I know what it’s like to be misunderstood.

I am from the Rust Belt, after all.

But you—I get the sense that you don’t even know who you are.

It started in 1796, when you joined the Union, as in became a state.

Your eventual capital, Nashville, was even named after a Revolutionary War hero.

But then, in 1861, you pulled a South Carolina and left to join the wannabe country with the copycat flag. You were confused, as East Tennessee wanted no part of secession.

Of course, like a little sh*t, you came crawling back.

And ever since then, say 1865, you’ve stayed confused as hell.

You and Nathan Bedford Forrest gave us the Ku Klux Klan.

You also gave us some of the best HBCUs the country has known.

Like most US states, you treated women like second-class citizens.

By being the 36th state to ratify the 19th Amendment, you also gave women the right to vote.

You prosecuted John Scopes for teaching evolution.

Then you did God’s work at Oak Ridge by helping make the first atomic bomb.

You’ve provided a safe haven for climate skeptics.

You’re also a leader in nuclear and hydroelectric power.

You became the home of the lefty Al Gore, whose wife, Tipper, tried to stifle artists and their lyrics.

You’re also the home of the right-wing nut job Marsha Blackburn, who has made a career of supporting artists.

It’s safe to say you’re into the Bible—I have firsthand knowledge.

You’ve also opened your arms to the largest Kurdish community in North America—it prefers the Quran.

Nashville has gone from a shade of blue to really damn blue.

It presides over a state that has gone from a battleground to really damn red.

You have no state income tax.

But you’re obsessed with consumption tax.

You love your hot chicken.

And you apparently like chicken vindaloo as well.

But despite it all, Tennessee, you are still a state that preserves the past.

Just ask your transplants who work at Oracle and Amazon.

Sincerely,

Khan Trae Dick Shin

The post Dear Tennessee: Who Are You Anyway? appeared first on ComposeMD.

I learned this the hard way, as I involuntarily lost my summer to Marvel.

I suppose the story should begin in May, when the son returned from college after negotiating his first year.

Things only intensified the next month, when the daughter joined the ranks of the summer vacationers.

The lunches—that I could handle.

The rides—I could even deal with that.

What did me in, however, was the loss of cultural control.

There was an era, I’m assuming, when senior generations could force feed the junior ones, ensuring the persistence of misogyny, racism, and other societal ills that old people (and scary young ones) enjoy promoting.

But the tables have turned, and now I’m apparently the one being force fed.

It began with mentions of an arachnid, somehow crossed with homo sapiens.

Then came references to a patriotic military hero, another dude dressed in metal, and some green guy.

Even I had to Marvel—at the comics, that is.

Because one simple film adaptation—Spider-Man: Brand New Day—had opened the flood gates, and over the next two weeks, I found myself submerged in additional films, all courtesy the progeny.

With no choice but to manufacture inspiration, I harnessed my own superpower, the one that has birthed this blog, skimmed occasionally by influential people like the wife and mother.

That superpower, of course, is finding the Rochester connection, which in the age of AI involves a couple clicks and a couple milliseconds.

Let’s rewind to 1939, when Marvel Comics began under the name Timely Publications.

Two years later, Joe Simon and Jack Kirby created Captain America. Simon, of course, was a Rochester (NY) native.

Fast forward to 1962, the year of Spider-Man’s first comic book appearance. A certain Iron Man showed up in the same year.

In 1983, Robert Downey Jr. made his professional stage acting debut at Geva Theatre Center—in Rochester. A quarter century later, he became Iron Man.

Five years after that, in 2013, scenes from The Amazing Spider-Man 2 were filmed in Rochester. If you watch carefully, you’ll recognize Main Street masquerading as New York City.

Finally, we get to the Avengers, whose Compound is somewhere in Upstate New York (not Rochester, but who’s counting at this point?).

Satisfied, I realized that thanks to my fellow Rochesterians, the youngsters were still learning a thing or two from their predecessors.

But deep down, I still hoped the next Rochester connection would happen at school.

The post There’s Always a Rochester Connection! appeared first on ComposeMD.

But listen closely enough, and it’s there, simmering, always.

You’ve heard the terms.

Has-been.

Passé.

Decline.

But could it be that this truth is actually a Trump truth, aka a lie?

Let’s scroll through some numbers, starting with eight, as in the number of US states that border the Great Lakes.

For the sake of argument, we’ll agree that the long downward slide, otherwise known as the biggest lie about the Great Lakes, began in 1950.

Since that time, in alphabetical order, the eight Great Lakes states have added the following:

Illinois: 4.1 million

Indiana: 2.8 million

Michigan: 3.7 million

Minnesota: 2.8 million

New York: 5.4 million

Ohio: 3.8 million

Pennsylvania: 2.5 million

Wisconsin: 2.4 million

Those millions refer to human beings, totaling 27.5 million and leaving five of the states in the top 10 by population and all eight in the top 22.

But you’re a private equity bro—all you care about is money.

Remember, I’m just an artist turned blogger, but I believe that nominal GDP can provide some insight in this regard.

Illinois: 5

Indiana: 19

Michigan: 14

Minnesota: 20

New York: 3

Ohio: 7

Pennsylvania: 6

Wisconsin: 21

Those numbers, from 2025, reflect each state’s ranking on a list of US states by nominal GDP.

In other words, if this is what decline looks like, where does that leave the other states?

The post The Biggest Lie About the Great Lakes appeared first on ComposeMD.

The wisp of water that connects Lake St. Clair to Lake Erie and separates Detroit, Michigan, from Windsor, Ontario, has been an incubator of human emotion.

Hope and elation gave way to desperation and despair, which in turn birthed nostalgia and acceptance.

But these days, along that river, if you listen closely enough, you just might hear whispers of optimism again.

It starts with the subtle, like when a graph of population estimates has a positive slope.

Then comes the more obvious, like new housing.

Finally comes the blatant—say a $4.7-billion, 1.5-mile, cable-stayed bridge over the Detroit River, a much-needed complement to the almost-100-year-old Ambassador Bridge and the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel.

The new structure, officially opened on July 27, 2026, is called the Gordie Howe International Bridge, a shout out to the legendary Canadian hockey player who spent most of his career playing for the Detroit Red Wings.

In true collaborative fashion—the type that would be expected among fast friends—ownership is shared by the Canadian government and the state of Michigan.

Fully funded by the Canadians, the plan has been for them to recoup the costs through toll revenue. Once that goal is met, toll revenues will thereafter be split between Canada and Michigan.

Six lanes of traffic, a dedicated multi-use path for pedestrians and cyclists, a marker of friendship, and a symbol of economic vitality—for a Rust Belt obsessive, it’s the stuff dreams are made of.

And then there’s Donald Trump.

The man who is unable to find meaning in life in the absence of conflict opted to manufacture some.

Trump’s buddy and donor, Matthew Moroun, happens to own the Ambassador Bridge and was opposed to the construction of a competitor.

In early 2026, shortly after Moroun donated $1 million to a Trump-aligned PAC, the President threatened to block the opening of the bridge.

And then, he started negotiating, aka extorting.

Claiming the aforementioned deal was somehow unfair, Trump coerced the Canadians into a parallel deal, one that gives an economic development fund controlled by the US government half the bridge’s net revenue for the first 15 years. (Whether Moroun will benefit from this fund is purely speculative.)

Just for kicks, a week before the bridge was to open, Trump announced 50% tariffs on a wide range of Canadian goods. In response, the Canadians disinvited Americans from a ribbon-cutting ceremony.

Of course, the argument could be made that this is the dream, the kind where The Godfather is more than mere art.

Let’s just hope that with tolls involved, no one goes the way of Sonny Corleone.

The post How the Detroit River Answered/Shattered My Dreams appeared first on ComposeMD.

On July 26, 2026, relentless Cyber-wandering landed me on a headline: “Colorado River reservoirs hit record lows as Trump administration threatens major cuts.”

I feigned shock—could rapid population growth in a desert have consequences?

Seven states—Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, New Mexico, Nevada, California, and Arizona—depend on the 1,450-mile-long river and its famed reservoirs (Lake Powell and Lake Mead) to quench their thirst.

One—Arizona—deserves special attention.

Located at the end of the line before the river dives into Mexico and empties into the Gulf of California, the state has concocted the following formula:

Keep taxes low.

This will ensure low per-pupil spending, low teacher salaries, and dated facilities.

The result will be the worst public school system in the country.

Allow high-tax states like New York—home to the best public school system in the country—to educate the next generation.

Meanwhile, use the low taxes to steal businesses from other states.

Then, go ahead and steal the young residents that other states paid to educate in order to fill those jobs.

While you’re at it, take some retirees as well so they can spend their life savings in your state as opposed to the ones where they made a living.

All of the above will equal Phoenix, the tenth-largest metro area in the country, home to 500% population growth over the past 50 years and 5.2 million residents—in a desert.

To make the place look nice, build a ton of golf courses and use the Colorado River to water them.

The last step, of course, is to complain that there’s not enough water.

As a final option, consider asking the states from which you stole businesses and residents if you can use their water.*

—

*The Great Lakes Compact, signed into law by President George W. Bush in 2008, is an agreement between the eight Great Lakes states (Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin), coordinated with two Canadian provinces (Ontario and Quebec), that with very rare exceptions bans the diversion of Great Lakes water outside its natural basin. And, on that note, I’ll have another glass.

The post Why the Colorado River Can Kiss My… appeared first on ComposeMD.

And you know Rochester, NY—that rusty town with a once-famous company that declared bankruptcy.

There’s a connection, and it goes beyond ruins.

Let’s back up.

Christopher Nolan, I’ve been told, is the man. Born in London—as in the UK—in 1970, the dude has turned himself into one of the highest-grossing film directors of all time.

Trust me—you know his stuff. In the mix are The Dark Knight trilogy, Inception, Interstellar, Dunkirk, and Oppenheimer.

And in 2026, added to that collection was The Odyssey, a film adaptation of Homer’s epic poem, the one you supposedly read in high school while studying the ancient Greeks.

The gist of it is that Odysseus, using the Trojan Horse, has just helped capture Troy, and now it’s time to go home. That brief jaunt, however, turns into ten years, rife with mythical monsters, deadly temptations, and so on.

Eventually…well, you’ll just have to read/watch to find out.

Rochester, NY, I’ve been told, is not the man. Incorporated as a city in 1834, the burg once showed immense promise.

Trust me—you know its stuff. In the mix were Xerox, Bausch + Lomb, French’s, Ragu, Western Union, Champion, and even a subway system.

But its best-known product remains Kodak, which, as mentioned, declared bankruptcy in 2012 and is now used by Harvard Business School as an example of what not to do.

Of course, random people have self-published books about how things in Rochester are nowhere near as dire as advertised, but readership has mirrored Kodak’s stock price, just without the rise before the fall.

The question, of course, is why Rochester can’t be innovative like Nolan.

The genius, after all, shot The Odyssey entirely on 70 mm IMAX cameras, something that has never been done before.

If only Kodak could have provided the more than two million feet of 65 mm film used to make that happen.*

Or, at the very least, the floundering company could have provided the print film—35 mm, 70 mm five-perforation, and 70 mm IMAX—shown in theaters.**

Then, perhaps, the stories told about us, like the film format itself, would be more three-dimensional.

—

*It did.

**It did.

The post How The Odyssey Saved Rochester, NY appeared first on ComposeMD.

(Or, if you’re reading this after July 19, 2026, I hope you didn’t succumb to the false advertising.)

Does 60 percent mean anything to you?

This story begins in the 1800s, when the Argentine government actively sought immigrants to populate the country and utilize the abundant agricultural land.

An obvious supply was found in Italy.

Fast forward to the next century, and the wave continued, this time also filling industrial jobs in cities like Buenos Aires.

After WWII, as Europe struggled to regain its footing, a final surge occurred, officially giving the South American country a healthy dose of Italians.

How healthy?

In modern times, as alluded to above, over 60 percent of all Argentines have Italian ancestry.

The marriage, it could be said, has been a happy one.

It has never been a struggle for Italians to learn the closely related Spanish. Along the way, the Spanish spoken in Argentina has been “Italianized”, both in terms of pronunciation and loanwords.

Religion, as you might imagine, has blended just fine, as Roman Catholics tend to have few issues with Roman Catholics.

And the food—has anyone ever complained about pizza, pasta, gelato, and Fernet?

Spain—as in the country that funded Christopher Columbus—of course knows a thing or two about Italy.

And the Spanish know that on the soccer pitch, their Mediterranean neighbor can be found disguised in sky blue and white.

The post Why Spain Is Actually Playing Italy appeared first on ComposeMD.

Shall we call it the (Asian) elephant in the room?

No, I’m not being harsh.

When a country accounts for one of every six people on the globe yet exhibits incompetence at the most global sport, we need to talk.

As of this writing, among 211 entities ranked by FIFA, India stands at 138.

That’s behind Haiti, Palestine, and…the freaking Faroe Islands.

The country declined an opportunity to play in the 1950 World Cup in Brazil, meaning it has participated in the event a grand total of zero times.

And don’t talk to me about poverty—the place has the sixth largest nominal GDP in the world.

In fact, in the 2026 World Cup Edition of Soccernomics, the authors recognized India for being the relatively worst soccer team on the planet. In their exact words:

Our model says that India, given its population, soccer experience, and national income, ought to have had a positive goal difference in the 2010s. But it scored 1.3 goals a game less than it should have. Admittedly that’s not as bad as its neighbor Myanmar, but then Myanmar has the excuse of being stuck in a civil war. India gets our Soccernomics award for the relatively worst soccer team on Earth.

All this leads to one question: Wtf—why does India suck at soccer?

The answers, of course, make sense.

• A national obsession with cricket—infrastructural, financial, and emotional—leaves little oxygen for anything else.
• Grassroots player development is lacking.
• In keeping with the above, infrastructure for player development is lacking.
• Standard Indian corruption has infected the All India Football Federation, resulting in anemic growth of the sport.
• Indian kids would rather study.

But two and a half decades into the 21st century, India is well aware that branding matters.

Look at South Korea—its global prominence has skyrocketed ever since the country forced us to listen to sh*t music, nicknamed K-Pop.

Stated another way, if all it takes to earn a little respect is kicking a damn ball, India is on board.

And there’s hope.

The Indian Super League, the highest level of Indian soccer, began play in 2014 and now boasts 14 teams (though financial viability remains a concern).

In 2017, India hosted the FIFA U-17 World Cup.

Local leagues and pitches are multiplying, at least in large metro areas.

This interest has been fueled in part by television, which regularly broadcasts English Premier League games.

Finally, in the Asian qualifying rounds for the 2026 FIFA World Cup, India fell victim to a horrendous call in Doha against eventual qualifier Qatar.

In other words, decades from now, Why does India suck at soccer? could have the same answer as Why do Rochester and Buffalo suck at life?:

They don’t.

The post Why Does India Suck at Soccer? appeared first on ComposeMD.

It’s complicated.

It’s the sport for everyone, except here, where it’s for wealthy suburban kids.

And it’s the global obsession, except here, where it’s a niche curiosity.

There are the Americans who don’t watch, unable to tolerate the dearth of scoring and the mysterious timekeeping.

And there are the ones who do watch, partly as a flex of their worldliness—they usually ride bikes and claim to like jazz music, too.

But the greatest complexity of all, the one that presumably exposes the dumb American (said to live somewhere in the Rust Belt), is what to call the sport in the first place.

Don’t blame us.

Blame the Brits.

Oh, and blame AI for the fact that I know this.

The prompt was rather simple: What is the origin of the term soccer?

The answer, scraped from a delicate blend of Britannica, Time, Wikipedia, Quora, and, of course, Reddit, changed my life.

In 1863, as Americans had taken to killing each other during the Civil War, the English had taken on a more pressing matter—standardizing the rules of their games.

To differentiate what would become two key sports, they established official names:

• Rugby Football
• Association Football

Later in the century, students at the University of Oxford developed their own slang, shortening words and adding the suffix -er.

Rugby football became rugger.

Association football became soccer (in lieu of asser, I believe).

For years, the Brits used soccer and football interchangeably to describe the sport of FIFA. Meanwhile, countries they had spawned—like the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, and South Africa—began developing their own versions of football. To avoid confusion, these countries stuck to soccer when referring to the British export.

(In other words, the dumb American is no dumber than the Canadian or Australian, at least in this regard.)

In the 1980s, realizing that their empire had collapsed and their global significance was dwindling, especially relative to that of the Americans, the Brits began a campaign to bash the American use of the term soccer.

And that got me to the next prompt:

Who’s dumb now?

The post Stop Blaming the Dumb American for “Soccer” appeared first on ComposeMD.