Monthly Archives: July 2026

The Drive to Preserve an Idealistic Past, Which Will Inevitably Fail

Posted on Saturday 18 July 2026 by Mark R. Kelly

We probably don’t realize how often conservatives are successful at rewriting the past; How the military is resistant to change; Right-wing figures resist commonsense health advice about wildfire smoke; People of faith discover that AI tells them what they want … Continue reading →

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Losing. Casting. Hormones. Freedom.

Posted on Friday 17 July 2026 by Mark R. Kelly

Trump’s latest speech, about voter fraud; Responses from Brian Tyler Cohen and Robert Reich; MAGA’s outrage over the casting in The Odyssey; Briefly noted: More about Hegseth and testosterone; Trump blames Canada for wildfire smoke; Lindsey Graham’s (unqualified) sister to … Continue reading →

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Testosterone?

Posted on Thursday 16 July 2026 by Mark R. Kelly

Pete Hegseth’s obsession with testosterone; Fallacies; My own experience with testosterone injections; The far right’s list of people they blame; How it’s selfish to think for yourself; Robert Reich’s ideas for making America affordable; Cliff Martinez’s score for George Clooney’s … Continue reading →

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Conservative Priorities

Posted on Wednesday 15 July 2026 by Mark R. Kelly

Conservative principles: none. Priorities: power, and money; More about Lindsey Graham and those who are most against gay rights; The recurring nonsense about “Daylight Saving Time”; Brief items about how facts are stubborn things, and Hegseth’s ongoing campaign to enforce … Continue reading →

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Conservative Opportunism, and Being Careful About What We Want to Believe

Posted on Tuesday 14 July 2026 by Mark R. Kelly

The death of Lindsey Graham, conservative opportunist, and perhaps closet gay; The only damage in the reflecting pool is from Trump’s limousine entourage; Item from Facebook about America and Finland; Another item about how America is opting out of the … Continue reading →

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Kurt Andersen: FANTASYLAND

Posted on Tuesday 14 July 2026 by Mark R. Kelly

Subtitled: How America Went Haywire: A 500-Year History (Random House, 2017, 462pp, including 22pp acknowledgements and index) Here is a book by a writer who doesn’t generally write this type of book. Andersen (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_Andersen) writes mostly novels and TV, and … Continue reading →

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Motivated Reasoning and Human Gullibility. UFOs!

Posted on Monday 13 July 2026 by Mark R. Kelly

UFO fans aren’t impressed by the latest government doc’s; More about supposed geo-engineering. – – – This is funny. And sad. NY Times, 11 Jul 2026 (though in today’s print paper): Non-Disclosure: In Roswell, New U.F.O. Docs Are a Declassified … Continue reading →

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The Dystopian Portrait of America Is Not True

Posted on Sunday 12 July 2026 by Mark R. Kelly

An essay on American loneliness denies the dystopian view of the nation; Gay marriage opponents revive a discredited 14-year-old junk science study; Brief items: a “Christian values” candidate with dicey behavior; restricting the public expressions of Muslims; Pete Hegseth’s pastor … Continue reading →

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“We think and dream and fuss and project entire worlds into existence”

Posted on Saturday 11 July 2026 by Mark R. Kelly

A new NYT newsletter called Gravitational Pull; Remembering Roger Williams, an early American advocate of religious liberty; And about early American philosophers Jonathan Williams and Benjamin Franklin; And revisiting Richard Einhorn’s Voices of Light, after 30 years; it’s still beautiful. … Continue reading →

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Human Limitations and Potential

Posted on Friday 10 July 2026 by Mark R. Kelly

Rethinking categories and provisional conclusions; XKCD on holes; A new Atlantic column on The Wonder of Everyday Life; A Star Talk video about the limits of human intelligence. – – – Rethinking again the categories of posts I do here, … Continue reading →

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