Take 5, D.

Weekly Update 2026-03-08: The Normal-ish Edition

What happened during the week of March 2nd - March 8th, 2026:

🆗 Welp, back to a normal weekly update format. Hope you enjoyed the slight variation on the usual pattern.

☔️ It's been a rainy week here in STL, though much of that rain was accompanied by much warmer weather than expected for early March. Temperatures near the end of last week were at or above 70 F, with Friday 03-06 having a high of 78 F! Saturday 03-07 was rainy and cooler, so false spring is definitely here. Unfortunately for me, my seasonal allergies can’t tell the difference.

🏞️ Photos have been selected in the Glass exchange I mentioned last week. I sent my photos to Schiller's on Saturday 03-07, and I'll pick them up early next week. Before I mail them out, I will highlight the ones which were selected by the recipient in Japan.

🚎 Earlier in the week, I finished my edits on "Partially Charged," my extended review of the Hyundai Ioniq 5 rented on our San Diego vacation, along with some rather pessimistic thoughts about the future of EV's in the US. I have been a fan of cars since my tween years, as I was likely way too young to be reading Car & Driver back in the early 1980s. This was the era of the magazine when the inimitable LJK Setright1 wrote for them, when its editor, David E. Davis, Jr. was probably the closest American sartorial equivalent to Setright, and when the magazine staff included Jean Lindamood Jennings and the immortally-named Csaba Csere. Cars were fascinating things for me back then, and in some ways that holds true today, but that fascination has dulled not so much with time but with product. Reducing the car market in this country to "any vehicle as long as it's an SUV or truck" has been a shitty state of affairs, if not outright enshittification, where the vehicles for sale are merely appliances and/or smartphones on wheels. EV's were a step towards giving the driving public something different, and my lament in the piece is we will see a backtracking on this step towards the "tried and true," towards vehicles that are bland, colorless, and expensive.

🎂 Oh, and before I forget, this blog is now 1 year old! My first post went live on 02-22-25, so the actual birthday occurred during the bumper crop edition of last week’s update. I posted a quick entry about the blog turning one, and yes, it’s quick by my standards.

Items Of Note From Last Week:

Outbound Actions

Internal Obligations

Media

More Info About The Media Selections From This Week:

I’ve held a belief for many years that gambling is far worse for society than porn or any sex-related industry could ever be. Gambling is far more seductive, easier to disguise as “legitimate,” and simply more organized as a force than something like, say, OnlyFans. The adult industry has been a prime mover in technological advancements going all the way back to the explosion of adult videotapes in the 80s, but I believe that gambling has usurped that role for itself. A stronger writer than me could trace the evolution of betting from trading stocks to crypto, from in-person gambling to mobile apps, from placing wagers on sporting games to fantasy leagues to betting on specific plays in games. It’s not too far of a jump to transfer that gambling approach from sports to current events, though betting on war and death is certainly a sign of what 404 Media has called “the depravity economy.” In the linked article and podcast, the crew expands upon these thoughts, and while I agree with them that there is at present no bottom, what they’re complaining about now in 2026 will assuredly feel quaint in about a year’s time.

The Night Clerk Radio podcast is a new one for me, and one I may keep in my rotation. It’s a music review show that covers the world of vaporwave music. How to define vaporwave? I’ll copy from the Vaporwave Wiki to save time: There has never been an universally accepted definition of the genre specifically, but in this fluidity there are common themes of counterculture, uncanny presentation of the past and future, and a particular nostalgia towards somewhere in time around the last fifth of the 20th century. The German music journalist Stephan Kunze has been a big fan of this micro-genre of electronic music, to the point where he’s interviewing various well-known artists in this field. One of the musicians he interviewed spoke highly of the Night Clerk Radio podcast, so I gave it a try. For now, I appreciate the critiques and praises offered by the hosts of the podcast, as they are helping me to understand more about this musical genre. I’ll likely move on to straight-up vaporwave podcasts at some point, but for now, this show satisfies my curiosity.

Commenting on breaking news stories is a Sisyphean task at best, so when shows like Trashfuture talk about the outbreak of war with Iran, there’s not a lot of room for analysis beyond what has immediately happened. Cracking wise about the influencers in the UAE who now feel like “politics” has intruded upon their peaceful existence is one thing, but tying together war in the Persian Gulf with energy security is another. High Country News examined the growth of small solar panels in the western US, including states like Utah who support solar energy as a form of non-governmental interference. Their article was written before the outbreak of war with Iran, but I can’t help but see the two linked together. I also appreciate the setup of the inevitable culture clash between the “go-it-alone” spirit of states like Utah versus the slavish love of fossil fuels that you’ll find currently in Washington.

Two of my favorite Japanese travel vloggers, Maibaru Travel and ITSUKA JAPAN, recently embarked on adventures that were out of their comfort zone. ITSUKA generally travels with her mother, but in more and more of her recent clips, she’s traveling by herself and going to places seemingly atypical of her past locations. She recently spent a night at a former drive-in-turned-resort(?), largely because of its Shōwa-era nostalgia vibes. Her cabbie warned her about spending the night there, but from my perspective as a viewer, there was little for ITSUKA to worry about. Meanwhile, Maibaru and her partner Yuu spent a week in Kenya, spotting the Big Five safari animals from a safe distance as each of them could easily give you something to worry about! Maibaru has some of the best cinematography going for the Japanese travel crowd, with this particular trip being one of the best she’s ever done. There is some truly stunning footage of balloon rides across the savanna, along with imposing thunderstorms reminiscent of what storm chasers see in Kansas and Nebraska. If you have a large monitor, or YouTube access through your TV, I strongly recommend watching this video on either large screen. Your phone won’t do it justice.

Finally, let’s end on a goofier note. I haven’t seen “The Wild Rebels” episode of MST3K in some time, but it’s one of the better ones from Season 2. For whatever reason, the early era of the show had a field day with 60s-era biker films, so for a while I skipped watching them as I just didn’t care for this genre. Fortunately, L. was a fan of this episode and prevailed upon me to watch it, and you know what? I’m glad I did! The riffing is strong here, there’s also an interesting anthropological look at the Florida culture of yesterday, the Wild Rebels cereal jingle, and a cast which included a former light heavyweight boxing champ and a successful music producer for KC & The Sunshine Band. As for Ars Technica, I have family ties to both the Chicago suburbs and to Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire, so I don’t have any excuses for not checking out which video arcade is bigger. I suspect that once I do so, I’ll be having such a great time that I won’t care either way.

Picture time!

Let's try a new feature to reward folks who've made it this far in the blog entry.

During the Alabama Getaway last November, L. & I experimented with staying at a glamping resort southeast of Birmingham. There weren’t too many photos to take of the camp’s interior; given how small the cabin was, features were minimal. However, it had a nice view from its window, which met with What The Duck’s approval.

WTD enjoying a human-free moment in a tiny cabin near Childersburg, AL

  1. I would love for a biopic on LJK Setright to exist, though I suspect everyone who watched it would claim the depiction of his life was fake or exaggerated. Yes, this is how he really dressed. Yes, he really did submit an article for CAR written entirely in Latin, without translation (though he provided his own the next day). Yes, he really loved Bristols. Yes, he was a fearsome test driver whom no other auto journalist would ride with, and yes, he would serenade these same journalists with clarinet solos during idle times. These all sound like preposterous claims, yet they are all true.↩

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