- First reaction to Disclosure Day, with a link to David Brin’s reaction; then noting the film’s religious allusions, its appeal to empathy, and its allusions to past Spielberg films;
- How the reflecting pool fiasco is emblematic of Trump’s strategy: hire loyalists, not experts, and when things go wrong, blame Democrats, and saboteurs;
- Banning flu vaccines leads to more flu cases, who knew?
- Why not ban all books?
- A mundane example of how capitalism works: when auto break-ins decline, auto glass repair businesses suffer.
No post here yesterday because we attended a late-afternoon showing of Disclosure Day that pre-empted my usual blog-post-writing interval.
Quick take. It’s a well-made movie, sometimes thrilling and sometimes touching, about a race to disclose or suppress information the US government has accumulated for decades about alien visitations, abductions, spaceship crashes, and whatnot. That is, it takes all the conspiratorial ‘evidence’ for alien visitations at face value and tries to rationalize why the government would be suppressing it. In fact, my understanding is that most of this ‘evidence’ has long been discredited. But Spielberg wants us to believe, as he clearly does.
Here’s a David Brin post on his blog with his take, posted yesterday. I’ve only skimmed it, but my take will be similar I suspect.
Contrary Brin, David Brin, 19 Jun 2026: Disclosure… alas… of an 80 year cliché with the same, tired villains. But still fun.
In the next few days I’ll revisit the several links I’ve saved over the past week discussing this film, in particular those from religious writers who apparently took great offense at the notion (common in science fiction, as I’ve mentioned) that the universe wasn’t created for the sole purpose of humanity. It’s a big universe out there. And the movie has explicit appeals to empathy, as if addressing the current political climate, which are consistent with my running thesis about the shifts in human nature that have enabled our global civilization.
What I did notice is the number of allusions to past Spielberg films. There’s a dramatic set-piece in which our heroes’ car is being pushing, by a villain in a truck from behind, into a passing train. This evokes his early TV film Duel, of course, which I saw him admit in some TV interview this past week. This new scene goes farther, utterly crushing the car. And scenes in the hotel features bright outside lights shining through the blinds, for no apparent reason; but these evoked scenes in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. No doubt there were many more I missed, or don’t remember off hand.
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More about this, because again, I think it’s emblematic.
Slate, Christina Cauterucci, yesterday: Peak Bloom, subtitled “Washington’s Reflecting Pool had an algae problem. Trump spent millions of our dollars to “fix” it. Guess what …”
The New Republic, Rachel Kahn, yesterday: Utterly Absurd Contractor Behind Reflecting Pool Renovation Disaster, subtitled “The Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool was renovated by a Trump donor who looks like he was plucked right out of a cartoon.”
This refers to this:
NY Times, David A. Fahrenthold, 18 Jun 2026: Firm Tied to Trump Donor Got No-Bid Contract to Clean Reflecting Pool, subtitled “A White House spokeswoman said the president was not involved in selecting Greenwater Services, the business owned by a trust led by John J. Cafaro.”
The New Republic piece has a photo of that contractor (which I will not link) complete with phallic comic book cigar. NYT:
A business tied to a longtime supporter of President Trump was given a no-bid contract to install a water-purification system in the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool earlier this spring.
Now that work is coming under scrutiny after algae blooms have come back and turned the iconic pool in Washington a vibrant shade of green rather than the American-flag blue Mr. Trump says he chose.
The contract shows that the National Park Service bypassed the competitive-bidding process that is typically required, and gave a $1.7 million contract to the firm, Greenwater Services of Brookfield, Ohio.
Why is this emblematic? Because it’s yet another example of how when Trump wants to get something done he, impulsively, consults no experts and simply orders his department to hire someone he knows (like a guy who refinished one of his pools). When it blows up, he blames left-wing “saboteurs.” He’s never at fault. It’s all a conspiracy against him. He’s wrecked the reflecting pool, he’s wrecked the East Wing of the White House, he’s wrecked the Kennedy Center for the Arts.
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NY Times, 18 Jun 2026: Scores Fall Ill at Air Force Base After Hegseth Makes Flu Vaccine Optional, subtitled “The defense secretary described the vaccine requirement, which he lifted in April, as an ‘absurd, overreaching’ mandate.”
A major flu outbreak has sickened nearly 160 troops at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas less than two months after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced that U.S. troops would no longer be required to be vaccinated for the flu, defense officials said.
I’m going to file this under ‘the limitations of human cognition.’ Which may doom the human species.
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Salon, Andi Zeisler, today: Why not just ban all the books?, subtitled “Keyword searches for ‘justice’ and ‘pride’ drive what ideas are being kept from kids”
The people who would do this think there is only *one* book. (Without understanding how it was assembled.) But even without religion, this a common totalitarian strategy. In Fahrenheit 451, the argument was that books were too confusing. They weren’t consistent.
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Fox 2 KTVU, yesterday: Auto glass repair businesses suffer as Oakland break-ins decline
This might be profound. As crime decreases, those who fix crime are losing business. Broadly, this informs the entire US economy. Trump doesn’t want renewable energy because coal miners would lose their jobs. The famous cliche is that early automobile makers faced resistance from horse-whip manufacturers. And there were the Luddites.
What is the answer? The basic one is the fact that people who lose those jobs adjust better than the conservatives fear. And, to ameliorate such consequences, support education. But conservatives fear education.
