Hearth on Creativity Hacker

The American Dream is a Funhouse Mirror

jeff@smithicus.com (Jefferson Smith) — Thu, 10 Apr 2025 22:05:05 +0000

Over on TrustCafe, James Young was trying to make sense of the broken American system that is being twisted out of all recognizable shape by the current Republican regime. He asked simply, “How did my country get here?”

I replied with my own take on the question, and then realized that my answer fit perfectly into this new blog stream that I’ve been thinking about.

Shopping Online Is Greener

jeff@smithicus.com (Jefferson Smith) — Wed, 09 Apr 2025 15:51:46 +0000

For years I’ve felt guilty about my use of online shopping. All those little packages coming from big Eastern cities, all the way across the continent, to be driven to my door by a harried little man in an overworked Honda. Surely that’s wasteful compared to me just going to the local bigbox outlet and buying it in person, right? Well, I recently had a thought that has me questioning that logic.

Soft-serve Sci-Fi

jeff@smithicus.com (Jefferson Smith) — Tue, 01 Apr 2025 14:47:03 +0000

Over the course of my lifetime, science fiction has gone from a niche-market storyform aimed at geeks and propeller-heads to a cultural juggernaut consumed by the masses. So you would think that, as a one-time card-carrying member of the Junior Space Ranger’s Adventure Club, I would be delighted by the scifi-rich world I now find myself living in.

But I’m not.

Healing the Existential Malaise

jeff@smithicus.com (Jefferson Smith) — Sun, 30 Mar 2025 19:35:07 +0000

In all the hubbub of getting the project section going, I’ve been ignoring the more bloggish portion of the site. But after putting together the Countdown To Launch, it became impossible to ignore it any longer. So this is my inaugural blog post, in which I’ll try to guess what the hell I intend to blog about.

Review of Typoman

jeff@smithicus.com (Jefferson Smith) — Sun, 30 Mar 2025 19:26:47 +0000

The video gaming world became toxic to me 20 years ago when I started getting motion sick every time I played. Maybe the game engines changed or maybe it was something in my head, but an entertainment medium I had previously loved suddenly became off limits, just as my children were beginning to discover it. But today was different.