Mind Wanderings
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The Efficiency Commission
The morning Marcus Preel was appointed to eliminate government waste, he requisitioned a leather chair that cost eleven thousand dollars. He explained this to no one, because explaining things to people was itself a form of waste. Preel’s official title…
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Rill the Ant: A Journey into the Unknown
To the untrained observer, the ant looked like any other worker, but she carried a secret in her polished, armor-dark body. Her name, at least the name she used when speaking to herself, was Rill. Rill was a scout for…
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Moving Beyond Ideology in America’s Gun Debate
The deluge of outrage and horror about gun violence usually requires an incident as a spark. The ususal pattern ensues, a battle between those who would ban every firearm and those who would put a firearm in the hands of…
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The Few Things Worth Remembering
by Joe Broadmeadow Music does not ask permission. Four bars come out of a car radio or drift down from a supermarket ceiling, and suddenly you are somewhere else, some other year, standing in a room that no longer exists.…
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The Last Person You Meet Before You Die
by Joe Broadmeadow We spend a surprising amount of energy casting the final scene. We picture the deathbed the way the movies taught us to picture it: low light, a warm hand in ours, someone leaning close to catch whatever…
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The Weight of Unlocked Doors
Marta had been leaving the side door unlocked for eleven years before she realized no one was coming through it anymore. She noticed on a Tuesday in November, the kind of morning where the light never quite commits. She was…
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The Great Bazooka Reparations Scandal: A Case Study in Corporate Justice
By Joe Broadmeadow I spent twenty years investigating crimes, some petty, some serious, and I thought I had seen every conceivable way an institution could underestimate the intelligence of the public it serves. Then Bazooka Brands sent my grandson four…
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The Unbreakable Myth: Why Trump Could Confess on Live Television and Nothing Would Change
An opinion piece on the most resilient political phenomenon of our time Imagine, for a moment, the unthinkable. Donald J. Trump steps to a podium. No rally music. No cheering crowd. Just a single camera and the quiet hum of…
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The Big Lie, Revisited: Why Trump’s Election-Integrity Claims Still Don’t Hold Up
An Opinion Nearly five years after the 2020 presidential election, the contention that the race was “rigged” or “stolen” remains a fixture of American political discourse. Former President Donald Trump and his allies have advanced a constellation of claims—from dead…
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The Cartographer’s Debt
The woman who came to collect my daughter’s debt arrived with a map she claimed my daughter had drawn. I’d been awake since four, drinking bad coffee and watching the marina fog roll in off the bay. Sixty-two years old,…