# twenty years (blogs) — RSS Amplifier Recent posts from the 15 feeds in the RSS Amplifier directory that cover twenty years. Page: Feed: --- ## [The Emptier Country: Why a 1971 Minimum-Wage Paycheck Bought More](https://chrisabraham.substack.com/p/the-emptier-country-why-a-1971-minimum) _2026-08-21 · Chris ÁBRÁHÁM · Chris Abraham_ A viral claim says a minimum-wage worker in 1971 lived like someone making $100K today. The number is real. The explanation everyone reaches for isn't the whole story. ## [I Lost the Song My Film Was Named After](https://adolfelassal.substack.com/p/i-lost-the-song-my-film-was-named) _2026-08-21 · Adolf El Assal · Adolf El Assal_ The rights were never secured. I found out with no time and no money left to fix it. ## [How I Spent My Summer Vacation I](https://flippistarchives.blogspot.com/2026/08/how-i-spent-my-summer-vacation-i.html) _2026-08-21 · Professor Batty · Flippism Is The Key_ “Postcards” from Elm Island Lake, Aitkin Country, Minnesota. Idyllic Beach: Flaming Sunset: Scrollin’ by the Campfire Rustic Bunkhouse: ## [America's Hedonic Hedonism](https://chrisabraham.substack.com/p/americas-hedonic-hedonism) _2026-08-20 · Chris ÁBRÁHÁM · Chris Abraham_ Treating the homeland like a foreign posting, because the tide never tells you which way it moved ## [The Outliers You Have to Remove to See What America Actually Looks Like](https://chrisabraham.substack.com/p/the-outliers-you-have-to-remove-to) _2026-08-20 · Chris ÁBRÁHÁM · Chris Abraham_ Homeless and $10 million net worth aren't opposite ends of one distribution, they're both outside it, and neither one tells you anything about how anyone else in the country actually lives ## [American Fascism: You Are Here](https://chrisabraham.substack.com/p/american-fascism-you-are-here) _2026-08-20 · Chris ÁBRÁHÁM · Chris Abraham_ The checklist has amnesia, and so does everyone sharing it ## [If You Are an Integrator, Integrate](https://aet1998.substack.com/p/if-you-are-an-integrator-integrate) _2026-08-19 · Signals & Switches · Signals & Switches_ Maersk spent a decade buying the pieces. The new org chart and the new P&Ls are where the answer starts to show. ## [Another Saturday Night](https://flippistarchives.blogspot.com/2026/08/another-saturday-night.html) _2026-08-19 · Professor Batty · Flippism Is The Key_ Twenty Years Ago on FITK … Another Saturday night and I ain’t got nobody, I got some money, ’cause I just got paid… How I wish I had someone to talk to, I’m in an awful way" -Sam Cooke A ritual in hundreds of cultures, for thousands of years, and billions of people. It could almost be called a rite of passage, except that the ritual is so sloppy. When the aim is internal chaos, how can ## [Buyout or License: What Happens When Netflix Calls](https://adolfelassal.substack.com/p/buyout-or-license-what-happens-when) _2026-08-18 · Adolf El Assal · Adolf El Assal_ The offer looks the same either way. It isn't. ## [Salka and Hekla x4](https://flippistarchives.blogspot.com/2026/08/salka-and-hekla-x4.html) _2026-08-17 · Professor Batty · Flippism Is The Key_ Iceland Airwaves, Iðno, November 5, 2025: Salka Valsdóttir and Hekla Magnusdóttir, Iceland Airwaves, 2025 ## [AI QA That Opens Fix PRs (Sponsored)](https://crawlproof.com/a/fq7cW8kQEZNx) _2026-08-17 · **Sponsored**_ Runs browser QA, files issues with repro evidence, and opens fix PRs. ## [Everybody Discovers the Clitoris Eventually](https://chrisabraham.substack.com/p/everybody-discovers-the-clitoris) _2026-08-16 · Chris ÁBRÁHÁM · Chris Abraham_ Some people just take sixty years. A response to the tech commentators announcing, breathlessly, that we're leaving the "humanist era" for a world where value has to be earned. ## [Don't Save the Whales 2026](https://chrisabraham.substack.com/p/dont-save-the-whales-2026) _2026-08-16 · Chris ÁBRÁHÁM · Chris Abraham_ Twenty-one years ago I wrote that no cause is noble enough to sacrifice your children to. A scene in the back of a Maybach just answered me back, honestly, for the first time. ## [All of Nothing Is Nothing](https://chrisabraham.substack.com/p/all-of-nothing-is-nothing) _2026-08-16 · Chris ÁBRÁHÁM · Chris Abraham_ Humanity's worst negotiating mistake was believing we're owed payment for existing, instead of for producing. The data backs the correction, not the myth. ## [You Can't Win a Revolution Against 60 Percent](https://chrisabraham.substack.com/p/you-cant-win-a-revolution-against) _2026-08-16 · Chris ÁBRÁHÁM · Chris Abraham_ Race war, class war, election: the same math problem three ways. The group being targeted for overthrow isn't a fragile minority elite. It's the actual majority. ## [In the Beginning Was the Code](https://chrisabraham.substack.com/p/in-the-beginning-was-the-code) _2026-08-15 · Chris ÁBRÁHÁM · Chris Abraham_ Swap one word for another in the most famous sentence ever written, and the whole argument about AI, art, and language changes. ## [I Am RDBMS](https://chrisabraham.substack.com/p/i-am-rdbms) _2026-08-15 · Chris ÁBRÁHÁM · Chris Abraham_ I didn't find out I have aphantasia until I was fifty. Here's what that actually feels like, and why I've spent decades backing my mind up to every platform that would hold it. ## [Words Are Code](https://chrisabraham.substack.com/p/words-are-code) _2026-08-15 · Chris ÁBRÁHÁM · Chris Abraham_ I write two or three articles a day now with an AI copilot, after twenty years of writing alone and unread. Here's why I don't think that makes what I'm doing any less mine. ## [Bernstein Core](https://chrisabraham.substack.com/p/bernstein-core) _2026-08-15 · Chris ÁBRÁHÁM · Chris Abraham_ How Radical Chic Became a Majority Lifestyle ## [Don’t Fall for the Fronting](https://chrisabraham.substack.com/p/dont-fall-for-the-fronting) _2026-08-14 · Chris ÁBRÁHÁM · Chris Abraham_ Everybody’s a squish. Everything else is cultural. ## [Are Rights Protections From, or Guarantees To?](https://chrisabraham.substack.com/p/are-rights-protections-from-or-guarantees) _2026-08-14 · Chris ÁBRÁHÁM · Chris Abraham_ FDR wrote a second Bill of Rights in 1944, died before he could fight for it, and his widow carried it into the UN. Here's why the word "rights" has been doing two different jobs ever since. ## [Crush Every Threat in Real Time (Sponsored)](https://crawlproof.com/a/03Fbj9MwSHhd) _2026-08-14 · **Sponsored**_ One agent for real-time detection, exposure tracking, and active defense. ## [I Signed Contracts on Set While Directing My Actors](https://adolfelassal.substack.com/p/i-signed-contracts-on-set-while-directing) _2026-08-14 · Adolf El Assal · Adolf El Assal_ What it cost me to make my first real feature, and the boundary I never set until it was too late. ## [Three Eyes of God](https://flippistarchives.blogspot.com/2026/08/three-eyes-of-god.html) _2026-08-14 · Professor Batty · Flippism Is The Key_ ## [A Feed You've Fallen Behind On](https://systemsandspines.substack.com/p/a-feed-youve-fallen-behind-on) _2026-08-13 · Kristi Pihl · Systems & Spines_ A briefing is a list of what happened. Everything that mattered, you had to be there for. ## [Gareth Jones: The Journalist Who Exposed Stalin’s Starvation of Ukraine](https://ukrainedecoded.substack.com/p/gareth-jones-the-journalist-who-exposed) _2026-08-13 · Viktor Kovalenko · Ukraine Decoded_ The Welsh reporter who walked into the Holodomor and refused to look away—while Moscow’s Western apologists called the dying “not starving” ## [The Last Stand of Senior Lieutenant Artem Abramovych](https://ukrainedecoded.substack.com/p/the-last-stand-of-senior-lieutenant) _2026-08-12 · Viktor Kovalenko · Ukraine Decoded_ In 2014, a 24-year-old Ukrainian tank commander and his crew sacrificed everything near Stepanivka to shield wounded comrades from advancing Russian armor. ## [Three stories. Disconnected.](https://flippistarchives.blogspot.com/2026/08/three-stories-disconnected.html) _2026-08-12 · Professor Batty · Flippism Is The Key_ Twenty Years Ago on FITK Thin strands of hair congregated like rope splinters to hang down in front of his eyes, hanging in the soft summer gravity, making me furious, twitching my hand with primal anxiety.I awaited the perfect moment to strike and it came so I struck.Reaching out to swipe the playful strands of hair from his eyes and saying to him, "Life is like the opposite of gymnastics in ## [Steve Wozniak’s Ukrainian Affinity: The Apple Co-Founder’s Embrace of a Contested Heritage](https://ukrainedecoded.substack.com/p/steve-wozniaks-ukrainian-affinity) _2026-08-11 · Viktor Kovalenko · Ukraine Decoded_ Despite a documented Polish paternal line and German/Swiss maternal roots, the engineer who helped launch the personal computer revolution has long voiced a personal connection to Ukraine. ## [Why Most Indie Films Die After the Festival Lights Go Out](https://adolfelassal.substack.com/p/why-most-indie-films-die-after-the) _2026-08-11 · Adolf El Assal · Adolf El Assal_ Distribution isn't the reward for finishing your film. It's a plan you should have made before you shot a single frame. ## [Departure Lounge Yoga](https://flippistarchives.blogspot.com/2026/08/departure-lounge-yoga.html) _2026-08-10 · Professor Batty · Flippism Is The Key_ There is nothing like some carefully chosen yoga routines to prepare one for a long flight. Downward Crouching Dog (with bag); Extended No-Foot: Non-Reversed Prayer: Double Garland (seated): ## [The Ukrainian Hercules They Tried to Erase: Ivan Piddubnyi and Russia’s Long War on Ukrainian Identity](https://ukrainedecoded.substack.com/p/the-ukrainian-hercules-they-tried) _2026-08-08 · Viktor Kovalenko · Ukraine Decoded_ From the wrestling mats of early 20th-century Europe to a neglected grave in Kuban, the story of a world champion reveals how Russian imperialism has systematically denied Ukrainian greatness. ## [Browse ThreatCrush Modules (Sponsored)](https://crawlproof.com/a/fQ6YoOabwNos) _2026-08-08 · **Sponsored**_ Install community-built security modules to extend real-time threat intelligence and monitoring ## [Panteleimon Kulish: Architect of the Modern Ukrainian Language](https://ukrainedecoded.substack.com/p/panteleimon-kulish-architect-of-the) _2026-08-07 · Viktor Kovalenko · Ukraine Decoded_ Today, August 7, marks the birthday of Panteleimon Oleksandrovych Kulish (1819–1897), one of the towering figures of the nineteenth-century Ukrainian national revival. ## [I Couldn't Pay Rent While Directing My Own Film](https://adolfelassal.substack.com/p/i-couldnt-pay-rent-while-directing) _2026-08-07 · Adolf El Assal · Adolf El Assal_ The producers didn't arrange a car. I took the bus through winter mornings to direct a film I'd already given everything to. ## [Table for Anderson… Party of Six](https://flippistarchives.blogspot.com/2026/08/anderson-party-of-six.html) _2026-08-07 · Professor Batty · Flippism Is The Key_ Morrison County, Minnesota, July, 1918 From the Oscar Anderson archives. ## [My Addiction: Reading, Ghost Stories, History and the Stories Behind the Past](https://www.laurencegreen.com/post/my-addiction-reading-ghost-stories-history-and-the-stories-behind-the-past) _2026-08-06 · ieva44 · Laurence Green_ My addiction is… you’ve probably guessed it: reading. I read far more than I probably should - often when I should be doing something more practical, like tidying the garden or working in the churchyard. But books have always been my passion, especially those that explore ghost stories, local history, military history, and the fascinating stories that connect England’s past with the wider world.… ## [Coffee](https://flippistarchives.blogspot.com/2026/08/coffee.html) _2026-08-05 · Professor Batty · Flippism Is The Key_ Twenty Years Ago on FITK It was a strange rendezvous, this meeting in a funky coffeehouse in Moorhead, Minnesota. How she ended up on that lonesome prairie was a long story that I was eager to hear. We had graduated together, done a few things in college with each other, and then drifted apart, she was on a career track, while I was spinning my wheels. Then we both got married, she moved away, ## [Why Producers Reject Scripts (And Almost Never Tell You Why)](https://adolfelassal.substack.com/p/why-producers-reject-scripts-and) _2026-08-04 · Adolf El Assal · Adolf El Assal_ The real reasons behind the silence, and how to position your script so it never has to compete with vagueness. ## [Traveling, Climate, and Love](https://wellness.janefonda.com/p/traveling-climate-and-love) _2026-08-03 · Jane Fonda · Jane Fonda Wellness_ I've been on the road for 2 weeks....... ## [Twenty Years On: How Yanukovych’s 2006 Return Undermined the Orange Revolution](https://ukrainedecoded.substack.com/p/twenty-years-on-how-yanukovychs-2006) _2026-08-03 · Viktor Kovalenko · Ukraine Decoded_ Twenty years ago today, on August 3, 2006, Ukrainian politics took a sharp and consequential turn. ## [Planting the Crops](https://flippistarchives.blogspot.com/2026/08/putting-in-crops.html) _2026-08-03 · Professor Batty · Flippism Is The Key_ Morrison County, Minnesota, c. 1918: From the Oscar Anderson archives. ## [Chicken Kiev Speech: How America Discouraged Ukraine from Independence](https://ukrainedecoded.substack.com/p/chicken-kiev-speech-how-america-discouraged) _2026-08-02 · Viktor Kovalenko · Ukraine Decoded_ On a warm summer day in 1991, U.S. ## [I Used to Know Exactly Who I Was](https://adolfelassal.substack.com/p/i-used-to-know-exactly-who-i-was) _2026-07-31 · Adolf El Assal · Adolf El Assal_ Twenty years ago the answer was simple. It isn't anymore, and I've stopped pretending that's a problem. ## [Hot Fun in the Summertime](https://flippistarchives.blogspot.com/2026/07/hot-fun-in-summertime.html) _2026-07-31 · Professor Batty · Flippism Is The Key_ Beer party, Morrison County, Minnesota, c.1918: From the Oscar Anderson Archives. ## [The Music Store](https://flippistarchives.blogspot.com/2026/07/the-music-store.html) _2026-07-29 · Professor Batty · Flippism Is The Key_ Twenty Years Ago on FITK Google street view image of what was once Amanda Bacon's Studio Located between the Polka Dot dairy store and what was once a candy store, Amanda Bacon’s Music Studio was an anomaly. Run by a feisty sexagenarian, this small shop in what was otherwise a cultural desert sat there unpretentiously for years, with Miss Bacon making a modest living giving piano and ## [What AI Can and Cannot Do for Filmmakers](https://adolfelassal.substack.com/p/what-ai-can-and-cannot-do-for-filmmakers) _2026-07-28 · Adolf El Assal · Adolf El Assal_ A clear-eyed look at where these tools actually help, and where they quietly waste your time. ## [A 1968 School Memory from King Edward VI School, Totnes](https://www.laurencegreen.com/post/a-1968-school-memory-from-king-edward-vi-school-totnes) _2026-07-27 · ieva44 · Laurence Green_ I recently rediscovered a photograph of a group of friends and me, taken in 1968, when I was in the Upper Sixth at King Edward VI School in Totnes, Devon. It's a wonderful reminder of school days, old friendships, and memories that have stayed with me for more than half a century. I'm the chap hiding in the shadows, looking down behind the pointing finger. As the saying goes, "The moving finger… ## [Scenes from a Carnival](https://flippistarchives.blogspot.com/2026/07/scenes-from-carnival-1989.html) _2026-07-27 · Professor Batty · Flippism Is The Key_ Anoka, Minnesota, 1989: No phones needed… ## [Every Film I've Ever Made Still Owes Me Money](https://adolfelassal.substack.com/p/every-film-ive-ever-made-still-owes) _2026-07-24 · Adolf El Assal · Adolf El Assal_ Director's fees, writing fees, producer's fees. All deferred, every project, for twenty years. None of it has ever come back. ## [GDRN](https://flippistarchives.blogspot.com/2026/06/photo-dump.html) _2026-07-24 · Professor Batty · Flippism Is The Key_ Icelandic chanteuse Guðrún Ýr Eyfjörð Jóhannesdóttir: Performing at Grund Senior home, Reykjavík, November 6, 2025 ## [Riverfest Rockin’](https://flippistarchives.blogspot.com/2026/07/corners.html) _2026-07-24 · Professor Batty · Flippism Is The Key_ My home town has a thing for summer festivals. I’m sure it is in no small part due to the three months of oft-times brutal winter weather we endure. Then again, perhaps this is some form of fertility rite, with lots of skin on display and somewhat suggestive food trucks (The G-Spot truck was selling tacos): But nothing could top the apparently topless vendor selling her CBD Sweet Mana ## [Family Values](https://flippistarchives.blogspot.com/2026/07/family-values.html) _2026-07-22 · Professor Batty · Flippism Is The Key_ Twenty Years Ago on FITK Two Harbors, Minnesota, July 7, 2006 After three hours on the road (and six hours since breakfast) the need for sustenance became apparent. "The Vanilla Bean Cafe and Bakery"- how inviting! We pulled into the side parking lot and left the car to go inside. On the way to the front door we passed by a row of Harley-Davidson motorcycles- big ones. Oh my...could be trouble..