Here is a world map showing in blue all countries with a GDP lower than that of the State of California:
To state it simply: California just surpassed Japan in 2025. There are only three countries with a larger economy than California. Those are the United States without California, China and Germany. And we only have to gain $500 billion to catch up with Germany. It won’t take us long.
If you have been reading my blog, you may have noticed that I collect pictures of visits to state capitol buildings. Go to the Categories selection box and select “State Capitol Buildings” and you get quite a list over the last few years you can browse through. Not all of them have me in the picture, since often I was there alone and I didn’t have a convenient passer-by help me take my picture.
But today I had some colleagues with me.
Here I am in front of the building. I don’t have a picture of the whole building. This one is different from most capitol buildings I have seen. It does not have a dome, and it’s built in the typical Santa Fee “adobe style” architecture. If they hadn’t pointed the building out to me, I would not even have noticed it – from the outside.
However, I was inside, and I got a great tour of all four levels, with the senate offices, the house offices, the chambers, and the governor’s office.
I must say, of all the capitol buildings I have visited and toured, this is absolutely the most beautiful one. Aligned with the art history of Santa Fe and its hundreds of galleries, the capitol building is an art museum all in itself. Every hallway, every staircase, every office is adorned with world-class art. I could have taken hundreds of pictures, and I am not exaggerating here.
I regret now that I was not smiling on this picture. The buffalo head is made entirely of recycled materials, rags, chains, bottle caps, cans, plastic spoons, newspaper, I could go on. It is a very striking work of art.
Here is another example of modern art, this one right outside of the governor’s office.
Here I am at the door to the governor’s office. No, I didn’t get to meet the governor. However, we walked right in, and the receptionist at the desk welcomed us in and invited us to walk around and check out the artwork.
Visiting the New Mexico capitol building I had the distinct feeling that it was “the people’s house” and it was open to the people. After we went through a security checkpoint, we were free to walk around, all the way into to lobby of the governor’s office.
Stephen King’s book The Stand is one of my all-time favorite novels. It first came out almost 50 years ago and I have read it several times. The book tells the story of a pandemic that wipes out over 99.9% of mankind. The world of The Stand plays in the aftermath of that pandemic. There are people who read this book once a year just for good measure. I believe it’s King’s grand opus and it’s 1,200 pages long.
I don’t usually like short stories or anthologies. When I came across The End Of The World As We Know It, I was skeptical. But once I started reading, I realized that the 34 stories by 34 different authors all play in the universe of The Stand. Some of them at the same time, as the disease ravages the world, others years later, and others yet decades and several generations later. They don’t all play in the United States either. Some are in other countries and continents. The anthology is over 800 pages long and it took me a while to read it – like about one story per session.
Stephen King has fully authorized this work about the harrowing world of The Stand. The stories are presented by award-winning authors and editors Christopher Golden and Brian Keene.
It features an introduction by Stephen King himself, followed by a foreword by Christopher Golden, and an afterword by Brian Keene. Contributors include Wayne Brady and Maurice Broaddus, Poppy Z. Brite, Somer Canon, C. Robert Cargill, Nat Cassidy, V. Castro, Richard Chizmar, S. A. Cosby, Tananarive Due and Steven Barnes, Meg Gardiner, Gabino Iglesias, Jonathan Janz, Alma Katsu, Caroline Kepnes, Michael Koryta, Sarah Langan, Joe R. Lansdale, Tim Lebbon, Josh Malerman, Ronald Malfi, Usman T. Malik, Premee Mohamed, Cynthia Pelayo, Hailey Piper, David J. Schow, Alex Segura, Bryan Smith, Paul Tremblay, Catherynne M. Valente, Bev Vincent, Catriona Ward, Chuck Wendig, Wrath James White, and Rio Youers.
I will go and find some of the works by these authors after reading their stories here.
Warning: If you have NOT yet read The Stand, this will not make sense to you. Read The Stand first, then this book. I highly recommend both.
During a meeting today in New York City, our hosts took us for lunch to the Rainbow Room in Rockefeller Center.
The Rainbow Room is a private event space on the 65th floor of 30 Rockefeller Plaza in New York. It opened in 1934 and was always a focal point for the city’s elite, as well as one of the United States’ highest restaurants above ground.
Here is a photograph of the building that I took in November, when they were just putting up the Christmas tree on the plaza. The building is iconic and a city landmark.
The first time I was there for lunch I was too embarrassed to take a photograph. I didn’t want to look like a tourist or country bumpkin. Today, however, I decided I didn’t care. I took a few pictures out the window. All of New York is visible in almost all directions. Here is a view south, showing the Empire State Building and in the distance to the right of it the World Trade Center tower.
Lunch was excellent.
I had no idea who James Talarico was. I don’t even watch TV. But when I heard today that Colbert was blocked by his network from airing an interview with him on his show, I searched for the segment on YouTube and watched it in its entirety.
I am not a Christian, but I’d vote for Talarico in a heartbeat.
When Trump and his goon in the FCC, Brendan Carr, tried to censor Colbert and “hide” Talarico, who is out to turn Texas blue, they miscalculated. Rather than hiding Talarico, they gave him a megaphone, so much so that I, a person wholly uninformed about Texas politics, now watched him and would be willing to support him.
I just read that election forecaster Logan Phillips pointed to Google Trends data showing Texans suddenly searching Talarico’s name at a “very high rate” just as early voting approaches. That’s not coincidence — that’s momentum.
Way to go Brendan Carr.
Here is the YouTube:
When the men with guns who have always claimed to be against the system start wearing uniforms and marching with torches and pictures of a leader, the end is nigh. When the pro-leader paramilitary and the official police and military intermingle, the end has come.
— from Chapter 6, On Tyranny – by Timothy Snyder (2017)
Are We Great Yet?
I stumbled upon this chart showing the relative reputations by countries. Reputation Lab visualized a survey that ranks the world’s 60 leading economies by their reputations. Countries with stronger reputations may attract more foreign investment, tourists, or respect in international institutions.
You can go to my source link below to access the details.
Source: Ranked: Countries With the Best Reputations in 2025
My observations:
United States – The US dropped from position 30 to 48 in just one year. That must be the largest drop of any country in history. The reputation of the US in the world is now below that of Kuwait, Algeria, India and Turkey. It’s just a couple of notches above Colombia.
Russia – Solid in place 60, right there below Iran, Iraq and China.
Switzerland – Solid in place 1.
Canada – Now in place 2.
And with all this, and our collective common sense, our leaders have the gall to tell us that we are finally respected in the world. My question is: How deep can we fall? Are we going to the territory of Russia and China?
I did another annual solo hike up my favorite ridge in Borrego Springs. There is no trail, no other people, just rough terrain high up on the mountain. When I hike there alone I have to be hyper alert since I can’t misstep so I don’t twist an ankle, or worse. Most of the time I am huffing and puffing, looking down for every placement of my boots.
Imagine then when I look up to catch a breath and find myself almost in the middle of a small herd of bighorn sheep. I am literally 30 feet away from them, just standing there, transfixed. And so are they.
If you click on the images you can zoom in. Some of them wear collars with trackers. Others have tags on their ears. The park service monitors and studies them closely, I guess.
As long as I am still and quiet, they just mind their own business.
I took an alternate route around them, so I would not disturb their grazing. They kept an eye on me nonetheless.
Here are a couple of videos I took, just so you can see them in their natural habitat.
Running into a herd of bighorn sheep during a hike always makes my day. It’s an awe-inspiring experience to be surrounded by these creatures who are superbly adapted to the rough environment of the desert mountains.
It’s 1944 in Seattle. World War II is in full swing in Europe. Genevieve “Gigi” Parsons is a housewife living at Parsons Manor, a gothic house her husband John Parsons built for her. They have a 14-year-old daughter named Sera. John runs a successful accounting business. However, recently he has started drinking and gambling excessively, to the point where they are about the lose the house. Their marriage is deteriorating. John has started to abuse his wife, both emotionally and physically.
Eventually, Gigi finds out that John’s gambling debts are to the mafia. Around that time, she notices a mysterious man watching her from the shadows of the woods outside her home. Eventually, the man enters the house and the two start a love affair. Gigi is torn between her safe but boring life with her faltering husband and her daughter, and the passionate affair with Ronaldo Capello. She learns that Ronaldo works for the mob and has his eyes on her husband.
The passion scenes between Ronaldo and Gigi are abundant and the book is basically just porn.
Yes, porn.
Of the 326 pages, I am sure half of them are just graphic and explicit porn, nothing else. Carlton is a pretty good writer, so rather than just building transitions between the Chi Chi Bow Bow scenes, she weaves the porn into a novel with a full plot and a World War II mafia story. But I get kept getting the feeling that the entire story was just there so we could read about the great sex they were having all the time.
I have never read any romance novels; I guess this was my first and last one. I remember reading Fanny Hill by John Cleland when I was 15 or 16, and I remember it was highly erotic (to the teenager I was, of course). This is much more explicit, but I am not a teenager anymore, so it really didn’t interest me much.
When I researched the author after reading the book, I learned that Phantom is a prequel to the “Cat & Mouse Universe” books by the same author, but readable as a standalone story. It combines gothic elements, historical fiction, and mafia stuff with morally gray characters and intense emotional and sensual tension.
Carlton is a bestselling fiction author known for dark romance and thriller novels. While this stuff is not for me, the writing is actually pretty good. I will give it one and a half stars.
The Rocky Horror Picture Show was first released over 50 years ago in 1975. It first was a box office flop, but by 1977, alternative movie theaters started midnight showings and it quickly created a cult following. I am aging myself when I tell you that I must have seen the movie at least 20 times in the years of 1978 and 1979, always at midnight, in Phoenix, Arizona. It was a great event to bring our friends and guests to.
While visiting my son and his girlfriend for Thanksgiving, we looked for cult movies to watch, and we talked about The Room, which my son had made us watch ten years ago. I will reassert here that The Room is the worst movie all all time. But speaking of cult movies, I remembered The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and so we watched it together. For me it was the first time after many decades, and while I had remembered many vignettes, much of it I had forgotten about. For instance, the singing lips through the initial scrolling of the credits was such an iconic feature – how could I possibly forget it?
The Rocky Horror Picture Show is a rock musical that crossed many cultural threshold in its time. It was also one of the first audience participation movies. People came to the theater dressed up like the characters, they recited key lines of dialog before they came up in the movie, and there was much audience participation, like throwing rice during the wedding scene, throwing toast and lighting cigarette lighters (we didn’t have smartphones with flashlights then). Going to see The Rocky Horror Picture Show was much more than just going to a movie, it was an experience that you took your friends to.
The film opened up the world for the LGBTQ+ community. It celebrated gender fluidity, queerness, cross dressing, sexual liberation and bisexuality in an unapologetic manner at a time when such images or concepts were rarely dealt with in mainstream society or media. It provided visibility and a sense of community for people who had few opportunities for public expression of queerness.
The music is pop rock and original to the movie. The songs stayed with me over the decades. In particular the “let’s do the time warp again” song is the one I think about when I think about The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
Susan Sarandon has a lead role as Janet, and it was one of her earlier movies at the beginning of her career. Also, notable is Meat Loaf’s role as Eddie in the film. Tim Curry, who plays the lead character of Dr. Frank-N-Furter, was already a Broadway actor when he appeared in the movie. He rose to prominence with this role.
The Rocky Horror Picture Show was a sanctuary where outsiders, misfits, and young people exploring identity could gather without judgment. I was proud to be part of that world as a 20-year-old, just coming of age and looking forward in wonder to the world awaiting me. Life was just getting started. “Don’t dream it—be it” became a catch-phrase for me, and I still fondly remember those days.
Watching The Rocky Horror Picture Show with my family felt a bit like passing a torch. It was nostalgia all the way.
Here is an excerpt from pages 318 to 319:
I am making it publicly known that in no way, shape, or form am I suicidal,” I typed hastily but resolutely (making several spelling and grammatical errors that I’ve corrected here). “I have made this known to my therapist and GP—If something happens to me—for the sake of my family, do not let this go away and help me to protect them. Too many evil people want to see me quieted.
On April 25, 2025, Virginia Giuffre died of suicide at her home outside Perth, Australia. Nobody’s Girl was published posthumously on October 21, 2025. She finished writing this memoir shortly before her death. She had expressed a strong wish for the book to be published, regardless of her circumstances.
A close friend of mine is the father of one of the over 150 gymnasts who had been abused by USA Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar. My friend has found it difficult to talk about what it is like to be a parent of a daughter who he entrusted to an academic institution for her education and training, only to be horribly betrayed, not just by the abuser, but by the entire system surrounding the abuse and allowing it to go on for such a long time. And yet, the sheer scale of Nassar’s abuse is paled by Epstein’s, as we all know now.
Virginia Giuffre has been one of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell’s most outspoken victims. Her dedication to bringing justice contributed to both Epstein and Maxwell to be convicted and put in prison. She was also the central figure who brought down Prince Andrew and eventually caused his ultimate expulsion from the monarchy.
In her own words, she describes her life, starting with her childhood, or should I say, the lack of her childhood. Her mother was a consistent drug abuser. Her father groomed her and then sexually abused her when she was a young as 7 or 8 years old. Worse, her father traded daughters with another man, so they could abuse each other’s daughters “for variety.” Her mother stood by and later claimed she didn’t know. This went on for years. As she got older, she ran away from home, only to be put into a correctional facility which – you might have guessed – also abused its teenage inmates. Her father was a handyman working at Mar-a-Lago when he got her a job as an assistant in the spa. She was 15. That’s where Maxwell first saw her. She told her that she knew a wealthy man who would teach her to be a massage therapist and she’d get paid well while she was learning. That evening, after she got out of work, she was at Epstein’s estate in Palm Beach, thinking she was going to give a massage. During that very first meeting, Maxwell and Epstein manipulated her into sexually servicing Epstein. And that’s how several years of sexual abuse in broad daylight started. She even suspected that Epstein paid off her father, so he would let it happen. In the course of her service, Epstein forced her to perform sexual acts with hundreds of other men, billionaires, scientists, politicians, two U.S. senators, one former governor of a U.S. state, and – as we all know, Prince Andrews.
Eventually, after several years of servitude, she managed to break free of Maxwell and Epstein’s clutches, eventually get married and have a family. But for the rest of her life she was haunted by the horrors of the abuse she had endured.
Reading Nobody’s Girl illustrates how sexual abuse can first start, then proliferate, and how vulnerable minors, boys or girls, can become victims of repeat and systemic abuse by predators who are master manipulators. It also shines a powerful spotlight on our current system that protects powerful and wealthy people and shelters them from exposure. The victims are called whores, opportunists who accuse rich people just to extract settlements from them. They are accused as liars or even perjurers, when it’s the word of a powerful royal, politician or mogul against a young woman that they “rescued from the gutter.”
Nobody’s Girl is a very important book at a time when our news are flooded with “the Epstein files.” The whole rhetoric of what we are currently witnessing every day becomes all the more real and poignant after reading this book.
Now I must point you back to my introductory quote. Virginia Giuffre, after you read her book, you will find is not the kind of person who kills herself, just as she has reached some success in bringing justice to her perpetrators and helping the thousands of other victims out there whose lives have been destroyed.
Yet, the media and the government will have us believe it was a suicide.
I – for one – do not buy it.
Somebody got to her.
A friend of ours (RW) had repeatedly recommended that we watch Pan’s Labyrinth, since it was one of the best movies he had ever watched. So it was on my list, and when our family was looking for a good movie to watch on the evening of Thanksgiving day, we decided to try it. That was after almost an hour of browsing various good movies and watching trailers, only to reject one after the other. Pan’s Labyrinth is also on a list of the “125 best movies of all time you have to watch before you die”, so how can we go wrong?
Guillermo del Toro’s film El Laberinto del Fauno is a Spanish film in the Spanish language, with English subtitles. We did not expect that we’d be “reading the movie” when we chose to watch it on the evening of Thanksgiving.
In Spain in 1944, fascism under Franco is in full swing. Military all over the country is brutalizing the population. Resistance warriors fight back as much as they can, waiting for the war to end. The captain of the local military force is an exceedingly brutal man. He married a woman with a young daughter, Ofelia. The woman is pregnant, expecting the captain’s baby. Ofelia does not accept her stepfather. She lives in a fairytale world, full of magical creatures like giant bugs, fairies, an old faun, and many other “monsters.”
While the story unfolds of how the resistance fighters try to undermine the regime with the help of the general population, and how the military thugs use sheer sadistic brutality against their own people, Ofelia tries to get out of her impossible situation by the magic of the fairy tale world that only exists in her mind.
Pan is a Greek god which the Christians later borrowed to embody evil, like Satan. He had horns, goat legs, fur, hooves, and a grotesque overall appearance. Such is the faun that appears to Ofelia and leads her through a set of impossible tasks to accomplish her own return to the throne of her true royal father and to live her life as the princess that she really is.
Pan’s Labyrinth brings a little-known aspect of World War II to life, namely what went on in Spain under Franco, while Hitler and Mussolini did their own murderous and ruinous deeds. Is Pan’s Labyrinth a great movie you have to watch?
No.
Does it, in my opinion, belong on any list of great movies you have to watch?
No.
There is not a spark of happiness, the good guys don’t win and gloom lives on. Pan’s Labyrinth is a dark and mystical tragedy that, after watching it, left me numb.
Yesterday I loaded up my mountain bike and went to Hemet to ride around Diamond Valley Lake, one of the largest reservoirs in Southern California.
About 15 minutes after I left my house I needed to get gas. At the pump, as I was trying to pay, I realized I didn’t have my phone with me. I had forgotten it at home.
After a moment of panic I realized that I also had my wallet and I could just pay the old fashioned way with a credit card. Then, while the pump was filling up my truck, I wondered if I should go back home and get the phone. It would add another 30 minutes to my travels, so I decided I was fine without it. I had some cash with me, and what would I need the phone for?
I felt oddly naked stepping back into the car knowing I was “off the grid.” As the day progressed I realized how dependent I was on my phone.
All the points above are fairly benign, nothing bad happened, but it was really strange to be spending the day off the grid.
I think I need to do that more often. On purpose next time. I’ll bring a book.
I have always been fascinated by crows. They are known to be extremely smart and they can recognize and remember human faces. We have a lot of crows in our neighborhood, and I have been trying to befriend them. There is a bag of peanuts in their shells in our vestibule. When I see a crow perching on our roof or on the lamppost out by the street, I go get a couple of peanuts and put them outside while they can see me. No takers yet, no crow friends, but I will keep trying.
The protagonist of Hollow Kingdom is a domesticated crow. The crow is the narrator. The entire novel does not have a single human character. The only referenced human is Big Jim, who rescued the crow when he was just a chick and raised him as a pet. We know about Big Jim only based on flashbacks told by the crow.
Big Jim had named the crow Shit Turd, but he goes by S.T. (not surprisingly). His other pet is Dennis. S.T describes him this way:
Dennis is a bloodhound and has the IQ of a dead opossum. Honestly, I have met turkeys with more brain cells. I’d suggested to Big Jim that we oust Dennis because of his weapons-grade incompetence, but Big Jim never listened, intent on keeping a housemate that has zero impulse control and spends 94 percent of his time licking his balls.
Yes, S.T. thinks and talks like a human. In fact, all the animals in Hollow Kingdom talk, all the way from whales to spiders.
This book is about an apocalypse. All the humans get sick and eventually die of some virus, but not before they mutate in grotesque ways. Think of zombies that do nothing but eat each other and their pets. That’s got to suck if you are a dog or a cat trapped in a house with a sick human.
S.T. calls humans MoFos, based on the name Big Jim had for them. As he realizes that the MoFos are all going crazy, he goes on a mission to “free the domestics.” But how do you open doors and windows to let them out if you are just a crow, and your only friend is a (stupid) dog?
Hollow Kingdom reminded me a little of Stephen King’s The Stand. The premise in The Stand is that a manufactured disease kills off almost all of humanity. Only a very, very few survive to rebuild society. The entire story is based on a group of survivors trying to make a new world. In Hollow Kingdom, humanity disappears and nature comes back. Domesticated and wild animals try to make sense of what is happening.
Hollow Kingdom is a black comedy and satire, wrapped in a fable. It made me think about how fragile our society is, and how easily humanity could devolve.
Shit Turd’s point of view is delightful and comical. Overall, this book is unlike anything I have ever read before. Extremely readable, it’s also completely whacky.
I could not help but give it 4 stars.
Reading Hollow Kingdom is a whacky adventure.
During a brief visit in New York, I saw the Christmas Tree in Rockefeller Center “under construction.” I have always wondered how they do this. They actually build a massive scaffolding and there are dozens of workers on it.
But no trip to New York is complete without a walk in Central Park. I didn’t have much time during the day, but I did a walk at night. Here is a view looking south from within the park.
On my way downtown I emerged from the subway and had this iconic view of the World Trade Center, the tallest building in the United States. The antenna alone is 408 feet (135 meters) tall.
But what I really went downtown for is a visit to The Strand bookstore on Broadway and 12th Street.
I was there on Friday around 1:00 pm. It was packed with people. Books are not dead yet. The art section alone on the second floor is larger than the entire Barnes and Noble store back home in Escondido.
It has become a must for me to visit whenever I go to New York.