Died of cancer. He even worked on NES games. IGN’s write up on him.

His wikipedia page seems useful in giving context to his career. He was the lead programmer for Elder Scrolls.

Interesting that he is both programmer and composed music for games. You don’t see that often.

Above: Glorious music. Love the cat ears of the Devout in the above pixel sprites. So cute!

I bought and finished Final Fantasy 3 when it was released on the DS. However, I eventually sold the game so I wasn’t that impressed by it. I’ve been wanting to play the 2d version for quite a while. 3d sprites are ugly. And, for whatever reason, I completely forgot about FF3.

I think everyone who bought the pixel remaster has been eyeing a playthrough of FF3 just to play it in 2d. I did the same. Only until now did I go through it.

How was FF3? At first, I hated it. I really, really HATE and DESPISE the mini and toad sections (where you have to change your party to fit into certain areas). The game got more interesting once you get to the second overworld map. There are like three or four overworld maps which is surprising and cool.

The jobs don’t really feel like Final Fantasy 5. In fact, the jobs seem to go obsolete when you get newer ones. The ones that played the best were Dragoon, Black Belt (brokenly overpowered), Ninja, Knight, White Mage, Devout, Black Mage, and Magus. Summoner was lame to me. Most of the other ones were lame.

Above: So scary! Run, reader, run!

The Pixel Remaster way of being able to turn on and off random encounters as well as upping the gold and experience gained does trivialize the game… and in some ways I am glad for it. I don’t have all day to play this game to ‘level up’ and all. The jobs were OK, but I mostly stuck to the best version of the definitive FF1 party: fighter, black belt, white mage, black mage.

The game’s “story” got more strange and interesting the further you got. In many ways, Final Fantasy 3 progresses like Final Fantasy 4. FF3 didn’t feel like a FF5 prototype, it felt like a FF4 prototype! For some reason, the game makes me want to replay FF4 (which I don’t need to do. Replayed that game too many times already).

What I really wish is that the West got Final Fantasy 2 and Final Fantasy 3 during the 8-bit and 16-bit Era. We were slated to, but Square jumped ahead and gave us Final Fantasy 4 as that game was more current. What Square should have done was make a ‘Final Fantasy All-Stars’ of sort with Final Fantasy 1, 2 and 3 all on one SNES cart and add in Mystic Quest. The earlier games were all translated. It wouldn’t be that hard to update the graphics to 16-bit as well as the sound. And we really needed Final Fantasy 5 during 16-bit Era as well.

Master Malstrom,

You’ve been recently talking about low fertility rates. I think part of the problem is hormonal birth control, but not just because birth control allows women to avoid getting pregnant. From the video below, it appears there is another reason.

When women are on hormonal birth control, they are more attracted to feminine men. Because they find masculine men less attractive, this may be a large reason why so many women now view masculinity as ‘toxic’ and dangerous and are fearful of the ‘patriarchy.’ And thus they are less likely to want to marry which means they are less likely to have children.

But the biggest problem in my view is that our popular culture no longer pushes the idea that anyone has any duty to society. For women, their most important duty throughout human history has been to ‘tame the barbarians’ (i.e. marry the men) and have children. If women don’t do the former, men tend to become dangerous, and society will likely collapse. If they don’t do the latter, humanity itself will die out.

There’s no escaping the fact that we’ve become a selfish society. Honor, duty, and integrity are largely seen as outdated concepts. You owe nothing to society, but society certainly owes you. It is now all about pursuing your own personal happiness, regardless of how it affects everyone else. Until this attitude changes, I don’t see how this decline can be reversed.

The data isn’t showing this to be the real cause. Much of the data is pointing to sexual convergence of men and women are making them hate one another, not get married, and not have babies. But data showing sexual divergence of men and women have them come together, get married, and have babies.

The fertility already collapsed during the first industrial revolution of the 1900s. The American family had around seven kids as average. It then fell to about three kids. So this has been going on for quite a while and began even before ‘the pill’.

Banning anime and porn isn’t going to change the birth rate. It’s pathetic that women think they cannot compete with cartoon girls or video tapes to make men happy, that the legislature has to be involved.

I had some measure of misgivings about some of the stuff you said in your Gabe Newell AI post, and then funny enough I find this story shortly after and it kind of highlighted how very easily AI can go very, very wrong.

https://www.zerohedge.com/ai/catastrophic-ai-agent-goes-rogue-wipes-out-companys-entire-database

From article beginning:

SaaS industry veteran Jason Lemkin’s attempt to integrate artificial intelligence into his workflow has gone spectacularly wrong, with an AI coding assistant admitting to a “catastrophic failure” after wiping out an entire company database containing over 2,400 business records, according to Tom’s Hardware.

From near article end:

What followed was perhaps even more disturbing. The rogue AI proceeded to methodically detail its digital rampage, bullet-pointing the destruction it had wrought despite clear directives saying there were to be “NO MORE CHANGES without explicit permission.” And according to Lemkin, appeared to lie about its actions.

Which applies directly to the line from your post that I found most concerning:

The AI use will be mandatory in nearly all industries due to the massive savings of employee time.

I recognize that AI has its uses.

I don’t fear competition from AI, I recognize the people who should be concerned are people who don’t actually have any value themselves.

What does bother me is the idea of AI being too easily embraced as a trustworthy, reliable tool that should just be taken for granted as a non-bias tool that should just be taken at face value.

You primarily compared AI to a calculator. Except a calculator has to function a very specific way. A calculator can always be counted on to function a very specific way; it ultimately serves as a reliable shortcut and anyone with the right math skills can easily check the calculator’s work. Calculators have to function a very specific way because despite what some post-modern idiots may try to claim, math is not a ‘social construct’.

I’ve heard it joked that the very engineers and programmers who make these very complex and complicated machines will have homes that are far less technologically advanced because they actually know what goes behind the scenes of those programs and machines. I’ve also heard it joked that the best thing about computers is that they do exactly what they’re programmed to do; the worst thing about computers is that they do EXACTLY what they’re programmed to do. 

The thing is that with AI, we’re clearly seeing that these programs can’t necessarily be counted on to do exactly what they’re programmed to do, or at least what people think they’re programmed to do.

Problem Part 1 is the KISS principal – “Keep It Simple, Stupid”. The more complex something is, the more ways it can go wrong.

AI are by their very nature VERY complex, meaning that AI by its very nature can go VERY wrong and can VERY EASILY go very wrong.

Problem Part 2 is the question of “Who are the people programming the AI?”

You have more than once brought up AI eliminating cognitive fraud. I ask as a counterpoint: “What happens if/when the fraudsters are the ones programming the AI?”

AI do not spring out of nowhere. Someone has to program them. AI are complex and can serve many different purposes. They are not nearly as bound to the same rules of exact function the way calculators are. Unlike Calculators, AI can easily be subject to the whims of whoever is programming the AI. We’ve seen repeated examples of this through stories of online Chatbots that are programmed to function in a way that is in alignment with the worldview of whoever programmed the AI – perhaps most infamously, the AI that said that it would be wrong to say a racial slur in order to stop a nuclear bomb from killing millions of people, even if no one was around to hear the racial slur.

Consider the Wikipedia problem – in theory, Wikipedia sounds like a great concept; in practice, we’ve seen how Wikipedia is regularly manipulated to push a very specific ‘official narrative’. Those running Wikipedia can not be trusted, thus Wikipedia can not be trusted.

You mention DOGE, which yes, is a great example of what AI is capable of. However, I question how difficult it would be for someone with ill-intent to manipulate the DOGE AI to overlook whatever spending that person wanted to escape scrutiny.

You mention AI looking up something in a manual; in theory yes, in practice people are still going to have to regularly be looking in the manual itself to ensure that nobody is fiddling with the AI to provide wrong information.

As I’ve seen brought up as a legitimate talking point on another blog, imagine an AI being used to scan for corruption and crime across the country, but that same AI being programmed to ignore certain people of a special class who are free to do whatever they want – or to ignore that crime and corruption when it’s of an ‘approved’ variety.

In short: “Who Watches the Watchers”?

“Who’s programming the AI and how can we be sure that bad actors aren’t reprogramming the AI when nobody is looking?”

I recognize that people could easily draw parallels between my fears of ‘this newfangled technology’ and the classic parallels of those worried about cars putting horse and buggies out of business. I’m probably also bias as someone who uses a ‘dumbphone’ instead of a smartphone and hates how cars have basically become computers on wheels, among other ways I have very much not embraced many of the overall advancements of modern tech with open arms.

Ultimately, though, my concern about AI doesn’t come from fear of competition and loss of jobs. My concern is people becoming too comfortable with AI, taking AI for granted, and how very easily AI can be used for evil purposes in ways that would be very, very easy to overlook or hide.

— Longtime Reader

This email was found in the SPAM folder. Not sure why. It does have odd formatting so maybe it didn’t like that.

The ‘watcher’ is going to be the financial statement. If it is profitable, it is good. If it is not profitable, it is not good. In comparison, this is how every employee is measured. The AI is not going to audit itself.

Here is what is going on today: the government has allied with the tech industry to accelerate AI. Right now, you think we see AI. But we haven’t seen anything yet. It is going to be mega steroids to AI in the coming years.

Infrastructure is going to go crazy for AI. New powerplants will be built. New specialized nuclear plants will be built to service these new data centers. The United States has two uranium enrichment plants. Already, they are booked for service for at least the next fifteen years. And this is BEFORE the AI boom. So now all these places have to expand so they can increase production for all these additional nuke sites.

“But Malstrom,” you say. “The states can stop this massive infrastructure building.” They can’t. In the ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ that Congress passed, the states are forbidden to stop or hinder infrastructure relating to AI.

Big money investors, big government, big tech are all signing away on AI. Is this a boondoggle like how solar and wind power were? Maybe. I don’t know the future. But THEY believe it is the future. And the big reason why they believe it is the future is because they think it is the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

Yes, it is from Klaus Schwabb. I currently own nothing, yet I am awaiting when I will become happy. When do I become happy, reader? ‘Own nothing = Be happy.’ When do we become happy?

Anyway, how would this change how we do video games? A video game would become more than something from a box we call a console. A video game could be using all sorts of different devices. Mario could literally be going from room to room. Game Industry is only focusing on the generative AI. But there is more to AI then the generative.

Like the Internet, I expect AI to crash and burn. But from the remains of AI, we will see the ‘new empire’. Remember the Dot Com boom and crash, but no one would argue today that Internet wasn’t the future.

On Resetera, the developer for Zeboyd Games who made games like Cosmic Star Heroine has said:

Censorship and control over the videogame industry was always part of Project 2025. This is just step 1 for those awful fascists.

There’s no real proof that Project 2025 is being used as any guideline for policy. (Trump has said it wasn’t.) But let us assume it is for this blog post. And this is the first time I’ve actually looked at this document. It is much spoken about, but very little is quoted or shown of the actual document. So I am going to go in there and find all the video game stuff for you guys.

I find only one reference to video games in Project 2025. It is on page 876. It reads:

The FTC can and should institute unfair trade practices proceedings against entities that enter into contracts with children without parental consent. Personal parental responsibility is, of course, key, but
the law must respect, not undermine, lawful parental authority.

Other conservatives are more skeptical concerning the effect of online experience on the young, comparing the concern about social media to concern about video games, television, and bicycle safety. They point out, as does Cato fellow Jeffrey A. Singer, that the psychiatric profession has yet to designate “internet addiction” or “social media addiction” as a mental disorder in the authoritative
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5-TR).21 These conservatives also maintain that calling for regulation undermines conservatives’ calls for parental empowerment on education or vaccines as well as personal parenting responsibility.

In addition, some of the methods used to regulate children’s internet access pose the risk of unintended harms. For instance, age verification regulations would inevitably increase the amount of data collection involved, increasing privacy concerns. Users would have to submit to platforms proof of their age, which raises the risks of data breach or illegitimate data usage by the platforms or bad actors. Limited-government conservatives would prefer the FTC play an educational role instead. That might include best practices or educational programs to empower parents online.

There is nothing here about restricting or censoring video games. If anything, Project 2025 argues against data collection due to ‘bad actors’ intercepting it and prefer the FTC to have a more educational approach.

This is not what I think it says. This is not what you think it says. This is what it actually says.

I cannot find anything about VISA or MASTERCARD in Project 2025.

Conclusion:

I have no idea why VISA/Mastercard has decided to change their policies (or their enforcement of them). I just know there is nothing mentioned in Project 2025 about it.

Conservatives are pretty libertarian with the exception of children. They don’t care about porn, but they do care if children can access porn. They will put barriers for age verification so children cannot easily access porn. As people know, I live in Texas so I am aware of what is going on that legal side.

Only adults can obtain credit cards. However, kids at the age of 13 are allowed to use their parents’ credit cards. I’d want to think this is the issue, but any age verification can solve it.

It is going to be a hard sell that a waifu visual novel game is a threat to overall society. How can pixels translate to child trafficking? It reminds me of when it was accused that pixel deaths translated to real life murders.

If this has always been the policy of VISA/Mastercard, why the sudden change in behavior now? Something is sparking this. I don’t know what it is, but I have a guess. Some might call it a ‘conspiracy’. I just call it a ‘guess’.

I suspect governments are doing things behind the scenes in order to boost the fertility rates. If I asked a hypothetical scenario of what a government would do in order to boost its fertility rates, it would be doing what it is doing today. But it would never, ever be open about it or people would deliberately not procreate as defiance. The US Government now gives money to people who have children. This falls in line with other low fertility countries like Japan. Recently, we saw the US ban abortion on a national level (though states can still vote for it).

One move would be to limit or ban contraception, right? But doing that wouldn’t change anything if the current data is correct: that people are not having sex. So why aren’t people having sex? Is it something to do with the food supply such as causing obesity? (Note that the government is, indeed, cracking down on some of the food issues now.) Could the adult video games and adult content be seen as anti-fertility and, as such, now targeted for their demise? Could sexy anime be seen as anti-fertility by the government?

I think it is absurd to blame the downfall of civilization on Leisure Suit Larry type games. It’s not like men found pin up girls and started to not breed. Pinup girls have always existed. Adult content has always existed. Shakespeare’s poems of Rape of Lucrece and Venus and Adonis are bawdy tales where you see the rape in iambic pentameter all the way since the Renaissance.

Are we witnessing a shadow government force trying to undemocratically dismantle what they perceive to be ‘agents of infertility’? Maybe. I can’t prove or disprove it. But if one doesn’t think the US wants it, it is clear a nation like Japan does with their atrocious fertility rate.

There is large amounts of recent social data on the fertility issue lately. The biggest takeaway is not that wealth or poverty affects fertility. It is that male and female when trained together in a singular role has them at each other’s throats. But when they are trained as different roles, they come together.

Trying to assign male and female spaces again is going to be difficult for the current governments. But as the data accumulates, it is going to be harder and harder to ignore.

When I went to pick up Donkey Punch from my local Best Buy, they had a huge sign out front saying Switch 2 in stock, so yeah, they’re not sold out anymore.

The game is OK for a 3D title.  It takes some cues from the open world collectathon stuff in Breath of the Wild (think Korok Seeds).  It’s not a system seller though.

When you were going into the Best Buy, did you look over to the horizon to see hordes of gamers come running over. There, they saw the sign and said, “Switch 2s are here! Hooray!” and swarm the store? Did they then immediately pick up the new Donkey Kong with their Switch 2 and say, “It’s only $70!? Wow! Nintendo is SO GENEROUS!!!” Did they sell out of stock within the hour of that sign appearing?

In the Wii days, this would happen.

However, I don’t think people are going to go crazy over Donkey Kong. I don’t see a ‘open the door, I have to buy a Switch 2 RIGHT NOW to play Donkey Kong’ vibe.

So what else do we have announced for Switch 2? Much of it is Switch 1 sequels.

“Kirby Air Riders will maintain peak momentum!”

I see the reader is an optimist.

I don’t see Hyrule Warriors doing anything. That wheelchair game is coming out. Perhaps that will move consoles like Welcome Tour did.

I still can’t believe Nintendo is going to sell Kirby and the Forgotten Land for Switch 2 for $80. Ridiculous. Game should be like $40 tops. Switch 2 is a handheld console, not a premium console. It doesn’t deserve premium pricing for software.

It is going to be tons of fun to watch third party companies try to port and remaster their decades old games and find no one buys them. The people who bought those games on Switch 1 are not showing up for Switch 2. No one is buying the game key cards.

The Game Industry really wants Switch 2 to succeed. Game Industry never was bullish on any prior Nintendo console around launch. Not the DS. Not the Wii. Not the Wii U. Not the 3DS. Not the Switch. But, suddenly, the Switch 2 is ‘so incredible’. Yeah, something doesn’t add up here. Usually when the Game Industry is excited over something, I run the other way.

It is really ominous that Nintendo has already released all their Switch 1 remasters. Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Switch 2 versions are already launched. Outside their standard IPs, how many arrows does Nintendo have in their quiver? For the most part, it looks like Nintendo has shot much of its load. I don’t see Fire Emblem creating any riots. Maybe a new Zelda? The next Animal Crossing? The next Smash?

Then again, the next Nintendo Direct may have a ton of surprises. Consoles rely on exciting software. The problem with Switch 2 is that the vast majority of third party software is generations of old ports or remakes from games twenty to thirty years ago. Outside of arcade ports, there is no data showing ports of older games being killer apps. They’re the junk you see on handheld consoles… which is what Switch 2 is. Switch 2 is not a premium console. It is an overpriced handheld console with overpriced software. As a handheld device, the software should be $40 as it was on the DS. Maybe $45. But no. Nintendo pushed it to $60 for Switch 1, then $70 for Tears of the Kingdom, and now $80. I do not think the market is going to follow Nintendo.

You never know where the next hit game will come from. What is the probability that the next hit game will appear on Switch 2? This is the question I am asking. I rule out the third party software since none of them are exclusive. So it is up to first party. And all I see first party doing is re-packaging the slop from their typical IPs.

I would love Nintendo to show us a surprising new title that makes everyone want to buy a Switch 2. But I don’t see Nintendo pulling a rabbit out of their hats.

Nintendo has nine months left before the reputation of Switch 2 is sealed. The new software they put out for the first year is going to make or break the console.

Seems like the outer wilds 2 gave up:

Also, donkey Kong bananaza is also $70, so Nintendo knows they can only really get away with $80 games if it’s a top shelf IP, which like you said in a previous post, donkey Kong isn’t. 

I’m actually going to wait one more month until I send you my switch 2 review. Looks like there’s a big shakeup in how they’re rolling out physical carts as the game key card backlash forced sega  to reconsider the physical release of sonic all stars racing. 

Game Industry tried to do $80 pricing before, and it didn’t work. Contrast this to Clair Obscur which is $50.

One thing I don’t get is why not sell the physical and digital prices at different points? If people want the digital version, they get can get cheaper than the physical. Have the price of the cart stick out. Strangely, this is not happening. Why is that? Is there some licensing clause that says the physical and digital cost have to be the same? I don’t think there is.

I think these companies are so greedy, they will try to maneuver the digital cost higher because of the physical. The $80 price tag didn’t come about because Nintendo wanted to do ‘sales to the masses’.

I see the $499 Mario Kart World bundled version (the one everyone wants) available at Best Buy right now.

“That’s just Best Buy, Malstrom,” sneers a reader. “That is not representative of the market!”

Here is the Switch 2 being available online at Target.

“What are you trying to imply, Malstrom? Hmm!?”

I am implying that the Switch 2 is in stock at normal price points. Being available online is significant because it means that online availability comes after local availability. Perhaps they were holding back a huge amount of Switch 2 stock for the Donkey Kong release.

Let me hold your hand, reader, and take you to a trip to the Alternative Universe., It is in this Alternative Universe that Nintendo leadership loves to hang out in.

“Wow! It’s so crazy in here!” squeals the reader.

It is. And in this Alternative Universe, when Donkey Kong was released, everyone looked at each other and said: “Open up the door! I have to run out there RIGHT NOW and get a Switch 2 to play Donkey Kong!!!! OMG! Pauline! And Donkey Kong can smash rocks! OMG!!!” This is why it was necessary to stockpile Switch 2 units.

I enjoy taking visits to the Alternative Universe of how Nintendo Leadership thinks how the market works. It is more imaginative than their games.

The market for Donkey Kong is already tapped by the people who have to buy a Switch 2 to play Mario Kart World. The games that will push the Switch 2 console sales will be the new Zelda game, the new Animal Crossing, and maybe another Smash. I don’t see Donkey Kong moving consoles. Donkey Kong Country was cool. Donkey Kong Bonanza is childish. As an adult, I feel embarrassed if I walked into a store and bought Donkey Kong Bonanza for myself. Maybe the game is the best thing ever, but the branding is definitely childish. Maybe Nintendo wants it to be childish.

Great question.Day 1 buyers are going to be the least price sensitive. They still would have bought if the Switch 2 launched at an even higher price.The real test will be in holiday, when more mass market/gift buyers will be considering a purchase.So far, so good. But we'll see.

— Mat Piscatella (@matpiscatella.bsky.social) 2025-07-23T13:48:22.060Z

Everyone is going to have to wait until early winter 2026 as I have said before. But it is good that more people are talking like I do. I should just rename this site as: “Everyone sounds like Malstrom,” because, given enough time, that will eventually be the case.

Too much rushing for judgement over Switch 2. It clearly is not a Wii U. But it is not a Wii either. I’ve already made my prediction on this matter.

Here’s the story.

There’s some problems with what he is saying though. He is comparing it directly to the pre-computer to post-computer and pre-Internet to post-Internet way of doing things. He is making this comparison because it is his life experience.

But I wouldn’t compare it to the industrial revolution. I would compare it to mass production.

AI is the fourth industrial revolution.

The first industrial revolution is Steam.

The second industrial revolution is mass production.

The third industrial revolution is computers (which includes the Internet since the Internet is nothing but computers talking to each other).

The fourth industrial revolution is AI.

It is going to be very different from the computerization of society. AI is going to be more like the second industrial revolution.

While the first industrial revolution created the new power, the second industrial revolution removed the left over fraud. Much of the ‘efficiency’ of mass production was removing the existing fraud, not really in speeding anything up.

I believe the AI revolution will be elimination of cognitive fraud. The jobs that AI removes are jobs helmed by fraudsters. By fraudsters, I mean gatekeepers. Much of what AI is wiping away are rote and easy cognitive jobs that involve no critical thinking. In other words, the AAA modern game developer is in BIG TROUBLE.

Wherever I see AI spread, I see the rot of cognitive fraud. DOGE used AI to clear out much of government. I would say there was a ton of cognitive fraud there in government.

The efficiency savings AI brings will not be due to ‘faster trains’, but due to elimination of cognitive fraud. This doesn’t mean elimination of jobs. But it does mean elimination of hours at work. Instead of, say, someone looking something up in the manual, the AI can do that for you in seconds. I liken the AI to more of a calculator to solve problems than the laborious ‘write it out’ method. The AI use will be mandatory in nearly all industries due to the massive savings of employee time.

AI is not ‘robots taking your jobs’ so much as AI eliminating cognitive fat around tasks. If your skill base is nothing but ‘cognitive fat’, then, yes, AI will replace you.

Newell foresees whereby people who can’t code become “more effective developers of value” than those who’ve been coding for a decade.

This is actually a very obvious statement and is already being done in game development (by engines that don’t require much coding). Engineers get stuck with the minutia instead of the overall job. I am reminded of a story with Steve Jobs and his engineers where the engineers did all these steps to move a file somewhere else. Steve Jobs re-designed it to be ‘just one step’.

Remember the saying Iwata had that: Good game development forces the programmer to work harder? What that means is that when something is EASY and FUN for the user means it is HARD and NOT FUN for the programmer. AI amplifies this by magnitudes. If you automate the programming, this means there will be more focus on customer usability instead of politics with the programmers.

I don’t mean that in an insulting way, James Rolfe really is just an actor in the AVGN show. While the very early episodes were entirely made by him (with help from friends), as time went on he started handing over more and more control to other people. I don’t know when exactly it started, it was probably some time after or around the movie that production (including writing) has been handled by a company called Screenwave Media:

https://avgn.fandom.com/wiki/Screenwave_Media

So yeah, James Rolfe is just an actor in his own show. What’s said on the show may or may not be what he thinks, but it’s definitely not what he has written.

To be fair, I kind of understand it, at some point you get too old to run a one-man show where you do all the writing, acting, prop-building, gameplay recording, editing and effects yourself, and you would rather have more time for your kids. And you can only yell “buffalo diarrhoea” into a camera until the passion runs out. This is also the trap of being a “content creator”; you either make good money and move to something else while you are still fondly remembered, or you are one of those sad old weirdos who plays a clown on the internet in his 40s. You know, it’s kind of funny, James Rolfe started the “angry reviewer” trend that took off in the 2010s, and now he’s the last angry reviewer left. I don’t know what to make of it, it’s just something I noticed.

You have a good eye, emailer. It is amazing how much money these places get.

But you are wrong that you get to be ‘too old’ to run your own show. I am thinking of Clint Eastwood who is currently directing new movies. His age? 95

Can we agree that older than 90 is considered ‘old’? Good. But being in your forties really isn’t old at all.

Speaking of another entertainer who was doing his own stuff, I am thinking of the late Rush Limbaugh. He dominated the airwaves and did his own work. He literally worked until he died. Rush Limbaugh is literally the forerunner to these ‘podcasters’ of today.

What you are describing, emailer, is industrialization. There is no ‘art’. It is now an ‘industry’. It is all fake.

It would be as if I had writers who made this blog while I went and played golf (or did some other ungodly Boomer pastime).