Mark R. Kelly
» Founder in 1997 and site-runner for 20 years of Locus Online (Hugo Award winner in 2002). Founder in 2012 and still site-runner of sfadb.com (Science Fiction Awards Database). Retired in 2012 after 30 years as a software engineer for a certain rocket engine factory.
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Recent Posts
- Distracted by Politics, Again
- AI Is Telling People What They Want to Hear?
- The Fringe Is Becoming Mainstream
- Why Totalitarians Prefer Crackpots and Fools, as We Are Seeing Under Trump
- Nostalgia Bias, and Christian Intolerance and Hypocrisy
- Music as Language
- Short-Term Thinking As the Problem, As I’ve Been Saying
- Nevil Shute: ON THE BEACH
- MAGA and Cultural Stagnation
- Trump the Bully Seems to Be What Many People Want
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Author Archives: Mark R. Kelly
TV, Juan Crow, Facts and Nonexistent Things, Alfred Schnittke
Trump trusts only TV; Heather Cox Richardson on how Republicans are digging into positions that are contradicted by facts; How the Trump administration’s “Juan Crow” echoes “John Crow”; More nonexistent things that can be banned; Short items about disabling hurricane … Continue reading
Posted in Conservative Resistance, conservatives, Music, Politics, Psychology
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Proselytism, Manifest Destiny, Arvo Pärt
Let Federal employees proselytize! Heather Cox Richardson on manifest destiny; Arvo Pärt. – – – As with that notion about regulating AI to be non-woke, have they thought this one through? Washington Post, 28 Jul 2025: Trump administration urges … Continue reading
More Items from the Authoritarian Playbook
About the conservative agenda concerning colleges, and education; Charlie Kirk thinks you don’t need college; just watch YouTube videos, especially his own online courses; Education Secretary Linda McMahon admits her political motivations for dismantling her department; Brief items about a … Continue reading
Posted in authoritarianism, Conservative Resistance, conservatives, Education, Politics, Religion
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Conservative Thinking Means Whitewashing the Past
A take-down of David Brooks, as an example of a conservative white-washing and distorting American history; How National Park gift shops are removing books about that same history for the same reasons; A religious rant bout Obama and Russia, and … Continue reading
Posted in conservatives, Politics, Religion
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How Can AI Tell the Truth? Whose Truth?
More about AI, and how (from Steven Levy) there’s no such thing as a bias-free AI; Speculation on what a MAGA ideologically correct AI would be; Following up on Harari: how would an AI handle inconsistencies among, and within, religious … Continue reading
Posted in Conservative Resistance, Human Nature, Technology
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“American” Intelligence?
Trump wants AI to be not “woke”; how will he enforce that? And he doesn’t like the word “artificial”; A reel by Yuval Noah Harari about a realistic threat of AI; Heather Cox Richardson on the various deflections Republicans are … Continue reading
Posted in Conservative Resistance, Technology
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I visit you in another dream
How conspiracy theorists think most people agree with them; How Trump’s administration is purging climate data; How JD Vance thinks some Americans are more worthy citizens than others; Paul Krugman on ICE and New York City; Three items from JMG: … Continue reading
Posted in Morality, Politics, Psychology
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It’s Always About the Gap Between Ideology and Religion, and Reality
And whether humanity can “grow up” and thrive by living in reality and not fantasy. Infrastructure note about More tags; Paul Krugman on why the right would see AI as “communist” — because it’s reality-based; (Aside: another arc of history … Continue reading
Posted in conservatives, Human Nature, Politics
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Sciency Things, and Presidential Pettiness
Tom Nichols on presidential pettiness; How the Trump administration is using a strength of science to discredit it; Ethan Siegel on what we’ve learned for 35 years of the Hubble Space Telescope; A breakthrough in a grand unified theory of … Continue reading
Posted in Lunacy, Politics, Psychology, Religion, Science
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Pat Frank: ALAS, BABYLON
(First published 1959. Edition here: HarperCollins/Perennial Classics, 1999, 323pp, including author biography and publication history by Hal Hager) Next up in the group of apocalyptic novels I read in June, following Butler’s PARABLE OF THE SOWER, is this. It isn’t … Continue reading
Posted in Book Notes, science fiction
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