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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Meta
Category Archives: Politics
History Rhymes? Will Humanity Ever Advance?
How history rhymes, about tariffs: Smoot-Hawley and Trump; How Musk lives fantasies about expanding the population (of people like him) without a grasp on numbers; How DOGE has cost taxpayers $135B, while claiming to have saved $160B — even that … Continue reading
Posted in conservatives, Politics
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The Cowboy Myth, Presidential Corruption, and Disingenuous Cuts to Science Research
Heather Cox Richard on the “cowboy myth” that informs the Trump presidency; How Trump et al are giving billionaires a bad name; How Trump has done the most corrupt thing any president has ever done — getting rich from anonymous … Continue reading
The Latest Cultural War Conservatives are Losing
How Conservatives keep badgering the law even as they lose the culture war; Specifically, the Supreme Court case about banning books that Christians are uncomfortable with; Related: HHS is proposing defunding the LGBTQ+ suicide hotline; and Sam Alito misreads a … Continue reading
Posted in conservatives, Politics, Religion
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What Conservatives Mean by the Deep State
Namely, anything that interferes with their agenda, in effect the entirety of Jonathan Rauch’s “constitution of knowledge,” since MAGA conservatives don’t truly believe in the Constitution or our system of government; Robert Reich on the billionaire class, that doesn’t care … Continue reading
Posted in authoritarianism, conservatives, Human Nature, Politics
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The War Against Intelligence
Trump’s rage against smart people; Defunding Harvard will hobble medical research that would benefit people like us; Historian Lauren Thompson compares the Gilded Age to the Trump Age; Trump and Vance praised b conservatives for lying about abortion; Hegseth purges … Continue reading
Posted in authoritarianism, conservatives, Culture, Politics
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Civic Uprising?
Conservative David Brooks calls for a civic uprising against the Trump administration; How Salon executive editor Andrew O’Hehir reacts to this; How psychopaths and financial services seem to go together; The extent to which JD Vance lies; Aid to foreign … Continue reading
Posted in conservatives, History, Politics, Psychology
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The Most Sublime Moment in Classical Music
Asimov on Heinlein, about libertarianism; More about “viewpoint diversity” in science, and how scientists react; About another stupidly doctored photo by Trump, to prove something to his dimwitted followers; How the history Trump wants to erase hold the answer to … Continue reading
Today’s Notes on the Destruction of America
How the quality of American life depends on the regulations that Trump and his vandals are discarding; Paul Krugman on Trump’s trade war and how they don’t know what they’re doing; Dana Milbank on how Trump’s first 100 days are … Continue reading
Posted in conservatives, Lunacy, Politics
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And Now We Have Linus
Why manufacturing jobs are never coming back to America; Heather Cox Richardson records Steven Inskeep’s quip; And How JD Vance is fine with abandoning due process; About Linus, our fourth cat. – – – I keep thinking: we’re living in … Continue reading
Posted in Culture, Human Nature, Politics
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Musk, History, Science, Education
Adam Grant on the wrong lesson to take from Elon Musk; David Remnick on the conservative urge to rewrite the past in simplistic terms; RFK Jr.’s contempt of science; And the conservative war against education. – – – Adam Grant … Continue reading
Posted in conservatives, History, Politics, Psychology
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