only once before the final week of the month, and at NO POINT in August was the nighttime temp low enough to cool off by opening windows. In the same month, Durham was mostly topping out in the 80s, and regularly dipped into the 60s at night — and had a low of 55F on the 22nd.
They have real winter there, Chet! Look out!
Yes, it does get colder there. But it’s not like midwest cold. It’s more like a winter happens, and you might need to wear a sweater or a coat. Fine! It’s also not unremitting, like our summers; even in January, Durham had 13 days over 50F, which is hardly a frozen hellscape. OTOH, I could’ve worn shorts to a Christmas Eve party this year in Houston, which seriously harshes my yuletide glow.
It still seems sudden!
I mean, you’re not entirely wrong. We’ve been house shopping via Zillow for about a year, and we’ve been open about our desire to go, but I honestly think most of you didn’t take us seriously. And the logistics of selling and buying in a coordinated way kinda gobsmacked us. The market’s behavior means liquidating investments to afford a down payment against a house there WITHOUT selling our Houston home first seems really dumb. So we were stuck. How do people who aren’t rich even DO this?
What changed?
We realized our Houston place is close enough to being paid off that we could just pay it off, and then rent a place in Durham while we sell Houston. And that allowed things to accelerate pretty quickly.
How quickly?
Well, last weekend we were in Durham looking at rental contenders. We’re about 2 shakes from executing a lease on one of them that’s literally walking distance from the aforementioned Agent MAD and his Librarian Emeritus partner — both of whom have been dear friends of ours since the late 1980s. If this goes through, it’ll start on 6/15, and we’ll plan to be in Durham on or about 7/1.
ZOMG!
Yeah, I know.
So can we get drinks / coffee / dinner / play a game / eat enchiladas?
You’re goddamn right. Call me.

I legitimately AM freaking out a little. Houston has been my home for my entire adult life. I moved here in 1994. I had no idea it would worm its humid, verdant way into my heart so completely and for so long. I always had intentions of living many places, and now I’ve spent more than half my life in the one I picked on a whim when I was too young to rent a car. I’ve lived in the home I bought at age 30 longer than I ever lived anywhere else, and it’s not close AT ALL. (Statistically, it’s entirely possible I’ll never live anywhere this long again — 25 more years puts me at 80.)

I’m wigging out, a little. But the Houston I loved is changing, too. We’re not the only ones on the way out the door in our social circle, so even if we stayed it wouldn’t be the same city. And the summer would still piss me off more every year.

So yeah, we’re leaving. But we love you all, and that part won’t change.

In re: LANDMAN

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It’s TV mogul Taylor Sheridan‘s latest project — he of YELLOWSTONE, of course, but also a few pretty good films. This time, instead of a grizzled and wise middle-aged dude played by Kevin Costner, our central character is a grizzled and wise middle-aged-dude played by Billy Bob Thornton.

Trouble is, I like Thornton. So I watched all 10 episodes on business travel this week.

It was absolutely a hatewatch.

First, it’s chock full of Taylor Sheridan’s standard validation of reactionary politics by only rebutting basic or simplistic arguments to the contrary. In YELLOWSTONE, it was about conservation efforts other than whatever John Dutton wanted. Here, it’s anything suggesting oil isn’t Right and Just. It’s not that Sheridan is dumb; I’m sure he knows better. It’s craven pandering to an audience that eats this stuff up as validation for their OWN points of view.

Second, it’s grotesquely misogynistic, which is again a Sheridan tradition. There are no fully realized female characters in anything he writes, even in stories notionally centered on women like his films WIND RIVER and SICARIO. His on-and-off-again ex-wife Angela and their daughter Ainsley (a carbon copy of her hypersexual mother) are awful, awful people. Rebecca Falcone, a lawyer brought in after an accident, is a thin Big City Person who must be taught how Things Really Are by the Wise Landman Who Knows Things.

Third, it’s absurdly full of middled-aged-man wish fulfillment. A broken down landman stands up to the cartel! His daughter actually listens to his Sage Advice! He’s rewarded with a promotion for helping to cover up how mismanaged the company’s wells and infrastructure are. He acts like an asshole to everyone around him, but suffers no interpersonal or professional consequences for it. Even the fucking CARTEL boss (and I’m still mad about how wasted Andy Garcia was here) is like “our bad, respect.”

BUT

Goddamn if Thornton isn’t fun to watch. I mean, he’s been fun to watch since SLING BLADE, but he was born to play Tommy.

Ali Larter — whom GenX folks will recall first came to fame as the fictional “it girl” Allegra Coleman in a satiric front-page celeb faux-profile in Esquire back in 1996 — makes an absolute meal of a thin, unbelievable character in ex-wife Angela. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen someone do so well with so little.

Jon Hamm, I think we probably all agree, seems unable to do wrong, and he’s not wrong here as the billionaire owner of the oil company in question. Having Demi Moore as his wife was genius, and while she’s not given much to do she does well doing it.

The supporting roles are generally great, too. I’d single out first Colm Feore as Nate, especially reacting to Ainsley’s antics and also just generally being the guy who gets to react like an actual person in most scenes.

Multi-project Sheridan company member James Jordan is having a HOOT as petroleum engineer Dale. We’ve seen him before as the main bad guy in WIND RIVER, and then again in MAYOR OF KINGSTOWN, and again in 1883, and again as Hendon on YELLOWSTONE, and again in LIONESS as Two Cups, and again in THOSE WHO WISH ME DEAD as Ben. (He, like Sheridan, had a small part on VERONICA MARS, so I reckon that was their initial connection.)

Jacob Lofland as Tommy’s son Cooper doesn’t have much to do early on, but really comes into his own in quiet scenes with Ariana, and in what comes after. However, the writing hurts him — we don’t really see anything at all that suggests he and Ainsley are related, even when they have brief scenes together. It seems obvious he’ll have a bigger role in S2.

Which is where I admit that yeah, I’ll probably hatewatch S2, too.

A couple notes that didn’t fit elsewhere

  • Luring us in with Michael Pena as a seemingly central character that is immediately killed off is some dirty pool.
  • Sheridan is weirdly obsessed with breastfeeding.

The best movie I’ve seen this year

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Granted, it’s March, but it also seems unlikely anything else I see in 2025 will top Hundreds of Beavers.

The argument is this: a wastrel applejack maker has a reversal of fortune and must survive the Wisconsin woods in winter. It is, above all, a cartoon — but a live action one. It’s not silent, but it has no dialog — eidetic sounds abound; characters grunt or otherwise erupt in exclamatory noises. The visual language is rich and consistent. The film’s look is a perfect hybrid of real and unreal, and the filmmakers achieved this miracle for about $150,000. Thus far, it’s made more than 10x that number.

Our hero must eat to survive, obviously, so his initial challenge is to trap a rabbit. The rabbits and all other animals in the story are represented by people in animal costumes; the viewer accepts this immediately.

There’s a tremendous amount of Warner Brothers vibe here, but also Buster Keaton and the Three Stooges. It’s wry and hilarious and smart, but it achieves this without spoken language. There’s a love interest, a protective father, a video-game worthy progression towards a goal, and deeply hilarious revelations about the state of the beaver scientific knowledge.

Absolutely four stars. My god, what a treat.

An interview with the director is here, and worth your time, but maybe watch it first. The film is apparently available at Amazon, Apple, and Tubi. However, we got to see it on the big screen last night over at the River Oaks Theater, a Houston gem we’ll definitely miss once we’re gone.

Dept. of Iconic GenX Motorcycles, Minneapolis Edition

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I found myself wondering what bike Prince rode in Purple Rain, and because it’s 2025 and the Internet exists, it’s easy to find out. The answer was kinda surprising, and kinda not.

What’s not surprising: It was Japanese. In 1985, Harley wasn’t really something most people would’ve noticed or wanted. The investor group led by Willie Davidson had only closed on the purchase from AMF a few years prior, so their recovery was really still a work in progress. The idea of Harley being “back” didn’t really come up until ’90. So: Japan still pretty much owned motorcycling in the US at that time.

What is surprising: What the actual bike was. In the film it’s a bike with a pretty big purple fairing, which gives it the IMPRESSION of being a large machine. Except we all NOW understand that Prince Rogers Nelson was a tiny, tiny man — about 5′ 2″.

Now, in 1984 we didn’t know this. I mean, he obviously wasn’t six foot four or whatever, but exactly how far to the left of the bell curve he fell was definitely not widely understood until much later.

Crucial to maintaining the illusion that one could not steal Prince by stuffing him into a moderate sized dufflebag was avoiding situations where it would be obvious the dude was crazy short, so clearly the producers were not going to put him on, say, a giant Kawasaki like the guys from CHIPS were riding. Having our hero and romantic lead not be able to flat-foot his moto would’ve been a really dumb idea.

So turns out: it’s a heavily customized but very small 1981 Honda CM400A. The big purple fairing was likely made by Honda customization shop Vetter, who were responsible for the original Gold Wing fairings (which were initially only an aftermarket product).

As the name suggests, it’s a 400cc bike. The parallel twin engine made about 27hp, and Honda insists it was technically capable of 85MPH. Even with a tiny, iconic musician driving, that seems optimistic. OTOH, it was 1985, and the 55MPH limit was still the law nationwide. I know from experience that 20HP will handle a double-nickel without complaint, and in the movie Prince uses the bike around town, not for a road trip to Sturgis. “The Kid” in the film is also not rich; a bike like this would’ve been easy to afford, and got excellent mileage to boot.

MORE interesting, though, is that it was equipped with a Hondamatic transmission, not a traditional motorcycle transmission. The rider didn’t have to clutch to shift at all, which is weird as hell. Predictably, the Hondamatic didn’t last long — they were gone by ’83. Interestingly, though, many modern Honda models are available with a true automatic transmission called the DCT. These bikes don’t even HAVE a clutch lever, which is important because it makes it easier for the rest of us to make fun of them. :)

In case you needed reminding how morally bankrupt the Catholic church is…

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The Archdiocese of New Orleans has dismissed multiple board members and longtime CEO Natalie Jayroe from Second Harvest Food Bank of South Louisiana after the nonprofit refused to allocate funds toward the church’s sexual abuse bankruptcy claims.

According to former board chair Bert Wilson, the food bank’s legal and financial agreements prohibit the use of funds for anything outside its mission of feeding the hungry.

“We have stressed the indisputable fact that our agreements with grant-giving organizations and other partners prohibit any expenditures that are non-secular or do not directly align with our sole mission of feeding the hungry,” Wilson said in a statement on Thursday, calling the decision “shocking and short-sighted.”

The organization cited its contract with Feeding America, which strictly limits how funds can be spent.

Wilson says failing to uphold such guidelines could shutter Second Harvest’s operations, leaving more than 400,000 south Louisiana residents at risk of food insecurity.

Predictably, the Archdiocese has released a statement denying this context, but nobody with a clerical collar and answerable to Rome has any credibility with me. Second Harvest responded to the message thusly:

The Archdiocese video statement, released earlier today and its message to donors of late last week, are remarkable for both they convey says and what they don’t.

Regarding the so-called tolling agreement, Archdiocese representatives were fully aware that Second Harvest was reviewing the proposed agreement and that it was only awaiting full executive committee approval. In direct contradiction to the Archbishop’s unfortunate comment is the fact that an existing agreement covering all parties was already in place until May 1, 2025. Clearly, there was no need for a headlong rush to execute a new agreement. That the Archdiocese jumped the gun by terminating three longtime board members and the non-profit’s CEO speaks volumes regarding their motivations.

More tellingly is the church’s cynical pronouncement of late last week that no Second Harvest donations have “been used for the bankruptcy”. That statement is only true because of the resolve of the now terminated CEO and three board members who were steadfast in their opposition to paying for abuse claims that were none of Second Harvest’s doing.

What’s missing of course, from the Archdiocese statements is any commitment to not ever use Second Harvest funds to help settle bankruptcy claims. Concerned donors and others would be well advised to contact the Archdiocese, their local church Deacons, priests and lay leaders to confirm the church’s real intentions in this regard. Getting such an assurance would go a long way toward resolving this unfortunate dispute and healing the many wounds the Archdiocese actions have caused.

All in All.

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It’s easy to feel like everything is terrible right now, but some things aren’t.

This isn’t. This is the 3 surviving members of Nirvana — Grohl, Novoselic, and Smear — reuniting for Fire Aid LA last night, with a rotating slate of vocalists. St Vincent joins them for “Breed;” early Nirvana patron and music god Kim Gordon steps in for “School.” Icon Joan Jett has the mic for “Territorial Pissings.”

And Dave’s daughter Violet sings on “All Apologies,” backed by her father (and also during which Gordon is back on stage on bass, as Novoselic shifted to accordion).

A fun thing to note here is that when famously-giant Novoselic (listed online at slightly over 2m, or about 6′ 7″) kneels in tribute to Jett at the end of her song, he’s still nearly as tall as she is. (And she’s not especially short, apparently; the Internet says 5’5″.)

Moonrise Kingdom, again

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My love for Anderson’s 2012 film Moonrise Kingdom is very well documented. Somehow, though, I missed that, in the run-up to the release of Asteroid City, there had been some additional “Andersonia” floating around.

Included was this short interview with Jared Gilman and Kara Wayward, who played Moonrise’s romantic leads. The catch is that now they’re adults. The whole thing is very charming and delightful. Enjoy.

What makes you happy?

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Reviewing an old thread on Facebook, wherein I was being grouchy about something, I find that someone asked “what makes you happy?” by way of contrast.

I replied with this, slightly edited. These are dark days. Don’t forget there is still joy in the world.

Erin. Bacon. Our cats. My nieces and nephew. My brother. Cool tech. Beautiful music. That feeling of being safe and warm at home with your people and pets when it’s cold and wet outside. Getting stronger on my bike. Our impending vacation. Erin’s ongoing experiments with the new slow cooker. My friends, and their beautiful children, even the ones we don’t see all that often. Houston in general. Houston’s arts community in particular. Mechanical watches. Fountain pens. Good wine. Great whiskey. Hubcap burgers. Alabama football, most of the time. The fact that more people can get health insurance today than a year ago. The migas at Guadalupana. Sherlock and Doctor Who. The impending release of the new Robert Ellis record. The fact that we have a great record store in Houston. My Kindle. Macintoshes. The prospect for a good year, businesswise. Photography.

Dept. of reaping what was sown

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According to a well-sourced (US Bureau of Labor Statistics) post on Reddit, Texas has lost about 50% of its OBGYN practitioners since 2019; in that same time period, the number of OBs in California (similar in size and GDP) has increased dramatically.

Dept. of Lost Causes

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Comes now this alert, via my sister, about the upcoming holiday in our home state:

Ms goddamn

Sometimes, when it comes out in conversation that I’m from Mississippi, people ask what that was like.

This is a great example. The whole state is STILL mired in Lost Cause bullshit to the point that ROBERT E. LEE’S BIRTHDAY is celebrated ALONG SIDE Martin Luther King’s. Over there, committing treason in defense of slavery is apparently just as laudable as fighting for civil rights. This combination is not accidental — like most of the Civil War monuments, it came later, as a thumb in the eye of those who’d seek to diminish the myth of the Lost Cause. Coerced by the rest of the country to enshrine Rev King’s birthday as a holiday, they chose to combine it with Lee’s.

What assholes.

I’ve said this before, but I’ll say it again: in high school, we were taught — and had to parrot it back, on tests — that the Civil War was more about states’ rights than anything else, and that slavery was a footnote. This was only a viable pedagogical position because the curriculum went out of its way to NEVER EVEN MENTION that the seceding states literally wrote and circulated documents detailing in no uncertain terms why they were prepared to go to war over leaving the union.

Had those documents been mentioned AT ALL, teaching this states-rights lie would’ve been utterly impossible. Mississippi’s document for example, starts like this:

In the momentous step which our State has taken of dissolving its connection with the government of which we so long formed a part, it is but just that we should declare the prominent reasons which have induced our course.

Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery– the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin.

Disingenuous people ask silly questions like “what even IS institutional racism?” This right here is a great fucking example: going out of your way to limit exposure to the historical record in order to suppor the teaching of an outright lie.

Obviously, everyone there isn’t terrible, but it’s safe to say the majority of (white) population mostly doesn’t mind this sort of thing. Why do I paint with such a broad brush? Well, it’s numbers.

See, it’s absolutely true that (for example) about 38% of voters there voted for Harris in November. That’s not nothing, right? I mean, as states go that’s a big margin, but it’s still a lot of votes.

However, if we go look at the demographics of the state, we see a very similar split; make of this what you will.

Screenshot 2025 01 09 at 5 48 50 PM

There’s a final note I’ll make. Mississippi is reaping what it’s sown. People with options don’t choose to live there. It’s a smaller state now, relative to the rest of the country, than it was when I was growing up. I was surprised, a little, to discover it’s down to 4 House seats now; in my youth there, it had 5. More shocking is the fact that, at one point in the earlier 20th century, it had 8.

You can measure that another way, too. When I was in high school, I was one of 8 National Merit scholars; a 9th young man qualified for the National Achievement program, so let’s work with that as a number. Of those folks, only one chose to make his life there. 1, out of 9.

Because we had options.

(Not for nothing, but it’s both tragic and heartwarming that today I saw a message from one of the others on Facebook announcing he’d lost his house in the Palisades fire, which was almost immediately replied by by another of our group who lives on the other side of the country. Nerdy kids stay friends, yo.)

Insurance companies are evil.

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Go read this story, and in particular pay attention to this paragraph, which talks about a hypothetical attempt to pay out of pocket for care denied by the insurer:

But we soon learned another sinister result of hyper-privatization of health insurance—even if we had the excessive means to pay the hundreds of thousands of dollars out of pocket, the hospital would not accept the funds. Why? The industry is such that not only do insurance companies deny 51% of claims, they have enacted policies forbidding people from paying for the critical medication they need out of pocket, lest the insurance company lose control and revenue. “Either you pay us, or you pay no one,” is a line you’d expect out of a mafia handbook—not out of a health provider. This is not health insurance, this is health exploitation.

Single payer now.

It turns out, “sucks” is relative

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I’m not an NFL fan, but it has not escaped my notice that Detroit is doing well this year. This seems odd to me, as an NFL outsider, because my definite impression is that the Lions have traditionally been helpless.

So I went looking, and found this excellent Wikipedia page, which includes a sortable table of all NFL teams by regular season record.

The table, interestingly, includes a column for games played. There’s a HUGE range here. The OG teams like Chicago, Green Bay, etc, are all over 1400 games at this point — but the newest team, our hometown Houston Texans, are at only 355.

Anyway, a few interesting takeaways:

  • First, the actual RANGE of regular season records is narrower than you might think. The winningest team is, despite my understanding of contemporary performance, Dallas. They’re at .576. The worst is Tampa, at .406.

  • Detroit IS towards the bottom; they’re 26th out of 32 at .455. But that’s pretty close to even, right?

  • The bottom five are, in descending order, Atlanta (.439), Houston, Jacksonville, Arizona (nee St Louis, and with Chicago the only remaining OG team), and Tampa Bay.

  • The “worst” team over .500 is the Rams, at .506, in 16th place.

Playoff records are also available. To probably no one’s surprise, given the Brady years, New England is that the top of that list. They’re at .627 in the postseason, followed by San Francisco (.613), Green Bay (.586), Baltimore (.567), and the Steelers (.563).

At the bottom, we find Cleveland at .353.

This sent me down a rabbit hole, because I thought I remembered that “Cleveland” of today is actually an expansion team, and that the “real” Browns moved to Baltimore to become the Ravens.

This was functionally true at the time (1995), but when Art Modell moved the squad to Baltimore he took the players, personnel, etc., the NFL treated Baltimore as an expansion team and left the Cleveland IP in trust and suspended. The NFL guaranteed that Cleveland would get a new Browns no later than 1999. Sure enough, when Cleveland resumed play in ’99, it was with an expansion draft, but this expansion team got to “inherit” the stats and history of the Browns. So at Wikipedia, Cleveland is credited with a 1950 founding date and 1,053 games played, while Baltimore is treated as a team founded in 1996. This is some serious doublethink bullshit, candidly, but it’s football so whatever.

HEY LOOK! MUSIC!

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FIRST:

Ol’ Man Dorman sent me this clip of a Paul McCartney show in CDMX a couple days ago wherein Jack White and St Vincent join him and his band for the conclusion of THE END. It is delightful.

THEN:

TV on the Radio resurfaced for an absolutely barn-burner of a performance on Jimmy Fallon, heralding both a criminally short tour AND the 20th anniversary reissue of their debut album, which I’m trying to decide if I’m gonna go buy RIGHT THE FUCK NOW.

Happy birthday to me?

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Two days ago this humble site had its 24th birthday; my first entry here was on the 20th of November in the Year of Our Lord Two Thousand.

I had but 20 posts that year. I didn’t get super verbose until 2003, and if I’m honest it’s probably the creeping horror of the Bush administration that did it. You can look over to the right, under the Archives header, and see the productivity curve. Peak was 2007, with 1,147 posts.

There have been 28 this year. Only 44 last year. I haven’t hit 100 since 2016. Habits die, I reckon.

I do regret every long form post or reply I wrote for Facebook or Reddit or Metafilter now, which ought to be instructive. There’s no good reason to write and post anywhere that you don’t own.

Anyway, Heathen limps along. I have no plans to stop.

New Frontiers in Ridiculousness

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So, Triumph has a giant-ass bike called the Rocket 3. It’s an inline 3-cylinder engine with 2,458cc displacement. That’s legit a car-sized engine. Motorcycles are almost exclusively under 1,000 CC — you may recall people talking about having a “500” or a “750” in years past; those were displacement numbers in CCs (and, honestly, those were ENTIRELY ENOUGH in a world where the national speed limit was 55).

Today, top-end sport bikes — bikes capable of 200+ MPH — have 1,000 cc engines. These so-called “liter bikes” are rightly viewed as widowmakers because, well, if you get too happy with the throttle you’re gonna have a real, real bad day (and so are the people around you).

The big cruiser makers (e.g. Harley) have traditionally stuck with very traditional engine types, and so they were pretty much the only folks out there still using (and requiring) displacement to get power. The top-end Harley touring bikes are well over a liter in displacement, though obviously they mark their engines in cubic inches on account of Freedom. Even so, I think the biggest one available is still only about 1,800 cc. The power per unit of displacement with Harley is, though, notoriously poor. (Tradition!)

Anyway, the Rocket 3 exists. That almost 2.5L engine gives the bike 180 horsepower, and it comes with a similar torque figure. That’s CRAZYTOWN. Most leaned-over fairing-clad sport bikes don’t make that much power, and this is a bike with an upright riding position and zero wind protection. I mean, sure, it’s a big bike — 40% heavier than mine — but it’s nothing like the nearly half-ton tourers you see on the roads that it’ll compete with.

Of course, such absurdity comes at a cost: the base model Rocket 3 is about $25,000, which is HUGE money for a motorcycle (my first one cost less than $5k NEW). All this together means the Rocket 3 is what they call a “halo model” — high price, extraordinary levels of charisma, and low sales, like the Viper your local Dodge guy had for a while. A dealer gets a couple to showcase on the floor, but he doesn’t expect to sell many.

But Wait There’s More!

In my email this morning — I’m on the Triumph list — came the announcement of a special edition of the Rocket 3 in honor of that paragon of motorsports safety, Evel Knievel.

Gaze in wonder at this $30K variant of an already very, very silly motorcycle.