All posts reflect my own stories and opinions and are not endorsed by WORT or its Board of Directors.
The Rat-Rod Skunkworks
A bar in Madison, a band called Flat Atom, and a single beer that changed everything. Two decades later, Recluse Studios is a rat-rod skunkworks building local-first audio software with the philosophy that the tool should belong to you.
The $50,000 Blind Date: Buying a Wheelchair in America
When you spend $50,000 on a car, you test drive it first. When you need a $50,000 power wheelchair, insurance hands you a brochure, refuses to cover basic independent living features like seat elevation, and leaves you praying the custom seat cushion doesn’t destroy your hips for the next five years. Here is the absolute absurdity of trying to buy a modern mobility device in America.
Soundbites & Lies
Political campaign ads run on deliberate misinformation and emotional spin. Examining election advertising standards, AI panic narratives, medical guidelines, computing infrastructure needs, and official USDA farmland data cuts through the noise.
Signal Drift: Chapter 28
The plastic syringe she had been holding slipped from her numb fingers, hitting the floorboards with a dull, hollow click. Audrey just stared at him, her face completely drained of color, looking at a man who was supposed to be a ghost thousands of miles away. In the tight, amber-lit alcove of a leaking riverside shelter, the weight of three decades and the raw trauma of what they had lost before the sky went dark came crashing back into the frequency.
Signal Drift: Chapter 27
The western bank of the Mississippi was a different kind of graveyard—sterile, calculated, and bound by invisible threads of corporate security. Crawling flat against the limestone shale to slip beneath the high-frequency click of Aegis microwave fences, Cronauer watched the cold reality of the harvest unfold through his night-vision lens. They weren’t just clearing the valley; they were indexing human assets, checking teeth, and sorting survivors like hardware for the shelters down south.
The Gibson, Garcia, and the Great Dumbed-Down Betrayal
We have GPUs capable of real-time ray-traced physics at 240Hz, but our desktop operating systems are artificially lobotomized so nobody accidentally breaks anything. From the Gibson in Hackers to Penelope Garcia’s command deck, Hollywood gave us a vision of computing as a high-touch craft—before big tech sanded down every sharp edge for the lowest common denominator.
Signal Drift: Chapter 26
The six minutes didn’t tick away; they evaporated. The machine was awake, the checksum was breached, and the maintenance deck of the dam erupted into a crossfire of automated lasers and concrete-shattering 7.62 rounds. With no time to reach for his rifle, Cronauer stood flat on the pegs and turned the heavy aluminum armor of his BMW GS into a flying kinetic battering ram.
Shag Shacks, Thrash Metal, and Horseradish
Thought Shatner’s metal record was a Pat Boone stunt? Think again. With a band called The *uckers, a Riot Fest rider demanding a Shag Shack, 4 feet of Polish sausage, and Eau Claire horseradish, the simulation has broken.
The Miracle of the Dreadlocked Tech and the Van of Holding
It took a dreadlocked tech, three proprietary hardware programmers, and a last-second scavenge from a van to fix the chair. With the rig back online, it was time to hit The Brewing Projekt and credit the man who turned me into a hophead.
Signal Drift: Chapter 25
The Mississippi was breathing. A thick, rhythmic fog rolled off the water, swallowing the bottom of the bluffs and turning the world into a grayscale blur. I had the GS in "Blackout Mode"—lights killed, traction control dialed to the dirt setting. But I wasn't hearing...