A weekly report on things I’ve read, heard and seen since last Wednesday. 

Article: “Keepers of a Shrine to Cable TV Decide to Cut the Cord” by John Koblin, New York Times, September 13, 2026. There was a place in Denver, Colorado, called “The Cable Center” which was funded by the cable TV industry and served as a museum of cable complete with a 75,000 square foot building. The highlight of each year for the Cable Center was a heavily-attended annual conference of cable industry leadership. But things have changed. Just five years ago, 40% of all TV consumed in the US was on a cable network; now that number is just 19%. With the loss of viewers comes the loss of revenue, so things like conferences and expensive museums are the first to get cut. I confess I’m partly to blame. Last month I returned my cable box to the Xfinity store and cut the cable. I haven’t missed it at all. That’s partly due to my interest in football being greatly eroded by billionaire owners sucking up to the regime; the outsized place of gambling; the lack of meaningful efforts to address CTE; and there’s so much else to do. Fortunately, the artifacts and holdings of the cable museum will be mostly preserved albeit in a storage space with much less access. But from a historian’s perspective, it’s important to preserve artifacts from dying institutions. 

Article: “Report says Flock allowed access to city license plate data.” by Yogev Toby, Boston Globe, September 13, 2026. Last year, the city of Boston obtained 45 Flock surveillance cameras as part of a pilot program. Among the conditions under which Boston took the cameras was that only a handful of Boston police employees would have access. That lasted about 72 hours until Flock made the output of all the cameras available to everyone on their national network. Someone in Boston figured out what had happened and complained, and the system was supposedly locked down again. At a Lowell City Council meeting several weeks ago, the city’s police chief assured residents that data from Flock cameras in Lowell are only accessible by authorized Lowell Police officers. I certainly believe that the Chief as speaking truthfully but I’m skeptical he was speaking accurately, because this company’s record for limiting access to the data collected by its cameras is, as reported in the media, problematic.  

Podcast: The New Yorker Radio Hour – September 10, 2026 – “Colin Kaepernick, Ten Years After Taking a Knee” – In this episode, New Yorker editor David Remnick interviewed former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick who burst on the scene as a star dual threat quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers but who chose to protest for social justice by kneeling during the National Anthem at the start of football games. A year later he was cut from the team and, despite his considerable skills and the need of many other teams for quarterbacks, no other NFL team would sign him. Kaepernick has a new memoir, “The Perilous Fight.” As is also the case with many big corporations, whenever an NFL team did something for “social justice” it was completely performative and a marketing strategy when that seemed an effective strategy. But with the resurgence of MAGA and its racism, there aren’t a lot of social justice efforts underway by pro football teams which is unsurprising given how most of their billionaire owners were and are big backers of the current regime. I immediately purchased Kaepernick’s book, mostly to show my support for him and the cause for which he sacrificed his career. But memoirs are perhaps my favorite form of literature so I look forward to reading it, as well. 

Article: “Sept. 11 played a role in paving Iran’s way to Mideast power” by Neil MacFarquhar, New York Times, September 18, 2026. The older I get, the more I realize the importance of studying history. This article illustrates that by linking key events from the Iran v. Iraq War of the early 1980s up to our present quagmire in the Middle East. When that war began, we were still in the midst of the Cold War struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union so our primary concern was to keep the Soviets from establishing a presence in that part of the world. And to ensure the continuous flow of oil to the western world. Eventually, the two combatants exhausted themselves and the war relented but when the Soviet Union fell, Saddam Hussein sought to become the main power player in the region, hence his invasion of Kuwait. The first President Bush led the coalition that expelled Hussein, but he wisely left that regime intact as a counterweight to Iran. But then, the second President Bush sought to overthrow Hussein using the 9-11 terrorist attacks as a pretense. Hussein was deposed by American forces but that created a regional power vacuum that was filled by Iran which spread its influence around the region through proxies. Then, the ongoing war against Iran which shows no signs of relenting and which has caused a precipitous increase in fuel costs and has invested Iran with far more strategic power than it had with the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, is one of many factors contributing towards America’s ongoing isolation and strategic retrenchment.