Category Archives: Culture

We’re Living in an Age of Regression

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

(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

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

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book that was popular in its time but is probably not really recommendable now, simply because it’s 50 years out of date in … Continue reading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

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

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

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

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

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

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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