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Month: September 2025

Weekly Round-up, September 27, 2025

2025-09-272025-09-27 John Winkelman

[The interior of the west wall of the old church at Hermitage and Diamond, the late afternoon sun shining through the stained glass window.]

This was another intense week at work, doing the final round of bug fixes before the next big push. My brain was already fried from (gestures at everything), but now it is breaded, deep-fried, and slathered with ranch dressing.

Impotent and incontinent president Donald Trump has made a feeble attempt to name ANTIFA a terrorist organization. Being a coward, Trump will undoubtedly declare anyone who doesn’t have a MAGA hat in their profile pictures to be ANTIFA. Trump is a fine example of why presidents should be tested for late-stage syphilis before being allowed to hold office.

And to anyone who thinks “ANTIFA” is more of a threat to this country than is MAGA, I point out that MAGA is in fact the American fascist party, and therefore anything “ANTIFA” does in response to the existence of MAGA is de facto self-defense.

Reading

I am still working my way through Baudrillard’s Simulation and Simulacra. It is a slow process. Not because of the difficulty of the text, though it is challenging. My problem is a lack of dedicated time in which I can focus on learning what he has to teach. This is not a book for browsing between laying down and falling asleep.

I ordered Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem, and it should arrive in a couple of days. The excerpts I have read indicate that the information contained therein (as well as The Origins of Totalitarianism) will be especially pertinent in the days and years to come. Actually, they have been pertinent since 2016, and really since about 1980. And REALLY really, since about 1969.

Writing

With the writing event calendar filling up, I am reviewing old poems and short stories with an eye toward assembling a chapbook or two. For new writing, maybe something during November, if I can focus long enough to get my thoughts together.

Weekly Writing Prompt

Subject: Fae, Dreams
Setting: Library
Genre: Fantasy

Listening

The Serpent Power, “Endless Tunnel” from their 1867 album The Serpent Power. [add David Meltzer, Simon Warner and his Rock and the Beat Generation newsletter]

Interesting Links

  • “The death of the corporate job.” (Alex McCann, Still Wandering)
  • “U.S. Military Leaders Plan to Use the Killing of Charlie Kirk to Boost Recruitment. Will It Work?” (Conor Gallagher, Naked Capitalism)
Posted in LifeTagged David Meltzer, fascism, Simon Warner, The Serpent Power comment on Weekly Round-up, September 27, 2025

Weekly Round-up, September 20, 2025

2025-09-202025-09-20 John Winkelman

A katydid on a white porch rail.

[A katydid on the rail of our porch.]

The last few months have been exceptionally chaotic, even by the standards of this already-chaotic year. I don’t recall the last time I had extended periods of so little time to myself. I don’t remember the last time my brain was so full of static.

I don’t like it.

However, with my partner out of town for a few days I found myself with some solitude and free time. I celebrated by watching Hannah Arendt, which I recommend to everyone. I have read some of Arendt‘s work, though not in at least a couple of decades. The Origins of Totalitarianism sits in my nonfiction bookcase, and I am pretty sure I have Eichmann in Jerusalem around here somewhere.

The political landscape here in the USA, particularly in the days following the death of the popular anti-intellectual influencer out in Utah, is becoming dangerous. Studying up on the banality of evil seems a good thing to do when the 47 administration seems to be following the exact same playbook used in Germany in the late 1930s.

Arendt points out that the many cogs in the machinery of evil may not be themselves malevolent, but the fact that they allow themselves to become cogs, to subsume their humanity in the larger whole of the destructive force, is an important point to recognize. This does not absolve the cogs of the responsibility of their actions, but it explains how easy it is to become a cog in the first place.

I recently read The Unaccountability Machine, which explores the ways that systems (corporations, governments, etc.) can make it impossible for the participants in those systems to act against the rules of the system. We can learn some things about authoritarian and totalitarian governments from the study of cybernetics.

Reading

I finished Notes on the Assemblage, and am now casting about for the next thing. Probably Eichmann in Jerusalem.

Writing

Still in a slump.

Weekly Writing Prompt

Subject: Aliens, Apocalypse
Setting: Lost City
Genre: Solarpunk

Listening

The Eurythmics, “Missionary Man” from their 1986 album Revenge.

Interesting Links

  • “Imperial tyranny, Korean humiliation” (Park Hyun, Hankyoreh)
  • “Arthur Sze is the new U.S. Poet Laureate.” (James Folta, LitHub)
  • “The Spectacle Made Flesh” (Yasha Levine, Nefarious Russians)
  • “Doomscrolling the Influencer Apocalypse” (Nat Wilson Turner, Naked Capitalism)
Posted in LifeTagged Eurythmics, Hannah Arendt comment on Weekly Round-up, September 20, 2025

Weekly Round-up, September 13, 2025

2025-09-132025-09-13 John Winkelman

An abandoned trucker hat in a concrete stairwell. The hat is black, with the word HUMBLE embroidered in yellow.

[Found in a stairwell in a downtown Grand Rapids parking garage.]

This past week was crazy. Both not enough and too much work. And the world took a decided turn for the chaotic a couple of days ago.

Master Yen Hoa Lee, my instructor of tai chi and kung fu for the past 35 years, passed away on September 1. His obituary is here. I will write more about him when I have the emotional energy to do so.

Reading

I am re-reading Jim Harrison’s Returning to Earth, which I tend to do when someone close to me dies.

Writing

Nothing new to report. Thinking about what I will do in November.

Weekly Writing Prompt

Subject: Mutants, Kaiju
Setting: Boardroom
Genre: Noir

Listening

David Bowie, “Ricochet”, from Bowie’s 1983 album Let’s Dance.

Interesting Links

  • “Stablecoins could crash our economy” (Richard Murphy, Funding the Future)
  • “The Alliance Among Washington, Tel Aviv and Silicon Valley” (Stefano Ali Azali, Naked Capitalism) – Originally published at The Muslim Faculty, but also posted at Naked Capitalism due to likely DDOS attacks on the original site.
  • “The Untold Saga of What Happened When DOGE Stormed Social Security” (Eli Hager, ProPublica)
  • “You Can’t Worship God and Money: Theological Abominations in Trump’s America” (Liz Theoharis, Tom’s Dispatch)
Posted in LifeTagged David Bowie 1 Comment on Weekly Round-up, September 13, 2025

Weekly Round-up, September 6, 2025

2025-09-062025-09-06 John Winkelman

Our cat Poe having a stare-down with a rabbit in the early morning.

[Our cat Poe having a stare-down with a rabbit in the early morning.]

This past week was rough, so no real update.

Weekly Writing Prompt

Subject: Environment, Colonization
Setting: Ocean
Genre: Adventure

Interesting Links

  • “The crash of 2026: a fiction” (John Quiggen, Crooked Timber)
Posted in Life comment on Weekly Round-up, September 6, 2025

August 2025 Books and Reading Notes

2025-09-012025-09-01 John Winkelman

August was an insanely busy month for me, but did offer up occasional reading time, mostly in airplanes, and at airports, and sitting in the public areas of convention centers before anybody else was awake.

Acquisitions

  1. Kaja and Phil Foglio, An Entertainment in Londinium (Airship Entertainment) [2025.08.05] – Kickstarter reward
  2. Eugene Vodolazkin, The History of the Island (Plough Publishing) [2025.08.14] – Purchased at Snowbound Books in Marquette, Michigan
  3. Juan Felipe Herrera, Notes on the Assemblage (City Lights Books) [2025.08.14] – Purchased at Snowbound Books in Marquette, MI
  4. Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman, Colleen Doran (artist), Good Omens: The Official (and Ineffable) Graphic Novel (Dunmanifestin, Ltd.) [2025.08.25] – Reward for a Kickstarter which persevered through multiple rounds of slings and arrows over the past couple of years.
  5. Zig Zag Claybourne, Amnandi Sails (Obsidian Sky Books) [2025.08.29]

Reading

Books

  1. Dan Davies, The Unaccountability Machine [2025.08.17]
  2. Dennis E. Taylor, We Are Legion (We Are Bob) (re-read) [2025.08.24]
  3. Dennis E. Taylor, For We Are Many (re-read) [2025.08.25]
  4. Dennis E. Taylor, All These Worlds (re-read) [2025.08.26]

Short Prose

  1. Kameron Hurley, “The Wonder” [2025.08.28]
Posted in Book ListTagged Airship Entertainment, Colleen Doran, Dan Davies, Dennis E. Taylor, Eugene Vodolazkin, Juan Felipe Herrera, Kaja Foglio, Neil Gaiman, Phil Foglio, Terry Pratchett, ZIg Zag Claybourne comment on August 2025 Books and Reading Notes

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