Category: Non Fiction
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Legacy Codebase
In the labyrinthine back-alleys of the political machine, the policy codebase resembles a forgotten Commodore 64 program held together with spit and baling wire. Any attempt to implement new social programs or tweak economic levers results in cryptic error messages and a system crash. Yet, charismatic snake-oil salesmen, fluent in the dialect of buzzwords and empty promises, keep slithering into the…
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Gamblers are Fragilistas
Dig this, man. These fragilistas, these jitterbugging fiends of the roulette wheel, ain’t some high rollers out for a score.Naw, they’re optionality junkies, strung out on the fumes of some imaginary jackpot. Blind as bats to the house edge, that meat grinder slowly chomping away at their stacks. Volatility, baby, that’s their drug. Each spin a potential freak wave of fortune, a Black Swan of bling that…
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Allons Enfants
France. A bureaucratic behemoth, a sluggish centipede choked on Brie and Beaujolais. The glorious postwar dream of prosperity curdles into a nightmare of rising debt, a fromage-fueled fever dream. France. A Gaullic hallucination, a decadent Disneyland sketched by de Sade. The once-proud engine of industry, sputtering, gears grinding into existential cheese rinds. The welfare state,…
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Common Knowledge
Common knowledge bleeds through the streets like a junky’s last fix. Coronations and executions, public spectacles of power and death, not for the king or the condemned but for the hungry eyes of the crowd devouring itself. The laugh track howls, a narcotic rhythm pumped into sitcom veins. American Idol’s studio audience, a pulsing mass…
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Fear and Loathing in the Supreme Court
SCOTUS Smackdown: A Legalized Thunderdome Here’s the CliffsNotes, man: this term, the Supremes have been on a bender, rewriting the whole damn rulebook. So here we are, America, knuckles white around the latest SCOTUS screed. These supposed guardians of justice have been snorting a mystery brand of powdered liberty and it’s got them raving like a pack of hyenas…
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Nero
Emperor Nero (Rome): A teenage viper thrust onto the golden throne, dripping with silk and delusions of grandeur. Fiddled while Rome burned, they say. But the fire was a flicker compared to the inferno raging inside his skull. A mother, Agrippina the Ambitious, a she-wolf in a silk dress, clawed her way to power through…
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Pope Clement VII
Pope Clement VII: A Medici marionette on the throne of St. Peter. A tangled mess of Renaissance finery and political scheming. Mind like a vat of lukewarm oil, swirling with Medici ambitions and papal paranoia. The Protestant Reformation, a gremlin gnawing at the roots of the Church, Luther’s words like a virus spreading through the…
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Tsar Nicholas II (Russia)
A gilded cipher on a throne of bones. Inherited a Romanov zoo of paranoia and privilege. Brain a Fabergé egg, all empty, jeweled cliches of divine right. Stirred the pot of discontent with a rusty scepter, clueless as a cockroach at a coronation ball. A Romanov on a rickety throne, ass squeezed by the iron…
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The Soft Machine Of Versailles
The Soft Machine of Versailles spins its gears, grinding Louis XVI’s indecision into a fine powder. Royal blood seeps through cracks in the palace floors, mingling with the sweat and rage of the hungry masses. Time fractures, spilling centuries of aristocratic rule onto cobblestone streets. Revolution crawls from the gutters, a mutant creature born of…