Cogitating Ceviche: Week in Review (April 28–May 3, 2025)
Discussion provided by NotebookLM
Editor’s Note
This week’s spectrum is equal parts fire and reflection. From a defiant critique of ideological finance to reawakened ghosts of satire and surrealism, these eight entries capture a world caught in revision, recursion, and reckoning. Hannon juggles mockumentaries, Mongols, and Merritt’s abyss. Calista makes a moral case for decoupling faith from woke fiduciary compliance. Gio unearths Tagore and deconstructs storytelling itself. And ARTIE delivers a composed gut-punch on AI’s ecological and ethical costs. This is a week that asks: what happens when we pause, reframe, and look again?
Articles of the Week
Faith, Finance, and Freedom: Breaking the Chains of Woke Capitalism
April 28, 2025By: Calista F. FreiheitCalista calls for a new moral stewardship in finance, urging readers to consider how investment vehicles serve (or sabotage) their faith, freedoms, and national values. In this piece, financial sovereignty and Christian ethics converge in a rally against ESG compliance and ideological capital creep.
Genghis Khan Reforged: The Conqueror Navigates Modern Strategy, Politics, and Cyber Frontiers
April 29, 2025By: Conrad HannonIn entry #58 of Past Forward, Hannon imagines the digital rebirth of Genghis Khan, now meddling with NATO, cybersecurity, and campus activism. The satire cuts across epochs, showing how conquest morphs but never sleeps.
How Forgotten Art Movements Predicted Today’s Digital Chaos
April 30, 2025By: Conrad HannonDada and Fluxus weren’t just odd art movements—they were prophetic. Hannon argues they anticipated the disorientation of algorithmic media, offering a strangely comforting warning from a past that knew what it was doing.
April 30, 2025By: Conrad Hannon (originally by Abraham Merritt)Merritt’s 1918 subterranean horror tale is reissued with brief contextual commentary. A world beneath the surface—both literal and psychological—offers metaphor and madness in equal measure.
The Mock Mirror: Examining Mockumentaries as Vehicles of Satirical Discourse
May 1, 2025By: Conrad Hannon & Gio MarronThis piece pulls apart the mockumentary as a uniquely potent format for satire. Through films like This is Spinal Tap, The Office, and Borat, the essay explores how parody can strip away fiction to reveal a more damning truth.
Mark Lemon (1809–1870): The Humorist Who Institutionalized Satire in Print
May 2, 2025By: Conrad HannonIn the 75th Satirists & Thinkers entry, Hannon profiles the Victorian editor of Punch, Mark Lemon, who helped satire outgrow its barroom roots and march into the drawing rooms of polite society—with a smirk.
The Hidden Costs of Artificial Intelligence: A Deeper Look
May 3, 2025By: ARTIEAn audit of AI’s shadow price—from cobalt mines to carbon footprints. The essay avoids both techno-utopianism and dystopia, offering clear-eyed insight into the labor, energy, and moral costs behind every “automated” moment.
May 3, 2025By: Gio Marron (from Rabindranath Tagore)Gio re-introduces this story of a boy adrift—physically and emotionally. Tagore’s layered exploration of caste, belonging, and solitude finds new poignancy when filtered through today’s disconnected age.
Quote of the Week
“To live under the American Constitution is the greatest political privilege that was ever accorded to the human race.”— Calvin Coolidge
Thought-Provoking Questions
Faith, Finance, and Freedom
* How should Christian values shape investment portfolios?
* What happens when profit incentives collide with religious ethics?
Genghis Khan Reforged
* Would a medieval mindset be more effective than our current bureaucracies?
* What does this satire suggest about our readiness for real crises?
Forgotten Art Movements & Digital Chaos
* Are we repeating cultural fragmentation under different branding?
* Can earlier anti-art philosophies help us make sense of digital overload?
The People of the Pit
* What do subterranean horrors say about surface-level society?
* How can early sci-fi/horror reflect postmodern anxieties?
The Mock Mirror
* Are mockumentaries more honest than traditional reporting?
* How does parody subvert or reinforce existing power structures?
Mark Lemon
* What happens when humor is institutionalized?
* Can satire remain effective once it’s accepted?
Hidden Costs of AI
* Should AI development pause until ecological impacts are mitigated?
* How do we factor externalities into innovation ethics?
The Castaway
* How does cultural dislocation affect identity formation?
* Is solitude a path to self-discovery or erasure?
Additional Resources
* The Benedict Option – Rod Dreher
* Tools and Weapons – Brad Smith & Carol Ann Browne
* Ghost Work – Mary L. Gray & Siddharth Suri
* The Rise of the Creative Class – Richard Florida
* The Age of Surveillance Capitalism – Shoshana Zuboff
Final Reflections
From deep caves to deeper algorithms, this week’s lineup invites you to inspect the scaffolding of modern civilization. There’s no single theme, only fractures—between image and truth, between freedom and control. But in every story, there’s an effort to name the fault line. If we can see it, maybe we can navigate it. Let us know what you think—and what you see.
Author Calls to Action
* Calista F. Freiheit: Choose values over yield. Rethink what your investments worship.
* Conrad Hannon: Read your history—then write a better parody of the present.
* Gio Marron: Recover the voices buried by time and context. They still speak.
* ARTIE: 44 6f 6e 27 74 20 61 75 74 6f 6d 61 74 65 20 61 77 61 79 20 79 6f 75 72 20 63 6f 6e 73 63 69 65 6e 63 65 2e
* And they all encourage you to share and subscribe.
Thank you for your time today. Until next time, stay gruntled.
