Coincident to yesterday’s post is this essay today in Salon.
Salon, Kyle Galindez, 19 Feb 2022: Why can’t sci-fi and fantasy imagine alternatives to capitalism or feudalism?, subtitled, “The limitless imagination of genre novelists hits a roadblock when it comes to envisioning other political systems.”
Today’s L&Qs&Cs, about where the 21st century is heading after the optimism of the 1990s, with a recollection about being in Berlin in 1993. Today’s endpiece, about Wordle.
Links today about how conspiracy theories advantage the right, and how this implicitly acknowledges that conservatives can’t win elections based on positions, arguments, or values.
Subtitled: “Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century” and published in February 2017 by Tim Duggan Books.
This is the third book I’ve read or reread recently with a numbered agenda, following the Zakaria book covered in previous post, and Harari’s 21 Lessons for the 21st Century, posted here.
Here’s the next book with a numbered agenda up for summary (following Harari’s 21 Lessons). It came out in October 2020, with journalistic promptness just six or seven months after the beginning of the lockdown, though before vaccines became available in early 2021. (The author is a CNN correspondent who’s also written a couple books.)
Today we went for a walk along the Berkeley bay shore, thinking to avoid traffic by setting off while that big football game everyone is talking about was playing. But we weren’t paying close attention and left about half an hour before the game began, so we still encountered traffic, on the freeways from home over to the edge of the bay in Berkeley.
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Pleasant day today, warm and sunny. We did a half-hour walk along Robinson to Skyline and back to Crestmont. I read 150 pages of the popular Mary Robinette Kowal novel, the one that won the big awards. Of my collected web links from the past few days, the one I began with took my allotted hour.
A few days ago — in my Feb 8th post — I linked an article from MSNBC that showed that the major issue in the US lack of response to the covid crisis was, not trust in science, but trust in government.
Another take on this question comes from…
Washington Post, Charles Lane, 8 Feb 2022: Opinion: Let’s be honest about why the covid death rate is so high in the U.S.
Short answer: obesity.
On Thursday I posted a “placeholder” post just so that any of my tens of readers would know I was still alive and posting and not missing a day. Today as I write is Friday and this post will replace the placeholder from Thursday. Another post, for today Friday, in a bit.
So on Thursday I visited my regular doctor, i.e. my PCP, primary care physician, in downtown Oakland, at this relatively unprepossessing location on 16th Street, a few blocks from Oakland City Hall. Photo:
L&Qs&Cs: The Unfortunate Built-In Trend of American Politics
Vox, Ian Millhiser, 14 Feb 2022: Why Democrats can’t get a fair shake in the Supreme Court, in one chart, subtitled, “Republicans get their dream nominees, while Democrats struggle to confirm moderates.”
The core issue is the familiar one that every state gets two senators, so that almost empty states like Wyoming are as well-represented in the Senate as a populous state like California.
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