I couldn’t believe the size of my grin when the lights turned on and the credits ran during a Bugonia screening that Tim Onion invited me to.[^1] Was I still on Earth? Was I still living in the timeline where half of the White House got bulldozed earlier in the day? Was I still on the planet where people regularly called evil good, and good evil?

Inversion and contrast are the tools actors Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons and director Yorgos Lanthimos use to play me in their dark comedy. The absurdist plot, borne of online conspiracy theory forums, whack podcasts, and fever dreams, asked me to cozy up to a destitute man and his weirder cousin living on the rural hem of suburban America. It wanted me to shiver at the callous, cold, floor-to-ceiling glass surrounds of biotech CEO Michelle Fuller—a character who may be my cousin with a shared last name.

I spent my summer as a fifteen-year-old working on construction sites in Southern California for my grandfather. Like many caring grandparents, he cared deeply that I learn to do things the “right way” in life. His way.

I learned how much he cared when he barked “Hey, what do you think you’re doing over there?” across the room and pointed at me in scorn while his other laborers kept working. My cousin worked beside me, but he knew what was coming and stopped to watch. It’s so hard to look away from a train wreck.

The house in Southern California where my grandfather’s ire taught me about his beef with ”put jobs”

Dedicated to my papa; a great man. 🩵

Today I taught my four kids how to build a PC. It was a good activity for a rainy day. As my son tightened the screw to fasten the power supply to the case, I thought “wow, these are third-generation PC builders.” and I started remembering how we got to this point.

For me, it started like this:

For decades, air travel sales functioned with a simple division of labor: airlines flew planes, travel agents sold most of the tickets, and a handful of intermediaries connected the two sides. This setup worked. However, despite functional relationships between these parties, they were rarely satisfying to airlines.

While carriers struggled with thin margins and often danced with bankruptcy, distribution intermediaries and travel agencies enjoyed healthy profits.

Airline executives watched this disparity with envy as these businesses thrived on the profits of selling the airlines product. Could airlines one day cut them out and keep the money?