At the Edge of the Continent

Posted on Saturday 13 January 2024 by Mark R. Kelly

Today my partner and I finished setting up my chic new curved widescreen monitor (a Christmas present), replacing the two standard-sized monitors I was using before. This new monitor (technically a “gaming” monitor) shows roughly the equivalent of three of the standard-sized monitors. It took several tries to hook up, using various cables ending in various kinds of ports; one of the two cables that came with the monitor simply didn’t work, and the other used plugs I didn’t have ports for on my relatively new laptop. Finally we found a suitable HDMI cable that works. Everything is working I think I still need to raise the monitor a bit, so top of screen is eye-level. It’s *heavy*.

Back to assorted posts on current events and politics.

  • Trump dreams of economic disaster since he doesn’t actually care about Americans, only his chances to win the next election, and this aligns with modern conservatives’ notions about Jesus and the Bible;
  • Short items about weather control and assassinations, false history and cults;
  • And R.E.M.’s song “I Remember California”.

Whose side are Republicans on? Not that of ordinary Americans; apparently only themselves.

NY Times, Paul Krugman, 11 Jan 2024: Trump Dreams of Economic Disaster

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Backing Into Philosophy: Stipulations

Posted on Friday 12 January 2024 by Mark R. Kelly

I do have another batch of links about current events, but I’ll save them for this weekend and instead spend tonight’s blog post jotting down thoughts about philosophy. I mentioned back on Jan 6th that one of my resolutions for this year is to systematically read a history of philosophy, after having only dipped into many of its subtopics over the years.

I wondered in that post what the bridge might have been between humanity’s earliest, intuitive, “Savannah morality” thinking, as I’ve described many times, and the first things that might be called philosophy. And then floated the idea that many individual wise men have surely been present throughout history, some of whose thoughts are lost to time, others of which we venerate, even if they were never systematized into any kind of “philosophy,” in the sense of their being principles of explanation or instruction meant to apply beyond the writer’s own experience.

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Take Another Trip Around the Sun

Posted on Thursday 11 January 2024 by Mark R. Kelly

Let’s try to drill through accumulated links, if only briefly, and then move on to other things. Among many items, these themes:

  • Republicans and “God gave us Trump” and America’s “collective pathology”;
  • Adam Lee on the idea that conspiracy theorists are trying (but failing) to do skepticism;
  • Why people split the world into good and evil;
  • Jennifer Rubin on how real conservatives used to think;
  • And another R.E.M. song: “Around the Sun”.

Salon, Chauncey DeVega, 11 Jan 2024: Experts on why so many Republicans accept that “God gave us Trump”, subtitled “How Donald Trump has evolved into a Messianic figure among the white religious right”

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A Dream of Oceans, and Sunken Cities

Posted on Wednesday 10 January 2024 by Mark R. Kelly

Still enamored by R.E.M., which is why I’ve chosen another of their lyrics for today’s post title.

Today: more items about trying to understand the modern world.

  • How false information might be the top global risk in 2024;
  • An example of conservative trolling from Aaron Rodgers;
  • Items about the Trump/MAGA mindset, including “God Made Trump” and how Republicans “Openly Insult Women Nearly Killed by Abortion Bans”;
  • And in complete contrast, R.E.M.’s “The Lifting”

OnlySky, M L Clark, 10 Jan 2024: Is false information our top global risk in 2024?

Overview:
If we can’t manage our mis- and disinformation crisis better, how can we ever hope to tackle our environmental, political, and economic issues well?

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Now is Greater Than the Whole of the Past

Posted on Tuesday 9 January 2024 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Three items about how conservatives resist solving problems if those solutions would benefit the Democrats;
  • A survey of readers, books they’ve read, books they own, and some of my own statistics;
  • And R.E.M.’s song “She Just Wants to Be” which includes this post’s title.

To begin, three items today that suggest an underlying theme.

Media Matters, 8 Jan 2024: Laura Ingraham demands Republicans reject deal for government funding to deny Joe Biden “a victory lap”

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Philosophy of Government, and other matters

Posted on Monday 8 January 2024 by Mark R. Kelly
  • How that DeSantis/Newsom debate revealed “the space between red and blue states”;
  • Short items about folding paper to reach the Moon (the answer is 42), and Christian ideas about good and evil, beating up gay children, and Trump as God’s gift to mankind.

I have a bunch of links from the past couple weeks and even before that I can post quickly, but in looking for something more substantial that I can quote from to begin the post…. Let’s try this.

I’ve posted a couple items recently about the stark difference between how conservatives/Republicans and liberals/Democrats would run the government. (I’ll insert links here shortly.) Here’s another, a link collected back on 3 Dec, which I’ve not seemed to have used yet. It’s about the “debate” between Newsom and DeSantis, back at the end of November.

The Atlantic, Ronald Brownstein, 3 Dec 2023: What the DeSantis and Newsom Debate Really Revealed, subtitled “The space between red and blue states”

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Addendum to Yesterday; Daily Dressing

Posted on Sunday 7 January 2024 by Mark R. Kelly

Two items today.

First, I added a few paragraphs to my philosophical speculations at the end of yesterday’s post.

Second, another life hack post (following the one yesterday about phone call etiquette).

Slate, Fortesa Latifi, 7 Jan 2024: Wear the Same Thing Most Days, subtitled “Am I ‘well dressed’? Maybe not. Am I comfortable? You bet!”

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Phone Calls, Denials, and Reading Philosophy

Posted on Saturday 6 January 2024 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Phone call etiquette;
  • Denial of the Jan. 6 Insurrection, despite receipts;
  • How denial of evolution resembles current efforts to deny democracy;
  • And some thoughts about reading philosophy.

Still under the weather; perhaps by Monday I’ll have the energy to get back to ‘work’, i.e. currently the database project. This past week I’ve spent an hour or two a day at the computer, checking my usual sites and doing a blog post, and otherwise lying on the sofa, napping, and reading Tintin books. Two or three a day. I have the complete set, most of them read back in the ’90s, but not in order. I have three left.

Washington Post, Heather Kelly, 25 Sep 2023: The new phone call etiquette: Text first and never leave a voice mail, subtitled “When is it okay to leave voice mails, call multiple times in a row or take a call in public?”

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Basic Principles of Politics, Economics, and Zealotry

Posted on Friday 5 January 2024 by Mark R. Kelly

Three items today.

  • How the Republican strategy has changed;
  • Zero-sum thinking (by conservatives) vs. division of labor and our modern complex society;
  • And fringe items about God-believers and how God made Trump.

There’s a commonly understood explanation for the long-time strategies of the Republican Party that even some current Republicans seem unaware of, according to Paul Krugman. It’s an explanation we’ve seen many times.

Paul Krugman, NY Times, 4 Jan 2024: Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley and Politically Obtuse Plutocrats

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Watching Movies in Theaters; UBI; Reality; Why Everyone Thinks They’re Losing; and Epistemology

Posted on Thursday 4 January 2024 by Mark R. Kelly

Items today:

  • How watching movies in certain theaters (AMC) is a bloated experience;
  • Why UBI studies are not making traction into political policy;
  • A New Yorker graphic essay about how reality might exist only because we’re observing it;
  • E.J. Dionne Jr. about how “everybody thinks they’re losing”;
  • Jennifer Szalai about Elon Musk and the “deeper predicament”: epistemology, how we know what we know.

Washington Post, Richard Zoglin, 27 Dec 2023: Opinion | When is this movie really going to start? I’ve been here half an hour.

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