{ "version": "https://jsonfeed.org/version/1", "title": "Mitch's Blog", "icon": "https://avatars.micro.blog/avatars/2026/26/2611.jpg", "home_page_url": "https://mitchwagner.com/", "feed_url": "https://mitchwagner.com/feed.json", "items": [ { "id": "http://mitchw.micro.blog/2026/10/12/ancient-egypt-goes-back-so.html", "content_html": "

"‘Ancient Egypt’ goes back so many thousands of years, that the most recent ‘Ancient Egyptians’ were already studying (even more) Ancient Egypt."

\n", "date_published": "2026-10-12T09:27:00-07:00", "url": "https://mitchwagner.com/2026/10/12/ancient-egypt-goes-back-so.html" }, { "id": "http://mitchw.micro.blog/2026/10/12/mitchellaneous-memes-and-other-found.html", "title": "🦍 Mitchellaneous #183: Memes and other found media", "content_html": "

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Angela Lansbury

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", "date_published": "2026-10-12T08:55:00-07:00", "url": "https://mitchwagner.com/2026/10/12/mitchellaneous-memes-and-other-found.html", "tags": ["Mitchellaneous"] }, { "id": "http://mitchw.micro.blog/2026/10/11/random-thoughts-about-science-fiction.html", "title": "Random thoughts about science fiction book series", "content_html": "

Elsewhere on the Internet, a friend was was talking about various particular science fiction series and sf series in general. My reply (lightly edited for readability here):

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I loved the “World of Tiers” books, by Philip Jose Farmer, but I read them loooooooooong ago. There was one I did not read, about a psychologist or psychiatrist (whatever) in present-day America treating a patient who believes the World of Tiers is real. That seemed intriguing but I never got around to it.

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I loved the first three of Farmer’s Riverworld novels, and enjoyed the remaining novels less and less. The ancient race that created the Riverworld is revealed, and they turn out to be a bunch of jerks with the emotional development of toddlers. I get that there is a powerful basis in mythology for that — Zeus in Greek mythology is a rapey frat-bro — but it didn’t work for me.

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There was a single volume of a shared-world anthology with multiple authors based on Riverworld and that was fun; I wish they had continued it. I recall one story about Daniel Boone who learns that there was a TV show based on his life and who is trying to find someone who remembers the theme song. Everybody from the 20th Century that he encounters only remembers the other theme song, Davy Crockett.

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After reading Riverworld I made the rule that when a science fiction series is about the characters trying to find the answer to a Great Cosmic Mystery, the answer is usually “aliens with godlike powers” and the answer is usually disappointing. But the journey can be enjoyable, so just go with it.

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I loved the Stephen King Gunslinger books. You may be right about the second volume and follow-up volumes going nowhere. I enjoyed the ride anyway.

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I loved the first “Amber” series by Roger Zelazny. I was disappointed by the second series but I have since re-read the whole thing once or twice and enjoyed it. The first series is a serious exploration of power, family, treating people like objects and Zelazny’s invented mythos. The second series plays the mythos for laughs and gimmicks, which is what disappointed me at first but on subsequent rereadings I went with it and enjoyed it.

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Zelazny basically invented the genre of “high fantasy but the characters talk like they’re in noir detective novels.” There’s a straight line from Amber to Game of Thrones, and I think George RR Martin freely acknowledges it. Martin certainly has explicitly said that Zelazny was one of his most powerful influences.

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Forgetting what happened between one book and the next in a series is a real problem for me. There is also the problem of just losing interest between books. That’s even more of a problem for TV shows — I sometimes lose interest between seasons, even if it’s a show I loved. I remember loving “Hijacked,” with Idris Elba, and “Slow Horses,” but I have not been motivated to catch up on the new seasons. I have seen speculation that this may be an issue for many people and a problem for the streaming industry. The regular cadence of linear TV in the 20th Century got people in the habit of picking up their favorite shows, and finding new shows, in September. Each season had a couple of dozen episodes and there was about a three-month gap between seasons. Now, each season has 8-12 episodes with gaps between seasons of a year or more. I loved “Severance,” but when it finally comes back, will I care?

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Regarding controversy over Zelazny and Asimov “selling out” by continuing to write Amber books and Foundation books: Back in the distant days of the 20th Century, a creator making things just for the money was looked down on as “selling out.” It was a big deal. Now, influencers consider selling out to be a badge of honor. They’ve made the big time. I say this without judging either way.

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Asimov wrote that by the 1980s he was far less interested in writing sf and preferred his science writing, but sf paid him big bucks and far from a shameful sellout, he considered writing for the bucks to be honorable, so that he could provide for his family. At the time of writing that he knew, but had not disclosed, that he was dying of AIDS.

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I read the first few pages of the first Dungeon Crawler Carl and was not moved to read further. I’m glad people enjoy it though.

\n", "date_published": "2026-10-11T12:25:59-07:00", "url": "https://mitchwagner.com/2026/10/11/random-thoughts-about-science-fiction.html" }, { "id": "http://mitchw.micro.blog/2026/10/11/mitchellaneous-memes-and-other-found.html", "title": "🦍 Mitchellaneous #182: Memes and other found media", "content_html": "

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Japanese novelty pocket calculator from the 1990s designed to look like an open pack of Mild Seven Lights cigarettes, with cylindrical number and operation keys styled to resemble cigarette filters.

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From the comments: “Extra points for carrying it rolled it into the sleeve of your T-shirt.”

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reddit.com/r/OldScho…

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", "date_published": "2026-10-11T08:55:00-07:00", "url": "https://mitchwagner.com/2026/10/11/mitchellaneous-memes-and-other-found.html", "tags": ["Mitchellaneous"] }, { "id": "http://mitchw.micro.blog/2026/10/10/what-are-your-favorite-web.html", "content_html": "

What are your favorite web novels and isekai?

\n", "date_published": "2026-10-10T20:17:22-07:00", "url": "https://mitchwagner.com/2026/10/10/what-are-your-favorite-web.html" }, { "id": "http://mitchw.micro.blog/2026/10/10/mitchellaneous-memes-and-other-found.html", "title": "🦍 Mitchellaneous #181: Memes and other found media", "content_html": "

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", "date_published": "2026-10-10T08:55:00-07:00", "url": "https://mitchwagner.com/2026/10/10/mitchellaneous-memes-and-other-found.html", "tags": ["Mitchellaneous"] }, { "id": "http://mitchw.micro.blog/2026/10/09/its-pm-and-i-have.html", "content_html": "

It’s 2:23 pm and I have not done anything stupid today.

\n", "date_published": "2026-10-09T14:24:01-07:00", "url": "https://mitchwagner.com/2026/10/09/its-pm-and-i-have.html" }, { "id": "http://mitchw.micro.blog/2026/10/09/edward-h-lehner-a-new.html", "content_html": "

“Edward H. Lehner, a New York lawyer, legislator and judge who, as a state assemblyman in the 1970s, helped pass a groundbreaking ‘pooper-scooper’ law … died on Sept. 9 in Brooklyn. He was 93.” (NYTimes/Sarah Lyall)

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It is wild to me that the principle that dog owners should pick up their dogs’ poop was controversial as recently as when I was a teenager.

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Lehner suggested using a disposable plastic bag attached to a pole to pick up the poops. But honestly it’s not a big deal. Just wrap your hand in a plastic bag and pick up the poops. You won’t die. It’s not even gross, not really. Wash your hands when you get home and don’t handle food or a beverage until you do.

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As a judge, Lehner blocked Donald Trump, then just a real estate developer, from seizing control of the Empire State Building in 1999 and denied a home buyer’s claim “that he should have been informed, before making a down payment, that the house he was purchasing was infested with poltergeists. (The decision was famously overturned when an appellate court ruled that ‘as a matter of law, the house is haunted.’)”

\n", "date_published": "2026-10-09T12:33:00-07:00", "url": "https://mitchwagner.com/2026/10/09/edward-h-lehner-a-new.html" }, { "id": "http://mitchw.micro.blog/2026/10/09/mitchellaneous-memes-and-other-found.html", "title": "🦍 Mitchellaneous #180: Memes and other found media", "content_html": "

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Please enjoy this trailer for the movie “Convoy” featuring a cover of the CW McCall novelty song with the same title and some unbelievable talent for what seems to be cinematic schlock — directed by Sam Peckinpah! Starring Kris Kristofferson! Ali McGraw! Ernest Borgnine! and Burt Young!

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www.youtube.com/watch

", "date_published": "2026-10-09T08:55:00-07:00", "url": "https://mitchwagner.com/2026/10/09/mitchellaneous-memes-and-other-found.html", "tags": ["Mitchellaneous"] }, { "id": "http://mitchw.micro.blog/2026/10/08/we-are-still-struggling-to.html", "content_html": "

We are still struggling to heal Minnie’s ulcerated eye. She won’t eat with the Elizabethan collar (aka “cone of shame”) on. She has done so in the past, but she has forgotten and has now decided it’s impossible and she stands next to her food looking confused.

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Until today, we took the cone off her to let her eat, but that meant she was un-coned for 60-90 minutes per day and free to scratch at her eye and rub it on the ground. No wonder it isn’t healing. It should have been obvious this was a bad idea.

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I tried putting the food on a flat plate and elevating it on a footstool, about a foot of the ground. Nope.

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So I took the cone off her to let her eat while I supervised her from a distance of less than three feet, to be sure she didn’t scratch at the eye.

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Because she is a senior dog with kidney disease, we feed her three times a day. Also, I’m giving her eyedrops four times a day. I have gotten very good at giving the dog eyedrops. I feel pleased with myself when I do it quickly and efficiently, less so when I dribble the eyedrops on her face. Notwithstanding those feelings of pride at a job well done this is not a skill I ever wanted to acquire. This is going to be how we do things for another week, then hopefully she’ll be healed up.

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This afternoon at the vet, when it was time to bring Minnie home, I just lowered the cone to face-level on the dog and she stuck her head right in it. The vet-tech was impressed. I acted nonchalant as if this was not a surprise to me.

\n\"\"\n", "date_published": "2026-10-08T16:44:05-07:00", "url": "https://mitchwagner.com/2026/10/08/we-are-still-struggling-to.html" }, { "id": "http://mitchw.micro.blog/2026/10/08/my-motto-for-the-week.html", "content_html": "

My motto for the week: “In retrospect, it should have been obvious that was a terrible idea.”

\n", "date_published": "2026-10-08T15:24:38-07:00", "url": "https://mitchwagner.com/2026/10/08/my-motto-for-the-week.html" }, { "id": "http://mitchw.micro.blog/2026/10/08/the-interview-chris-rock-has.html", "content_html": "

The Interview: Chris Rock Has Been Thinking About Forgiveness [David Marchese / The New York Times]

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“Rodeo Drive and Skid Row are in the same city, probably eight, 10 miles apart. In a lot of ways, America’s like that: very rich, very poor. We live in a world where either you order shit or you deliver shit], and you really don’t want to deliver [expletive], you know?”

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Also:

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You don’t really realize if you love somebody until you have to forgive them. I can enjoy myself with just about anybody. It’s when somebody tests you, when somebody betrays you, when somebody lets you down and you still want to be around them – that’s love. I have a friend that’s going to be nameless that might have gotten canceled. Another friend of mine was like, “How can you be friends with that person?” I was like, “If you’re only friends with your friends when they’re good, they’re not your friends.” If you’ve got a bunch of people that are only going to be there when you’re good, you have no friends. That doesn’t mean condoning abusive behavior; you can reprimand your friends. That’s also part of friendship.

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Despite the headline, Rock genially but firmly cuts off questions about the Will Smith slap. He says he has said everything he is going to say about the subject, and wishes everyone well.

\n", "date_published": "2026-10-08T10:08:00-07:00", "url": "https://mitchwagner.com/2026/10/08/the-interview-chris-rock-has.html" }, { "id": "http://mitchw.micro.blog/2026/10/08/how-i-got-this-photo.html", "content_html": "\"\"\n

How I got this photo

\n", "date_published": "2026-10-08T09:14:00-07:00", "url": "https://mitchwagner.com/2026/10/08/how-i-got-this-photo.html", "tags": ["Record album covers from the Tree House Inn"] }, { "id": "http://mitchw.micro.blog/2026/10/08/mitchellaneous-memes-and-other-found.html", "title": "🦍 Mitchellaneous #179: Memes and other found media", "content_html": "

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", "date_published": "2026-10-08T08:55:00-07:00", "url": "https://mitchwagner.com/2026/10/08/mitchellaneous-memes-and-other-found.html", "tags": ["Mitchellaneous"] }, { "id": "http://mitchw.micro.blog/2026/10/07/jamelle-bouie-i-cannot-emphasize.html", "content_html": "

Jamelle Bouie: I cannot emphasize enough that the president has pudding for brains. youtube.com/watch

\n", "date_published": "2026-10-07T20:39:08-07:00", "url": "https://mitchwagner.com/2026/10/07/jamelle-bouie-i-cannot-emphasize.html" }, { "id": "http://mitchw.micro.blog/2026/10/07/mitchellaneous-memes-and-other-found.html", "title": "🦍 Mitchellaneous #178: Memes and other found media", "content_html": "

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", "date_published": "2026-10-07T08:55:00-07:00", "url": "https://mitchwagner.com/2026/10/07/mitchellaneous-memes-and-other-found.html", "tags": ["Mitchellaneous"] }, { "id": "http://mitchw.micro.blog/2026/10/07/appellate-court-rules-that-aigenerated.html", "title": "Appellate court rules that AI-generated video of a manslaughter victim forgiving his killer went too far", "content_html": "

404 Media:

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A man convicted of manslaughter in Arizona will be resentenced because an AI-generated video of his victim speaking from beyond the grave was ruled to have carried “undue emotional weight” as an impact statement. An appellate court in Arizona ruled that the manslaughter charge will remain, but the judge must reconsider the length of the man’s prison term because of AI.

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To be clear, the victim’s sister, Stacey Wales, who generated the video, was in no way deceitful. She wrote her own perceptions of what victim Gabriel Horcasitas would have said as a way of expressing her impact statement, put the words in the AI-generated video of her brother, and she disclosed all of this to the court.

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She compared it to the way courts thought of photography in the late 19th century.

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“It took about 15 years […] and about five landmark cases in the United States that went all the way up to the Supreme Court before photography was an accepted standard to be used in the courtroom for evidence, identification, and testimony, et cetera,” she said. “I believe that’s what we’re seeing now with AI. It is a brand new medium.”

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\n", "date_published": "2026-10-07T07:14:00-07:00", "url": "https://mitchwagner.com/2026/10/07/appellate-court-rules-that-aigenerated.html" }, { "id": "http://mitchw.micro.blog/2026/10/06/he-was-the-timess-moscow.html", "content_html": "

He Was The Times’s Moscow Chief. My Grandmother Was His Censor.

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When I was a kid in Moscow, my grandmother told me that New York was the greatest city in the world, The New York Times was the greatest newspaper in the world, and Harrison Salisbury was its greatest journalist. She had made these determinations decades before she ever saw New York City or held a copy of The Times in her hands. As for Salisbury, she never met him. For several years, though, she read almost every article he wrote. She was also his government censor, the person whose job, at the Chief Directorate of Literature and Publishing, was to keep much of his work from ever being published.

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M. Gessen, writing at the NY Times, remembers his grandmother, her career as a censor and Salisbury’s career as a foreign correspondent in Moscow.

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Salisbury covered the USSR for the Times during World War II, left, and fought to never go back. But he returned in 1949.

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He seemed to grasp the biggest story almost immediately. ⁠⁠The Soviet government was waging a campaign to identify and imprison “rootless cosmopolitans” — a code word for “Jews.”

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He wrote a story about the campaign, which Gessen’s grandmother censored.

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⁠⁠My grandmother remembered this article as revelatory. But it contained nothing she didn’t already know. For more than a year, she and her circle of friends – young Jewish intellectuals in Moscow – had been living with a growing sense of fear. Many of them had had their university studies interrupted by the war and were just now, in their late 20s, graduating to find out that Jews had become all but unemployable. They read all the reports of high-profile Jewish writers, actors and critics being denounced, demoted and jailed, and they were sure this was just the beginning. Salisbury’s article reflected these facts and fears back to my grandmother.

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\n", "date_published": "2026-10-06T12:57:00-07:00", "url": "https://mitchwagner.com/2026/10/06/he-was-the-timess-moscow.html" }, { "id": "http://mitchw.micro.blog/2026/10/06/mitchellaneous-memes-and-other-found.html", "title": "🦍 Mitchellaneous #177: Memes and other found media", "content_html": "

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", "date_published": "2026-10-06T08:55:00-07:00", "url": "https://mitchwagner.com/2026/10/06/mitchellaneous-memes-and-other-found.html", "tags": ["Mitchellaneous"] }, { "id": "http://mitchw.micro.blog/2026/10/05/the-internet-isnt-made-of.html", "content_html": "

The internet isn’t made of meat anymore — Bots have passed humans as the internet’s main source of traffic. Telcos need autonomous, AI-defended, sovereign networks to keep up. My latest on Fierce Network.

\n", "date_published": "2026-10-05T11:22:43-07:00", "url": "https://mitchwagner.com/2026/10/05/the-internet-isnt-made-of.html" }, { "id": "http://mitchw.micro.blog/2026/10/05/white-supremacy-welcomed-his-rage.html", "content_html": "

“White supremacy welcomed his rage, and that made it irresistible.” In prison, white supremacist literature is required reading: ⁠

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To survive the box, you learn to fish. People on the outside call it solitary confinement, but it isn’t really, not even at a place like Upstate Correctional Facility, the supermax prison in Malone, New York, ten minutes from the Canadian border. It’s true at Upstate you’re locked down twenty-four hours a day. It’s true you spend twenty-three of those hours in a small concrete and steel cage, and that the twenty-fourth hour is spent in another concrete and steel cage that’s connected to, but even smaller than, the first. It’s true that for the whole time you’re at Upstate, you might not touch another human being, and it’s true you won’t see another person except through a tight mesh of steel wire and reinforced glass. And it’s true you might be locked down for years.

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But man is a social animal, and even in a place like Upstate, people will find a way to communicate.⁠

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— Joseph Margulies, lithub.com/in-prison…

\n", "date_published": "2026-10-05T11:19:00-07:00", "url": "https://mitchwagner.com/2026/10/05/white-supremacy-welcomed-his-rage.html" }, { "id": "http://mitchw.micro.blog/2026/10/05/mitchellaneous-memes-and-other-found.html", "title": "🦍 Mitchellaneous #176: Memes and other found media", "content_html": "

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‘How it works’ The Computer - A Ladybird Book by David Carey, 1971 www.tumblr.com/thevaulto…

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Barbara Eden (left) and Elizabeth Montgomery, 1967 www.tumblr.com/retropopc…

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chaka khan 1975 www.tumblr.com/mudwerks/…

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", "date_published": "2026-10-05T08:55:00-07:00", "url": "https://mitchwagner.com/2026/10/05/mitchellaneous-memes-and-other-found.html", "tags": ["Mitchellaneous"] }, { "id": "http://mitchw.micro.blog/2026/10/04/ai-is-a-power-tool.html", "content_html": "
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AI is a power tool, and like any power tool it’s dangerous if you’re careless with it. You can be the guy who warned everyone that a table saw can cut your fingers off and still lose a finger one day.…

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— Don’t Write With AI, Say People Who Write With AI [Will Oremus / The Atlantic]

\n", "date_published": "2026-10-04T14:33:53-07:00", "url": "https://mitchwagner.com/2026/10/04/ai-is-a-power-tool.html" }, { "id": "http://mitchw.micro.blog/2026/10/04/gerbil-journalist-allen-salkins-multipart.html", "content_html": "

Gerbil — Journalist Allen Salkin’s multipart investigative podcast about that rumor about Richard Gere.

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“A deep dive into Hollywood’s most infamous rumor — and what it reveals about celebrity, gossip, power, the internet and our own brains.”

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I’m not sure about this podcast but I enjoyed the first episode and Salkin’s interview on Dan Savage’s podcast so I’ll stick with it for at least one more episode and see where it goes.

\n", "date_published": "2026-10-04T14:29:13-07:00", "url": "https://mitchwagner.com/2026/10/04/gerbil-journalist-allen-salkins-multipart.html" }, { "id": "http://mitchw.micro.blog/2026/10/04/a-reckoning-in-springfield-stephanie.html", "content_html": "

A Reckoning in Springfield [Stephanie McCrummen / The Atlantic]

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Trucker Jack Buhring wrestles with trauma after he accidentally struck and killed 20-year-old Haitian legal immigrant Pierre Damas Bel on the highway outside Springfield, Ohio.

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Bel, who had never violated any law and who had a solid job, was among the Haitians in Springfield ordered to check in to ICE field offices and wear ankle monitors.

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Following the accident Bel’s father put out a statement saying “after my son was outfitted with this ankle monitor, he felt like he was treated like an animal.”

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In 2024, the despicable J.D. Vance spoke the hateful lie that Haitians in Springfield were eating cats and dogs. When Vance was called out on the lie, he admitted it and said he was right to do it.

\n", "date_published": "2026-10-04T14:20:03-07:00", "url": "https://mitchwagner.com/2026/10/04/a-reckoning-in-springfield-stephanie.html" } ] }