Is Reality a Hoax or a Conspiracy? No.

Posted on Sunday 26 April 2026 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Many items about the apparent assassination attempt last night at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, and how many people on social media detected signs of a staged attack;
  • Why posting the Ten Commandments in classrooms doesn’t work, as conservatives think it should;
  • Jerry Coyne explores evidence about whether reality has a liberal bias, and my take on that;
  • Listening again to Philip Glass & Robert Wilson’s Monsters of Grace.
– – –

Within an hour or so of my finishing yesterday’s post, which ended about how many people, even Trump supporters, think the 2024 assassination attempt was staged, another apparent assassination attempt occurred at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, in of course Washington DC. And while mainstream news coverage is fairly uniform, Facebook (and elsewhere on the internet, apparently), has been full of speculations and even claims that it was staged.

First, links to some reasonably consistent coverage, remarkable because many of these news correspondents *were there*! All of these posted today or late last night.

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An Assortment of Current Events

Posted on Saturday 25 April 2026 by Mark R. Kelly

Trying to catch up on numerous items from recent days, briefly.

MAGA and confederates • Firing the National Science Board • A Texas court defies the Supremes about posting the ten commandments • America’s moral code • The new Navy Secretary believes in witches, but he’s loyal to Trump! • Both Trump and the Pope are compromised • RFK and Trump triple-down on their phony percentage calculations • Democrats should bring back USAID • Michio Kaku thinks some mysterious deaths of scientists is a big deal, while a writer for the Atlantic thinks it’s a statistical illusion • The Indiana Lt Gov. thinks Democrats are led by demons • Ben Shapiro thinks posting the ten commandments in schools isn’t theocracy • Trump wants to rename Mt Kilimanjaro, for himself • DeSantis bans climate change efforts • A revealing photo of women’s tennis champions • More examples of deep superstition in the guise of religious belief • And how some of Trump’s base thinks his 2024 assassination attempt was staged.

*

  • Washington Post, today: Trump ousts National Science Board members
  • Subtitle: Members of the independent board that guides the National Science Foundation said they received a notice from the White House that their positions were being terminated.
  • No reason given. More tearing down, now of what has been a useful, nonpartisan agency since 1950. Who is Trump actually working for?

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Change For the Better, vs. Sunk Cost

Posted on Friday 24 April 2026 by Mark R. Kelly
  • John McWhorter: Don’t pronounce the T in ‘often’;
  • How an American living abroad realizes the problems with America;
  • Why we’re stuck with a religious calendar.
– – –

My favorite pet peeve.

NY Times, John McWhorter, yesterday: What’s Better Left Unsaid

(I made this point in one of my earliest (and shortest) posts on this blog)

People without enough to do like to find unnecessary rules for English speakers. I discussed dangling modifiers last week. In that vein, let’s do “often.”

Many think it should be pronounced “off-ten” rather than “offen,” or at least feel better saying “off-ten.” But why, when we don’t pronounce “listen” as “lis-ten”?

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Another Example of the Endless, Fruitless, Search for Proof of God

Posted on Thursday 23 April 2026 by Mark R. Kelly
  • No, there isn’t any new evidence that God exists;
  • Clannad and The Last of the Mohicans.
– – –

Noted from last month. What could this mean?

The Atlantic, Elizabeth Bruenig, 26 Mar 2026: The Evidence That God Exists, subtitled “Searching for scientific proof for faith misunderstands faith.”

You can see the writer establishing some wiggle room with her subtitle.

I grew up in a faithful Methodist household in deep-red Texas during the George W. Bush years, when the political sway of evangelicals was at its zenith. At the same time, evangelists of a robust atheism—figures such as the biologist Richard Dawkins, the critic Christopher Hitchens, and the neuroscientist Sam Harris—toured the country offending salt-of-the-earth Americans with their contempt for religious belief.

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Dismantling Modern Civilization in Favor of Intuitive Superstitions and Religious Verities

Posted on Wednesday 22 April 2026 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Those looking to ancient Greece to justify their current warmongering are getting their history wrong;
  • Parody and reality about Hegseth relaxing flu vaccine requirements for the military;
  • The CDC is suppressing a report on the efficacy of the Covid vaccines;
  • Calls for “Biblical masculinity,” whatever that is;
  • Short items about the worst president in US history; removing support for immigrant kids to learn English; how actual data shows the success of Bidenomics; a book review on what North Korea’s cult of personality owes Christianity; and how moon denialists are using AI to fake Artemis footage, without irony.
– – –

Is this an in inescapable cycle? This seems to be the trend in the US.

Warmongers always look to earlier warmongers for justification. As if childish behavior justifies lifelong childish behavior.

NY Times, guest essay by Stewart Patrick, who “directs the Global Order and Institutions Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.”, 19 Apr 2026: The Warmongers Are Getting History All Wrong

Members of the Trump administration have been channeling their inner Thucydides, paraphrasing the Greek historian’s aphorisms about the pitiless realities of power in a world of self-interested nations.

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Myths That Endure, and Conservatives

Posted on Tuesday 21 April 2026 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Who are these young Republicans who find MAGA insufficiently radical?
  • Myths that endure: utopia, invisibility, magic, the immortal soul;
  • Trump is going to read the Bible, out loud??
  • How Pro-Trump avatars are infecting social media;
  • The evidence for the Trump’s administration’s engaging in insider trading;
  • That Kash Patel article in The Atlantic;
  • Peter Gabriel: Passion: With This Love.
– – –

Catching up on a few days.

The New Yorker, Antonia Hitchens, 6 Apr 2026: How the Internet Fringe Infiltrated Republican Politics, subtitled “Inside the battle for the post-MAGA G.O.P.”

Caption on photo: “The crowd at an event for James Fishback, a Florida gubernatorial candidate, who, like many other young conservatives, considers MAGA insufficiently radical.”

Long, 30+ screens. Not going to read it all. My thought: who are these kids to have learned to be very selfish (and/or racist, etc.) at such a young age? What do they want? Let’s see if I can spot anything.

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The Origins of Conservative Values

Posted on Monday 20 April 2026 by Mark R. Kelly
  • MAGA wants more teen births (!), with reflection on why most human societies postpone children until adulthood;
  • How Red State restrictions against abortion only stopped the lifesaving ones;
  • Two items about Pete Hegseth and his Christian Nationalist leader, and guns.
  • And how Republicans are always ready, fearing an ever-dangerous world, to spend more on defense.
– – –

More examples today of how conservative “values” are the priorities of primitive tribes, especially those living on the verge of extinction in the ancestral environment. Promote expansion of the tribe; fear others.

Salon, Amanda Marcotte, today: MAGA wants more teen births. It won’t work, subtitled “Teen birth rates are at historic lows — and young women want to keep it that way”

There used to be a consensus on both the left and right that it was best to wait for adulthood to have kids. But some conservatives are rethinking this view, and Republicans are now drifting toward open complaints that teenage girls aren’t having enough babies.

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Everything Bad Is Due to Progressivism! (says Clarence Thomas)

Posted on Sunday 19 April 2026 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Reactions to Clarence Thomas’s speech blaming everything he doesn’t like on progressivism — and Hitler and Stalin too! A standard conservative screed.
  • The Project Hail Mary soundtrack.
– – –

What kind of contorted logic is going on here?

Slate, Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern, 17 Apr 2026: Clarence Thomas Gave a Speech Blaming Progressivism for Hitler. It Was Mostly Just Sad.

Justice Clarence Thomas gave a rare public address on Wednesday that started as a benign celebration of the Declaration of Independence before devolving into a bitter attack on progressivism, steeped with grievance, bad history, and self-regard. In the speech, delivered at the University of Texas at Austin, Thomas blamed progressives for the worst crimes of the 20th century, insisting that “Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, and Mao” were all “intertwined with the rise of progressivism,” as was “racial segregation,” “eugenics,” and other evils. The justice also bemoaned the “unfair criticism and attacks” that he and other tellers of truths must withstand as the price for courageously “not budging” on their principles.

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Changing Minds

Posted on Saturday 18 April 2026 by Mark R. Kelly
  • The World Bank thinks better of free-market absolutism;
  • For some, every thing the least bit unusual is *meaningful*.
– – –

A couple non-political items today.

The Atlantic, Rogé Karma, 16 Apr 2026: A Pillar of the Economics Establishment Admits That It Was Wrong, subtitled “In a new report, the World Bank thinks better of its old free-market absolutism.”

For anyone or any institution to admit they were wrong, to have learned from evidence, is progress. And rare. Note “simple”:

How does a country get rich? For decades, the economics establishment generally agreed on a simple answer: Embrace free markets and avoid “industrial policy”—state-led efforts to shape what an economy produces—at all costs. No institution embodied this viewpoint, widely known as the “Washington Consensus,” quite like the World Bank. Established in 1944 to provide low-interest loans to developing countries, the bank soon became the intellectual center of development economics. In the 1990s, it took a hard stance against industrial policy, turning the concept almost into a taboo.

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Magicians and Evangelicals and Traditionalists

Posted on Friday 17 April 2026 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Penn & Teller advise the Supreme Court about junk science, and the significance of how magicians are less easily fooled than lawyers, politicians, and even scientists;
  • How most Americans think Trump isn’t religious, how MAGA doesn’t care, and the idea that people being fooled by magic tricks aligns with religious devotion;
  • Long piece by David Brooks about how reactionaries are taking over the world, forever in search of roots, enchantment, moral order, and protection against change, i.e. the threats of modernity.
– – –

It’s been said that charlatans — psychics, spoon-benders, and so on — are happy to perform in front of an audience of scientists. Scientists are easily fooled, because they expect the universe to play fair. But charlatans will never perform in front of magicians. Magicians know all the tricks.

NY Times, Andrew Liptak, 16 Apr 2026: Two Magicians Warn the Supreme Court About Junk Science, subtitled “Penn & Teller filed a Supreme Court brief questioning the use of ‘investigative hypnosis’ in a death-penalty case in Texas.”
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