Narrative Closure in A House of Dynamite

Posted on Saturday 1 November 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • And David Brin on the persistent idiocies of the UFO cultists
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We watched the new film about a potential nuclear war, A House of Dynamite, last Sunday on Netflix, and then I watched it again on Netflix Monday evening (while Y was on the phone with work). It’s a taut, well-made film about a contemporary missile crisis, roughly analogous to the situation in Fail Safe (book and film reviewed here), in which a foreign missile is detected heading for the US, origin unknown, intent unknown — is it real? An accident? More to the point — as in Fail Safe — if it really is a nuclear bomb and it detonates over its target, Chicago, what does the president do? All sorts of potential response strategies are alluded to, just as they were discussed in Fail Safe.

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Democratic Erosion, SNAP, and God-Sized Holes

Posted on Friday 31 October 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • A NYT Scale of markers of democratic erosion;
  • Heather Cox Richardson’s even-handed assessment of the SNAP crisis;
  • Jerry Coyne dismantles Arthur C. Brooks’ arguments for not dismissing the idea of God;
  • (And my take on how the common conceptions of God betray a several lack of imagination, even a conceptual limit to human cognition);
  • Short takes on the SNAP program, how ticket sales at the Kennedy Center have plummeted, and the newly MAGA CBS News has fired its climate change team;
  • Even shorter takes from the fringe.
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Two days ago I noted an essay that described five ways you can tell when America has become a dictatorship.

Today comes an analogous, much more elaborate piece at NYT, designed to be scrolled through, listing 12 “markers of democratic erosion,” with scales showing how far along we are along each one, moving away from democracy.

NY Times, Editorial Board, 31 Oct 2025: Are We Losing Our Democracy?

Countries that slide from democracy toward autocracy tend to follow similar patterns. To measure what is happening in the United States, the Times editorial board has compiled a list of 12 markers of democratic erosion, with help from scholars who have studied this phenomenon. The sobering reality is that the United States has regressed, to different degrees, on all 12.

Our country is still not close to being a true autocracy, in the mold of Russia or China. But once countries begin taking steps away from democracy, the march often continues. We offer these 12 markers as a warning of how much Americans have already lost and how much more we still could lose.

I’ll screen-capture the first.

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Notes from the Reality-Based Community

Posted on Friday 31 October 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Hemant Mehta on a new wave of atheist content creators;
  • Scientific “groupthink” is a myth, an effect of how our fundamental theories are extremely successful;
  • Richard Dawkins can’t understand how Tom Holland and his readers believe ancient legends and myths are literally true;
  • (My comment: especially when they don’t trust modern media to get yesterday’s news right);
  • Short items about Reagan, Grokipedia, living on military bases, nuclear weapons, those Aryan posters, predator pastors, and Trump’s agenda.
– – –

Let’s give Hemant Mehta his due when he says his post today is an important one. (Why? Because he’s trying to be positive, instead of relentlessly negative in reporting about the religious shenanigans going on every day in the world.)

Friendly Atheist, Hemant Mehta, 30 Oct 2025: How the American Humanist Association is empowering a new wave of atheist content creators, subtitled “A quiet experiment could redefine how secular voices reach millions online and revive a movement that’s lost momentum”

A few months ago, I was given the Humanist Media Award from the American Humanist Association. Rather than speak directly about my own work, I used my time to highlight a growing concern I’ve had about the broader atheism movement.

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Sam Harris: THE MORAL LANDSCAPE

Posted on Thursday 30 October 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

Subtitled “How Science Can Determine Human Values”
(Free Press, Oct. 2010, 291pp, including 100pp of acknowledgements, notes, references, and index)

Sam Harris came to fame in the years after 9/11 for writing a critique of religion called THE END OF FAITH. He, along with writers of later books, Daniel Dennett and Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, became known as the “four horsemen” of the “new atheists”. I reread that book a few years ago and reviewed it here. The present book followed in 2010, and I read it the first time in 2014 and quoted from it a bit in this post. Then I reread this book about three years ago and took detailed notes, which I’m now summarizing here.

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Gist: Harris is challenging the nostrum that science can tell us about the world but not about how to behave: that is, science can have nothing to say about morality. Yes it can, he claims, essentially by applying a utilitarian policy upon the world: design society to maximize the happiness, or well-being, of as many people possible. Further, what science can say avoids the trap of inconsistent religions making contradictory, and incorrect, claims about the nature of reality

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Useful Categories

Posted on Wednesday 29 October 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Five ideas to tell when America has become a dictatorship;
  • A Jesus and Mo cartoon that reflects my discussions of secular awe and religion;
  • Phil Zuckerman on how social justice is secular;
  • Short items about worries of American’s impending population collapse, national emergencies and election fraud, the firing of the commission on design, how Musk’s project is cribbing from Wikipedia, and yet another example of conservative bigotry and nonsense.
– – –

Slate, Herb Bowman, 29 Oct 2025: How Will You Know That America Has Become a Dictatorship? After 20 Years Living in One, I Can Tell You.
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Moral Rot

Posted on Tuesday 28 October 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Paul Krugman on food stamps/SNAP; the common conservative belief that recipients are malingerers; and some facts about who actually gets those benefits;
  • The Labor Department’s white supremacist posters;
  • Short items;
  • Dr. Warren J. Blumenfeld on Trump’s disrespect, and how he’s wrong in the head.
– – –

Paul Krugman, 28 Oct 2025: The Hunger Games Begin, subtitled “40 million Americans are about to lose food stamps”

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What People Know, and What They Want

Posted on Monday 27 October 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • What undecided voters say they are concerned about, vs. reality;
  • Tom Tomorrow on effect and cause, within the Trump administration;
  • An OnlySky piece by Michael Carteron about the paradox of modern life;
  • Jerry Coyne on Charles Murray’s “God-sized hole”;
  • My thoughts about the need for someone to take care of you.
– – –

The Bulwark, Jonathan V. Last, 27 Oct 2025: The Lies They Tell Themselves, subtitled “A conversation with voters about The Real Issues.”

The writer participates in some sort of focus group surveying undecided voters in New Jersey, and concludes:

Some large portion of voters do not appear to understand elementary, objective aspects of reality.

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Drizzly

Posted on Sunday 26 October 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Intro;
  • Are religions by their nature fascist?
  • Latest on the Republican war on science;
  • Peanut allergies go away when infants are exposed early on;
  • Takes on what socialism is.
– – –

It was drizzly all weekend. Yesterday we attended a birthday party for grandson Nicholas, at a park in Alameda, despite weather predictions of light rain. The rain mostly let up by noon (we were there at 11) but resumed with drizzle before we packed up and left. Today, more shifting forecasts of rain this afternoon, changing every time I looked at the weather app on my phone. As I did earlier in the week, by chance, I went out for a walk during what turned out to be the lightest drizzle of the day; now, despite earlier forecasts, it’s not just drizzling, it’s raining.

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Several substantial leftover items from the past week.

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Are religions by their nature fascist? Is this an impertinent question, or a dumb one?

I’m recalling the nutshell definition of fascism in Heather Cox Richardson’s book (review begins here).

…The US has an actual history of struggles, leading to the idea that all people are equal. Fascism, in contrast, was based on the idea that some people are better than others, and deserved to rule.

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Disintegration

Posted on Sunday 26 October 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • The Pentagon Press Corps;
  • Trump’s pardons;
  • Charlie Kirk;
  • The East Wing and the new ballroom, with an analysis that suggests the proposed ballroom is not real;
  • Short items.
– – –

What’s new?

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Propaganda, not news.

Slate, Molly Olmstead, 24 Oct 2025: The New Pentagon Press Corps Is … Really Something, subtitled “Legitimate journalists declined to agree to absurd eligibility rules for Pentagon press passes. Trump’s team is very excited about their replacements.”

The Gateway Pundit, RedState, LindellTV, OAN, and The Epoch Times, among others.
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They’re Already Here

Posted on Friday 24 October 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

About transcendence, and alien intelligence.

More about “transcendence,” and quibbling with that essay I linked yesterday. It said this:

Transcendence—basically, the human experience of a higher and deeper reality somehow hidden in our everyday existences, but giving hints of itself in certain circumstances—is a constant phenomenon across time and cultures. … Without any form of supernatural existence, what could transcendence be about?

The error is tying the perception of something “higher and deeper” than our everyday existence, with religion.

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