Bryan King

Some light house-keeping: I've started a new blog, and backfilled it with some posts from 2023 that are also archived on Substack. I will spare us all from the poetics about new blogs and just start writing.

God Judging Adam by William Blake, c. 1795

The phrase necessary evil gets thrown around a lot, usually referring to subjects that must be either. When in doubt, we could certainly go without. And dualism tells us that the bad contains the good, while the good contains the bad.

Instead, a necessary evil should be reframed as a coordination cost, where we are aware of the tradeoffs we're making in attempt to avoid a certain outcome. Typically, those outcomes are things like war, poverty, starvation...death, in other words.

To avoid them, humans have stumbled upon unique ways of coordination: churches and states and corporations that steer groups of people into more advantageous situations. The three bodies are the pillars of our world, and they often wage silent wars on the others in pursuit of supremacy.

There are two main tools they use: bureacracy and propaganda.

Bureaucracy helps a system maintain itself, ensuring that change happens at just the right pace. Within it, there is a hieracrchy, both implicit and explicit, that is representative of the competency of the system. Sometimes competency is raw ability to perform a task, but often the most competent person is the one who most effectively wields influence. Few understand that persuasion is the most important skill when it comes to coordination, and a lot of suffering follows.

Propaganda is the system imposing it's narrative on the surrounding ecosystem, including within the system itself. There is an inner game, where the system must tell stories to maintain the bureaucracy. Then there is an outer game, where the system tells stories in attempt to shape the ecosystem to it's advantage. Again, the ability to persuade is the chief skill. But people know this, intuitively, and it gives them the ick, so a lot of suffering follows.

So, in order to avoid suffering (the death kind, not the moralistic agonizing kind) humans work diligently on their superstructures and the stories they tell about them. Quite often, our pursuits bring us even more suffering than if we'd just accepted our fate. We could've remained in the garden, but we didn't. This is perhaps the greatest evidence for free will.

More people than ever understand human machinery. The breakdown isn't clear to me, but within this group there are some who are disgusted by the machine's capacity to inflict suffering. And then there are others who see it for what it is, without moral struggle, but are prevented from action by fear: either because they fear failure or because they fear becoming someone of disgust.

I think there's a two step method out of that fear:

1. You must believe in your vision for the future
2. You must be willing to use the machine to realize that vision.

That means you have to be a romantic. It's not enough to complain about big things. Nitpicking is a necessity, and along with it you must dream up something better. And you've got to learn to wield bureacracy and propaganda for your own benefit. That doesn't mean you must create your own, but at a minimum you must leverage it to do your bidding.

Failing to do so is nihilism. But if you can pull yourself together and power through the trough of despair, you might just have what it takes to make your little slice of earth heaven.

At least, that's all I can hope for myself.

The frontispiece to America a Prophecy by William Blake, c. 1793

America is a country of refugees. It's people fancy themselves freedom fighters, but we are all descendants of people who chose to run instead of fight. We're told that there's a culture war going on. But how can that be, when we never had any heritage to begin with?

In the last century or two, our culture has successfully drowned out all the others. Around the world, once rich traditions have become shells of their former selves. Most people attribute this to various boogeymen, like capitalism and the neo-liberal order. Technocracy provides such immense comfort that tribal ties are meaningless. They say there is no alternative, so you might as well play along: our only virtue is Progress.

But I don't buy that. Somewhere along the way people stopped believing in tradition, or at least allowed themselves to forget enough to make space for change. Whether it be mismanagement of the church or the excessive regulation by the state, people began to turn away from each other when faced with their own cultural struggles. Instead, they put their faith in the vagaries of freedom and the wild idea of a better tomorrow.

One of my favorite reads is Stefan Zweig's World of Yesterday, which chronicles the rich cultural world of Europe leading up to the first world war, and then the demise of it in the interwar years. Zweig was among the time's most renowned writers, and is one of the biggest fans of the European project. Still, during the second world war, he fled the place he loved so much, knowing he was unlikely to return.

Casablanca is one of my favorite films (cliche, I know). It only just occured to me that the people coming through Rick's Cafe are just like Zweig. They the enjoyed decades of decadence that their heritage enabled. But when faced with the slightest of conflicts, they ran for safety instead of fighting for their people. I'm sure some people thought the war would blow over and they'd return. I doubt many did.

But Casablanca is a great story because it is about resistance. The protagonists may have allowed the demise of their culture, but faced with tyranny, they chose to fight back. Rick presents a facade of neutrality, but from the beginning of the film we see his belief in good over evil. Even the chief of police in the city, as cooperative as he was with evil, made the conscious choice to side with good.

Ultimately, it was the Americans who came in to clean up the mess during the war. Yet it wasn't the culture they were fighting for. It wasn't even about freedom (none of our wars ever are). No, the technocracy must always put down rising factions. That is why things are tense with China, but we are content to merely provide aid to Ukraine's war against Russia. Xi wants to become the next chief technocrat while Vlad (for better or worse) merely wants to restore his ancestral tradition.

Of course, history never repeats itself. If America falls off the throne, it will not be from war but from atrophy. Like our ancestors, we will cease to believe in our beloved virtues. Progress may not have been a good foundational value, but it got us pretty far nonetheless. It brought us tremendous wealth and a brief period of cultural greatness (post-war to the 70s), followed by an extraordinarily decadent period where people benefitted from the culture without reinforcing it themselves.

In that respect, we look a lot like the Europe of a century ago. But this time, it is our people who suffer the loss, and I fear we have no place to retreat. There is no New America to find refuge. The irony is that there is no enemy: neither foreign nor domestic.

Nobody poses a real threat to conservative culture, and the conservatives are frankly too lazy to do anything but bitch about liberal culture. In reality, I don't think either side has a culture that's worth a damn anyhow. They are whining about stuck culture when we barely had any culture to begin with. All we know is that we love the freedom. We don't even know why we love it, because even though we have the rights we don't use them. I guess it's just in the water.

So, who's with me? It's time we stop acting like refugees and build a place worth a damn or two.

The Matrix was supposed to be a mindfuck, or so I was told. I watched the first movie for the first time yesterday, and the second one just now. I've been wrestling with a lot of themes I presumed the movies explore. Here are some thoughts:

1. the red pill, as a symbol, is the only philosophical export. I was expecting some grand Marxist critique, but I'm not even sure words like capitalism were uttered at all. Which, I guess was a good thing. In fact, most of the movie didn't feel like it had social undertones at all. It was more about Neo's coming to terms with the concept of choice.
2. I'm glad the movie didn't veer too far into sophomoric philosophy major territory, airing vague grievances with forces outside of the individual's control. At the same time, I wish that they would've gone deeper into Neo, and all the other characters for that matter. They all had this sort of aloofness that made it hard to read. Maybe that's the point. I guess living underground makes man numb.
3. Other than one Redditor, I seem to be the only person alive that thinks the entire thing was Thomas Anderson's dream. Actually, now that I think of it, if that's the case, then Christopher Nolan probably had the same thing in mind when he made Inception.
4. They did just enough world-building. Actually, they probably could've done a litte more. I'd love to see the origin story. What was the world like as people were creating the machines that would go on to make the matrix? How in the hell did they block out the sun and dig to the Earth's core? Do all humans outside Zion live in those vats? I have so many questions.
5. You can tell the Wachowskis had fun making this movie. By my estimates at least a third of the run time prominently features defiance of physics. Today, we take this for granted, but in '99 this was cutting edge. Even the style of the film felt familiar because action movies for the next decade copied it.
6. In Reloaded, the second movie, I was again looking for deeper exploration of the characters and more answers about this unique setting. Instead, I got over an hour of kung-fu fighting.
7. Neo seems sort of dead for a guy that's supposed to be super man. Even his steamy sex scene with Trinity felt like he was some sort of android instead of a human.
8. There's also a whole political drama unfolding around the plot that is given screen time, but never really advanced the plot. Maybe this manifests in the third film, but I won't hold my breath.
9. The Merovingian was slightly annoying but he was the true chaos character the film needs. Mr. Smith definitely ain't it, and while I get that the bland, faceless thing is the evil of the matrix, the lack of compelling bad guy takes the story down a notch.
10. There was also the part where his wife pulled the power move to get a kiss from Neo and I thought for sure it was going to drive a wedge between him and Trinity but it never came up. Not even juicy inner chaos with Neo here.
11. When Neo met the architect, more questions, which I don't expect to get answers to. I feel like the sequencing around this scene made it feel very rushed. The man was deciding the fate of humanity and it felt rushed because we already knew that Trinity was in trouble and that Neo was set on trying to save her.
12. The final scene where "real world" Neo uses his gifts which were only available in the Matrix lends itself well to my theory that the whole thing is a dream I refuse to believe that this divide was judiciously constructed only to be leaky.

It's 10:17. Should I dare to watch number three before bed?

There's been a lot of talk lately about sloppy football. Tom Brady said it earlier in the season, and in the wildcard playoff round I heard an announcer say the same again. Across the board, from players to coaches to referees, the lack of fundamentals is pretty obvious. You see a lot of guys missing tackles and calling dumb plays and missing blatant rules violations. Football isn't what it once was, and I think that the NFL and collegiate conferences are pleased about that.

Football has always been a spectacle: twenty-two hulking men bashing heads like American gladiators. But in the last decade or so, the game has transcended the field. No longer are there just two sports networks and a few journalists in a few dozen national markets. The internet allows everyone to be a Monday morning quarterback, and above all else, the MMQB's chief trait is outrage.

A few generations of sports fans, raised watching Pardon the Interruption and Around the Horn, now have the means to broadcast their own opinions. Not only that, but they can get on Twitter and spat with the heels of sports media. The leagues are not only well aware of it, but they also celebrate the kayfabe. Above all else, the NFL loves drama. All press is good press, so whenever controversy arises, business is booming.

I just watched the AFC championship game between the Chiefs and the Bengals. Setting aside the fact that I live in Cincinnati and have grown to be a fan, I also pride myself on being a fan of football, the game, above all else. I want to see good, clean football. All drama comes from the competitors themselves.

There were a number of questionable calls in the fourth quarter, along with a totally bizarre sequence that gave the Chiefs two shots at third down. Not too long before that happened, I tweeted that I would not complain about poor officiating, but that there is certainly too much officiating these days. The referees have become stars in their own right, so much so that the TV networks all staff rules analysts to comment on the zebras' performances.

Some time, probably about 15 years ago, instant replay really took off. The cameras  and video transmission tech got good enough that they became tools to review plays during the game. For a while, coaches were permitted a pair of appeals, which triggered the process. After a while, the leagues began instituting automatic review procedures, meant to verify scoring plays and other key moments.

That's led to a lot of sloppy officiating. This was pretty clear in the college football playoff, where officials would let play continue, just in case. It's an innocent until proven guilty strategy, requiring play to be constantly interrupted so that New York can give their take. No longer are games played out between two cities, the commisioner's office must mediate games in their entirety.

The league loves that people hate it, just like the heels in pro wrestling. Millions of people, within and outside Cincinnati, are pissed about the role the refs played this evening. Everyone feels like we didn't get to see a fair matchup, that there was something else that got in the way of true competition. And I have to say: I agree.

It feels to me that the sport I love so much, the sport that has given me so much, has lost it's purity. And those aren't just my rose colored glasses. The game has been professionalized for quite some time, but even as a kid it seemed to have a certain rag-tag charm that's gone now.

Football is no longer a game. It's now a commodity; just another product of show-business.

The Lovers by René Magritte, c. 1928

I slid the book out from the shelf. In it was a slip of faint chartreuse paper that read Book Corner -  Bloomington, Indiana at the top. It's common to see all shades of yellowing on old receipts, but never before had I seen hues of green on thermal paper. Surely, in another eleven years, the remaining ink will be gone and the hues more vibrant.

What would a sophomore at Louisville had been doing on campus in the hoosier state? It probably had something to do with music, but there's proof that she also bought a copy of Raymond Carver's short story collection, Where I'm Calling From. That receipt, our evidence, was used to mark the start one of Carver's most famous stories: What We Talk About When We Talk About Love.

She told me that story struck her...that at nineteen years old it informed the way she thought about love. Raised in suburban Cincinnati by a pair of school teachers, she was a bright student, a gifted musician, and the recipient of a full ride scholarship. In short, she was the kind of girl who hadn't given much thought to romance before she entered the great big world. I'm sure you know the type.

Over the next few years she'd live as most college students do: study music education and work odd jobs and meet guys. Eventually, graduation came and a real job came and she started thinking about settling down. The very idea of settling down unsettled her. She leaned on a lot of feminist literature to cope. I'm sure you know the type.

A few more years pass. She's living with a boyfriend who was still working odd jobs whenever he wasn't getting stoned and playing games with his buddies. He relied on her to pay most of the bills and wasn't the charming boy of years ago. She didn't appeciate being unappreciated, so she took a job back home. I'm sure you know the type.

We'd been dating for a month or so when she showed up at my house with this book. At that point, I was coming up on the one year anniversary of divorce. So I was coming at love from a very different perspective, and she knew it: When We Talk About Love was my shit test.

Carver's story is not quite to my taste, but literally tackles the question posed in the title. Two married couples, getting around getting drunk on gin, get going on the topic of love. The narrator and his wife are bystanders, representing calm and light love. We don't hear anything about them. The other couple represent frantic love: the woman (Terri) having dealt with an ex that offed himself in the name of love and the man (Mel) a strained first marriage.

The plot thickens when Mel offers a nihilistic view of love: we have all loved before and when love is lost, we find it again elsewhere. All previous love is lucky if it becomes a memory. Mel knows it's cynical, and asks to be corrected. His wife is upset, but his point stands. Later, he says he wishes his wife would die, a sign that his past has stained itself on his memory.

You can tell a lot about someone when you hear them talk about love. Their past run-ins are especially enlightening. One cannot express a drop of resentment, even under the worst relationship disintegrations. But you can't go too far the other way. Having fond recollections of old flames doesn't sit well with new suitors.

I failed that shit test, not because I was bitter, but because I was grateful.

When I was in college, a creep of a co-worker told me about the three month rule: after a few months of dating pass, there is a go or no-go choice. Even if things are fine, if there's any doubt, you should pull the plug after three months. No need to waste anyone's time if you don't think the relationship has legs.

Although I'd confessed to my previous marriage on the second date, the topic wasn't breeched until the three month mark. That was a month or so after I'd read Carver, but at the time I'd forgotten about the ticking time bomb and never realized the book was a test. So, of course when serious conversation about my past came up, I did not give the answers she was looking for.

I am reserved, without a big network of people and vibrant social life. So when I get to know people, and let them know me, I love. That means I'm the guy who tells his friends he loves them, who would probably tell the familiar barista he loved them too if that were socially acceptable. I have tried to learn to hate to help me cope with the world, but I don't have that in me.

So, when pressed about my past, that probably came through. I have loved before, and I honor and cherish that love. Expressing any manner of indifference wouldn't be possible. Ms. Ohio didn't like that. She'd recently made her way back to god by way of one Jordan B. Peterson (you know the type). The entire concept of divorce is something she'd struggled with, just like any good Christian.

The last time I saw her we had a very awkward conversation at a community table inside a warehouse brewery. She drove me home and the tension continued. I never saw her again. She spent the next ten days chaperoning a trip at Disney World. And for nine of them, she was trying to decide: go or no go? For reasons I don't understand, she let that kill her mood for more than a week at the happiest place on the planet.

What We Talk About When We Talk About Love is still on my bookshelf, marked with that pale chartreuse receipt, the only keepsake from that ninety day free trial.

I was never bothered by the way that relationship ended. If anything, my lack of concern is more worrysome, given my sentimental nature. But in the years since, I have come to see the signs and symbols at play.

As the great Ricky Bobby once said, if you're not first, you're last. The Carver story brings up memories, but frames them as things to be forgotten. What do we do when we not only can't forget, but have vivid recollection of past love? What do you do when some other person is engrained in the lore of your partner? When the other's name comes up in storytime at family gatherings, where an uncle calls you by the wrong name?

We do not answer these questions. It is our natural inclination to repress them, the other becomes the one who shall not be named. But it just becomes baggage to tote through life, from apartment to apartment, from the garage to the attic, hoping that they stay zipped away in storage for good.

I just watched the final episode of The Last Kingdom. A couple years back, I stumbled upon the show and watched the first five seasons in about a week. Sometime in the last year or so, the final season was released, but as I don't watch much TV these days, it slipped through the cracks. I remembered it a few days ago and finished what I started.

The premise of the show revolves around the 11th century Saxon peoples aiming to unite all the kingdoms into England. Along with a game of thrones, they struggle taming the barbaric Danes throughout the realm. There is a great warrior, born a Christian but raised a Dane, who fights to do the most Right he can to achieve harmony amongst the two ways of life.

To me, there are a few themes that stuck out, some obvious in the first watching and others only now. I think my spotting of these things was heavily influenced by my own status while viewing.

Earlier, the tension between a savage way of life and a proto-modern way stood out. The Saxons, along with their undying belief in one true god, benefitted from great scholarship. Priests and chroniclers play a big role, interpreting the history of the world and formulating grand visions for their own storybooks. They'd also developed military technologies that helped them fight off the unorganized Danes.

The Last Kingdom, without saying it aloud, demonstrates the power of certainty. The Saxons created a sophisticated order which could anticipate and respond to chaos. They always had the Danes on their heals, so much so that the savages would foresake their many gods and swear to both the king and the Christian god. This is a story about will against destiny.

And that's what is so striking now. All but a single woman believes in fate; in one true path for everyone. The Kings believe that it is their destiny to build god's empire. Their lackeys and soldiers believe in the divinity of the king. And of course, the clergy surrounding all of this believe in embodying the word of god.

The main character and his Danish pals also believe in the sway of their own gods. They are merely carrying out the destiny of their ancestors who set out to settle on fertile lands. And their witches are a gateway to the gods, who will surely steer them the right way.

Throughout the show, and especially the final season, Utred, the Saxon-Dane warrior of a main character, struggles with his destiny. It is only when he runs into his long warrior-nun friend that he realizes he has free will. Her name was Hild, and in a cast of great characters, she was quiet and understated, but left a mark on me.

I think it's because she was both a woman of god, but had also fought and killed. She understood that faith must be protected; that if you believe in something you will eventually have to fight for it. Her message to Utred was: you have been on this path, and while you may have a fated future, you can't be sure if that time is now. You can only exert agency and believe that you're capable of fulfilling your dreams.

The Circus is in Town by Edith Cockcroft, c. 1912

Welcome to America, Earth's official Home of Innovation. Beware, though, not too innovate too much. If you not only solve a problem but solve it ten times better, you will, in the eyes of the State and Public, have no competition.

Lately I've defended two companies accused of being monopolies: Pantone and Ticketmaster (technically Live Nation Entertainment, after a merger). Pantone has long served as a precise color management system that sits between designers and printers. In short, they have a library of colors and technology that allows them to render those colors accurately. Otherwise, CMYK components are mixed together to acheive a color, often with mixed results. Pantone is the standard, and charges a lot of money to use it's reliable system. It doesn't matter if you (or the FTC for that matter) think they are a monopoly. Pantone is a useful technology...period.

Ticketmaster has been in the news for it's (mis)handling of ticket sales for Taylor Swift's latest tour. And before that, there have been all sorts of accusations about scalping and back room dealing and such. I am not claiming that Ticketmaster has a crystal clear reputation, nor am I willing to try to prove or disprove that they are a monopoly.

I am merely here to point out that like Pantone, Ticketmaster is a useful technology. And in a world with a lot of harmful and/or phony technologies, I think we should celebrate the ones who solve legitimate problems, really well.

It's funny to me that people really only complain about Ticketmaster in the exact scenarios where it's existence is most justified. I can't be bothered to look up the particulars of the Taylor Swift case, but there were something like 14 million people (and bots, more on that later) vying for 2 million tickets. That was 10 million more than the company expected. They used their verified presale system some 400 times without fail, but this time it broke. Regardless of this particular outcome, a 0.25% failure rate is exceptional.

I'd wager that there are but a few dozen companies around that have both the infrastructure and experienced talent to handle that kind of volume spike. Most of them are cloud infrastructure companies and large retailers. I can't think of any others which would be handling a surge of 14 million users. Yes, it's unfortunate that it failed this time, but I'm sure the next time will go off without a hitch.

Meanwhile, there are no other alternatives. Sure, there are a few other ticketing platforms (which are working with Congress to break up Ticketmaster...SHAME!) and I'm sure they could, in theory, have handled this situation. It's a hard problem, matching millions of people to tickets and getting them checked out. Even harder is preventing scalpers from commanding bot armies to buy up tickets for resale.

Fighting scalpers has always been Ticketmaster's big selling point. How do you prevent grifters from buying up all the tickets, constraining their supply and thus driving up the going rate? I imagine in the days of the box office, scalpers just paid people to stand in line and buy tickets in exchange for peanuts, or more likely crack. You can't just walk up to the window and ask for 2,000 tickets, but you could send 250 people to do it for you. I'm sure the economics worked in their favor.

Online ticket sales made this simpler: write a little script that spins up some credit cards and identities to avoid having to exchange drugs for tickets. So Ticketmaster has to get sophisticated in attempts that each order is being placed by a real person. It is a never ending arms race. Vigilance is needed to stay one step ahead of the bot armies. Nobody is ever perfect, so some fraud is expected.

As the internet took off, Ticketmaster lobbied the government on two fronts: one that helped them bring charges against scalpers, and another that required state sponsorship of ticket resellers. I imagine the second was pushed in order to prevent a scalper from creating a legal business entity and claiming itself a reseller. This authorized reseller legislation helped bolster legitimate competitors like SeatGeek and StubHub.

Now, if this were healthcare or insurance or some other opaque industry, nobody would really give a damn. We've collectively written off those industries as lost causes when it comes to sketchy behavior. They may get trotted out in front of a congressional committee every so often, but it's not an event. But Taylor Swift tickets? You never get in between a girl and All Too Well.

The big problem that Ticketmaster solves is not scalpers.

No, Ticketmaster allows artists to keep their ticket prices artificially low.

Artists don't want to be perceived by their fans as greedy pigs. In that light, Ticketmaster is not only the engineer of the clearinghouse for tickets, but also a scapegoat. They are the evil capitalists that make artists' and managers' lives possbile.

A big critique of Ticketmaster (that's Live Nation Entertainment) is that it not only collects fees on ticket sales, but it also promotes the shows and operates the venues. And they pretty much force you to buy the total package. This is what's known to grubby consultant types as vertical integration. An arrangement like this helps create more certainty in it's supply chain.

In Ticketmaster's case, it knows that the quality of experience at the event is important to get people coming back. We've all been to events at venues we'd rather not return to. So they create systems that help events run smoothly so that artists and guests can enjoy themselves. That takes planning and costs money.

That money is recouped when people purchase the tickets, hence the fees. But when people don't buy tickets, those venue bills don't get paid. So it's important to get tickets moving. Taylor Swift doesn't have that problem but 99% of the rest don't sell out shows.

In order to sell more tickets, Ticketmaster acts as a promoter of the shows. They buy ads and billboards and work with radio stations to get people excited about concerts. Where else do you think the 99th caller's tickets came from?

Without Ticketmaster's vertical integration, I have a hard time believing that live shows would consistently be of high enough quality to keep people paying the prices these artists are asking.

By now, the Ticketmaster fees have been memed to death. Because the company takes the L and plays the bad guy, the fees for promotion and operation and everything else is tacked onto ticket sales, like an itemized invoice. Sure, it could be a single grand total, with Ticketmaster and the artists negotiating the cut. But that'd be a higher face value and the artists wouldn't be able to maintain their socialist sensibilities.

Which, remember, is the main reason artists still use Ticketmaster. Seeming affordable is of utmost importance to their brands. Laws of economics cannot intervene in the pursuit of cultural relevance.

But, ironically, this turns concert tickets into a status symbol. At the end of the day, if prices are too low, then there are more people willing to buy them. A bidding competition ensues, and suddenly a $60 ticket becomes a $6,000 ticket.

And that's how Taylor Swift, the brand, joins the ranks of Rolls Royce and Gucci. Not by charging obscene amounts of money for an otherwise commodity good, but by making sure that demand for her shows is orders of magnitude larger than the constraints placed on supply.

So, while it may be possible for Taylor Swift to perform outside of Ticketmaster's realm, it won't happen any time soon, both because of technical and social reasons. This does not excuse any past, present, or future misbehavior by Ticketmaster or otherwise. I don't believe that they are pure in any sense of the world. But they are single-handedly enabling showbusiness at scale.

Please stay tuned for my forthcoming essay, On the Origins of Showbusiness. Coming soon.