Introduction

How do you do? I’m albrt and this is my blog.

I’m a lawyer in flyover country and I’ve been on the internet under the name albrt since about 2000.  I’m nearing retirement age so I’d like to start writing more. I don’t use scam apps like Facebook or Twitter, but I do read some blogs. If you’ve seen a comment on a blog by somebody named “albrt” it’s probably me—I haven’t come across any others.

Much of what I posted over the years is gone due to the ephemeral nature of the internet. I did some guest posts for Calculated Risk back during the financial crisis. Here are couple of examples:

• https://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2009/10/us-bank-v-ibanez-more-fun-with.html

• https://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2009/11/thanksgiving-weekend-mortgage.html

I posted on Daily Kos for a while. Here’s a sample entitled How Obama Sold Us Out, Chapter 1. Needless to say I did not get much traction on Daily Kos (although I was not actually banned). I also posted some things during the Obama years on a defunct website called Corrente (run by Lambert Strether now of Naked Capitalism). Then I went quiet except for occasional comments here and there.  Last year (2023) I started submitting guest posts to Naked Capitalism:

• https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2023/08/what-is-this-lawfare-i-keep-hearing-about.html

• https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2023/08/analyzing-apparently-irrational-behavior-in-western-elites.html

• https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2023/09/the-rise-and-fall-of-signaling-and-performativity.html

Not all my thoughts are suitable for Naked Capitalism, particularly when I have difficulty deciding what I think, so I started this Substack. I won’t be charging anything, at least until I figure out whether I can produce enough material to make it worth anybody’s while.

Inspirational Acknowledgements

Yves Smith and Lambert Strether at Naked Capitalism, of course.

Bill McBride and the sainted Tanta of Calculated Risk.

John Michael Greer, formerly of the Archdruid Report and now Ecosophia.

Bruce Dixon, Glen Ford, and Margaret Kimberly of the Black Agenda Report, back when it was mostly writing and not so many podcasts.

Izabella Kaminska, formerly of the Financial Times and FT Alphaville, now proprietor of The Blind Spot, a blog I can’t afford to read.

Aurelien of Trying to Understand the World.

Offline inspirations include Charles Dickens, Stephen Dunn, Barbara Ehrenreich, Erik Erikson, David Graeber, Aldous Huxley, George Orwell, Dawn Powell, Roy Rappaport, and others too numerous to mention.