Category: Old Man Yelling at the Sky

Apr 03 2026 2026-04-03 2026-04-03 by Ross

The Horse and the Library….

Posted in Old Man Yelling at the Sky

There’s a saying about a horse tied to a post. If you tie the horse there enough times, eventually you can untie the rope and just let it dangle. The horse still won’t walk away. It’s been conditioned. The rope doesn’t even need to be attached anymore.

I’m the horse.

A few years ago, the Chicago Public Library eliminated late fees. Don’t return a book? Nothing happens.

In the last few years, they’ve also done away with the security feature in books. No more demagnetizing the book, so you can walk out without setting off the alarm. They still have a security guard sitting by the door, but I’m not sure why.

Today I went to pick up two books I had on hold. I pulled them off the shelf and went to the self-checkout computer. I try to never go to the front desk because they are some of the most…uh…interesting people in the city. Most still wear masks, and I’m not sure how to put this nicely, but they’re all weird. Not quirky weird. Just weird. Like still wearing masks and smelling vaguely like cat food (or piss)

As I was checking out, it dawned on me that the rope wasn’t tied to the hitch.

Why was I bothering?

They don’t have security features on the books, and it doesn’t matter if I return them on time (or ever), so why didn’t I just take the books off the shelf and leave? Why “check” them out?

I know it might help the library keep tabs on the books, but they don’t care if I don’t return them, and they don’t care if I walk out without checking them out.  If they are going to treat it basically like Big Free Library, so bet it.  Take a book, leave a book.

 


Apr 02 2026 2026-04-02 2026-04-02 by Ross

The Wheelbarrow of Regret: A Tax Season Requiem…

Posted in Old Man Yelling at the Sky

Sigh. Costly mistakes were made.

We’ve officially hit that time of the season—the period where my blood pressure does a slow, steady climb in tandem with the blooming tulips. It’s tax time.

Back in my pre-30s “innocence,” I actually didn’t mind this month. I worked for government entities, clutched my W-2 like a security blanket, and usually walked away with a modest refund. I’ve never been a fan of giving the government an interest-free loan (I’m perfectly capable of burying my own money in the backyard, thanks), so I never aimed for those massive, celebratory checks. But it was clean. It was simple.

Then came the law practice years. I’m not sure I’ve seen a “refund” since Y2K (my own personal disaster!) Instead, my life became a revolving door of estimated taxes and the soul-crushing weight of self-employment tax.

I’ve often thought that if every American had to physically write a check for their taxes every quarter—instead of having it stealthily siphoned away before it even hits their bank account—our tax rates would plummet within a week. I’m looking at you, Beardsley Ruml. You and your pay-as-you-go withholding system have a lot to answer for.

These days, the wife and I are back in the government fold, which simplifies things on paper. However, our finances stayed… “complicated.” In the world of adulting, “complicated” usually means “you have some means,” which is a blessing. But it’s a blessing that comes with a very sharp, very hidden edge. [Don’t misunderstand, it’s a blessing.  I’d rather have this issue than not. This isn’t really about the money and more about me being slapped in the face by a poor decision]

My particular brand of stupidity this year? Choosing the wrong “means” to pay for my kids’ tuition.

Imagine two accounts. Account A is a friendly, tax-neutral pool of money. Account B is a literal tax landmine. A smarter person—or perhaps a person who wasn’t rushing—would have pulled from Account A. Instead, I reached into Account B, triggered the landmine, and now I’m staring down a tax bill that requires a wheelbarrow to deliver to the IRS. [for reference, take about 40% of the tuition for two kids at college…that’s about what I owe]

So, on the 15th, I’ll be writing two checks: one for the “Oops, I’m Ignorant” fund and one for the 2026 estimated taxes. It’s a double-tap to the bank account that has me beating myself up. I’m all for supporting the infrastructure of society, but it’s hard to feel like a “proud taxpayer” when you know a healthy chunk of your hard-earned cash is destined to be swallowed by inefficient bureaucracy or lost to fraud [or both!].

Theoretically, I’m trying to be Zen about it. I’ve learned a “valuable lesson” (the most expensive kind). I know exactly how to pivot so that next year the pain is reduced by 90%. I am a wiser, more seasoned financial traveler.

But honestly? Zen doesn’t pay the bill. Writing these checks still feels like a kick in the teeth. If you see me wandering around Chicago looking slightly dazed this week, just pat me on the shoulder and ask, “But did you die?”  

No.  Just money.  [cue the crying]


Mar 18 2026 2026-03-18 2026-03-15 by Ross

Comfort Creep and My 60th Lap…

Posted in Old Man Yelling at the Sky

In my last couple of posts about The Comfort Crisis by Michael Easter, I talked about prevalence-induced concept change—the idea that when problems become rare, we start redefining smaller and smaller things as problems.

Closely related to that idea is another one Easter talks about: comfort creep.

Comfort creep is simple.

Once we experience a certain level of comfort, it quietly becomes the new normal.

Then we start optimizing for even more comfort.

Not because we need it.
Just because it’s available.

Air conditioning becomes climate control.

Driving somewhere means driving to the closest possible parking spot.

Waiting two days for a package becomes an unbearable delay if it isn’t delivered tomorrow.

Comfort keeps creeping upward, and our tolerance for inconvenience creeps downward.

And before long, we find ourselves complaining about things that would have seemed like science fiction luxuries a few generations ago.

The Goal: Whine Less

One thing I’ve been thinking about as I approach another lap around the sun is this:

I’d like to complain less.

Not because there aren’t real problems in the world. There are.

But because I’m increasingly aware of how often I’m complaining about things that are really just minor inconveniences.

Slow internet.

A line somewhere.

A minor plan change.

None of these is actually a problem.

They’re just moments where my expectations of comfort were slightly interrupted.

That’s comfort creep talking.

Saturday Morning Reminder

I had a small reminder of this on Saturday.

A co-worker mentioned the day before that they were speaking on a panel about Veterans in the Arts at a local college. It sounded interesting, so I went.

And it was.

Not only was the panel interesting, but I also met a few people beforehand who had incredible stories—people who had served, people who had turned their experiences into music or writing or art, people doing genuinely fascinating things with their lives.

The whole evening made me realize something.

There are amazing things happening everywhere.

Talks.

Lectures.

Art shows.

Music.

Game communities.

Sports events.

Museums.

People doing creative, interesting, meaningful things.

And most of us miss them.

Not because we can’t find them.

Because we’re sitting on the couch looking at our phones.

Coincidentally, my best friend texted me he was on a party bus to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day in some small Wisconsin town.  He was doing it.  Out there, meeting people, having fun.  More of that!

The Doom Scroll Trap

The internet has an amazing ability to make the world seem terrible and boring at the same time.

Scroll through your feed, and it looks like the entire world consists of:

  • bots
  • partisan rage
  • people arguing
  • people selling something
  • people complaining about other people

That environment keeps us glued to our phones.

Which is convenient for a wide range of interests—advertisers, platforms, political operatives, and anyone who benefits from attention and outrage.

But while we’re staring at that little glowing rectangle, we’re missing something much more interesting:

the real world.

The one where people are building things, creating things, telling stories, and doing genuinely interesting work.

My “60th Lap” Plan

So one of my small goals as I head toward my 60th lap around the sun is this:

Be aware of comfort creep.

Recognize when I’m defining problems down..

And most importantly:

Spend more time doing things than scrolling about things.

This isn’t going to be a strict “less screen time” rule.

Instead, it’s going to be something more positive.

Go out and see things.

Attend things I know nothing about.

Random lectures.

Museum exhibits.

Local music.

Art scenes.

Game scenes.

Sports.

Panels.

Community events.

Whatever.

There’s an incredible amount of interesting stuff happening in the world.

It just requires one uncomfortable step:

leaving the house.

The Antidote to Comfort Creep

Comfort creep tells us to stay where things are easiest.

The couch is comfortable.

The phone is comfortable.

The algorithm serves up things we already agree with.

But the real antidote might be something simple:

Get out.

Go somewhere unfamiliar.

Talk to people.

Listen to someone’s story.

See something you didn’t expect.

Comfort might creep.

But curiosity can creep too.

And I’m hoping to let that one creep a little more this year.


Mar 18 2026 2026-03-18 2026-03-18 by Ross

Minor Peeve: The Lying Weather App…

Posted in Old Man Yelling at the Sky

Here’s something that annoys me way more than it should.

My weather app currently says:
High: 42
Low: 35

Cool. Got it.

Also my weather app:
Current temperature: 25

…excuse me?

So at some point, without notifying anyone, we decided to just… blow past the low? Like it was more of a suggestion? A vibe? A loose guideline?

And the best part—they don’t update it.

Not like:
“Hey, quick correction—turns out 35 was wildly optimistic. New low: 25. Our bad.”

Nope. They just leave it there.
Like I’m not looking directly at the number.

This happens all the time. More often than not, honestly. The forecast is basically that friend who says, “I’ll be there in 10 minutes,” and then shows up an hour later with Starbucks and no explanation.

I’m not asking for perfection. Weather is complicated. Science is hard. Clouds are sneaky.

But if the temperature is already LOWER than your predicted low… maybe… just maybe… update the low?

Otherwise, what are we even doing here?  Other than telling me, “hey, we got it wrong…again”


Mar 17 2026 2026-03-17 2026-03-15 by Ross

Less Is More, Even When It’s Hard…

Posted in Old Man Yelling at the Sky

In my last post, I talked about a concept from The Comfort Crisis by Michael Easter called prevalence-induced concept change—the idea that when problems become rare, we expand the definition of what counts as a problem.

The more I think about it, the more it connects to a theme I’ve been writing about here for a while: Less Is More.

At first glance that phrase sounds like minimalism. Fewer possessions. Less clutter. Maybe a clean desk and three shirts hanging in the closet.

But the idea Easter is getting at goes deeper than that.

It’s about removing some comfort on purpose.

The Problem With Perfect Comfort

Modern life is incredibly comfortable.

  • Climate-controlled homes
  • Food is available 24 hours a day
  • Entertainment instantly available
  • GPS so we never get lost
  • Online shopping, so we don’t even have to leave the couch

None of these things are bad. In fact, they’re amazing when you step back and think about them.

But there’s a strange side effect.

When life becomes frictionless, our tolerance for friction disappears.

Small inconveniences suddenly feel like real problems.

The internet is slow.

The coffee line is long.

The streaming service doesn’t have the show we want.

None of these would even register as issues to someone living a hundred years ago. But our brains recalibrate to the environment we live in.

And our environment has almost no hardship.

Humans Were Built for Some Hardness

Easter argues that humans evolved in environments that regularly included challenge:

  • physical exertion
  • hunger between meals
  • cold
  • uncertainty
  • boredom

Those weren’t occasional experiences. They were normal parts of life.

Today we’ve engineered most of them away.

Again, that’s mostly a good thing. I’m not advocating bringing back cholera or food shortages.

But when everything becomes comfortable all the time, we lose something important: contrast.

Without occasional discomfort, comfort itself stops feeling good.

Parenting and the Discomfort of Letting Go

This idea has been bouncing around in my head lately in a place I didn’t expect: parenting adult children.

When kids leave home, graduate from college, and start building their own lives, they run into all sorts of struggles.

Jobs don’t work out.

Friends drift away.

Money is tight.

Plans fall apart.

And as a parent, your instinct is to fix it. Remove the discomfort. Smooth the road.

I catch myself worrying about their struggles as if they’re something that went wrong.

But maybe they’re not.

Maybe that discomfort is the point.

Struggling through those early adult years—figuring things out, making mistakes, recovering from them—is exactly what builds the qualities we all hope our kids will have:

  • resilience
  • independence
  • self-confidence
  • the ability to handle life when things don’t go perfectly

If parents successfully remove every hardship, we may accidentally remove the very experiences that create capable adults.

Which is a hard thing to accept when the instinct is to protect.

Sometimes the best thing we can do is step back and let them handle their own discomfort.

The Less Is More Version of This

This is where my own “Less Is More” idea overlaps with Easter’s argument.

Sometimes adding more comfort doesn’t make life better.

Sometimes removing comfort does.

Examples from my own life:

Riding my bike for two hours in the cold doesn’t sound comfortable, but afterwards, a hot shower feels incredible.  Plus, I feel great for having completed the ride!

Spending a weekend camping without constant screens somehow makes ordinary life feel richer when you get back.

Even something as simple as being bored can lead to reading a book, going for a walk, or thinking about something new.

The hardship creates the appreciation.

The Strange Trick

What Easter suggests—and what really stuck with me—is intentionally adding small amounts of voluntary discomfort back into life.

Not suffering for suffering’s sake.

Just doing things that remind your brain what effort feels like.

Walking instead of driving.

Working out hard enough to be tired.

Going outside when it’s cold.

Leaving your phone behind sometimes.

None of these is dramatic.

But they reset the calibration.

Why This Matters

If prevalence-induced concept change means we redefine smaller and smaller inconveniences as problems, then the solution might be surprisingly simple:

Reintroduce a little difficulty.

Not because life needs to be miserable.

But because a little hardship restores perspective.

It reminds us that the things we complain about most of the time…aren’t actually problems.

And maybe it reminds parents of something else, too:

Sometimes the hard parts of life—the ones we want to protect our kids from—are exactly the parts that will make them strong enough to build a life of their own.  This is why I’m trying to get.


Mar 16 2026 2026-03-16 2026-03-15 by Ross

When Problems Disappear, We Redefine Them….

Posted in Old Man Yelling at the Sky

I’m reading The Comfort Crisis by Michael Easter and came across a concept that made me stop and stare at the wall for a minute.

It’s called prevalence-induced concept change, which is a fancy way of saying:

When problems become rare, we expand our definition of the problem so we keep seeing it.

Researchers ran an experiment in which participants had to identify threatening faces in a series of photos. At first, there were plenty of threats. Then the researchers quietly started removing them.

You’d expect people to say, “Hey, fewer threats!”

Nope.

Instead, participants started labeling normal faces as threatening.

Their definition of “threat” expanded.

Apparently, our brains really don’t like empty problem space. If the big problems disappear, we simply promote smaller ones.

And once you hear that idea, you start seeing it everywhere.

Parenting in the Age of Imaginary Dangers

One place it shows up is parenting.

If you’re roughly my age, your childhood probably included phrases like:

  • “Be home when the streetlights come on.”
  • “Don’t burn the house down.”
  • “If someone kidnaps you, I’m not paying the ransom.”

And then you rode your bike around the neighborhood for six hours with no adult supervision.

Today, parents are far more anxious about kids being outside alone, largely because of fears of kidnapping or “stranger danger.”

The thing is, statistically speaking, stranger abductions are incredibly rare. I remember reading somewhere that a child would need to stand on a street corner for something like hundreds of years before the odds of being kidnapped by a stranger caught up with them.

But because the truly serious dangers to kids—disease, violence, unsafe environments—have dropped dramatically over generations, we’ve become hyper-sensitive to extremely rare risks.

The definition of “danger” expands.

Now, a kid walking to the park alone feels like a crisis.

When Success Creates New Problems

The same phenomenon happens at the societal level.

When governments or institutions successfully reduce a problem, the incentives don’t always reward saying, “Great! We solved it.”

Instead, the definition of the problem often expands.

Take language shifts like:

  • Homeless → Unhoused
  • Hunger → Food insecurity

Originally, homelessness meant someone living on the street or in a car. Today, depending on the definition used, it can include someone temporarily staying with relatives or couch-surfing.

Hunger once meant literally not having enough food. Now “food insecurity” can include uncertainty about where the next meal might come from.

To be clear, those situations can still be real struggles.

But the broader the definition becomes, the bigger the problem appears, which conveniently keeps the attention, funding, and bureaucratic machinery running.

When a problem becomes less prevalent, the definition often expands to fill the gap.

The Comfort Crisis Part

This ties directly into Easter’s larger argument.

Modern life has removed many of the hardships humans evolved to deal with:

  • hunger
  • cold
  • physical danger
  • boredom
  • uncertainty

Our ancestors regularly dealt with real adversity.

We deal with Wi-Fi outages and slow lines at Starbucks.

But our brains still evolved to scan for problems. When the big ones disappear, we simply recalibrate.

A minor inconvenience becomes a serious grievance.

A rare risk becomes a looming danger.

A solved problem becomes a newly defined crisis.

The Takeaway

The lesson here isn’t that problems aren’t real.

It’s that our perception of them is relative.

When life gets better, we don’t necessarily feel better. We often just move the goalposts for what counts as bad.

Understanding that might help us do something radical in modern life:

Pause.

Look around.

And admit that things might actually be…pretty good.


Mar 10 2026 2026-03-10 2026-03-10 by Ross

My Very Specific Definition of “Free Time”…

Posted in Old Man Yelling at the Sky, Sharpen the Saw

Here’s one of my problems. And, woo boy, do I have a lot of them.

I have an extremely narrow definition of free time.

In my mind, free time means sitting on a couch. Preferably with a book. Possibly watching a Korean TV show. Maybe staring into space while holding a remote I’m not even using. The key requirement is that I am stationary and no one expects anything from me.

Anything else?

That’s an imposition.

Now, obviously, some things are not free time. Grocery shopping. Running errands. Household chores. Fixing things around the house. These are clearly classified as Life Responsibilities That Are Actively Stealing My Couch Hours.

But here’s my real problem: I also count things that normal people consider leisure as not free time.

Take Friday night.

My wife and I went to a Blackhawks game. We stayed the entire game. We had arena food. We watched the Hawks… play hockey. I won’t go so far as to say they played well or bravely, but technically they were on the ice.

Now, by any objective standard, this should qualify as free time.

You’re not working.
You’re not doing chores.
You’re watching your favorite sport
With your favorite person
You’re eating stadium food that was included in the price (so it sort of feels free)

And yet my brain still thought:

“Great. There goes my Friday night.”

Saturday morning wasn’t much better.

I got up and went for a two-hour bike ride. Fresh air, exercise, beautiful morning. The kind of thing people with life coaches and wellness podcasts talk about as the foundation of a healthy lifestyle.

Then I got a massage, my first in three years.

A reasonable person might think:
Wow, what a fantastic morning.

My brain thought:
“Well… that whole morning is gone now.”

Next up was Costco, which I will allow counts as a chore. Costco is less a store and more of a survival event where you push a cart the size of a canoe through crowds of people hoarding industrial quantities of mayonnaise.

After that I stopped at Chick-fil-A, which definitely does not qualify as a chore unless you consider waffle fries a burden.

Then I picked up my son at the airport. This technically falls under Responsible Parent Duties™, although it also I got to enjoy the 40-minute ride home with him.

My focus, however, was not on that.

My focus was on traffic.

And the growing realization that my entire afternoon had somehow vanished.

This is the pattern.

Unless I am sitting on a couch at home, doing absolutely nothing, I somehow feel like my time has been stolen from me.

Bike ride? Time gone.
Massage? Time gone.
Hockey game with my wife? Time gone.
Picking up my kid from the airport? Time gone.

I don’t like this about myself.

It’s no way to live.

I’m doing things people actively plan vacations around—sporting events, outdoor exercise, family time—and instead of enjoying them I’m mentally calculating how many couch minutes I’ve lost.

That’s a terrible way to measure a life.

So I’m trying to work on it. I need to get my brain to treat all of those activities as the good things they are.

Free time isn’t just the hours spent horizontal on a couch.

Free time is any time you’re not working, not doing chores, and lucky enough to be with people you actually like.

Of course, if we’re being completely honest…

The couch still makes a very strong argument.


Mar 06 2026 2026-03-06 2026-03-06 by Ross

The Only Way to Win is Not to Play…

Posted in Old Man Yelling at the Sky
I was listening to a podcast today about a guy who figured out how to hack the Spotify system. His scheme was simple in concept: create a massive library of AI-generated music and then run a program that streams it over and over so he collects the royalties. (Darknet Diaries. Melody Fraud)

I’m only partway through the episode, but the story had already gone in a direction that made my head hurt.

Before he even got to the Spotify part, he was explaining how his company used to “hack” social media platforms for clients. Their job wasn’t security hacking—it was attention hacking. They figured out ways to manipulate the systems that decide what goes viral, what gets likes, and what gets pushed into people’s feeds.

One example stuck with me. They would hide “like” or “follow” buttons inside image carousels. You’d click on a picture, thinking you were just flipping to the next photo. Instead, the click secretly followed some random page they were promoting on Facebook, or triggered a YouTube video playing in the background to inflate the view count. Then, when you clicked again, the image would finally change as you expected.

You never even knew you’d been used.

And that’s just one trick.

On top of that, there are the algorithms that decide who goes viral on YouTube, X, Instagram, and TikTok—systems that can be manipulated by companies, influencers, or even the platforms themselves.

Then layer in the bots.

Bots generating engagement.

Bots amplifying outrage.

Bots pushing political agendas.

Bots pretending to be real people arguing with each other.

Add in PR firms, marketing agencies, and even governments that deliberately stir controversy because outrage spreads faster than truth. At some point you start wondering: how much of what I’m seeing online is even real?

I see it happening to blogs I used to enjoy. Sites that used to be thoughtful have slowly turned into clickbait factories. Rage bait. Headlines designed to make you angry enough to click. They don’t care if they leave the internet a little worse than they found it. They just want the traffic.

And honestly, I’m tired of playing in that ecosystem.

So I’m opting out. No bots. No shady tricks designed to make me follow something I didn’t choose. No manipulated “viral” moments. No algorithm pushing outrage into my day.

There’s a line from the movie WarGames where the computer finally realizes something about nuclear war strategy.

“The only winning move is not to play.”

That’s kind of where I am with most social media. I’m just not playing anymore.

One of the nice things about running my own blog is that there’s no algorithm deciding what you see. No bots trying to game the system. No engagement tricks.

It’s just words on a page.

If you happen to stop by and read them, great.

If not, that’s fine too.

At least it’s real.

(While some might claim this is novel and we live in some particularly shitty information era, I could’ve used “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore” from the movie Network back from 1976.  I think this is just a continued slide, but not fundamentally different)

 


Mar 05 2026 2026-03-05 2026-03-05 by Ross

If You Can’t Find the Light, Be the Light…

Posted in Old Man Yelling at the Sky

The other week I joined a new (to me) social network just to see what it was about. I heard about it on a podcast and figured I’d poke around for a bit.

The network is called the Fediverse. If you’ve never heard of it, the easiest way to think about it is this: instead of one big company running a social media site (like Facebook, Instagram, or X), the Fediverse is made up of thousands of independently run servers that all talk to each other. Each server has its own community, rules, and vibe, but users can still interact across servers. It’s decentralized social media. Think email, but for social networks.

In theory, it sounds great. No single company controlling everything. Communities are built around interests. A chance to escape the worst parts of the big platforms.

So I joined a server hosted by the podcast hosts.

I’ll admit, at first I didn’t really know how to use it. The interface felt a little like Twitter from ten years ago, and the culture seemed… intense.

What I found in the beginning was more of the same thing you find almost everywhere online: endless political rants and hot takes. Usually from one side of the aisle. And it ranged from far that side to farther that side to farthest that side.

That was disappointing.

But I kept experimenting and eventually learned how to mute hashtags and follow only the things I wanted. Once I did that, my feed improved dramatically. Suddenly, it was posts about hobbies, music, random observations, and people sharing things they enjoyed.

In other words, the internet I actually want.

Ironically, though, it wasn’t something on the Fediverse that made me rethink it. It was an Instagram post.

I wish I had saved it because I can’t find it now, but the basic message stuck with me. The post talked about how easy it is to look around and see all the darkness in the world. The bad news. The anger. The constant outrage.

And let’s be honest, that’s what a lot of social media has become. A place to wallow in whatever the worst thing happening today might be.

But the post ended with something simple:

Look for the light. Look for the good things.

And then the line that stuck with me:

If you can’t find the light, be the light.

Yes, I realize there are some pretty strong religious undertones there, and I’m 100% fine with that.

That quote actually prompted me to clean up my Fediverse feed. I muted political hashtags and followed good-news type tags. Travel. Music. Hobby stuff. People posting interesting or funny things.

But when I mentioned I wanted to keep my feed mostly non-political, the responses rolled in.

Apparently, I was “living in a bubble.”
Apparently, I needed to be political everywhere because of tyranny.
Apparently, choosing not to engage in constant online political debate was some kind of civic failure.

I get my news from plenty of places. I read across the spectrum. I stay informed.

What I don’t need is political commentary on every single website I visit.

Eventually,I just decided it wasn’t worth the hassle. I deleted the account. To be fair, I probably could have stayed and curated it better. But the moment had already done its work on me.

Because I realized something.

I already have a place on the internet that I control.

This blog.

The other nice thing about a personal blog is that there’s no algorithm. No company is trying to feed me outrage because outrage keeps people scrolling. No system boosts the most extreme voices because they generate engagement. What you see here is simply what I choose to write and what you choose to read.

No trending topics.
No rage bait.
No “you might also like this argument.”

Just a quiet corner of the internet.

Now, I know I complain here sometimes. I whine about getting older. I write pity-party posts. I talk about injuries, triathlon training mistakes, random annoyances, and occasionally yell at clouds.

That’s not going to completely disappear.

But I’d like this space to lean toward something else.

I’d like it to be a small corner of the internet that’s a little lighter.

Not fake positivity. Not pretending the world is perfect.

Just a place that occasionally highlights the good stuff. Music. Funny complaints. Triathlon adventures. Random observations about life. Maybe the occasional success story.

In other words, my attempt to be the light, even if it’s just a small flashlight in a very large internet.

And if nothing else, at least it will be a place where the comment section doesn’t turn into a debate about the fall of civilization every time someone mentions a bicycle ride.

Which already makes it better than most of the internet.


Feb 20 2026 2026-02-20 2026-02-20 by Ross

First! ….

Posted in Old Man Yelling at the Sky

We have been getting so many political ads in the mail, but one of them caught my eye.  It’s for a judicial election, and the candidate prominently notes “NAME OF CANDIDATE WOULD BE THE FIRST ASIAN AMERICAN FEMALE JUDGE ELECTED BY THE 20TH SUBCIRCUIT.”

You can probably already guess that she obviously wouldn’t be the first female elected.  You can probably also guess that she wouldn’t be the first Asian-American woman elected in Cook County. (not even close)

But what you probably don’t know is that the 20th Subcircuit was only created in 2022.  There has only been one election for that area, and two judges (one man, one woman) were elected.  There is no glass ceiling she’s breaking through.  No great history of discrimination that will end with her election.

Everyone has to be “the first….”  That’s meaningful when it means something, not when it’s trivialized to woo voters who don’t know the history.