Quote of the day October 28, 2025

"The simple act of an ordinary brave man is not to participate in lies, not to support false actions!" - Aleksander Solzhenitsyn

Quote of the day October 27, 2025

"The fates guide the person who accepts them and hinder the person who resists them." - Cleanthes

Quote of the day October 26, 2025

 "Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all others." - Marcus Tullius Cicero

Thoughts on the Kotzebue City Council Meeting from October 24, 2025

 

I want to start off by echoing the citizen comments from Friday’s city council meeting and thanking the administration and employees for their work during the storms earlier in the month. While it’s worrying that these events are happening more frequently thanks to climate devastation, I’m grateful for The City of Kotzebue for their work in fulfilling our need for safety. Several people mentioned the need for shelter at higher ground, and it just happens that I’m working on an article for The Green Party of Alaska’s newsletter on leadership needing to make their communities antifragile.

 

I want to congratulate Saima Chase and Johnson Greene on their electoral victories. We get to welcome back Cory Jackson onto the council as well, who has been chosen to fill the vacancy we had. I’d like to congratulate Saima Chase om being chosen as our new mayor of Kotzebue and Ernest Norton on becoming our new vice mayor. Before we move on with the new, I’d like to thank former mayor Derek Haviland-Lie for not just his leadership during the three storms but throughout his term as mayor. He is a man that continues to put the community first and does what he can to improve The City of Kotzebue.

 

I’m grateful that with the turbulent year we’ve had that Ron Johnson has stepped up to the plate to be the city’s acting city manager. I appreciate that the entire city is working together as they work to fill voids in the team. If you’re looking for work be sure to check out open positions at City Hall. It seems like everyone has several jobs to do with how many open positions there are. As Johnson Greene has been pointing out it’s worrisome how much of the work to be done is being outsourced.

 

While climate devastation, an economic downturn, and political polarization keeps the federal government shutdown is all quite worrying we shouldn’t fall into nihilism over it. We must remember our most important resource is people, and we people right now in the administration working on building a great team. And it’s good as well that we have a full city council filled with leaders who care about this community and where it’s going. The City of Kotzebue is a listening government and will work on the feedback it gets from its citizenry.

Quote of the day October 25, 2025

"I think of myself as playing against the board, and not against my opponent." - Daniel Naroditsky

Quote of the day October 24, 2025

"Under no pretext should arms and ammunition be surrendered; any attempt to disarm the workers must be frustrated, by force if necessary." - Karl Marx

Quote of the day October 23, 2025

 "The virtue of a person is measured not by his outstanding efforts but by his everyday behavior." - Blaise Pascal

Quote of the day October 22, 2025

When you have trouble getting out of bed in the morning, remember that your defining characteristic - what defines a human being - is to work with others. - Marcus Aurelius

Quote of the day September 28, 2025

 “Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.”

- Squire Bill Widener

Quote of the day September 27, 2025

 "Focus on growth rather than rating."

- Grandmaster Elshan Moradi

Quote of the day September 26, 2025

 

The Legend of Zelda stream highlights 9/15

 

Where There’s Work, There’s Worth

 

I’ve just gone to a funeral of someone I love dearly, and the process is a lot more demanding for the community in Kotzebue than it is in other places. From building the casket to cleaning up after the potluck. I didn’t realize how different the process was until I went to a funeral in Nome. While I was certainly grateful that someone took care of the digging and burial for us, I appreciate it when a community gets together to help each other out. I feel like community is something a lot of people are missing out in the modern world.

 

Like a funeral in rural Alaska, Labor Day is also a community effort. The holiday was created to advocate for worker’s rights. Unions fought for and won the weekend, along with the 40-hour work week. Workers fought against child labor, with kids getting paid cheaply for their work, stunting their intellectual development. Though the days of parades and advocacy on Labor Day seem to be a thing of the past, just like community involvement in funerals outside Rural Alaska.

 

Organized labor has lost a great amount of power in the United States, and that came with the decline of union membership, from a high of 40 percent of the workforce being a member of a union down to 11 percent today. As much as we celebrate democracy we mainly participate by choosing who represents us in government, while many workplaces operate like monarchies. People want a psychologically safe workplace, not one where they are viewed as replaceable tools.

 

Capitalism has disrupted our traditional way of life, and that’s true for everyone around the world. We didn’t always have jobs that kept us away from our families. Culture requires sacrifice, the workplace having a culture all its own, and it’s different from company to company. Before Inupiat people would give seals a drink of water after a successful hunt, appreciating a being, who is spiritually on the same level as themselves, who is being sacrificed for the well-being their community. Now people are expected to go to work, and sacrifice time with their family, and perhaps even the ability to make their own.

 

Solidarity is something missing in our culture today, with rampant hyper individualism, algorithms keeping people hooked on applications, and nihilism. But humans have not climbed to the top of the food chain because we’re the strongest or fastest animal. Rather, we are where we’re at today because of our ability to work together to solve problems. And that’s what Labor Day is all about, everyday people working together to keep our world going.

 

The Green Party celebrates solidarity and wants to be involved in facilitating that this year, organizing Labor Day events in Kotzebue, Alaska. While we understand there’s a lot to be angry about, we feel the climate and democratic crisis is even more reason we need to come together this year, and every year going forward. We recognize there are issues that we can only solve by working together, like climate devastation or replacing this economic system that is past its sell by date, there are more ways to measure how well we are doing than with financial capital alone, like human, social and resource capital.

 

Labor Day isn’t a Green Party holiday, and we’re excited to do our part in helping to make these events happen. We’re looking to work in solidarity with other organizations like NW Arctic Takes Action, a local group who oppose the growing authoritarianism in this country. And we’d like to thank The City of Kotzebue for weaving the fee for The Youth Center. We’re visiting everyone in town this August to let people know that Labor Day is going to be different this year. The workers in Kotzebue are worth investing in, and I’m looking forward to showing appreciation for them.

 

Our way of life is in danger, as Kotzebue has been impacted greatly so far by climate devastation, and more is to come. Humanity needs to look at our limits of separation with Earth, and how our actions impact the environment. Unfortunately, our leadership fails to see how we are parts within a whole. How often do we measure only financial capital, ignoring human or social capital? We have several cable television channels that are looking at how well DOW Jones or S&P 500 are doing. Our economic system didn’t get where it’s at because it was driven by people looking for short-term gains.

 

People are worth investing in, and we feel that they should be considered more in our economic system. Democracy shouldn’t just happen in ads and on election day but also needs to be extended into the workplace. We need an economic system that considers human capital along with financial capital. Labor is not a pillar of our society that we should ignore. Workers have built this world, and we’re going to need them to save this one as well. Who knows what the damage to Kotzebue would have been if someone hadn’t built our sea wall. What kind of society would we become if there wasn’t someone out there getting their hands dirty every day?

Quote of the day August 19, 2025

 “It is in disaster, not success, that the heroes and bums get sorted out.” - James Stockdale

Trekking the Future Season 3, Episode 5 | The Sehlat Who Ate Its Tail

 

This week on Trekking The Future my friend Justin and I discuss the new episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds The Sehlat Who Ate Its Tail. We continue the new Lower Decks comic by IDW Publishing as well. We end the podcast by discussing leadership.

Pictures from Saturday's Chess Club August 16, 2025

At this weekend's chess club our Vice President and I played a game of Tri-dimensional chess, the game created for the Star Trek series. I ended up prevailing in the game, checking where my pieces can go on the different levels of the play field. I ended up being caught off guard, not paying attention to the moves Nigraq can make. While scary at first, I pressed on and ended up delivering checkmate!

A frequent player in our weekend games has been Devon Stalker, who has learned what all the pieces are faster than our Vice President of the club. Both men ended up blundering their queens, though Nigraq was able to make a comeback and triumph in the end.

Our monthly puzzler was solved by KOTZ Radio's news director Desiree Hagan, who won our prize, a magnetic travel chess set.

Quote of the day August 18, 2025

 "The whole point of business in life is to find where you have a monopoly." - Peter Thiel

Quote of the day August 16, 2025

 "Whoever makes his journey to a tyrant's court becomes his slave, although he went there a free man." - Sophocles

We need to celebrate Earth Day

I’ve told many about my existential crisis, as I try to escape nihilism and embrace life. Studying philosophy, I wonder what am I sacrificing my time and energy for? Thanks to my upbringing I’ve always been an environmentalist, being taught to respect the land, animals and plants. Reading Friedrich Nietzsche, I’ve come to realize that we need to do more than simply conserve what we have now but improve this world for the Overman and the future generations of this planet. Even if you don’t subscribe to Eternal Return, perhaps you are a Christian, I don’t see how someone can be satisfied with humanity receiving such a great gift from a god and trashing it.

 

It hit me that more needed to be done in Kotzebue’s City Council meeting on February 6^th, where we approved a holiday schedule. You could probably guess that Earth Day was missing from the agenda. I voted to pass the resolution without Earth Day because I know we haven’t done enough work to make it a big deal to the people of Kotzebue. Culture requires investment, and I’ve done plenty for days like Independence Day and Christmas but unfortunately leaving Earth Day out in the cold. Sure, I should have done more in the past, but the second-best time to do something is right now!

 

The Alliance for Knowledge and Reason (ARK) is hosting their 7^th Annual Regenerative Summit, coordinating a full week of events from April 20^th to the 26^th. The summit is driven by the principles of Permaculture, where ARK will present examples of how we can adopt to climate devastation through economic solutions, getting to the core issues of energy independence, zero waste, and food sovereignty. It’s exciting that this summit is sponsored by organizations like The Green Party of Alaska and The Alaska Forward Party. This year Kotzebue will be involved, with viewing parties being set up, along with other events for Earth Day itself.

 

We are in a climate crisis, with humans driving this ongoing sixth extinction event. The question is will humanity rise to occasion and make Earth a great home for the Overman; or will we parish to let another species have a go at this in the next few million years? There is reason to be optimistic, looking in the past when we almost wiped out the whales, but we were able to slow down our hunts for them when we discovered oil in the ground and innovated ways of extracting it. We have stopped ecological disasters before, and we can do it again!

 

Earth is our home, and we should celebrate it. Often when talking about our solar system it seems like people forget that the coolest planet is The Earth. When we look out at the stars where else do we see green patches of life? Philosophy has taught me to ask myself what my sacrifice is, as the fact is none of us are immortal. Why else should you be given money for your time, as we understand we don’t have an unlimited supply. The Earth, like any home, is worth that sacrifice. If we can’t come to terms with that, we can make the path for the next species to give it a go.

Trekking the Future: Children of the Comet

 

Bentley Bear's Crystal Quest stream highlights

 Switched to playing with OGHUGO's joystick controller. Even though there are phantom jumps I feel much more comfortable using his controller.

Bentley Bear's Crystal Quest stream highlights

 My puppy Malik interfered my stream!

 

I still got a new high score on Bentley Bear's Crystal Quest for the Atari 7800, getting 198,000 points.

Trekking the Future - Strange New Worlds (Season 1 episode 1)

 I join Justin in talking about the Star Trek show Strange New Worlds.

Combating imperialism

 

We need to prioritize what we're teaching in history if we're going to combat imperialism. Changing maps isn't what makes a person great.

The Democrats want to shut The GPAK down

 

I'm grateful Robert Shields is heading The Green Party of Alaska's effort to collaborate with other the other parties. Unfortunately, our experience with The Democrats is that they want to prioritize shutting us down.

Virtue

Officers of The Green Party of Alaska discuss virtue.