lies and fear and authoritarianism 

JC/ August 26, 2025/ history

“the jews are overcrowding our hospitals” – hitler“immigrants are a burden on medicare and medicaid” -trump These statements are both lies. They are lies that prey on our insecurities we have about life and death. Our insecure feelings about life and death give us the fear we need to rationalize the empowerment of this mass murdering child rapist. Get it?

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The Age of Cyborg Problem Solving

JC/ August 21, 2025/ biography, science

Thank you to all the IT professionals who helped me when I asked, “Can you just add this A record to the DNS,” over the years. I recently had the chatbots guide me through implementing and troubleshooting DNS and virtual host configurations for my new site from the command line. In doing so, the bots taught me how complex and

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The curse, Wakefield’s knuckleball, and another f’n home run.

JC/ August 13, 2025/ history, language

When Wake’s knuckleball launched off of Aaron’s bat on the night of October 16, 2003, every member of Red Sox Nation was hit in the gut. The hit, so reminiscent of Bucky f’n Dent’s, hit us like Babe Ruth himself had put the lumber to the soft tissue of our midsections with his 38oz Louisville Slugger. We, the nation, Red

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Familiar jargon

JC/ August 6, 2025/ biography

Sexual predators use a pattern of soothing jargon designed to pacify victims as they are stripped of their humanity, and hope is voided from their souls. We see similar patterns of language used by other abusers whose victims are resist their assault. These patterns extend into the business world by way of cowardly leadership afraid of, “rocking the boat.” “Look, let

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glass shards

JC/ July 29, 2025/ poetry

each of us isa jagged shardof broken glasswith razor sharpedges that cutdeep on all sidesinto the skin.we hurt each otherobserve the paingrateful that weare not the oneswho hurt today.

Divide and conquer

JC/ July 22, 2025/ history

This is a summary of my recent learnings of North American history in context of contemporary events. Studying history has opened the time aperture through which I look at our current situation. I am reticent to admit my negligence in considering the past prior to this year.  To understand the authoritarian state of the US today, we cannot look back

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No Politics Around the Campfire

JC/ July 15, 2025/ biography

In late September 2002, on a campground in Southwestern New Hampshire, United States I sat around a small fire in the woods with some of my best friends. We all met for the first time 5 years prior. We bonded over live music, and pro-wrestling. Our host’s brother in-law, a self-avowed nazi, was joining for the weekend. Dennis, the self-avowed

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Freedom “from” versus “to”

JC/ July 9, 2025/ biography

Growing up with a modicum of privilege in the United States during the end of the 20th century we dreamed of the things we could do with our freedom, “to.” We could leave home to make riches and buy big cars, big houses, big boats, big vacations. We had big dreams for things. In those times we took our freedoms,

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Fear and the biology of our human brains

JC/ July 1, 2025/ science

What causes some to be more fearful than others? When two people are exposed to the same stimulus under the same conditions why does one person respond with panic, isolation, and defensiveness? While the other responds with calm, curiosity, and resolve? Research indicates that more grey matter in the anterior cingulate cortex equals more liberal, less fearful responses. Larger right

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Getting to Work in the Community

JC/ June 24, 2025/ biography

This weekend I did a job I had never done before. I’m not talking about a job on the other side of the shop, or org chart. I’m talking about completely new and different work to me. I went to work with people whom I had never before worked, materials I had never handled, technologies I had never seen, and

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