Category Archives: Culture

We’re Living in an Age of Regression

Posted on Tuesday 13 May 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

In Trump’s America, it’s every parent and child out for themselves; Who decides who’s Christian? The government? Fox News says the Qatari bribe to Trump is fine because FDR gave three planes to the Saudis… 80 years ago; Robert Reich … Continue reading →

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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 … Continue reading →

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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 … Continue reading →

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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book that was popular in its time but is probably not really recommendable now, simply because it’s 50 years out of date in … Continue reading →

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Tribal Warpaint

Posted on Sunday 27 April 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

How Trump doesn’t want to govern, and rejects the idea of American government as a collaboration; How the idea of consumer choice led to the idea of being gay; Trump and covid.gov rewrite the history, as authoritarians do; How Trump … Continue reading →

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The Cowboy Myth, Presidential Corruption, and Disingenuous Cuts to Science Research

Posted on Friday 25 April 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

Heather Cox Richard on the “cowboy myth” that informs the Trump presidency; How Trump et al are giving billionaires a bad name; How Trump has done the most corrupt thing any president has ever done — getting rich from anonymous … Continue reading →

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The War Against Intelligence

Posted on Tuesday 22 April 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

Trump’s rage against smart people; Defunding Harvard will hobble medical research that would benefit people like us; Historian Lauren Thompson compares the Gilded Age to the Trump Age; Trump and Vance praised b conservatives for lying about abortion; Hegseth purges … Continue reading →

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And Now We Have Linus

Posted on Wednesday 16 April 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

Why manufacturing jobs are never coming back to America; Heather Cox Richardson records Steven Inskeep’s quip; And How JD Vance is fine with abandoning due process; About Linus, our fourth cat. – – – I keep thinking: we’re living in … Continue reading →

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The Devolution of the United States

Posted on Thursday 20 March 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

America is 24th in a ranking of the happiest countries in the world. Don’t Americans wonder why so many other countries are happier? I suspect they do not. [Update: this is a fairly superficial measure. Even so.] Trump and his … Continue reading →

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How MAGA folks don’t actually believe in traditional American values

Posted on Tuesday 18 March 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

Rather, they embody the essence of primitive tribalism. A Ben Shapiro host renounces the Statue of Liberty and its “stupid” poem; The disappearance of Navajo Code Talkers on government websites suggests again that MAGA is a white supremacy movement; Shameless … Continue reading →

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