An Old Reporter’s Notebook Is a Fine Instrument
All the PPP — print press peers — used to carry them. Corsaletti. Carson. Sperry. And even, rumor had it, Richard Buck. Buck, after all, built the original Cost of Nothing index, sounding one of the earliest alarms on what later became politely known as “customer charges.”
One of the more dishonest accounting schwoozles ever devised.
I was also one of the early adopters of the Sony TC-110 cassette recorder. Anyone who worked with those square condenser mics remembers the moment: realizing how much signal you could capture when you stopped trusting memory alone.
Which is why this column exists at 1:50 a.m.
An hour ago, the phone rang.
“You need a team?”
“Power outage.”
Soft click. Overwatch withdrew into the dark. I caught a chuckle on the way out.
And then — it made sense.
When you’ve been around long enough, you learn that the future doesn’t announce itself with trumpets. It whispers. It shows up first in dreams, in off-hand remarks, in that low-grade tension you can’t quite locate. If you’re paying attention — to your gut, to the wind, to social chatter — you can hear it.
All last week I couldn’t put my finger on what was coming, only that something was. Enough so that I kept repeating one odd warning: stay off the roads on Super Bowl Sunday. I didn’t know why. Now I do.
The strongest jolt came earlier, when my CPAP machine stopped mid-cycle. When that happens, I don’t ease awake — I’m airborne, armed, scanning. NVGs on, the whole schmear.
Power Outage
Not a big one. Fewer than 500 homes. But enough.
Out here, outages are rare. The local utility runs a tight ship. Smart meters light up the map within minutes. As a solar co-gen site, I see the diagnostics almost immediately: crew dispatched, ETA posted, problem localized.
Still, I don’t trust automation alone. Even in auto-land, there’s comfort in knowing a breathing pilot is sitting there in hot backup.
So I called it in.
And with nothing else scheduled at that hour, I had time to think — about time itself. About how often we mislabel cause and effect. About how the most likely explanation for this outage wasn’t weather (clear skies, METARs showing light and variable 2–5 knots), but a drunk driver meeting infrastructure at exactly the wrong moment.
My writing didn’t prevent the outage. But somewhere a week earlier, my preconscious was already flagging elevated risk around Super Bowl traffic.
That’s the part most people miss.
Today’s Big Ponder Is About Time
Not prediction — detection. How weak signals surface before events. How systems telegraph stress long before failure. So this – my outage – was the root of all my “drinking and driving warnings” this week?
Which brings me to the work I’m doing now: a long-lead Peoplenomics report on how the United States would likely function under a Vance administration.
That sentence alone makes some people uncomfortable. But serious planners don’t wait for certainty. They map contingencies.
And there’s been a familiar gnawing lately.
Gnawing Away Time
Donald Trump turns 80 this summer. Mid-June. What follows next is not analysis — it’s the official narrative, the version fed to the public.
The White House physician continues to describe the president as being in “exceptional health,” citing routine exams and assessments. Trump himself jokes that he feels “29.”
At the same time, outside observers — including medical professionals commenting only on public behavior — have noted visible signs common in advanced age: occasional drowsiness at events, ankle swelling, changes in gait or cadence. These observations have prompted questions about stamina, not diagnoses.
Photos and video over the past year have also shown recurring bruises or bandages on the president’s hands. Trump has attributed these to minor bumps and aspirin use. No confirmed diagnosis of a serious underlying condition has been disclosed.
Officially, there is no indication that Trump intends to leave office early or is incapable of serving. His team forcefully rejects such suggestions, and no constitutional mechanisms have been invoked.
That’s the pabulum.
Now the Concerns
Over the weekend, my consigliere and I spent time discussing something different: behavioral filtering. Specifically, the late-night sharing of cartoon imagery depicting the Obamas as apes.
Not the politics of it — the mechanics.
In clinical literature, one of the earliest indicators of certain neurodegenerative conditions is the erosion of social filters: a reduced ability to suppress impulses that would previously have been recognized as inappropriate or damaging.
This is not a diagnosis. It is pattern recognition.
Supporters dismissed the incident as humor. “Just a cartoon.” Perhaps. But that explanation only holds if the filter that once prevented such material from being shared remains intact.
I’m not the only one asking the question. Multiple media outlets — some serious, some less so — have openly raised concerns about cognitive decline. A few lean heavily into clickbait. Others quote credentialed professionals speaking cautiously about public signs.
There’s a line about tabloids from Men in Black that’s always stuck with me:
“Best damn investigative reporting on the planet. But hey, go ahead, read the New York Times if you want. They get lucky sometimes.”
The point isn’t that tabloids are right. It’s that weak signals often surface at the margins first.
There’s also a clustering of independent indicators that I don’t like. One respected Polish futurist — whose work I’ve followed for years — has publicly questioned whether Trump completes the year. I don’t share predictions lightly, and I don’t relish that possibility. But dismissing converging signals because they’re uncomfortable is how systems get blindsided.
Which is why the timing matters.
Vice President Vance’s fourth child — a son — is expected to be born in late July 2026. In serious succession planning, temporal markers matter. If stressors emerge, they tend to do so before such markers, not after.
That’s the axis the upcoming Peoplenomics report will explore: not personalities, but operational reality. How power would flow. How markets would react. How governance would actually function.
One More Forward Cluster
There’s another zone lighting up: late March into April. Multiple independent models are flagging elevated risk of market instability. Not certainty — probability.
No panic today. Old NFC logic still holds; markets often rally on football Sundays. I closed a modest long Friday within a point of the daily high. Metals were firming in early futures. And one Asia-based analyst I respect has circled February 27 as a date worth watching.
None of this is financial advice. And this column predicts no specific outcome — political or otherwise.
But concern is not prediction. It’s preparation.
There’s a faint tingling that shows up at the back of the neck when enough weak signals align. It’s not fear. It’s awareness.
People know more in advance than they admit. The hard part is silencing ego, filtering noise, and learning how to weight what you sense without letting it run you.
Lights are back on. Another half-cup of coffee.
Back to non-destructive pillow testing.
— ure
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