Author Archives: diestl

For all the noise about progress and justice, one group has recently been left behind by the Democratic Party: the middle class. These are the people who clock in every day, pay the bills, raise their families, and keep the wheels of this country turning. They are the backbone of America, yet their concerns areContinue reading “Seams of narcissistic entitlement”

I recently heard the prime rib at Tam O’Shanter was something special, but I’d never been there myself. Actually, in my almost twenty-six years living in Los Angeles, I never heard of the place So, I asked a couple of brothers if they’d like to join me for dinner, and together we set out toContinue reading “Tam O’ Shanter”

In the 1970s, streakers became a problem in sports. Once TV stopped showing them and the broadcasters stopped feeding the attention, the copycat behavior lost its reward and died down. The streakers weren’t doing it for the act itself, they were doing it for the audience and notoriety. Remove the audience, and the incentive goesContinue reading “Copycat behavior rewards”

Every major entertainment company operates under a code of conduct. Jimmy Kimmel knew that. Yet when ABC executives confronted him about his rhetoric following Charlie Kirk’s death, he reportedly pledged to double down. With his show already dragging in the ratings and losing money, it was an astonishingly reckless stance. Sponsors were prepared to walk.Continue reading “Freedom of speech narrative”

Social media is engineered to grab our attention, shred it, and replace what trash you just saw with new garbage. We don’t need that. The parasites who run it weaponize our focus to widen the divide, seeding outrage with insignificant drivel. I can’t understand how anyone lets these attentivores, these cultural cancers, move into theirContinue reading “The feast of futilism”

When you shut off all media, TV, social feeds, news apps, even the endless notifications, you cut off the artificial extensions of reality. What’s left is only what your senses encounter: the people in your presence, the conversations you’re having, the work at hand, the street outside your window, the air you breathe. Media, byContinue reading “Digital detox”

Fences were made to be climbed, an invitation, a whispered challenge of a dare. To step away from where life is manufactured through repetition. Whereas breaths are not so deep and mediated. Will the grass be greener? Step over and see. Regret is just a shadow, that fades with the sun. Mistakes are humans rulesContinue reading “Perceptual distortion”

Why do we try so hard to fit into a mold? Each of us carries a spark of uniqueness, yet we are told, conditioned, to believe there is one model of success, one shape of life we must aspire to. This is nothing but illusion, hogwash wrapped in authority. The “mold” is presented as security,Continue reading “Safe in Chains”

The vessel re-shapes itself, consistently through knowledge and experience. It avoids hypocrisy, and knows that contradiction is not a fracture but a mirror, a lesson whispered back through time. It does not hunger for affirmation, for its existence is its own justification. Stop searching for symmetry. Life was never designed to balance. It was designedContinue reading “The flexibility of balance”

Palm trees that grow in the desert, their roots tangled in shifting sands, drinking from wells the eye cannot see, stretching upward with a faith that heat cannot break. Each frond whispers a defiance, green against the repetition of dust, shade against the tyranny of light, a soft, living hymn where silence reigns. They areContinue reading “Palm tree”