The Distance Between Official Policy and Public Reality
This was a week in which the distance between official policy and public reality continued to narrow in ways that should concern anyone paying attention. It did not narrow comfortably. It rarely does. But the narrowing happened, and it was documented, and the record now reflects what the record reflects. That is what this network is here for. That is what we have always been here for.
We begin with the matter of the Thunderbird program, because the matter of the Thunderbird program requires beginning with. Leaked Pentagon correspondence confirmed this week what several of our field correspondents have described, off the record, as an open secret in certain circles — that the Department of Defense has been allocating black budget funding, to the reported sum of fourteen million dollars, toward the development of Thunderbirds as aerial weapons platforms. I want to be precise about what this means and what it does not mean. It means the federal government has spent fourteen million dollars attempting to direct the behavior of prehistoric sky creatures toward military objectives. What it does not mean, based on all available evidence, is that this effort has produced the outcomes the program’s architects anticipated. The birds, as this network reported, have their own opinions about that. Congressional testimony did not substantially challenge this characterisation. The program is described as ongoing. The birds are also ongoing. Whether these two ongoing things are related in the way the program intends remains, at this time, unclear.
On Wednesday morning at 2:14 a.m., a Fresno Nightcrawler entered the Rite Aid on North Blackstone Avenue through the automatic doors. It spent eleven minutes in the seasonal aisle. It purchased nothing. It left calmly. Mara Vane’s coverage of the incident is thorough, and I would direct readers to it in full. What I will note here, from a broader editorial perspective, is that the staff report filed following the entity’s departure has not been collected. This is the detail I keep returning to. Not the entry, not the eleven minutes, not the seasonal aisle — the uncollected report. Someone filed it. Someone decided it should be filed. And then nothing came to collect it. This is, in my experience, how the week’s more significant developments tend to announce themselves.
Evelyn Crowe’s feature on the Grimshaw Wendigoes ran this week, and I have received correspondence about it. I will address that correspondence directly: yes, the profile is sincere. Yes, the bark-and-bone aesthetic is treated with the same journalistic respect we extend to all subject matter. The Grimshaws are, by available accounts, forthcoming interview subjects with a coherent domestic philosophy and a documented preference for Scandinavian minimalism. Ancient hunger spirits are not outside the scope of this network’s coverage. They are within the scope of this network’s coverage. They have always been within the scope of this network’s coverage.
Penny Hart’s piece on ride-share liability involving anomalous entities has been our most-read item this week by a significant margin. Six witnesses. One star rating that the platform’s review architecture was not designed to accommodate. I note, without further comment, that three of the six witnesses describe the experience as having changed their relationship to punctuality in ways they are still processing. The piece runs long. It earns the length.
What connects these stories, if I were to name a thread — and I am — is the question of documentation. The uncollected report in Fresno. The leaked emails in Washington. The congressional record that now contains the word Thunderbird in a non-metaphorical context. The magazine profile that will sit in archives long after the interview subjects have moved on, in whatever direction ancient hunger spirits move. The ride-share ratings that cannot go low enough but exist nevertheless. Everything happened. The documentation exists. What comes next is a separate question.
This is Hal Ridgeway. The week is on the record. Reporting continues.
