Hip-Hop – Origin of Term

By the mid-1970s, neighborhood D.J.s started holding parties in parks and community centers. In July 1977 — the month of a blackout that left New York City dark — the brothers met a D.J. named Joseph Saddler, who called himself Grandmaster Flash.

Flash worked with a bowlegged teenager named Keef Cowboy, who energized the crowds with simple rhymes and exhortations. When a friend enlisted in the military, Cowboy teased him on the microphone: “Hip, hop, hip, hop!”

The new culture would soon have a name.

The Fall of Kidd Creole: Inside a Rap Pioneer’s Tragic Descent
As a member of Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, he helped invent hip-hop. He spent the rest of his life trying to recapture that glory. Then, in seven minutes on a Manhattan street, it all came to an end.

Affording Health Insurance in the US. Over 60 But Too Young for Medicare.

Anyone else over 60 that has been priced out of the Marketplace? Anyone else considering just not having insurance?
Looks like I may be $680 over to qualify for my previous subsidy. I paid $550 per month for a crap policy but now am staring down the possibility of no subsidy, $1400 per month for crappy insurance. I can self pay routine stuff, but I don’t qualify for catastrophic coverage. I will be 65 in March of 2027. Anyone else in this boat?

HidingoutfromtheCIA
Get a bronze plan and open a HSA. Drop a few grand in it and lower your MAGI below the 400% federal poverty limit and regain your subsidies.

jhkayejr
A bronze plan for me is $1,700 a month. The idea that I’d then also be able to put money in a HSA is insane.

LadyMaggieMae
Unfortunately that exact plan leaves me $680 over. With the smidge of SS COLA, my modest pension fund and again modest interest rates the $4400 HSA will not get us there

[deleted]
This. You can actually put $5400 in your HSA since you’re over 55. It sounds like you don’t have earned income, so IRA/401k contributions wouldn’t be an option for you. Also, if you take the standard deduction, starting in 2026, you can do an above line deduction for charitable contributions ($1000 if filing single; $2000 for married filing jointly). That’ll reduce your MAGI. Edit to add: the charitable contributions have to be cash. Thanks for the clarification below, PeacefulCW.

Responsible-Bid5015
For you the HSA contribution limit is $5400 in 2026. You can also look into using the BOXX ETF for some of your cash savings to get extra margin. Note there is some risk to BOXX since the IRS has not really decided if it is a valid scheme. BOXX pays capital gains on withdrawal but no interest/dividends. So if you withdraw the full amount next year, there is no benefit.

Best Books I Read in 2025 that Weren’t Published in 2025

Selections mine. Comments via Amazon. In order of publication date.

The Night of the Gun
David Carr
Publication Date: August 5, 2008

Amazon Best of the Month, August 2008: In his fabulously entertaining The Kid Stays in the Picture, legendary Hollywood producer Robert Evans wrote: “There are three sides to every story: yours, mine, and the truth.” David Carr’s riveting debut memoir, The Night of the Gun, takes this theory to the extreme, as the New York Times reporter embarks on a three-year fact-finding mission to revisit his harrowing past as a drug addict and discovers that the search for answers can reveal many versions of the truth. Carr acknowledges that you can’t write a my-life-as-an-addict story without the recent memoir scandals of James Frey and others weighing you down, but he regains the reader’s trust by relying on his reporting skills to conduct dozens of often uncomfortable interviews with old party buddies, cops, and ex-girlfriends and follow an endless paper trail of legal and medical records, mug shots, and rejection letters. The kaleidoscopic narrative follows Carr through failed relationships and botched jobs, in and out of rehab and all manner of unsavory places in between, with cameos from the likes of Tom Arnold, Jayson Blair, and Barbara Bush. Admittedly, it’s hard to love David Carr–sometimes you barely like the guy. How can you feel sympathy for a man who was smoking crack with his pregnant girlfriend when her water broke? But plenty of dark humor rushes through the book, and knowing that this troubled man will make it–will survive addiction, fight cancer, raise his twin girls–makes you want to stick around for the full 400-page journey. –Brad Thomas Parsons

Planet Funny
Ken Jennings
Publication Date: May 29, 2018

In his “smartly structured, soundly argued, and yes—pretty darn funny” (Booklist, starred review) Planet Funny, Ken Jennings explores this brave new comedic world and what it means—or doesn’t—to be funny in it now. Tracing the evolution of humor from the caveman days to the bawdy middle-class antics of Chaucer to Monty Python’s game-changing silliness to the fast-paced meta-humor of The Simpsons, Jennings explains how we built our humor-saturated modern age, where lots of us get our news from comedy shows and a comic figure can even be elected President of the United States purely on showmanship. “Fascinating, entertaining and—I’m being dead serious here—important” (A.J. Jacobs, author of The Year of Living Biblically), Planet Funny is a full taxonomy of what spawned and defines the modern sense of humor.

The Art of Logic in an Illogical World
Eugenia Cheng
Publication Date: September 11, 2018

In a world where fake news stories change election outcomes, has rationality become futile? In The Art of Logic in an Illogical World, Eugenia Cheng throws a lifeline to readers drowning in the illogic of contemporary life. Cheng is a mathematician, so she knows how to make an airtight argument. But even for her, logic sometimes falls prey to emotion, which is why she still fears flying and eats more cookies than she should. If a mathematician can’t be logical, what are we to do? In this book, Cheng reveals the inner workings and limitations of logic, and explains why alogic — for example, emotion — is vital to how we think and communicate. Cheng shows us how to use logic and alogic together to navigate a world awash in bigotry, mansplaining, and manipulative memes. Insightful, useful, and funny, this essential book is for anyone who wants to think more clearly.

The History of Bones
John Lurie
Publication Date: August 17, 2021

In the tornado that was downtown New York in the 1980s, John Lurie stood at the vortex. After founding the band The Lounge Lizards with his brother, Evan, in 1979, Lurie quickly became a centrifugal figure in the world of outsider artists, cutting-edge filmmakers, and cultural rebels. Now Lurie vibrantly brings to life the whole wash of 1980s New York as he developed his artistic soul over the course of the decade and came into orbit with all the prominent artists of that time and place, including Andy Warhol, Debbie Harry, Boris Policeband, and, especially, Jean-Michel Basquiat, the enigmatic prodigy who spent a year sleeping on the floor of Lurie’s East Third Street apartment.

Just a Girl – No Doubt

“Just a Girl” is a song by American band No Doubt from their third studio album, Tragic Kingdom (1995). Released as the record’s lead single in the United States on September 21, 1995, it was written by Gwen Stefani and Tom Dumont, and produced by Matthew Wilder. It has also made an appearance on their 2003 greatest hits album, The Singles 1992–2003. Lyrically, “Just a Girl” is about Stefani’s perspective of life as a woman and her struggles with having strict parents. “Just a Girl” was the first song Stefani wrote without the assistance of her brother Eric.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_a_Girl

Historians Point of View – David Blight Quote

I also like this little passage, to just put into your craw, about any History course, about any interpretation. And of course I’m going to have a point of view at times in this course; all historians do. Don’t even listen to a historian if he or she doesn’t have a point of view. None of us are blank slates. None of us can just tell it like it was–“stop interpreting, please.” But I always try to remember William James’ passage in one of his Pragmatism essays, an essay I think that should be required for U.S. citizenship. If I ruled the world you’d have to read this for U.S. citizenship. In it, James says, “The greatest enemy of any one of my truths is the rest of my truths.” It’s as though James is saying, “damn, every time I think I really know something–that’s the truth–along comes some other possible truth and it screws it up.” Why can’t history just be settled? Enough already. If it was, it wouldn’t be any fun; if it was it wouldn’t be interesting; if it was it wouldn’t be good for business either.

HIST 119
The Civil War and Reconstruction Era, 1845-1877: Lecture 1 Transcript
Professor David Blight

It’s Just the Day I’m Having

61. “It’s Just the Day I’m Having” . . . . . . the young brother said to me as the wind blew his glasses from the bill of his Burger King ball cap, probably on his way to work, looking exasperatedly at me as he bent over to pick them up, looking at the lenses and then to me and then back to the lenses, and I said, hoping it was not the wrong thing to say, “It’ll get better,” and he said, “Thank you.” (Apr. 9)

The Book of Delights: Essays
Ross Gay

from Amazon book description:
The winner of the National Book Critics Award for Poetry offers up a spirited collection of short lyrical essays, written daily over a tumultuous year, reminding us of the purpose and pleasure of praising, extolling, and celebrating ordinary wonders.

5 Best Books of 2025

Selections mine, summary via Amazon. In order of publication date.

The Very Heart of It: New York Diaries, 1983-1994
Publication date: June 3, 2025

In 1983, Thomas Mallon was still unknown. A literature professor at Vassar College, he spent his days traveling from Manhattan to campus, reviewing books to make ends meet and searching the city for his own purpose and fulfillment. The AIDS epidemic was beginning to surge in New York City, the ever-bustling epicenter of literary culture and gay life, alive with parties, art, and sex.

Waiting for Britney Spears: A True Story, Allegedly
Publication date: June 10, 2025

America, 2003: A country at war, its shiny veneer beginning to crack. Von Dutch and The Simple Life dominate. And on the cover of every magazine, a twenty-one-year-old pop star named Britney Spears. Tracking her every move for a third-tier gossip rag in Los Angeles was an unknown young writer taking whatever job he could while pursuing his distant literary dreams. He’d instead become an eyewitness to the slow tragedy of a changing nation, represented in spirit by “the coy it-girl at the end of history.”

The Jailhouse Lawyer
Publication date: July 8, 2025

Calvin Duncan was nineteen when he was incarcerated for a 1981 New Orleans murder he didn’t commit. The victim of a wildly incompetent public defense system and a badly compromised witness, Duncan was left to rot in the waking nightmare of confinement. Armed with little education, he took matters into his own hands.

King of Kings: The Iranian Revolution: A Story of Hubris, Delusion and Catastrophic Miscalculation
Publication date: August 5, 2025

On New Year’s Eve, 1977, on a state visit to Iran, President Jimmy Carter toasted Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, King of Kings, Light of the Aryans, Shadow of God on Earth, praising Iran as “an island of stability “ due to “your leadership and the respect and admiration and love which your people give to you.” Iran had the world’s fifth largest army and was awash in billions of dollars in oil revenues. Construction cranes dotted the skyline of its booming capital, Tehran. The regime’s feared secret police force SAVAK had crushed communist opposition, and the Shah had bought off the conservative Muslim clergy inside the country. He seemed invulnerable, and invaluable to the United States as an ally in the Cold War. Fourteen months later the Shah fled Iran into exile, forced from the throne by a volcanic religious revolution led by a fiery cleric named Ayatollah Khomeini. The ensuing hostage crisis forever damaged America’s standing in the world. How could the United States, which had one of the largest CIA stations in the world and thousands of military personnel in Iran, have been so blind?

The Uncool: A Memoir
Publication date: October 28, 2025

The long-awaited memoir by Cameron Crowe—one of America’s most iconic journalists and filmmakers—The Uncool is a joyful dispatch from a lost world, a chronicle of the real-life events that became Almost Famous, and a coming-of-age journey filled with music legends as you’ve never seen them before.

Why people talk when they’re not really talking about the thing they’re talking about. – ChatGPT on Chekhov

Uncle Vanya is one of the richest texts for understanding why people talk when they’re not really talking about the thing they’re talking about. Chekhov’s characters speak to avoid truth, ease loneliness, signal desire, maintain roles, fill silence, or relieve ache, far more than they speak to convey facts.

THE PATTERN IN UNCLE VANYA
Every major character uses talk not to convey information, but to perform one of a few deep needs:
Astrov: talks to avoid despair → identity performance
Yelena: talks to hide desire → polite deflection
Sonya: talks to console → emotional caretaking
Vanya: talks to be acknowledged → validation-seeking
Serebryakov: talks to maintain status → ego protection
Marina: talks to comfort → stable background warmth

Chekhov’s genius is that the real story always happens beneath the dialogue, in the gaps, in the evasions, in what’s being unspoken. The talk is camouflage, coping, performance — everything except direct communication.

Below is a structured breakdown, focusing on several key scenes with close paraphrases and line-level function analysis (no direct copyrighted text).

1. ASTROV’S FOREST SPEECHES — “Talking to Perform Identity / Avoid Pain”
Context: Astrov goes on long monologues about the forests, conservation, maps, logging, the future of the region. His speeches recur in Acts I and II.

Paraphrased moment: Astrov unfurls a map and launches into an impassioned lecture about deforestation. He points out patches of green, lists the acreage lost, describes the peasant’s short-sightedness. No one asked for this level of detail.

What’s really going on beneath the words:
Self-soothing: He’s talking to stabilize himself, to escape his emotional drought and existential exhaustion.
Identity armor: He wants to be the idealist doctor who cares about something enduring.
Avoidance: Talking about forests is easier than talking about burnout, alcoholism, or loneliness.
A bid for admiration: Especially in front of Yelena, his speeches are a way of saying: See me. I’m noble, thoughtful, worthy.
Deflection: By talking about trees, he avoids talking about human suffering—his own included.
Function of the speech: Not information, but existential distraction + self-mythologizing.

Grease – Franki Valli

The opening credits theme to the 1978 movie adaptation of the 1971 musical of the same name, and one of the singles from the soundtrack album. Written by Barry Gibb of The Bee Gees, “Grease” is a disco song that sums up the central theme of the story, namely the idea of individuality in the face of those that want others to conform.

Being a disco song for a film/musical with a 1950s setting, some critics felt that this song doesn’t really fit with the rest of the soundtrack, either on the film itself or on the musical it’s based on.

https://genius.com/Frankie-valli-grease-lyrics#about

I saw my problems, and I’ll see the light
We got a lovin’ thing, we gotta feed it right
There ain’t no danger, we can go too far
We start believin’ now that we can be who we are
Grease is the word

They think our love is just a growin’ pain
Why don’t they understand? It’s just a cryin’ shame
Their lips are lyin’, only real is real
We stop the fight right now, we got to be what we feel
Grease is the word

Grease is the word, is the word that you heard
It’s got a groove, it’s got a meaning
Grease is the time, is the place, is the motion
Grease is the way we are feeling

We take the pressure and we throw away
Conventionality belongs to yesterday
There is a chance that we can make it so far
We start believin’ now that we can be who we are
Grease is the word

This is a life of illusion, wrapped up in trouble
Laced with confusion, what’re we doin’ here?

Denver – Number 84

It’s no secret Metro Denver has long been one of the nation’s fastest-growing regions for decades, and with a steady job market and one of the busiest airports in the world, it’s also no surprise the Mile High City was recently ranked as one of the world’s best cities to live, work and visit in 2025, according to Resonance Consultancy’s annual ranking.

“The world’s great urban centers are the engines of their nations and, increasingly, the global economy,” Resonance, a real estate and tourism consultancy firm, said. “They are the pistons driving the places where people choose to live, work and travel – magnetizing talent, capital and culture.”

The report ranks the 100 best cities in the world out of more than 270 worldwide based on principles of “Livability, Lovability, and Prosperity,” looking at things like parks and open spaces, job market and economic development and cultural attractions.

From London to Doha, Qatar, the ranking picks the top cities in the world, and Denver was among them, coming in at No. 84.

Denver is one the world’s best cities: Report

The AI Bubble – Price to Earnings Ratio, History

Kai Ryssdal
A huge chunk of the S&P gains of late have come because of the hundreds of billions that are being invested in Artificial Intelligence. So, bearing in mind that the average p/e ratio on the S&P right now is 25, price to earnings ratio, what does that tell us?

Michelle Lowry
People have very optimistic expectations of how fast these AI companies are going to grow, into the future.

John Steinsson
There are kind of two episodes in the past where the price to earnings ration has shot up to really high levels. One was right before the great depression. One was in the late 1990’s, during the internet bubble.

What’s a price-earnings ratio anyway?
Kai explains the P/E ratio of the S&P 500, which is higher that it’s been since the early 2000s.
Marketplace – Nov 12, 2025

Note – transcription approximate, done by hand, not ai.

The End of an Era – Late 70’s Vibe Shift

The Sex Pistols finally invaded the territory of the ’70s rock titans and landed on the cover of Rolling Stone in the October 20, 1977, issue. The headline: “Rock Is Sick and Living in London.” It was the beginning of the end of the ’70s.

One fine spring day, a student in a big puffy jacket came into journalism class and announced his hero—Ronald Reagan. A new definition of cool was emerging, and it was a long way from the shaggy hippies I knew at the Door house. Now there was a new kind of teenager, a young Republican who savaged the perceived naïveté of liberalism but also really liked rock.

The Uncool: A Memoir
Cameron Crowe
NOTE: Highly recommended book.

From google AI:
A “vibe shift” refers to a significant change in prevailing cultural moods, aesthetics, and trends, coining the term for a major shift in collective feelings from one style or topic to another. It’s used to describe the evolution of popular culture, from the early 2000s’ “bling” era to the later “hipster/indie” trend, and even more recently to the idea of a shift back towards certain aesthetics like “indie sleaze” and nostalgia for the 2000s. The term was popularized by writer Sean Monahan, and can be used to describe everything from fashion and online culture to political and social attitudes.