What On Earth is Bethesda Softworks Up To? : An Addendum

Armed with somewhat more knowledge and the time, experience, and distance to not just be astonished at what I feel was a weird lack of business savvy from a multi-million if not billion dollar company, and some news stories that help explain things I can perhaps offer a guess at what was going on at Bethesda that they released a Fallout show without a single hint even of a game from the same IP capitalizing on the hotness that only a streaming series can deliver in this day and age.

I think it can be traced back, given all the news stories about studio closures, to Microsoft itself. With the recent studio closures being the talk of the gaming world this past week, a new vista opened up that suggested extreme pressure, duress, and managerial issues probably responsible IN PART for the boring space game and the lack of any project 'on deck' for launch or reveal with the show's debut.  

(I myself have always had ideas for a more rogue-like Fallout game where you set out from the same town or vault, your character can die permanently and is randomly chosen, you can play as mutants or ghouls or robots in addition to humans, and levelling up and character builds are fast and fun. It could be modded onto Fallout 4, by the skillful and talented professionals who made that game, in about 8 months granted effective organzation and leadership and vision.) - [I am available for creative direction at frankly irresponsibly low prices, if anyone from Bethesday is reading this, leave a comment with your email let's make a hit]

As BSG is part of Microsoft XBox Games Studio (?) now, and was probably being banked on to quickly drop a genre-defining game in support of the console, the recent releases start to make more sense and their shift into more lucrative attempts (Fallout 76, real money shop stuff) at software can be explained as being tied to the balance sheet that investors froth at the mouth about. 

That same dedication to the financial aspect of making games has pretty much cratered the entire industry in the past 10 years and has also led to a lot of sloppy behaviour from big companies that should know better but have a fiduciary responsibility (yes this is a reference to real life, but also the game streaming series Fallout!) to make poor decisions that pay the maximum posssible return to investors and shareholders. 

It's why EA became a piece of shit, it's why Activision Blizzard lost all the goodwill either non-agglomerated company ever had, and it's part of the drawing of blood from the stone of reality that delusional capitalism excels at. EVs are greenwashing writ large, cap and trade was a noxious scam to steal from the public while polluting at an equal pace, NFTs were such a baldfaced scheme they sunk without a whimper, eCommerce is designed to empoverish all communities more rapidly than even Reagan's most based neoconservatism, and AI is mostly an orobourous generative scam built on the promise of esoteric, exploitative technologies of the future that is specifically designed to appeal to the sci-fi fantasies of computer understanders, but if you want to see the deleterious effects of capitalism, the bona fide premium examples have always been in video game entertainment, since E.T. in the 80s at least.

Still, let's not suggest it's all just due to the meandering will of a division of a 3 trillion dollar company, Bethesda have their own issues. In my opinion they've been making straight up pabulum since Oblivion, and as a Morrowind head (who first played Oblivion in 2010) I didn't find that game particularly  compelling. Skyrim had typoes, broken quests, and dozens of other design issues and bugs that put me off of it. Plus it was gorgeous but utterly boring, and I had played Mount and Blade by that time, a game with bugs, design issues, and actually interesting gameplay.

The Bethesda-era Fallout series started Oblivionesquely with Fallout 3, which was outstanding and stunning if you played it right then. I found it janky and kind of boring, and beat it one time and never went back. New Vegas was broken and buggy but an absolute treat to play and explore. Even the shitty DLCs each had something interesting to offer or examine (including, and I shudder, Old World Blues—the lowest of the low).

Fallout 4 was really a step forward in so many ways, from the presentation to the moment to moment gameplay. The first 10 hours with that game were revelatory and so compelling I just couldn't stay away. And yet FO4 was also a step backwards in terms of narrative, writing, systems, and long term appeal. Everything was there for a good game and then they had to smash their dumbass railroaded storytelling and quests into it, while making it a more open-ended experience could have made it an all time great. I don't understand how the masters of open world games fail to understand the premise and make players start each playthrough in a 15 to 45 minute tutorial. By the 11th hour doubts crept in, and by the end of the game the shitty conclusions of the quests and frustrations had me feeling not just crestfallen but really bitterly disappointed. The game world seemed like the hollow place it was, with no reason to return.

I can justify a New Vegas playthrough and I think about doing one—the build I'd try, the new perk to examine, the factions to align with, the quests or companions to pursue—about once or twice a year. I haven't gone back to that game in a bit over a decade but I still think about it and then the idea of modding it into stability and figuring out my Nexus password again just kills my desire, but the game itself draws me back... wait it's not time for an unarmed explosives survivalist run! I'm getting distracted.

What does this have to do with what's currently going on at Bethesda? Well, good question. It seems I got carried away doing some sloppy blogging. But it's only possible to see some cultural shifts in terms of one's own experience of it, and use that perspective as the guide. What happened to the company that led to less interesting titles was its success and growth. Larger teams were making larger and more technically impressive games that with each iteration strayed from the very open-world principles that (with Morrowind specifically) launched their success and gained them the interest, admiration, and money of a large audience.

Then they released Fallout 76, which was a Games as a Service product and also horrifically and well-documentedly a terrible release. The product was yanked out of the oven like the Fire Giant in Nausicaa and forced to do battle only to melt sadly after one big belch of radioactive sales. Since, I'm told that the game has been improved and fixed, and it works more or less properly, and some people even like it. I'm like I'm good, though, I played FO4 and I don't need more of the same. 

The grand freedom which allowed a new player to jump over the entire island of Vvardenfell and die on the landing is gone, it's flown the damn coop even. You can't abuse crafting or spellcasting or potionmaking to briefly become a demigod anymore in any game of Bethesda's. You can't even levitate anymore. 

The freedom is over. But that's not just for the player at one end, it's also true for the designer, the programmer, the maker on the other end, and that's not just a capitalism problem, or a sickness of success, or a super uncritical audience of gamers (who are so easily parted from their money that it's sad and also why institutional money moved in on games so predatorily),  it's a problem of management, of seeing easy money and guaranteed fat paycheque or bonus, of company culture trending towards a flat plateau, of being risk-averse, uncreative, uncritical, bloated, and too big and confident to switch tack on anything.

And the audience has rewarded it every time. This is why they got a boring space game rushed out the door, because when they sold a slightly more expensive version so they could do final beta testing and play three days early, they bought it and forgot about the game a week or two later. The business moves according to the cardinal rule of any over-financialized industry: risk not the investor's dividend and ye shall be rewarded. The only problem is, that was never true at all. 

Massive layoffs seem to happen whether or not games are successful and seem to have more to do with labyrinthine internal politics. Profits have skyrocketed, the industry is worth more than it ever was in the past, and those profits are funnelled ever more aggressively into the hands of people who did none of the work. (And they say capital gains taxes put innovation at RISK, one could cry from laughter if it wasn't so sad). And in the case of Arkane Studios, they were sabotaged by upper management and lost a lot of their more senior and talented people which led to the collapse of a recent project not even worth a vampirically circumspect mention. 

Senior and talented people are more costly because they have earned the right to ask for more, having experience, and having built success and generated profits for their employers. In traditional work-capital relations, these people are afforded more responsibility by an upper management that values loyalty, and then rewarded by increased salaries for their efforts and successes. In the hypercapitalism of today, where accountants run pretty much everything, the price of talent and experience are unconscionable. 

Replace them with idealistic and youthful people who can be ground down through overwork, poor management, and synthetic crises and thrown out before they get senior enough to affect the bottom line—or when they burn out. This isn't just true in games studios, it's true in every sector from advertising to zebra husbandry. 

So while I can certainly scoff at Bethesda and speciously ask why they make pabulum, it's probably healthier and more realistic to see them as a victim of the free market, one who will probably become yet more bloated, and release less remarkable games, until the original core of people are shuffled out and replaced and it too collapses and is scrapped for IP value, because outside of independent or private companies, that is the only future now.

Interview with a Young North American Couple

Dennis and Leanne Sarcowitz are your typical Young North American Couple: middle class, literate, professionals with creative streaks, white wine with seafood, she drives a KIA sedan (he's holding on to his Civic), fitness enthusiasts, photogenic, politically liberal... I interviewed them because they're my age and I needed a blog post, but also to find out more about this exciting and diverse world, and others' experiences of it. Plus, everyone loves the interview format!

Publicato: Alright, thanks for agreeing to do this. You're helping me out a bunch. I guess the most obvious place to start is to ask how you met each other.

Dennis: Well it's pretty much the standard version: two people in similar social circles meet –

Publicato: Cool, yeah...

Dennis: – and they connect over really basic stuff. 80's movies, childhood memories, a shared fondness for plummy reds, similar senses of humor. It's standard but it's magic, you know?

Publicato: Oh definitely. So it's love?

Leanne (laughing): I guess it is. We're happy.

Publicato: Right on. Everyone's talking about gas prices, what do you guys think about it?

Dennis: They're great. I'm saving twenty or more bucks per fill-up. I still go out of my way to avoid traffic, but most excitingly –

Leanne: We're talking about doing a nice road-trip this summer with the money we're saving. Connecticut, to visit some of my family, and maybe all the way to Oklahoma to visit his. On the way we'll do some good hiking and camping and sightseeing... this is the year to do it.

Publicato: I hope so. If a '73 style crisis develops and you get stuck in backwoods Arkansas, will you liquidate your whole nest egg to get home?

Dennis: It's super unlikely, and we have other resources, but yes, we would do quite a lot in order to make it home safely. Gas will probably go up in a few months and we'll, I dunno, fly to Europe again or something. Spain's real nice any time of year and we haven't been to Bucharest yet – which we really want to do before it becomes touristy.

Publicato: Oh, word?

Modern Tips for Investing your Identity

These days its not good enough to just exist and passively consume media. I mean, it is, if you exist in the lower tiers of society and not at all online. Even then you'll have to be around people who are either careless or completely uncool... what I am saying is its impossible if you care at all about your image. People will treat you differently based on your projected identity, and perhaps most importantly of all, in the absence of an identity you will be assigned one. People aren't often too kind when assigning you an identity, unless... many factors can intercede in your favor or your detriment.

Escape is unlikely. People who run from identity find themselves cornered and unmarketable to other human beings. No mass movement exists of people who spurn identity as an outdated, noxious concept. Individualism is still in vogue, denying it, even to the least aware person, will mark you as abnormal and potentially dangerous. On the other hand, lots of people get very invested in their identities, to the point where even the dumbest person can see they've taken it too far and judge them for it. With identity comes conflict, and identity fetishism, and a lack of real personal constitution – look at everybody who identifies as anything, too much. They're as odd and bland as the people who want no identity affixed to their name.

What is important is to have something outside of yourself to identify with. Not all identity can come from within, even if the best and most trustworthy kind cannot be bought. Hobbies, interests, activities, talents, peculiarities all are good starting points. Anything but the basic job/field of study/consumption habits can augment the identity you might have (or have not) developed since you were born. As soon as you start falling into the void of identity via consumption, or the chasm of applying various identities to see which you prefer... it becomes quite apparent to others that you are not comfortable enough with yourself.

It's tempting to say that experimenting with identity is something for teenagers. This is not true. Adults reinvent themselves all the time: sometimes they succeed and sometimes they fail quite miserably and get mocked and look like total jackasses. The trick is what it has always been: to have a kernel of self, to hold true to it, and not sell it out for temporary gain.

In these largely soulless times it is easier than ever to find an extreme niche identity and invest heavily into it. Life is hard and lonely, and most of us are not exceptionally popular or easy to like. It's easy to become distracted from the struggle of 'being oneself' and buy into one of many processed, mass-appeal identities that will quell your feelings of alienation and disgust. Being a human isn't easy. It isn't a question of blending in. Most authentic people are pretty subdued and blend in easily. Often it's the identity fetishists who stand out the most... the ones who live by their t-shirt, hairstyle, loudly proclaimed philosophies... and even the least presumptuous and annoying among us can be inauthentic, quietly fetishizing their unremarkableness and stifling what or who they really are.

Therefore it's a question too big to answer in a blog post, sequence of blog posts, or even an entire blog. I won't pretend to even be knowledgeable about it, but I think I can draw up a list of helpful tips and insights for modern identity:

1. Never try too hard. People can sense this and almost none of them are impressed by it.
2. It's harder to be something than to look like something. There is living, and there is lifestyle.
3. It's not always worth it to have an identity. Others can be generous with their identification of you.
4. If you're trying to be on top of things, it can paint you into a corner. Be broad, be general, and profit.
5. This issue will never not be an issue. It will often be bothersome, so learn to keep your cool.
6. The harder you are to identify, the more offended you might get at how people see you.
7. The golden years differ for everyone: for most, it's easiest to have a fluid identity in their 20s.
8. Learn to roll with it: you may know what you really are, but you can't always make others see it.
8.1. Sometimes you will get spit on: sometimes you have to hold your pride, and sometimes you have to stand up for yourself.
9. There is an inverse rule about caring somewhere in there, but it has exceptions. Not getting started on it.
10. Baudrillardian concepts about authenticity, simulacra, etc. apply.

I didn't arrive at quite the point I wanted to, which was to say that most everyone fronts a little bit here and there - check out the game Majora's Mask for some insights into this tragic topic. Or gain some actual critical literacy (just don't get too caught up in identifying as culturally literate). For example, a majority of people and things related to entertainment media (music, film, TV shows, video games, mass market books, increasing amounts of political and philosophic content, even health) is insubstantial or faked, which is why people whose identity hinges on them are often either children, mentally unhinged, or totally mentally deficient.

Personally, at times I wonder if it's worthwhile to be anything at all.  I certainly can't say at this point. The only thing granted is humanity, and some abandon even that. The internet, cultural appropriation, along with basic human prejudice, have helped make the issue more central than it ever ought to be and very complex. Don't invest too heavily because the market is a bit overheated and might collapse. Best of luck to you and your identity.

Has the Golden Era of Adblockers Passed?

Recently I tried to watch some online video on a television channel's website. The video applet failed to load completely and it didn't take long for me to develop the correct suspicion. I disabled my adblocker and reloaded the page. No fucking video. So I open the page in a vanilla browser and it loads, a wild contrast from what I had, up till that point, been used to. On the vanilla browser there is a banner and large square add. Then the video starts and I am subjected to extra-loud advertising, TV style, with a vengeance. In addition to the other adds. Another advertisement plays, and a third, before my content is loaded.

Adblockers, with the advent of hijacked banner ads and unscrupulous marketing, to say nothing of the paranoid or political users of the internet, are not simply a tool entitled users employ to rid themselves of annoyances. Ad-blockers are legitimately a way of keeping your computer clean, of preventing your oft-used technological distractions from compromise. The fact you don't have to watch commercials (which are basically always: manipulative, insulting, indoctrinating or some shameful combination of all three) is an added bonus to not having your internet-accessing-device fucked with.

I am not a poweruser but I've been adblocking for years - since I discovered it was possible. I understand that advertising revenue drives some smaller sites, and, yes, I'd agree they deserve their due - assuming they police their advertisements for some level of quality. Fine, whatever, have your .005 cents per impression. You deserve it, plucky little website. However, the worst offenders are often large media sites – sometimes even those which already use paywalls. Let me present a brief overview of the galloping trend of online advertising.

In the early 90's during the second wave of the internet, when things became graphical enough that advertisement in the classic sense became possible, it was largely internet entities that advertised for themselves, and certain forward looking companies often related to the tech-sector. It was a simpler time. By late 1999 basically everyone who wasn't under a rock or a dinosaur was getting into online advertisement. 'Hey, check out our website at http://www.geocities.SonnysPizza/index.htm for some coupons' and other types of hilarity abounded. Whatever, wherever you got advertised to, it took a slice of your pitiful bandwidth and generally wasted time and resources, but you had to face it. Eventually MSN Messenger (R.I.P) becomes huge, and eventually it begins to advertise to you.

Side banner; top banner; .gif flames - all of these things were familiar. Between then and now the internet has grown up and come of age to the point where a huge section of people use it. All the troglodytes, termites, attractive well-adjusted people, and infants came out of the woodwork and the internet is full of everyone now. Whatever, other people will tell you about it, and some gigantic nerd could probably make a convincingly venomous deal about it... all I'll say is it drove a wave of advertising intensity that eventually rivaled the notorious realm of television adverts.

Fucking pop-ups were one thing, but there came layers of advertising that would jump into existence around key-words. Video sidebars that glitched out your browser and had to fling their audio payloads into your ears. 'Interactive' commercials made by committees of dullards and shills. YouTube videos became clogged with side, top, and skippable pre-video advertisements for every user account considered important enough to waste your time for their profit. What was once dumb, became even dumber, amen. So it goes, right? Absolutely. Yet there were additions to your browsers that would kill all advertising.

True to form, adblockers were free. They worked, and nobody who adopted them ever looked back. Surfing without them was like going back in time. It sucked, you were exposed to all the reprehensible shit that barely existed in your ideal internet experience. Going back to ads is like hitting yourself in the face with a shoe. Beautiful adblocking programs, released by benevolent and right-minded developers, worked on classic print ads, video ads, and even ads played in video content. It is like a magic balm that drives mosquitoes far, far away. For those who use adblockers, the internet just is that much less shitty. It's less claustrophobic and it can seem like the terminal cash-in state of the world has been opposed.

So of course, it comes to an end, by hosted content ('hosting ain't free, yo') which a profitable broadcaster puts online. Until very recently I had never been blocked for anything but geographical reasons (though nationalization of the internet is another ugly recent phenomenon) but a week or two ago I was denied a show I had been following online. I imagine in a year it will be impossible to skip video-advertisements everywhere, and only the smug power users will know what to do about it. Hopefully the same people who did the good work of blocking online advertising will keep up and their programs will not lapse into irrelevance due to some frightening and monstrous online advertising epidemic.

Because what the hell? You're running a profitable business already, and why not add some more revenue? Why not even more? Why not three advertisements every five-and-a-half minutes on video content? Why not have it be 30% louder than actual content, like on TV? Who cares is the commercial is ideologically loaded or bankrupt of all value? Who cares if it's annoying? 'I like money, gentlemen, and nobody gets a free lunch!'

A browser without an adblocker is a sign of a pitiable person trapped in the commercial arena, a hopeless square, a submissive lackadaisical fuck, a worthless shit hyperbole rapist. This is one fight the internet should not lose.

New Sincerity and You: Counter-Counter-Countercultural Warfare

In today's culture of needy oversharing, cultural voyeurism, and [post-]post-modern irony it can seem as if nobody is willing to simply be their own self. It's possible that being a human being will no longer be as attractive an option as it used to be in the so-called 'simpler times' but most likely it is the old struggle in which mass culture tries to either force itself to be interesting or lays down a smokescreen of excuses about why it isn't. A reasonably recent phenomena, born out of cultural desperation and distaste, is New Sincerity. And, goddamn, the term is hot right now, and getting hotter by the moment – so come inside, place your bets, and learn a little something about nothing!

I'm no expert. New Sincerity, as a term, doesn't sit well with me, just like so many other facets of contemporary cultural shorthand. In many ways New Sincerity can be simplified as the diametrical opposite of that vague modern boogeyman 'the Hipster'. And yet, research I have done on the matter seems to suggest that mainstream 'hipster scions' are in fact loosely associated with New Sincerity. I don't really know what Zach Braff would say about the matter. Was Garden State actually a determined piece of New Sincerity propaganda? Did it manage to cash in on the credible? Worse yet, have the bewildering, out-of-favor films of Wes Anderson been appropriated by the movement? By the other movement?

My intention in this article has changed from simply making fun of New Sincerity to undertaking somewhat of a census about it. Mostly this will be the type of armchair cultural criticism I am known for, worldwide. For the most part New Sincerity is often used as a prescriptive term. In music this situation changes: many bands, hearkening back to the simpler, more heartfelt times of Bruce Springsteen, term themselves part of the New Sincerity movement, performing lyrics based less on conceptualism and cleverness and more on love, loss, sorrow, joy, and excitement. These are the earnest topics for music, but what keeps them from becoming pop music is a blend of aesthetics, identity, and intent. The prime axiom is to be authentic at all costs by not making attempts at authenticity, and never to ask 'what is authenticity?'

Unsurprisingly, New Sincerity stems from classic rock superstars such as Bruce Springsteen, Ted Nugent, John Mellencamp, and Bob Seeger, among others. Hair metal and psych are too ironic, or too insincere, or illegal, so lots of 'dad-rock' played to death on classic rock radio is actually questionable. Or perhaps they are valid inspiration, it's quite foggy to me and researching these kinds of things is slower than decisive critical strikes. What have these (and other) roots inspired?

Modern popular/indie acts such as The Hold Steady, Japandroids, Passion Pit, and evidently even Animal Collective are considered New Sincerity. These are just loose examples. To my mind the absolute pinnacle of new sincerity is probably Japandroids - they're not as bland as The Hold Steady and they're not politically or philosophically newly sincere. They just rock out and sing and holler and scream about partying, kissing girls, how life is and what they feel about it.

It's not slavish imitations of Springsteen topics about living in a shit down and running out of hope, or shooting up a bank in the back-roads of Nebraska. One has to admire the mixed positivity in songs about change, nostalgia/heartbreak, or raw excitement. The sense is that it's all youthful enthusiasm and angst, sometimes regret, and the energy cannot be denied. Their lack of pretense, deliberate simplicity and raw force all stand in contrast to established hype bands like The Hold Steady (with Springsteen and hearts worn on the sleeves). However, Japandroids' sophomore album is either too earnest or actually ironic in the ennui mode (or simply underwhelming after their debut), which may or may not say anything about New Sincerity.

Myself, I think the best part is that New Sincerity is often hailed as the redemptive force of contemporary hipster culture. It's a pretty great lie, but it makes everything seem much more epic and heroic, as if there really is a struggle against insincerity in culture. I stress, again, that the modern hipster has roots in Victorian England and earlier German youth movements. We see again and again the sorrows of young Werther in the trappings of a modern-day dandy. However it was inevitable, after the crushing nihilism of the 80's and the strung-out apathy of the 90's, that some kind of cultural force would rise in opposition. The only questionable thing is whether terming it 'new' is not a smidgeon untrue.

A New Vanilla Ice Era

It goes without saying that Justin Beiber is his generation's Vanilla Ice. There is so much fuss made about the whole thing by people who hate him, people who support him, and, most oddly of all, people who claim to be entirely disinterested. Yet the truth is pretty simple, and I hear very few people discuss it at all.

I have to wonder about that for at least a moment. Ultimately it makes sense that nobody cares. Everyone is too busy pulling original agendas (and trying to make them stick to an indifferent, fractured and/or and shellshocked mass identity) to consider the wholesome, mundane, and entirely mystifying patterns that are more and more self-evident.

Problems, often doubling as patterns or effects of patterns, are just not so easy to turn into double-plus commercials. 

Insect Heaven and Other Works of Art

There is no single antidote to the effects of living in the world. Everybody knows this, more or less, except for the lucky few who make a total escape into alcohol. But they pay their own price, and are forced to encounter the ghosts of their drunkenness at some point. So you take to looking around for distractions. There are all kinds, of course, distraction being the main industry of the world since time immemorial – distraction being at fault for a majority of atrocity, and interestingly enough being quite a lucrative market.

But I'm going a bit off course. There's not much I can do about it, to be honest. This is how the blog slops when it's a sloppy blog, and, as Bukowski put it, "...the shit shits." That's how you know he was ultimately, whatever his failings, a masterful poet. It's almost too easy to think the age of the raconteur is over, much like the era of the troubadour or the psychopomp. Although I know that more or less all of those industries are alive and kicking, though in a variety of new circumstances and costumes.

I do enjoy comics, though. It's more or less a casual thing, and I was recently talking to a peer who told me that he thought the comic was in decline. And I don't mean stand-up comic, you commie. I mean comic illustration – even a comic book though I haven't held one in at least a decade (and that one was probably shitty) – as in the type mostly found in the newspapers. You got Doonesbury and all kinds of excellent shit and there's also the somewhat weaker efforts that appear and you deal with it, because usually there's one or two good comics. My peer told me the newspaper associated comic was in decline because of readership loss and all that. And I told him there was even a small chance he was right, but that comics would do just fine on the internet.

Or if not 'just fine' something like 'surviving in a vivacious marketplace, nonetheless'. Look around at the minimum of one thousand webcomics. Dozens of them at any time have at least ten thousand followers. One of my favorite comics is Bizarro, which I used to read in the newspapers and now follow on line. Bizarro is a great and sometimes most excellent comic, not afraid of controversy and politically extremist – the perfect antidote to such sentimental nostrums, bromides, or distractions as Family Circus, or... For Better or Worse and I don't know, I stopped reading newspaper comics seriously years ago and now it's just a wasteland of inoffensive, reflexive pablum and reactionary nonsense, 'random' zany hijinks or dying comics you used to like.

There was great comic about Insect Heaven, and that kind of thing is exactly the sort of healthy distraction from the world that a comic is supposed to be. Instead of obeying a narrative, this is a sort of non sequituresque business with an excellent track-record of amusing, funny comics. Plus the author recently posted something about disconnecting from the 24/7 news cycle and kicking it on your own terms, which is an opinion I can assent to being broadcast via the internet, to anyone who cares to listen. In fact it should be announced from loudspeakers like all other truth, but that's another matter entirely, which only the government knows to solve.