Ecce Sigum

Immanentize the Empathy

Category: Life

Weekly Round-up, November 7, 2026

John Winkelman
Small hawk in a late autumn walnut tree.

Well that was certainly a week.

Statewide and nationally, Democrats beat Republicans in almost every race where there was even a remote chance of blue winning over red. And it was glorious. The bleating and mewling from the gleefully fascists Republicans began before the count even started, and only increased in volume as it became apparent that this would be an utter blowout.

I really want to write volumes about the ChristoPedoFascists who control this country, and what should be done to them, and what realistically can be done about them, but that would take more time than I have available in the next hour, day, week, or year. So this will have to suffice: Anyone who voted for any MAGA in any of the last twelve years should be named, branded, shamed, and never allowed to have friendship, comfort, peace, success, or love, for the rest of their days. MAGA is a white supremacist, Christian nationalist (but I repeat myself), child abusing (but I repeat myself), misogynist (but I repeat myself) death cult. They do not, have never had, and never will have, anything useful to contribute to society, except as compost and landfill material. And even that would need to be decontaminated of all of the Mar-A-Lago Face treatment materials.

The Democrats are a moderately to strongly conservative political party by any rational measure. They are not liberal, nor “left”, and certainly not RADICALLY left, no matter what the ChristoPedoFascists of the Republican party would have us believe. There may be individual party members who fir those descriptions, but they are, at best, outsiders, and none of them are part of the party power structure.

And the Democratic Socialists who find themselves currently in ascendance are barely left of center, by any rational measure. They will have their work cut out for them. They need to put in place a foundation from which the political window of this country moves back left enough that we can cull the ChristoPedoFascists and hypercapitalists (and their enablers, supporters, bootlicks, etc.) from the halls of power, once and for all. It will be a process of decades, at least.

The immediate problem is that the Trumpists have caused so much damage over the past 12 years that we are in the beginning stages of an unavoidable polycrisis which will crash down, full-force, in the next couple of years. Economic turbulence caused by the Iran war. The AI grift and its stranglehold on the global economy. The ongoing climate crisis. Trumpist brownshirts kidnapping and murdering people in the name of “security.” The war in Ukraine. These are issues which will take many years and decades to mitigate and respond to.

And humans have very short memories, and we are being gaslit by the technofeudal overlords.

The Democrats are facing a likely “Blue cliff” where, because the damage caused by the oligarchs of the Epstein Class can’t be fixed in a year or two, blame will shift away from the perpetrators and onto the people failing to work miracles.

Thus it is vitally important that we exhaustively document every single problem caused by the Epstein class oligarchs, collect the receipts, and use this proof to absolutely bury everyone who tries to shift blame onto anyone else.

And we also need to, culturally, destroy the idea that any members of any in-groups are victimized for being members of those in-groups.

Men are never oppressed, repressed, marginalized, or victimized, for being men.

White people are never oppressed, repressed, marginalized, or victimized, for being white.

Straight people are never oppressed, repressed, marginalized, or victimized, for being straight.

CIS people are never oppressed, repressed, marginalized, or victimized, for being CIS.

Conservatives are never oppressed, repressed, marginalized, or victimized, for being conservative.

Christians are never oppressed, repressed, marginalized, or victimized, for being Christians.

(These points are specific to the USA, but largely apply to the rest of the Eurocentric world, as well as any country colonized by a European power)

When it comes to ranking the relative privilege of belonging to one or another of these in-groups, as well as people who might be part of an in-group in one context, but part of an out-group in another (e.g. conservative women, gay men), there is a calculus of intersectionality which can quickly become complicated but which remains valid nonetheless. I will address this, as well as other considerations (such as the grid of supremacist vs. bootlick vs. ally vs. resistance) in future posts.

For now, let us all enjoy the slowing of the slide toward ethnonationalist christofascism. We are still heading in that direction, but the movement has lost a little steam. We have a lot of work to do to reverse that course.

Reading

Currently cooking my brain with Underground Empire: How America Weaponized the World Economy by Farrell and Newman, and Hayek’s Bastards: Race, Gold, IQ, and the Capitalism of the Far Right by Quinn Slobodian. And for my bedtime reading I just cracked open Nona the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir.

Writing

I have completed a draft of the poem I will submit to the Hello, Future! project. I have a week to clean it up, run it past beta readers, and send it off.

Weekly Writing Prompt

Subject: Apocalypse, Super Powers
Setting: Museum
Genre: Steampunk

Listening

Sun Ra, “Heliocentric,” from the 1965 album The Heliocentric Worlds of Sun Ra.

Interesting Links

Weekly Round-up, October 31, 2026

John Winkelman
A plastic skeleton in front of a brick wall and stone steps.

So I’ve been thinking recently about some of the implications of the ongoing LLM-ification of the world, and there are some interesting issues which may arise in the near future, if they have not already happened.

Currently, the unedited output from LLMs cannot be copyrighted. This is as it should be, considering the vast number of copyrighted works which were used to train the LLMs, without adequately compensating the original creators. Works which are derived from LLM output may be copyrighted if there is sufficient provable human input into the final product. [NOTE: review this situation in relations to copyright of derived vs. original works in traditional creative output.]

A recent consequence of the rapid adoption of LLM tools by various businesses is that insurance companies are using “AI Exclusion” clauses in their coverage contracts. This means that the insurance companies will not cover harm caused by the output of LLMs. This is a very good thing, as it will necessarily limit the amount of work which a company can shift to LLMs from their human employees.

But companies will not stop using LLMs in place of human workers. So it is more likely that companies will require humans to “sign off” on LLM-generated ideas and content, and present it as their own. Of course this will not improve the quality of the LLM output; it will just shift the blame when things go off the rails. The companies which do this will certainly add sub-clauses to their binding arbitration agreement to which employees must agree as a condition of employment.

To sum up: Corporations which are heavily invested in LLMs will soon be in need of Judas goats for signing off on the output of LLMs, and scapegoats for bearing the brunt of the inevitable blow-back. It’s nice work if you can get it.

Reading

I just reached the end of the beautiful The Essential Neruda, a bilingual edition published by City Lights. I will close out the month with the Fall 2026 issue of Peninsula Poets, a publication of the Poetry Society of Michigan. This month has been poetry-intensive, in a very good way.

Writing

As this post goes live, I am probably sitting on my porch with the cats, working on yet another draft for the Hello, Future! time capsule project. The organizers extended the deadline by two weeks, which means two more weeks of procrastination. Yay!

Tomorrow is the first day of That November Thing, the annual month of writing which our local writing group organized to take the place of National Novel Writing Month when the NaNoWriMo organization imploded a couple of years ago. I would be very surprised if I have, at the time this post goes live, decided what my project will be.

Weekly Writing Prompt

Subject: Apocalypse, Undead
Setting: Space
Genre: Folk Tale

Listening

“Do You Compute?” by Donnie Iris, from his 1983 album Fortune 410. Iris (born Dominic Ierace) died on Monday at the age of 83.

Interesting Links

Weekly Round-up, October 24, 2026

John Winkelman

My vacation is officially over. I will return to work on Monday. I spent some of my time off dealing with technical issues and tech support over an upcoming equipment upgrade, so I feel like I am maybe owed an extra day off. Unfortunately, The Man will probably not see it that way.

For the first time this year, I feel relaxed, refreshed, and restored. This was exactly the right time to take a vacation, and it was exactly the right length. I completed some of the tasks on my to-do list, volunteered for a couple of events, read a lot, wrote a lot, ate some really good food, and even escaped Grand Rapids for a couple of days.

As this post goes live, my partner and I are participating in the first Ashby Row Block Party. I am probably out on the street, talking to people, drinking a drink, and assisting Zyra as she cooks up a big pile of meat on a stick.

Reading

I am rounding out the month with The Essential Neruda, edited by Mark Eisner and published by City Lights books. This is a bilingual collection – Spanish on the left, the English translation on the right. My Spanish is quite limited so I am mostly sticking to the recto, though I occasionally wander through the verso and in doing so pick up a couple of new words. Or words I already knew in new contexts.

I feel like I am also picking up some Latin, which makes sense, considering Spanish. It’s also interesting to see the differences between the Latin-based words of Spanish, and the Germanic-based words of German. I imagine the translators used the Anglo-Saxon words on purpose in order to not too closely repeat the original text of the poem. Borges has written about the possibilities inherent in these choices.

Writing

I am still working on my poem for the Hello, Future! project. Yesterday I read all of the drafts I have written so far, then sat down and brainstormed for an hour, writing down words, fragments, thoughts, ideas, all in no particular order. I will probably repeat this exercise once more to find if this limited form of automatic writing points be to what the final version should be.

Weekly Writing Prompt

Subject: Economics, Artificial Intelligence
Setting: Labyrinth
Genre: Dystopian

Listening

Tears for Fears, “Famous Last Words,” from their 1989 album Seeds of Love. I picked this one from the comment in the review of Roland Orzabal’s book, below, which said that Tears for Fears once offered this song to Tom Waits. That would have been amazing!

Interesting Links

Weekly Round-up, October 17, 2026

John Winkelman

As this post goes live the last event of the Poetry Saves Lives festival is taking place at the 106 Gallery in downtown Grand Rapids, Michigan. I participated as a volunteer and also read at some of the open mic sessions.

At this point I am halfway through a two-week vacation, and though I am relaxing and recharging I seem to find more and more tasks, errands, and chores to fill my days. I understand from my older friends that this is what retirement looks like. If that is the case, it’s not so bad.

Reading

Since this was a week of poetry events, I have been reading poetry! I have The Confluence, the collection of Grand Rapids poets which I picked up at the launch event a few days ago. And also a collection of Neruda, and a new acquisition, Pain and Pleasure, from local poet Shayna “Akanka” Marie. That’s enough words to keep me occupied through the rest of my vacation time.

Writing

My writing has fallen off a little, due to the amount of time I have spent volunteering at the Poetry Saves Lives festival. But I have another week of vacation coming up with no specific commitments, and the days will be sunny and pleasant. Perfect for sitting on the porch with a pile of books and pens.

Weekly Writing Prompt

Subject: Environment, Empire
Setting: Battlefield
Genre: Dystopian

Listening

The theme to Near Dark, by Tangerine Dream.

Interesting Links

Weekly Round-up, October 10, 2026

John Winkelman
Fungus growing in the bark of a dying maple tree.

This past week was my first genuinely quiet, normal week since the beginning of January. I rolled off both of my work projects at the end of September and as of yet have not been assigned anything new. A week on the bench is not unusual in my profession or with my employer, but I have not had more than a couple of weeks without billable work since before the COVID era.

So I spent some time reviewing documents and running numbers and seeing what the future might look like if I am not given any new work and the company decides to relieve itself of my presence. Depending on the specifics of my exit I would be okay for between three and six months, and unemployment insurance could float me for maybe a few more months besides. I would rather stay employed where I am until I retire (assuming there is still a world into which to retire in five years) than be forced to search for either a new employer or a freelance gig.

Reading

In the past week I finished reading both Diane Seuss’s frank: sonnets and Damnation Alley by Roger Zelazny. Two books which on the surface are worlds apart, yet there was no real dissonance when reading them one right after another. Seuss writes close to the bone and her poems tore my brain down to the bare wood and wires in the best way possible. I regret not having read any of her work years ago.

Damnation Alley is far from Zelazny’s best work, but the quality of the writing is good, and occasionally outstanding. Given its post-apocalyptic setting and Zelazny’s poetic prose, Damnation Alley could be read as a distant descendant of Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian. Of course Zelazny wrote Damnation Alley almost two decades before McCarthy wrote Blood Meridian, but the prose in each is both beautiful and grotesque.

Writing

I have a total of ten drafts for the poem I want to submit to the “Hello, Future” time capsule project. Somewhere in the middle of all those drafts is the final version which will be read in 2076. Maybe. Hopefully.

Weekly Writing Prompt

Subject: Art, Apocalypse
Setting: Urban
Genre: Mystery

Listening

Del tha Funky Homosapien, “Mistadobalina,” from his 1991 album I Wish My Brother George Was Here. I heard this while Z and I enjoyed coffee and breakfast at Kaffeine Place, our neighborhood (and most excellent!) Korean restaurant.

Interesting Links

Weekly Round-up, October 3, 2026

John Winkelman
A small orange cat, sticking her head out of a patch of green undergrowth.

At long last, the fiscal year is over. And it takes with it the two projects which ate my life for nine months. Never again will I take on more than one project at a time in my current industry. The stress and loss of work/life balance is simply not worth the effort.

The picture at the top of this post is of Poe, peeking out from a patch of weeds which I have since torn out. That space will eventually house a pergola, over-engineered in order to be a stable support for heavy bags, hammocks, and other heavy-use outdoor paraphernalia.

Reading

I acquired several books of poetry last month and I am making my way through them now and enjoying every moment of the process. Right now I am reading G.F. Korreck’s The Pope’s Astronomer, newly published by the Grand River Poetry Collective. It is quite good.

Writing

As of this writing, I have drafts of nine poems for the Hello, Future project. The deadline was bumped to November so I have time to turn one of these drafts into something worth sending forward into the future. I will also likely write a few more poems as the mood and muse strike me.

Weekly Writing Prompt

Subject: Cyborgs, Language
Setting: Boardroom
Genre: Utopian

Listening

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, “The Waiting,” from their 1981 album Hard Promises. Petty died nine years ago yesterday. Nine. Years.

Interesting Links

Weekly Round-up, September 26, 2026

John Winkelman
Facing east down Wealthy Street at 6:00 am on September 19, 2026.

This week was much more quiet than the past thirty or so. I took some naps, then I took some more naps, then I slept a lot, and I took a sick day from work so I could take more naps.

I came out of each of the past three weekends more exhausted than I entered them, thanks to flight delays, weather, and assisting my partner with a couple of events. That made for some significant sleep deprivation, which finally caught up with me.

The image at the top of this post is from one of those events. This past Saturday, September 19, Zyra was a vendor at the Eastown Street Fair. We arrived just before 6:00 am, in heavy rain, to begin setting up. We had just finished putting up the tent and tables when one of the volunteers let us know that, due to incoming thunderstorms, the start of the fair would be delayed until 2:00 pm.

The assistance with these events involved a lot of loading things into my car, and then unloading them again a few miles away. I drive a Subaru Outback, so this is expected. The final unloading for Eastown took place just before midnight.

On Monday morning, which was the next time I started my car, I had a dead battery. My partner jumped it for me, and everything seemed to be fine. I drove to practice without difficulty, and restarted the car after it sat idle for a couple of hours.

On Tuesday, I called in sick so I could take more naps. This was well-timed, because that morning my battery was so dead I couldn’t even unlock my car using the key fob. I called my mechanic and told him, “dead battery, but maybe not.” He said to bring the car in, so that afternoon I had Z assist with another jump-start and drove the the service center. Then we drove home and I went to bed.

Wednesday morning, having no car, I left the house at 5:45 am and walked the mile and a half to From the Heart Yoga for our recently-restarted iron shirt chi kung class. The walk took exactly half an hour from door to door.

As I was walking along a stretch of road between streetlights, the city slowly waking around me, I saw something coming up the sidewalk toward me. Something big. I stepped into the street to avoid it, as this area of town is full of deer, wild turkeys, and all sorts of urban wildlife.

And also, as it turned out, dogs. This one was mastiff-sized, brindle colored, with a bright blue collar and a big dead raccoon in its mouth. It trotted past me and continued down the sidewalk head held high with pride, the raccoon carcass flopping dramatically.

A minute later a man walked past me on the sidewalk. Before I could say “Good morning!” he said, “Did you see a dog?”

“Big one?” I said. “Blue collar?”

“Yup.”

I pointed back up the street. “Back that way. Carrying a dead raccoon.”

The guy gestured in exasperation and looked to the heavens, and said “Thanks,” and continued on his way.

When I returned home I had a message from my mechanic. When I read it, all I could do was laugh.

While unloading my car around midnight on Saturday, I apparently bumped the toggle switch for my rear dome light from “door” to “on”. I barely knew I had a rear dome light, and I definitely didn’t know it had independent controls. The light is small and is almost impossible to see from outside the car due to tinted windows. Also, at night I park under a street light which illuminates the interior of the car. Thus the light had been on for two days, slowly draining my battery.

When I arrived at the service center I asked him “Is this the dumbest repair you’ve ever done?” He chuckled and said they see this issue a few times a year, and I was not even the first that year.

So thank you to Mike and the rest of the crew at Heritage Service Centre for being kind in the presence of idiocy.

That was enough excitement for the week.

I have three days left on my two projects at work. Then the new fiscal year begins, and who knows what that will bring. I have already reserved my vacation time for the rest of the calendar year, and plan to spend a lot of time catching up on things I didn’t have time to do in the first nine months of the year thanks to working 50+ hour weeks for months at a time.

Reading

In my down time I have been reading a lot. I finished Donella Meadows’ Thinking in Systems, then in quick succession finished two books of haiku, and Umberto Eco’s How to Travel With a Salmon, which was fun but light compared to e.g. The Name of the Rose. Now I am reading Lamont Arrington’s poetry collection My Heart Blues, which is beautiful.

Writing

I am still working on first drafts of poems to include in the “Hello, Future!” poetry time capsule project. The deadline might be pushed back a few weeks, which gives me more time to procrastinate.

Weekly Writing Prompt

Subject: Language, Death
Setting: Ocean
Genre: Fantasy

Listening

Siouxsie and the Banshees, “Kiss Them for Me,” from their 1991 album Superstition. “Kiss Them for Me” got a lot of play back in the early 1990s, just as I was finishing up college and working at the local Polish/Mexican fusion restaurant. I remember listening to the whole album a lot as I completed my capstone classes in Russian Studies and Liberal Studies back in 1992/1993.

Interesting Links

  • “Effective Altruism Is a Misnomer Just Ask Ezra Klein” (Nat Wilson Turner, Naked Capitalism) – Excellent explanation and take-down of effective altruism and EA bootlicks like Ezra Klein, with respect to “A.I.” and the “A.I.” companies who say they want to reign in “A.I.” development but who really plan to capture any regulation of the technology.

Weekly Round-up, September 19, 2026

John Winkelman
A spider on a sandstone slab

Well it was another crap week of work with my two crap projects lingering long past the time when they should have been out of my life. Ten days and counting. Then on to the next thing. Which will be only one thing, not two. Lesson learned.

Reading

I am nearly finished with Donella Meadows’ Thinking in Systems, which is rewiring my brain as have few books in recent memory. This is a book everyone should read, especially if they are in a position where they need to make any decisions at all which affect anyone, including themselves. I wish I had read this when it came out, 18 years ago.

Writing

For all its chaos and frustration, this was a pretty good week for writing. I put down a couple more drafts for poems for the time capsule project, and should have the best one completed by the deadline in two weeks. If not, well, I still have some new poems to play with.

Weekly Writing Prompt

Subject: Fae, Mutants
Setting: Library
Genre: Romance

Listening

Luna, “Season of the Witch,” from the soundtrack to I Shot Andy Warhol.

Interesting Links

Weekly Round-up, September 12, 2026

John Winkelman

As I noted in my previous post, last week was chaotic. Four days of travel turned into five days of travel capped by a 12-hour layover in Charlotte, which meant about 36 hours without sleep. Fortunately for me this coincided with the Labor Day weekend which meant an extra day of down-time, which was really a day of catching up on neglected chores and errands.

My partner, Zyra, has spent the past few months planning the Kultura Celebration 2026 here in Grand Rapids, at Fountain Street Church. As this post goes live the celebration will be entering its last hour, with the MexiCuba Duo providing live music, and the Journee leading a poetry workshop. Between food, dance, spoken word, panels, and music, I expect it will be a superb event.

Reading

My work projects are winding down which means I am only working 40 hours a week, which leaves me with a little reading time for the first time this year. Well, outside of three weeks of vacation back in July. So I’m reading.

I am slowly catching up on John Scalzi’s oeuvre, with The Kaiju Preservation Society while stuck in the Charlotte International Airport and Starter Villain while crashed out on the couch on Labor Day. Now I have a pile of new poetry books thanks to a book release event for the Grand River Poetry Collective this past Thursday – GF Korreck’s The Pope’s Astronomer, Lamont Arrington’s The My Heart Blues, and Japanese Garden by Nellie DeVries.

Writing

Recently I wrote down scraps and bits of a few poems which, if I apply myself, might end up in the time capsule project led by Grand Rapids Poet Laureate Christine Stephens Krieger. The prompt is “Hello, Future!” and the poem is meant to be read in 2076 when the time capsule is opened. What do you say to someone in 2076? I don’t even know anyone who lives there right now.

Weekly Writing Prompt

Subject: Revenge, Cyborgs
Setting: Subterranean
Genre: Folk Tale

Listening

The Soulbenders, “Hey Joe”. I knew the guitarist, Jeff Boughner, back in the 1990s and 2000s. We worked together at Schuler Books.

Interesting Links

Weekly Round-up, September 5, 2026

John Winkelman
The view from the plane window on leaving Orlando.

As I write this, the time is just after midnight on September 5. I am in Concourse D of the Charlotte International Airport in North Carolina.

I am on the way home from a three-day work training session in Orlando, Florida. My first flight was delayed two hours due to severe storms around Orlando, which meant I missed my connection. The next available flight back home is at 9:30 this morning, which means I will arrive in Grand Rapids at around 11:15 am.

This means, counting from when the first plane was first scheduled for takeoff, my trip home will take around 18 hours.

Back in 1994 I travelled to Russia as part of my degree. The flight from Grand Rapids to St. Petersburg was around 18 hours.

While at the conference one of my directors informed me that I would be rolled off of my current project at the end of the month, which is also the end of the fiscal year in the corporate world. This coincides with my secondary project coming to a close, also at the end of the month.

So I might take an extra few days off in October. And a couple of weeks on the bench would be nice.

Reading

For reading material during my trip I brought Donella Meadows’ Thinking in Systems, which is engaging and informative. Many of the concepts in the first part of the book are familiar to me, but put together in a way which unlocks possibilities and implications which are new to me. It was a good pairing.

For the flight home I downloaded and read Terry Pratchett’s Interesting Times, one of the few Discworld books which I had not yet read. Fun, funny, unexpectedly deep, and very much a good book to read when stranded in an airport.

[Update, 14:13] After I finished the Pratchett I immediately downloaded and read John Scalzi’s Kaiju Preservation Society. I finished it just before the plane touched down in Grand Rapids. Scalzi described it as “pop music,” which tracks, as it was fun and engaging and clever, but like most of his tunes (to belabor the metaphor), the lyrics are worth paying attention to.

Writing

Due to work stress and travel disruption, I have, for the first time in months, written nothing at all. Not even journal entries.

Weekly Writing Prompt

Subject: Addiction, Reincarnation
Setting: Subterranean
Genre: War

Listening

Brand X, “Nuclear Burn” from their 1976 album Unorthodox Behavior. That’s Phil Collins on the drums. Damn!

Interesting Links