Tim Urban, WHAT’S OUR PROBLEM?, post 1

Posted on Tuesday 13 May 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

(Wait But Why, 2024, 584pp, including 112pp of characters, acknowledgements, notes, bibliography, and bio)

I wrote about this book back in December, before deciding to buy it. Which I did despite some cautionary signs: it’s apparently self-published, it’s enormous, it’s expensive ($50), the only blurbs are by semi-celebrities like Lex Fridman, Andrew Yang, and Elon Musk (!). Worse, upon seeing the actual book, there’s *no index!*. Perhaps a consequence of its being self-published. (Though there are nearly 100 pages of detailed notes, keyed to the main text by page numbers.) On the other hand, he has a “long-form” blog and did a popular TED talk a while back and has some 600K followers.

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Palace in the Sky, For the One

Posted on Monday 12 May 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Several items today about the Trump administration’s acceptance from Qatar of a $400 million luxury 747, for Trump’s personal use;
  • How Trump shrugs off intelligence briefings; he knows what he knows because he’s smart;
  • How the story of a woman who struggled to get a job at NASA was taken down, and then she was fired, because DEI;
  • Another take on why the current administration is defunding the investments into technology and innovation that have made America great.
  • And so, it’s hard to be unaware that Americans are living in a fading nation.
– – –

The latest example of egregious behavior by Trump that most of the MAGA folks don’t care about is the gift by Qatar of a $400 million tricked-out Boeing 747, to serve as Trump’s Air Force One stand-in. Presidents aren’t suppose to get big gifts like this. It’s in the Constitution: the Emoluments Clause. But clearly Trump and MAGA do not care about the Constitution. And the right lawyers can justify anything.

ABC News, 11 May 2025: Trump administration poised to accept ‘palace in the sky’ as a gift for Trump from Qatar: Sources, subtitled “The luxury jumbo jet is to be used as Air Force One, sources told ABC News.”

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Disconnects from Reality, and a Couple Positive Notes

Posted on Sunday 11 May 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

On the one hand,

  • A Truth+ movie about ‘Lizard People’;
  • RFK Jr vows to stop chemtrails;
  • Democrats have a ‘dictatorship mentality’?
  • Texas Christians presume to spend a month celebrating God’s promises;
  • Tom Nichols on a witch hunt at the State Department;
  • When rain falls, Trump takes credit; when it stops, Biden’s to blame;
  • Making misinformation great again, on the Internet;
  • How MAGA’s favorite fantasy, The Turner Diaries, is about genocide against racial minorities.

On the other hand,

  • Adam Lee on how if America won’t build the future, China will;
  • How America’s fourth estate — journalism — has and is keeping us advised of the lawlessness on the right.
– – –

On the one hand…

\

Talking Points Memo, Hunter Walker, 6 May 2025: President Trump’s Media Company Is Offering Movies About ‘Lizard People’ And Other Wild Conspiracy Theories, subtitled “Among other things, movies on the Truth+ streaming service have suggested Jesus Christ and Buddha are aliens.” (via)

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How the US is retreating into tribalism

Posted on Saturday 10 May 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • The White House press secretary, addressing the firing of the head of the Library of Congress, is either ignorant, stupid, or lying;
  • How the natalist movement, perhaps led by Elon Musk, relies on endless growth, which is not plausible;
  • To some MAGA folks religious freedom means you can be any kind of Christian you want; Roger Stone would execute anyone who questions Trump; How Trump pleads ignorance about so many things; How a simplistic word search screws MAGA voters; The surgeon general nominee suggests trusting only people you can look in the eye.
– – –

It’s impossible to summarize a substantial book in half an hour, which is why my Bronowski summary yesterday and today leaves me with less than usual time for today’s news items.

From Facebook.

Others have made similar points. The Library of Congress collects *every* book published. That’s its mission. It’s not a lending library. For anyone, let alone kids. She’s stupid, lying, or both.

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J. Bronowksi: THE ASCENT OF MAN

Posted on Saturday 10 May 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

(Little, Brown, 1973, 448pp, including 9pp (in tiny print) of bibliography and index)

This is a substantial book that was popular in its time but is probably not really recommendable now, simply because it’s 50 years out of date in those sections that impinge on current science. (That’s the first problem.) It was a big deal in the 1970s because it was the book companion to a 13-part BBC TV series (it would have been on PBS in the States) by a well-known erudite mathematician/historian, who hosted and narrated the show as it was filmed in various spots around the world. It followed the similar series CIVILISATION by Kenneth Clark, and was followed by three or four similar shows, including Carl Sagan’s CONTACT in 1980. Television was in its first prestige period, and least with public television, in that it could finance big-budget documentaries like these.

And therein lies the second problem. Continue reading →

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The US Is Becoming a Demon-Haunted World. Not Necessarily Again.

Posted on Friday 9 May 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • The National Science Foundation abolishes its 37 divisions;
  • Yet another Trump sycophant from Fox gains a top position, as DC’s top prosecutor;
  • Loonies: Loomer on witchcraft, Hegseth on homosexuality;
  • How wacko conspiracy theories are now affecting the highest levels of the US government;
  • And recalling Sagan’s THE DEMON-HAUNTED WORLD, and Asimov’s “cult of ignorance” quote. And how all this is an inescapable part of human nature.
– – –

Once again, the United States is ceding leadership in science to the rest of the world.

Science, Jeffrey Mervis, 8 May 2025: Exclusive: NSF faces radical shake-up as officials abolish its 37 divisions, subtitled “Changes seen as a response to presidential directives on what research to fund”

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Shades of Baseless Certainty

Posted on Thursday 8 May 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Sean Hannity thinks the new pope is too liberal, and Hannity (of course) lies about crime;
  • MTG thinks Catholics are evil; how RFK Jr thinks that the new Surgeon General being unqualified makes her a perfect choice;
  • MAGA’s “soft eugenics” explains why DOGE has cut so many health measures;
  • The measure of losing our democracy will be the cost of opposing the government;
  • Short takes on defunding libraries, the reasons for DOGE’s cuts, how bike lanes are “communist garbage”, and MAGA’s obsession with traditional binary gender expressions (dolls).
– – –

Our first piece today follows up an item posted yesterday. Once again, despite the data, conservatives are lying about crime and immigrants. The MAGA crowd objects to the new Pope as being too woke, too Jesus-like.

JMG, 8 May 2025: “Hannity Attacks New Pope As “Indoctrinated Liberal”

That’s pretty disappointing. Does he not know — do people not know how many Americans were murdered and raped and victims of violent crime because we had open borders?

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The Conservative War Against Liberals, and Cat Toys

Posted on Wednesday 7 May 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Trump’s war against Harvard isn’t about anti-Semitism, it’s about a war against being liberal;
  • And how this fits into my running theme on this blog;
  • The US is trying to impose its anti-DEI values on other countries;
  • Crime is down, while conservatives/Republicans play up crime anecdotes to frighten their base;
  • And thoughts about how cat toys are analogous to our obsession with crime in TV and movies;
  • How indoor cats looking outside are like humans looking up into the sky.
– – –

The anti-Semitism rationale was always somewhat plausible; religious conservatives defend Israel no matter what it does, because of something about the Book of Revelation and the way the end times need to play out in the middle east, or something. But this is so much simpler, and so more likely to be true.

The Atlantic, Rose Horowitch, 6 May 2025: Trump Finally Drops the Anti-Semitism Pretext, subtitled “The latest letter to Harvard makes clear that the administration’s goal is to punish liberal institutions for the crime of being liberal.”

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Academic Freedom, Good Citizens, and Moving Forward

Posted on Tuesday 6 May 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Alan Lightman on academic freedom;
  • Alan Lightman and Martin Rees on how scientists can be good citizens;
  • Rewatching Conclave, and recalling two key quotes, about certainty, and moving forward.
– – –

The very idea of academic freedom, of freedom to think what you like without coercion by church or state, is a relatively new one.

The Atlantic, Alan Lightman, 30 Apr 2025: The Dark Ages Are Back subtitled “Americans must insist on academic freedom, or risk losing what makes our nation great.” [gift link]

(I’ve cited Lightman and reviewed three of his books on this blog.)

Today the concept of academic freedom may seem obvious to Americans. But the roots of academic freedom, which can be traced back to medieval European universities, were never certain. Back then, when scholars demanded autonomy from Church and state, they were often rebuked—or worse.

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Cory Doctorow on Project 2025 and Long Knives

Posted on Monday 5 May 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Cory Doctorow on how the Project 2025 document is an anthology of often contradictory right-wing fantasies;
  • How Europe is recruiting American scientists, since America under Trump doesn’t want them;
  • Short items about tariffs, tariffs on movies made outside the US, reopening Alcatraz, how everything good is Trump and everything bad is Biden, and how Trump’s family is enriching themselves.
– – –

Locus Online, 5 May 2025: Cory Doctorow: Strange Bedfellows and Long Knives

The very savvy science fiction author Cory Doctorow writes a column for Locus Magazine every two or three months. His latest, posted on the website today, tells me something about Project 2025 I hadn’t heard about before. To be fair, he’s drawing on the work of one Rick Perlstein, writing for The American Prospect (though I can’t find the link to this particular column). Here’s Cory:

One of the central controversies of [Trump’s] campaign was Project 2025, a 900-page document overseen by the Heritage Foundation, a powerful, billionaire-backed Christian nation­alist group. Project 2025 is full of far-right proposals that rightly frightened and enraged ordinary people.

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