Author: vicSocotra

Strong Words

The President had some strong words for the Mullah in Tehran the other day, so we assume that means something much is going to happen, since the Mullah may have noticed that something strong happened the last time the President had some increase in the rhetorical intensity and volume. We admit we may be losing […]

Forty-Seven Years

The present -day Indo-Pacific Fleet is not bounded by the vast ocean for which it is named. When Iranian militants seized American hostages in November 1979, the U.S. Government decided to establish a continuing presence in the Indian Ocean as a means of demonstrating resolve and ability to project military power. Although that ocean is […]

Three Down, Nine to Go!

This week, President Donald Trump and SECWAR Hegseth put on a double team effort to highlight shortfalls in America’s defense- budget, one of nine still unfunded and which could cause a shut-down in three weeks. Wait, Is that ‘defense’ or actually the ‘WAR” budget? The routine news from the Hill this morning highlights what is […]

Handmaidens to Heck

(This is the General Dynamics sales brochure of their new ballistic missile submarine. It is a pricey beast, with a dealer tag of nearly $9 billion—nearly the amount of fraud found so far in the Minnesota day care system. But check the subtitles: it is a diligent handmaiden—guarding against the fires of hell while retaining […]

Just Darker

We spent the beginning of lunch with the Governor of Minnesota. It had been an interesting morning filled with angry white women and former Vice Presidential candidates. The discussion was animated ad filled with the imagery of N utomobilie being put into “drive” and striking a Federal Law Enforcement officer. As a group, we took […]

12-Time-Zone world

That sentiment was expressed as an urban planning tool that showed up a split-generation ago. It held that modern living should be oriented toward neighborhoods that hold everything necessary within a fifteen-minute walk, or a scooter ride. They had commenced putting three-and-four story vertical additions on some of the little Cape Cod houses purchased for […]

So, That Was the Week That Was

This is Red Square as it was in late summer of 1998, the last time any of us were there in person. We are running it this morning with a sense of loss, since we are 13 time zones away from Pyongyang, North Korea. We were playing with some of the images from the trip […]

4th Week of Advent, 2025

To mark the Solstice and the week, we turned off the news in the conference room. No panels, no crawls, no updates from the wider human derailment. Instead, we wandered into the seasonal video entertainment we’d been ignoring while waiting for Santa—this one with the stout beared fellow improbably trapped in an AI-generated psychic globe […]

Traffic Accidents, Resignations, & Mood of the Year

(A distant view of the world famous Shopping Bag high-rise, the “Good Luck Bear” taped to the overhead of the group mobility van, the wreck, the Fire Fighters and the Fairfax Police responded and alert drivers found a cut through off the big road and we got around it. Without use of horn. Things in […]

The Gens

This is an unusual edition of the Socotra House Daily. it begins with an apology for allowing the past catch up to us as the future arrives. Some of the Boomers in the group are now proud grandparents of some attractive “Gen A” kids, and that is what started the discussion, since we didn’t know […]