I haven’t been writing as much about current events of late, other than an occasional nod and link. Truth be told, I don’t feel up to it anymore. The firehose of bullshit gets me down, and as many others have noted, no mere mortal can keep up.
I’m in awe of people like…oh, Aaron Rupar, who spends all day every day watching right-wing media and clipping it for the rest of us. His Substack is well worth the money, too. Many Substacks are, in fact, but I still don’t know how the hell they do it. If a kid asked what it takes to be a journalist these days, I don’t know if I could even answer. The circus has passed me by. And every young journalist I know is working 10 times harder than I ever did.
For some reason, this makes me remember a reporter in Columbus, who, when called one evening by an editor with a question about something in his story for the next day, snapped back that he didn’t appreciate being bothered at home and don’t do it again. Ha ha ha ha ha. A very different time.
That said, there are days when I simply cannot believe what’s happening in the world. The good days are when I can be simultaneously agog and almost helpless with laughter, like today, with the spectacle of the vice president of the United States, a Catholic convert of seven years, lecturing the Pope on Catholic theology. Of course, he’s doing so on behalf of his boss:
President Trump has appeared stung by Leo’s condemnation of the war, criticism that has highlighted the challenge the administration faces from the coalition of conservative and religious voters who helped elect Mr. Trump in 2024. The president lashed out at the pope on Sunday in a social media post that called the first American-born pontiff “weak on crime” and “terrible for foreign policy.”
…The back-and-forth has presented a particular quandary for Mr. Vance, a convert to Catholicism who is publishing a book about his path to the faith and who has long courted the Republican religious base. Asked about the debate between Mr. Trump and the pope at an Athens, Ga., event hosted by the conservative group Turning Point USA, Mr. Vance admonished Leo, saying that if he was “going to opine on matters of theology,” his comments needed to be “anchored in the truth.”
Holy shitballs. I’m no believer in papal infallibility, but I do believe in papal competence on matters of theology, certainly competence above that displayed by this sleazy grifter.
As Lily Tomlin said, “No matter how cynical I get, I can’t keep up.”
In other actual news at this hour, an influencer was sentenced to a six-month stretch in prison in South Korea, and for once, I’m sorry the sentence wasn’t harsher, or maybe in North Korea instead:
(Johnny Somali) was convicted by a court in Seoul on several charges, including obstructing a business and distributing sexual deep fakes, according to local news media. A court official confirmed the sentence but the verdict was not immediately available.
Somali, 25, whose legal name is Ramsey Khalid Ismael, is an online personality who specializes in producing “rage bait” — chosen as 2025’s word of the year by the Oxford University Press, and defined as “online content deliberately designed to elicit anger or outrage by being frustrating, provocative or offensive.”
His stunts involved blasting music in public, yelling at strangers and vandalizing a small business in Seoul. He was arrested in Japan for trespassing on a construction site in Osaka in 2023, and was fined the equivalent of about $1,000 for disrupting a restaurant there with loud music.
MIAMI — Controversial influencer Clavicular was hospitalized in Miami on Tuesday night after suffering a suspected overdose during a livestream.
Few details have been released, but Miami Fire told CBS News Miami that crews were called to the corner of 9th Street and South Miami Avenue in Brickell after getting reports of a possible overdose of a 20-year-old man.
A source close to Clavicular told CBS News that he was suspected to have had an overdose.
Video from Clavicular’s livestream on Tuesday night caused concern for his hundreds of thousands of followers, saying that he seemed out of it.
Then the video abruptly ended.
I watched part of this; a friend sent me the video. Miami is a sewer at this time of year.
OK, this is the last entry for the week. We’re off for a long weekend of R&R in a major American city that you will probably recognize when I post photos, which I hope to do later this week.














