jameswharris

“Dominion” by Lauren Acampora

by James Wallace Harris, 8/5/26

There has been much discussion lately about how people are no longer reading for pleasure. Advocates for reading often claim that reading is important because it promotes empathy. Is that really true? I’ve decided to test that.

I read the short story “Dominion” by Lauren Acampora in The Best American Short Stories 2025, but it was originally published in New England Review. “Dominion” is reprinted in Acampora’s new collection The Animal Room. You can read more about Lauren Acampora here.

Roy Fox is a retired CEO of an oil company. “Dominion” is his story, and we follow Roy’s thoughts. Roy spends his retirement collecting exotic animals. He claims he runs a rescue preserve, but in reality, he owns a large private zoo and employs many people as caretakers.

The plot pivots on a girl who is clawed by a serval when Roy invites his granddaughter’s kindergarten class for a field trip.

Now I can’t say that Lauren Acampora’s goal in writing “Dominion” was to have readers empathize with Roy Fox, but if the virtue of reading is to understand people who are unlike us, then Roy is our subject. We live in politically polarized times where politics and wealth make us vilify our opposites.

Acampora doesn’t side with Roy. I believe she works hard to paint Roy Fox realistically and without judgment. However, many readers will see Fox as a narcissistic rich man who constantly rationalizes his wants while sneering down on the poor. But Acampora’s presentation is more nuanced than that.

The story begins when Roy reads through a couple dozen letters that mostly thank him for bringing Molly, the tiger, to Piper’s school. Piper is Roy’s granddaughter. However, one letter, written by a parent, riles Roy:

While we appreciate your good intention in visiting our child’s school with an animal ambassador as impressive as Molly, we’re concerned by the practice of keeping wild creatures captive—

Roy immediately wanted to defend himself by contacting the parent and telling them that Molly was rescued from a circus cage in Peru and now had three acres to herself. Then Roy thinks about how Shannon, his daughter, insisted on sending Piper to a public school when there was a “… panoply of private and Christian academies at her disposal.” He then thinks, “It was doubtful that his granddaughter would gain any special benefit from ‘diversity’ in this rawest sense of the word, this bestiary of scrappily dressed, minimally groomed children.”

Now, is Acampora using these details to criticize Roy? Or faithfully paint her character? Are liberal readers supposed to empathize with Roy? He is spending a great deal of money to “save” animals?

Roy’s favorite lines from The Book of Genesis: “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.” He had it engraved on a stone plaque and put it on the gate to his property.

Roy also recalls a time when his company spilled 10 million gallons of oil into the sea. He rationalized that it wasn’t the largest of spills. And that TV images of oil-covered birds were a PR nightmare for his company. Roy worked to minimize his company’s exposure to the affair, but that led to a fiasco. Marilyn, his wife, had tried to get him to immediately take responsibility because that would be the right thing to do. He refused, but in his mind he admitted she was right.

Are readers to assume that Roy is now spending a fortune on a personal zoo as atonement for the oil spill? Do we forgive him? Are we supposed to forgive him? Or is Acampora only asking us to walk a mile in Roy’s shoes?

The readers are next shown Roy’s love of his animals. Is it genuine love, or do caring for the animals only support Roy’s narcissism? Isn’t he getting off on playing God to them? That Bible quote is a clue. This long paragraph is quite telling.

Roy found himself laughing, too. The truth was that he enjoyed his property staff more than his peers in black tie. The people he hired to maintain the property and care for the animals were fine people, steered by other desires. The concept of ambition—of success for success’s sake—was foreign to them. Satisfied by the simple things the natural world provided, they were unaware of or indifferent to the higher calibers of human pleasures. Roy might have envied this plain contentment, but he understood he was designed differently. His enjoyment of these animals, this life, was necessarily contingent on all that had come before, the challenges he’d met with his own brain power. He enjoyed the animals because he’d worked to obtain them. But unequal as they were, he and his staff were happy together in this Eden. Roy was pleased to share the humor of watching a capybara waddle into the lagoon. Marilyn took delight in the animals, too—especially the camels, whose faces she loved, full of comedy and tragedy. She divined profound feeling in their soft, long-lashed eyes. She was, ironically, the keeper of the household ledger. In a funny swap, she was the manager now, and Roy the irresponsible one in need of reining in. When he’d wanted to build a dolphinarium, Marilyn had unequivocally told him no.

Roy wants to control his image. He decides to invite Piper’s class to the estate as a field trip. He’s sure they will see his side of things. Marilyn agrees with Roy and thinks it’s a good gesture. And the school agrees to come, but under conditions that irk Roy and spoil some of his plans.

Unfortunately, the field trip turns into another oil spill for Roy when a serval leaps at the fence, sending one of its very long legs through the links, clawing Layla, a young girl, on her chest.

After the ambulance and school bus leave, Roy goes inside and lies down. When Marilyn comes home, he tells her what happened; she’s horrified he didn’t follow the ambulance to the hospital and meet the parents.

Marilyn rushes them to the hospital. Marilyn goes right in and physically comforts the parents, while Roy holds back. Readers don’t know if Marilyn is a naturally good person or just good at appearing to do the right thing.

Roy is confronted by Layla’s teenage brother, Jordan. Jordan’s righteousness reminds Roy of his daughter, Shannon, when she was young. Roy feels Jordan spits on him, but the others don’t see it. Roy leaves the hospital room quickly to hide in the bathroom, where he starts getting hives that he scratches until they bleed.

As he and Marilyn near home, Roy calms down. He says he forgives Jordan because he is young. Marilyn informs him the parents aren’t going to sue. Roy tells her they should open up their zoo to the public so they can learn about animals.

The last paragraph is quite revealing.

At last, they pulled up to their gate, and Roy pressed the button that instructed the iron doors to swing inward. The row of elephant heads receded in orderly welcome. The car drove through, its tires purring over gravel, down the row of tamarind trees. The gnarled branches laced overhead, wrinkled pods dangling—and like that they left behind the barbaric world with all its howling demands. This was home, a sanctuary in the truest sense of the word. Roy’s heart eased back to a steady rhythm. All around them, miraculous creations. The flamingos in the distance like so many fresh brushstrokes. The camels, his grave dignitaries. The monkeys chirping merrily, scrambling through the branches, swinging down in bright numbers to greet him.

Has God returned to Eden after visiting Adam and Eve on the outside?

Like all stories, we could interpret this one in a zillion ways. But I wonder if Acampora is asking us to empathize with Roy Fox? If the value of reading fiction is to help us see inside other people, what should we do with this insight?

I believe one reason why Trump won the 2016 election is that conservative folks were tired of being bullied by liberals. For decades, comedians, late-night hosts, comedy news shows, and sarcastic intellectuals felt it was ethical to belittle the right. It’s rather ironic that we liberals have always defended the downtrodden and demanded that political correctness protect the weak from verbal persecution. Yet, the rich and strong were fair game to any kind of bullying. If kindness means protecting the mentally ill from verbal abuse, why don’t we extend such empathy to narcissists? It’s just another condition in the DSM.

I just wonder if Acampora was trying to make us feel bad for Roy. She paints him with all his sins, yet doesn’t her story ask us to forgive him? Am I taking my bleeding-heart liberalism too far? Am I expecting the woke to wake up even more?

Acampora also portrays Roy Fox in her novel The Hundred Waters. A blurb at Amazon quotes the Boston Globe calling Acampora “a brilliant anthropologist of the suburbs.” I’m tempted to read it.

Karen Carlson at A Just Recompense has a much different take than mine. But that’s to be expected. Everyone reads a story in their own unique way. Peter Kirwan at Come to the Pedlar is somewhat like Carlson in analyzing Roy. I agree with them that Roy is a goldmine for psychoanalyzing. I’m more curious what Acampora was aiming at in her storytelling.

The writer at Workshop Heretic feels Acampora is contemptuous of Roy. They certainly provide plenty of evidence to make their case. They also found the story dull. I didn’t at all. They called it a “bog-standard lit fic story.”

Since I have many hours of MFA writing courses (but without the degree), I know what they mean. Modern writers are so well trained in MFA programs that their work has a sameness to it. However, I consider that sameness to be high-quality writing.

And I’ll admit that reading The Best American Short Stories won’t appeal to many readers. But is that because its stories feel intellectual, often by elite writers from the literary establishment?

I have a different take. I refer to it as my “message in a bottle” theory of writing. We all live alone inside our heads, isolated from each other, like living on a deserted island. The best literary stories are distilled insights placed in a bottle and thrown into the ocean. The writers hope that bottle might be found and someone else might see what they see.

If you read this story, let me know what you think. I’ve told a good portion of the plot, but that leaves out the heart of the story. It’s a shame that it’s not online to read for free.

I highly recommend The Best American Short Stories series.

JWH

Studying Euclid’s Elements in Retirement

by James Wallace Harris, 8/2/26

Euclid is sometimes called the Father of Geometry because of his book The Elements. A literal translation of the word geometry could be “earth measurement.” Even Aristotle knew that the Egyptians and Babylonians used geometry to survey land and construct buildings. Euclid doesn’t use numbers or make measurements in The Elements, and his geometry does not match what is taught in Geometry classes today.

What Euclid teaches is an abstract construction, yet it drives a pylon into reality. What Euclid really teaches is how to think clearly and precisely, something humans seldom do. There is a story about Abraham Lincoln that claims he didn’t become a good lawyer until he mastered the first six books of The Elements. (If you understand the foundation of what Euclid teaches, you will follow that link. If you don’t follow the link, you will after you have studied Euclid.)

The reason I’m studying Euclid’s Elements in retirement is that it’s exercise for my aging brain. Crossword puzzles, Wordle, and Sudoku are decent stretching exercises for my flabby neurons, but The Elements is Nautilus machines. I’m only as far as Proposition 12 in Book 1, which has left my brain in a puddle on the floor.

It’s not that the problems in The Elements are hard; they mostly require persistence. Numbers and measurements aren’t involved. Just logic, reason, a straightedge, compass, and pencil. Even a tiny amount of exercise can make you feel weak and lightheaded if you’re out of shape.

At 74, the challenge is whether I can learn anything new at all. Especially since I can’t seem to retain new words and concepts. I can still recall old stuff, but keeping new stuff is difficult. Maybe studying Euclid will help with that.

Before I retired in 2013, I thought I’d work on a degree in computer science as a hobby once I retired. I’ve taken many computer courses at the undergraduate level while earning an English degree. Since I spent my working life with computers, I always wanted a computer degree to validate myself. However, when I investigated the requirements for a B.S. or M.S. in computer science, I learned that I needed 24 hours of math as a prerequisite.

I only had College Algebra, Calculus I, and Statistics from the 1970s. When I looked at textbooks in those courses, I realized I had forgotten everything. I’d need to start over from scratch. Not only that, but when I tried Khan Academy as a refresher, I learned I had forgotten the fundamentals of math from elementary school. I had to start over in the 2nd grade. I eventually worked my way up to 5th grade in Khan Academy, but my brain ran out of gas. I dropped the idea of going back to college as a retirement hobby.

Twelve years later, my mind is even more mushy. I do Wordle and the Mini Crossword at The New York Times every day. Even though I often have trouble remembering words, I’m pretty good at those puzzles. I gave up on learning math over a dozen years ago. I regret that. I should have stuck it out.

Recently, I read about the history of Euclid’s Elements. Supposedly, it’s only second to The Bible in the number of editions over the last two thousand years. Its main claim to fame is that it teaches more than basic geometry – it pushes its students to think logically.

The geometry in Elements is very basic, not like the geometry they teach in school today. All 13 books of the Elements use the same 5 Postulates and 5 Common Notions. From that foundation, 48 propositions (problems) are set up in Book 1. Each proposition is proved step by step with diagrams based on the 23 definitions. 131 total definitions cover 465 propositions in all 13 books. Most students only do the first 6 books.

For centuries, an educated person in the Western world would study Latin, Greek, and Euclid’s Elements. Before the scientific method, most knowledge was opinion. Euclid’s Elements set up the idea that knowledge should be built on a foundation. A foundation that is consistent across cultures. Every proposition has to be proved with definitions, postulates, and common notions. Look at this video; the visual demonstration will probably say more than I can in words.

The simplicity and limited domain of the Elements appealed to me. I may not be able to pass a university math course, but hopefully, I can work my way through the first book of the Elements.

I started with the free web version, and then bought a 99-cent Kindle edition of The Elements of Euclid for the Use of Schools and Colleges (Illustrated) so I could read on my phone. I also bought Delphi Collected Works of Euclid (Illustrated) because it had a long history of this famous book. It was only $2.99 for the Kindle edition, and I liked the scholarly history of how Euclid wrote the Elements and how people used it over the centuries.

I’ve been able to work through the early Propositions. I even bought a compass to draw them out myself. I’m not sure I’d even call this mathematics. It’s really just logic. The work is tedious, though. With each step, you’re supposed to cite the Definition, Postulate, or Common Notion you used to justify that step. You have to think hard as you follow along.

Here’s my work for Proposition 1. Most books describe the steps in words, and then show the final diagram. I find that confusing.

Proposition 1: To construct an equilateral triangle on a given finite straight line.

Look at how David E. Joyce works the problem at Clark University. It’s very wordy, but it also explains some of Euclid’s faults. But even Euclid’s description is very confusing, at least to me. It’s only clear when you follow the problem logically, step by step.

We start with a line segment with the endpoints being A and B. Ignore point C for now. Many teachers start by drawing line segment AB and immediately put a point C above it. I think that’s wrong.

Draw:

Then draw a circle with A at the center, with AB as the radius.

Then create a circle with B as the center, using AB as the radius.

Now, it’s time for point C. Where the circles intersect, designate points. Remember the definitions. They are abstractions, but we have to always build on them.

Definition 1: A point is that which has no part.

Definition 2: A line is a breadthless length.

Definition 3: The ends of a line are points.

Definition 15: A circle is a plane figure contained by one line such that all the straight lines falling upon it from one point among those lying within the figure equal one another.

Definition 16: And the point is called the center of the circle.

Postulate 3: To describe a circle with any center and radius.

Euclid doesn’t state that when a line crosses another line, the intersection is a point, but we assume it. He should have included it as a definition.

Because the two circles intersect, we have defined two additional points, which we can label C and D; however, D is not needed for this proof.

Now we can draw lines AC and BC.

Definition 20: Of trilateral figures, an equilateral triangle is that which has its three sides equal, an isosceles triangle that which has two of its sides alone equal, and a scalene triangle that which has its three sides unequal.

Postulate 1: To draw a straight line from any point to any point.

Common Notion 1: Things which equal the same thing also equal one another.

Common Notion 4: Things which coincide with one another equal one another.

Because AB is the radius of both circles, and AC and BC are also radii of those same circles, all sides of the triangle are equal.

Thus we have proved:

Proposition 1: To construct an equilateral triangle on a given finite straight line.

In modern geometry, we would have just drawn an equilateral triangle knowing that all three angles equal 60 degrees. And we could have measured the length of each side with a ruler. The point of Euclid is to create geometric objects with basic geometric building blocks. No numbers are involved.

The rest of The Elements involve creating ever-evolving complicated 2D and 3D geometric shapes. Some of which prove other mathematical problems, like Proposition 47. It’s an alternate method of proving the Pythagorean theorem.

But even after watching a video multiple times, it’s still hard to do it myself. Without practicing with drawing lines and circles, it’s hard to see how the proofs really work, even when they are shown to you.

JWH

You Can’t Go Home Again – But Do I Really Want To?

by James Wallace Harris, 7/28/26

What is nostalgia? Most people think of it as a mental perception, an outlook, but what if it’s just another emotion caused by a chemical reaction in the brain? What if it’s like fear or sexual desire, caused by triggers in our environment? When we were still hunters and gatherers, wouldn’t you think that all emotions evolved from traits that supported survival? Fear of tigers and snakes made fear a very good thing. Horniness promoted reproduction.

However, other emotions, like anxiety, sadness, and depression, don’t feel positive, nor would I think they’d promote survival. Have we always had such emotions? Did cavemen sit around the fire complaining they were depressed and didn’t feel like hunting mammoths today? Did they long for old campgrounds or prey they hadn’t seen in a long time?

If nostalgia is an emotion like anxiety, what triggers it? Nostalgia used to be considered an ailment, but today we think of it as an indulgence. Nostalgia has been in the news lately because Gen Z has become nostalgic for the 1990s, and especially for a time before smartphones and social media. Lots of writers and pundits are trying to read the tea leaves of current nostalgia trends.

I have always suffered from nostalgia, even when I was a kid. Nostalgia has always been both painful and euphoric to me. Often specific thoughts and sights trigger it. Does that mean nostalgia is an emotion similar to sexual desire? Then does it have a useful purpose?

Early this morning, my sister sent me a link to Google Maps showing the house her son is buying for her. She said it reminded her of the house we lived in back in the late 1950s, in the Lake Forest subdivision, near Hollywood, Florida. She asked me if I could find the address of our old home. I got on Google Maps and found that house.

That Lake Forest house is a powerful trigger of nostalgia for me. It has haunted my dreams since 1963. It’s the El Dorado of my childhood that I keep searching for in my subconscious.

I never felt nostalgia before I lived there. I’ve never analyzed why before. I have looked it up on Google Maps several times over the years, and it’s always triggered a tremendous rush of nostalgia.

My family first moved to that house in 1958 when I was in the 2nd grade. We’d just moved back to Florida after living in South Carolina for a few months. This might have been the first house my parents owned.

This was an interesting stage in my life. At 7, I evidently was old enough to remember more, so this period is an archaeological strata near the lowest part of my mind. I had memories of places before this, but they are vague and rare.

We only lived at the Lake Forest house for about a year, and then moved to New Jersey and Mississippi for my 3rd grade, and then returned to Lake Forest for my 4th grade. During the 5th grade, we moved to Homestead AFB in 1961, and then returned to Lake Forest in early November, 1963. We moved away from that house the day after John F. Kennedy was shot in Dallas. That was 11/23/63, and I was in the 7th grade.

I spent less than 3 years total at the Lake Forest house, probably closer to 2 years. Yet, it’s burned into my memory. From 1963 until sometime in the 1980s, I often dreamed about the Lake Forest house. The dreams were always about desperately trying to find my way home. In the 1980s, I actually got to see the Lake Forest house again with my sister and her husband. That was an intense experience. It felt so tiny that I thought I could walk like a giant up and down the block in five steps.

Those searching for my way home dreams stopped. Visiting Lake Forest cured them. At least until I got into my sixties, when I started having a generalized version of those dreams, which I wrote about as “Can’t Find My Way Home Dreams.”

When I looked up the house on Google Maps this morning, that old intense feeling returned. I get this specific, overwhelming ache whenever I think about the places I used to live. And it depresses me in a unique way when I discover that any house I once lived in has been torn down, such as the one on West Trade Avenue in Coconut Grove.

There have been times in my life when I fantasized about returning to one of my favorite houses, buying it, and retreating there to live like a monk until I died. What’s that about? What would a psychiatrist make of that?

My father was in the Air Force, and we moved many times when I was young. I think I went to 3 first-grade schools, 3 seventh-grade schools, 1 school for 6th, 9th, and 12th, and 2 for the rest. Maybe all that moving around as a kid did a number on my psyche. Why do I want to go back to those places? I don’t mean now, but in time. Is nostalgia about finishing unfinished business?

I’ve known people who are seldom, if ever, nostalgic. My friend Laurie will call me sexist for saying this, but I feel women are less nostalgic than men. I know a lot of men who are nostalgic for the things they owned, wanted to own, in adolescence, or for the people and activities they pursued in their teenage years. Is nostalgia simply a longing for happier times? Just look at the old guys who buy old toys. I’d like a 1967 GTO.

Then how come I’m nostalgic for all the less-than-great times? For example, what was so great about the Lake Forest house? Do I want to be a kid again? Do I miss my little friends Michael Kevin Ralph, and Patty Paqquete?

I don’t know what happened to them.

They say when you die you are reunited with everyone you once knew. That’s probably a trick of the mind during the dying process. If it is, does that mean it’s the most powerful desire we have in life? To meet everyone again?

I have moved around so much that there are hordes of people I once knew. And I have run into a few of them over the years. What’s weird is such reunions are often disappointing. We discover we have so little to say to each other. We really can’t go home again. Then why do we try?

If I could travel back in time to visit earlier versions of me, I’m not sure if we would have much fun together. Is the Jimmy that was blown away by hearing Bob Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone” on a clock radio in 1965 anything like the Jim that thrilled to listen to “Like a Rolling Stone” on SACD in 2010? Or the old Jim listening to it now?

I must admit that Spotify is a goddman humongous nostalgia machine. Six feet to my right are bookcases with old science fiction magazines. They aren’t the same magazines I owned as a kid, but they are the same issues.

Sometimes I think nostalgia is feeling loss for parts of ourselves that have disappeared along the way.

What’s funny is I don’t think I’m as nostalgic in my 70s as I was in my 60s. Maybe, after decades of trying to return home, I’ve accepted I can’t.

I know I hate to travel in my old age, but that might be normal. Before I was 40, 18 months was the longest I lived anywhere. Then as I got older, that period began to lengthen. I’ve lived in this house for 20 years, and the previous house for 7 years.

I want to die in this house.

I still get deep emotional pangs when I think about certain houses, especially the Lake Forest house. Do I grieve for past versions of myself? Did Thomas Wolfe write You Can’t Go Home Again because many people feel that way? Maybe I need to reread that novel. It might be more meaningful now that I’m older. When I first read it, it was assigned in college.

It’s rather ironic that I’ve spent so much time reading science fiction, thinking about the future, and now I spend most of my time living in the past by reading old books, listening to old music, and watching old TV shows and old movies. At night, I dream about people I used to know and places where I used to work. And if I have insomnia, I lie awake thinking about the past. But is that nostalgia? I’m not so sure. I’m probably just consuming pop culture that I’m conditioned to enjoy most.

When I was younger, I’d lie awake thinking about the future, making plans. I used to worry about the future, but I don’t worry much about it anymore.

This morning I listened to an article from The Atlantic about how young people are nostalgic for the years before smartphones and social media, even if they never lived in those times. They hunger for a simpler time.

I wonder if my nostalgia for old homes is something like what they are feeling?

During my younger days, I used to love fantasizing about where I’d go if I had a time machine. Would I return to 1958 if I could? Notice the windows on the right in the picture at the top. They’re open. We had no air conditioning back then. The high today is expected to be 100F. I know this makes me a pussy, but I’d never travel further back in time before central air.

And unlike the current generation, I don’t think I’d like to travel to a time before smartphones. My memory is going, and I depend on them to recall words that won’t come to mind. As my mind becomes more crippled, smartphones are proven to be excellent crutches.

Besides, the old music I love sounds better on modern stereos. And the old movies and TV shows look way better on my 65-inch high-definition TV than they did on the old 19″ CRT. And I doubt the two heart procedures I’ve had were available in 1958.

If I’m realistic, I know any wanting-to-go-home-again nostalgia I feel is just chemical processes in my brain I can’t control. It’s about as useful as feeling horny when you’re an old fat bald guy with ED at 74. That’s just damn annoying. I guess when we’re old, we want to return to many places we used to go, and for some, it just takes a long time to realize we can’t.

JWH

Will AI Grifters Push Everyone Back to the Analog World?

by James Wallace Harris, 7/12/26

Rebecca Jennings, writing for the Intelligencer at New York Magazine, tells about how Zuhair Lakhani has created an army of AI tech influencers to promote your online product. This really bums me out. I knew that companies paid people to promote their products through fake reviews, social media testimonials, and endless scams. But the idea of armies of AI-generated agents putting all those desperate humans dreaming of making a quick buck out of work is even more depressing.

Grifters are scummy, but AI grifters are enough to make me go analog.

Using AI to automate the worst of being online is a bridge too far for me. Humans should create AI buyers to pretend to buy from all the AI sellers.

In October, Lakhani announced Doublespeed and claimed it was the only venture-capital-backed bot farm in America when he received an investment from Andreessen Horowitz, also known as a16z. “Because why let Russia and China have all the fun?” Lakhani asks in his launch video, in which he peels a digital mask off a pretty young woman’s face to reveal his own, sitting in front of a green-lit stack of phones, a cyberpunk set for an explicitly bleak vision. “Never pay a human again,” reads Doublespeed’s website, which advertises the ability to create AI personas on TikTok like a 62-year-old mother in Phoenix or a Gen-Z skater in Atlanta who will then post about your product. The investment was part of a16z’s three-month Speedrun accelerator program, in which young founders with start-up ideas can receive investments up to $1 million from the firm. Peers included “the world’s first AI-powered credit card,” the “world’s largest Netflix-quality AI streaming platform,” and a “Bible-based AI buddy,” which together formed what the tech publication 404 Media called an “AI-generated hell on earth.”

There is so much about the internet I love, but enshitafication is happening faster than I can try to stay cheerful and positive.

I also love watching YouTube, but AI is ruining it, too. I love learning from little documentaries, but it drives me bonkers when supposedly historical “facts” are illustrated with obviously fake photos. I know much of YouTube is created by lone creators, who don’t have the resources of professional documentary makers. But if you don’t have actual photos or videos that match your subject, please don’t generate AI slop. It just makes me cringe.

And I’m so tired of all the natural healthcare testimonials on Facebook and Instagram. If there were easy cures for all those ills, those ills wouldn’t exist.

This is one area where AI is helpful. I’ve found that if you take any claim for a natural remedy and give it to an AI, it will debunk it or explain why the claim has limited positive effects.

The internet is being ruined by greed, hate, delusion, lies, and people trying to validate their personal beliefs by brainwashing others to believe the way they do. It’s all grifting.

AI makes it much too easy for people to become grifters.

Is there any way to fix the internet? I’ve wondered if we should start over with another internet where every user has to be validated with something like a RealID. Leave the old internet in place for people who like to hang out on the dark web and be anonymous, but create another web where every packet has a validated user.

What would the Internet be like if every IP address had a validated user ID attached to it?

For now, I’m just going to start avoiding anything that smells fake, even if it looks fun. If the Internet continues to enshitify, then I’ll go back to the analog world.

JWH

I’ve Got a Noir a Day Habit

by James Wallace Harris, 7/9/26

I went for years not being able to sit through a movie or television show by myself. My mind would just feel restless after ten minutes, and I couldn’t continue. I guess I felt guilty, thinking I should be doing something more productive with my time. But being retired, I have all my time free, so why did it make me feel uneasy about frittering away a bit of it?

Then I discovered my mind would latch onto certain old movies, and I learned to relax and go with the flow. Oddly, these were mostly film noir movies. I’ve never been big on mystery or crime fiction. I just never cared whodunit. Evidently, there are aspects to film noir that calm my restless mind.

Today’s film was Flaxy Martin (1949), starring Virginia Mayo, Zachery Scott, and Dorothy Malone. I was inspired to select this movie because of The Stiletto Gumshoe’s essay, “Meeting Flaxy For The First Time.” I had no memory of seeing Flaxy Martin before, but as I watched, I realized I had.

I instantly picked Flaxy Martin for today’s dose of noir because of this photo. I’m a big fan of Elisha Cook, Jr. He’s most famous for playing the gunsel, Wilmer, in The Maltese Falcon. But Cook shows up in countless old movies and old television shows. He plays a very similar character in both Flaxy Martin and The Maltese Falcon – a bantam rooster with a rod.

I’ve never thought of myself as a fan of Virginia Mayo, but I might need to rethink that. Flaxy is a femme fatale and quite evil, and I love a good evil woman character. My friend Mike and I have been keeping a list of evil women in movies since we saw Gene Tierney in Leave Her to Heaven (1945). Flaxy is not up to the evil of Ellen Berent Harland, but she’s dangerous enough. I see that Mayo was also in two other 1949 films admire, Colorado Territory and White Heat.

I wish Flaxy Martin had been the main character in Flaxy Martin; unfortunately, she’s not. She’s AWOL for most of the middle of the film. The movie is really about Walter Colby (Zachery Scott), a lawyer for crime boss Hap Richie (Douglas Kennedy). Quite a lot happens to Walter in the flick, which is why the story moves so fast.

At the beginning of the film, Walter is in love with Flaxy, not knowing that Flaxy is two-timing him with Hap. Of course, Flaxy plays both ends against the middle, and neither the audience nor Walter nor Hap knows where she stands until the end of the film. For each man, Flaxy acts as a spy on the other, but lets the audience ponder whether she’s a double agent for which one.

Flaxy Martin lacks the style of true noir, so it’s really just a good, fast-action B-movie thriller. There are noirish scenes. The movie would have been hardcore noir if the story had been told entirely from Flaxy’s perspective. We see Flaxy set up Walter, and then for the middle of the film, he goes off and falls for Dorothy Malone. The film moves fast, with several twists, but the subplot with Malone feels tacked on. That middle part does give Elisha Cook, Jr. a lot more to do, and I appreciated that.

It’s just a shame that Flaxy wasn’t the main character. Femme fatales seldom get to be the main character. It would have been great to see Flaxy manipulate all the men all the time, for the entire show.

I don’t think the production code would have allowed this, but I would have loved to see Flaxy manipulate all the men and get away with it.

The weird thing about being retired is having all this time to fill. I’m never bored, but neither am I fulfilled. I’m well occupied by a series of entertaining diversions. Watching a film noir each day is becoming as regular as lunch. I assume I’ll burn out on them one day. I wish I knew why my brain likes them now.

Eddie Muller will convince you to watch Flaxy Martin.

JWH