The Proper Study

Posted on Monday 24 August 2026 by Mark R. Kelly
  • The proper study of mankind, if not in the way Alexander Pope meant;
  • Powers of Ten, and the range of human intuition and understanding;
  • If Pluto is a planet, so are dozens of other spherical bodies.
  • A passionate performance of Mahler’s 5th.
– – –

I’m steadily tweaking and updating my Outline of Themes. It needs much work. Three items today. This illustrates the second:

The first: the primary issue goes back to that famous Essay on Man by Alexander Pope, which famously begins:

Know then thyself, presume not God to scan;
The proper study of Mankind is Man.

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Kevin, Sean, Darline

Posted on Sunday 23 August 2026 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Noting Kevin Kelly’s substack;
  • David French, Sean Duffy, Harvard, and fear of corruption;
  • World hunger is declining;
  • How is Sharia Law worse than Christian Nationalism? (asking for a friend);
  • Ignoramous Darline Graham pivots to a safe conservative target: trans kids.
– – –

Nothing vital today. Let’s note this.

Boing Boing, Mark Frauenfelder, 18 Aug 2026: Kevin Kelly: AI will be a microscope we point at our own minds

I noted the anniversary of his book Out of Control a couple months ago, but didn’t highlight the fact that he has a substack, KK. Add it to my rotation? For a while. It already takes me an hour a day to visit my usual sites. His latest post is Without a Theory of Intelligence.

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The War Within Human Nature for Human Survival

Posted on Saturday 22 August 2026 by Mark R. Kelly
  • The growing movement of Americans who don’t think all people are created equal;
  • Trump tries to intimidate the source of a report he doesn’t like;
  • Under Trump, protected wild horses are being slaughtered;
  • Trump is doing everything he can to drain Harvard’s funding;
  • And how Trump is trying to crush California’s environmental policies;
  • Two responses from Robert Reich about Trump: he’s mad; his worldview.
– – –

Seldom is there such a confluence of examples, in one day, of one of my ongoing premises.

CNN, John Blake, today: Some Americans don’t believe all people are created equal. Their movement is going mainstream, this author says

My premise is simply that an original base human nature, one that is tribal, racist, and selfish, resides within all of us; some of us have inherited a gradually evolving enlightened human nature, that has grown along with the growth of a global society; and modern life is a sort of see-sawing back and forth between which of these perspectives prevails at any given moment. The OT represents the former; parts of the NT (some of what Jesus said; nothing of what Paul said) and the US Constitution and many other documents represent the latter. MAGA represents the former, even as they claim to worship Jesus and the Constitution. They seem completely un-self-aware, or maybe are just dumb.

The article:
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The Transition

Posted on Friday 21 August 2026 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Fareed Zakaria responds to Ezra Klein about The Odyssey;
  • Briefly: Trump running out of people to blame; How liberal families look pretty much like conservatives ones; The vacuousness of Darline Graham;
  • Wojciech Kilar’s score for The Portrait of a Lady.
– – –

Working some infrastructure pages recently. For today, more of the same, more or less.

Here are two of my favorite writers, in discussion: Fareed Zakarian responding to Ezra Klein.

Washington Post, Fareed Zakaria, today: What Odysseus can teach us about liberalism, subtitled “The challenge is to preserve human dignity while recovering our capacity for heroic ambition.”
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Ideology and Fertility

Posted on Thursday 20 August 2026 by Mark R. Kelly
  • The complex reasons behind the drop in fertility;
  • Mike Johnson is literally illiterate;
  • Texas Christians are trying to define Muslims out of existence;
  • Trump is trying crush California’s environmental policies, of course;
  • Robert Reich explores who’s benefiting from the explosion in the national debt;
  • Heather Cox Richardson on Natalie Harp, if we still care;
  • Von Karajan does Bruckner 7.
– – –

Testing provisional conclusions. Is this just about primitive tribal priorities for survival, in a world that doesn’t actually need more children? Or something else?

The Atlantic, Olga Khazan, today: Another Big Difference Between Liberals and Conservatives, subtitled “People on the right tend to have more kids than people on the left. Why?”

…several academics told me that research conducted in the past few years has shown a fairly strong association between ideology and fertility. The latest evidence comes from a June report by the Institute for Family Studies, a think tank that promotes marriage and family life, which polled more than 7,000 Americans aged 18 to 54 and found that self-identified conservatives had 1.4 kids, on average, to liberals’ 1.09, a statistically significant difference. The study also found that liberals were more likely to not have children. The ideological fertility gap remained even after controlling for other variables that may influence family size, such as religion, race, income, age, marital status, and education.

Several theories. Liberals are more anxious about the state of the world. Liberals and conservatives have different values. And both sides tend to live in bubbles. The rest of the article expands on these.

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Wiping out databases; sycophants; misogyny; revenge; Waymo

Posted on Wednesday 19 August 2026 by Mark R. Kelly
  • What authoritarian regimes do: suppress inconvenient evidence;
  • Much concern about Trump sycophant Natalie Harp;
  • More about Trump’s misogyny;
  • Trump is all about revenge;
  • How Democrats are resisting Waymo, a promising new technology.

This is not a surprise. This is what authoritarian regimes do to hide their mismanagement and irresponsibility.

The Guardian, yesterday: Trump 2.0 has deleted or altered nearly 400 US datasets, endangering public health, education and more

Why? Short answer is in the subtitle: “Health data appears to be most affected by administration’s attempt to wipe findings that don’t align with its priorities, tracker shows”

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Stories and Reality

Posted on Tuesday 18 August 2026 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Are more Americans seeing the truth behind the GOP lies?;
  • Evidence that disputes Trump’s promises, in 11 charts;
  • Robert Reich tells Scott Bessent who’s wrong and who’s right;
  • Paul Krugman wonders why Trump likes North Korea, the worst government on Earth;
  • Rep. Jared Huffman’s frank discussion of Christian Nationalism;
  • Haitink conducts Bruckner 4.
– – –

Some people (whom we call conservatives) won’t ‘believe’ any kind of evidence that disputes their stories.

The New Republic, yesterday: At Long Last, Americans Are Starting to See the Truth About the GOP, subtitled “A businessman can set this country right. Republicans are better for the economy. Republicans love the military. Lie, lie, and lie. ”

But the last three Republican presidents—Bush, Bush, and Trump—have been disasters. The first Bush oversaw a double-dip recession and a massive savings and loan scandal that looted the treasury. The second Bush started a costly and tragic war based on lies and nearly brought the global economy to its knees. Trump, you know about—corruption, fascism, and staggering incompetence.

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How the American Experiment May Not Be Working

Posted on Monday 17 August 2026 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Adam Lee suggests abolishing the US Senate (as others have before him)

America has always considered itself an experiment, on the world stage, and in fact it has developed into the most powerful nation on Earth. But has the experiment been entirely successful? Is America perfect? The test of any experiment and its conclusions is whether they can stand up to later discoveries and experiments and their conclusions. Things change.

OnlySky, Adam Lee, today: For the good of democracy, abolish the Senate, subtitled “It’s an oligarchic institution designed to thwart the popular will.”

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Caro Claire Burke, YESTERYEAR

Posted on Monday 17 August 2026 by Mark R. Kelly

(Knopf, April 2026, 391pp)

I read the bestselling novel YESTERYEAR, by Caro Claire Burke, three weekends ago, on a trip to LA to spend time with family on the occasion of a 1st birthday and a new house, and it turned out to be a perfect book for such a trip. In such family gatherings things are going on all around me that don’t need my attention (especially on Open House day when 50 people were wandering around the house and property), and this book was an easy read as I sat on the sofa, or retired to our guest room.

It’s difficult to discuss this book without spoiling it in one direction or another. I added it to my Weekly Bestsellers page, on Locus Online, beginning April 20th, because the various descriptions of the book implied it involved time travel — a contemporary woman goes back to 1855.

Spoiler: Continue reading →

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Fantasy Lands

Posted on Sunday 16 August 2026 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Andrew O’Hehir on how few people understand the differences between socialism, capitalism, and all those other isms, as even MAGA embraces socialist ideas;
  • Mark Joseph Stern on the origin of originalist ideas about the US Constitution;
  • Jamelle Boudie on how Trump is living in a fantasy land;
  • Two items about Trump’s underwhelming “Patriot Games.”
– – –

Some of us are more closely aligned with reality than others.

Another in a series about how few people know what these various terms actually mean.

Salon, Andrew O’Hehir, today: Even MAGA loves socialism now, subtitled “Everyone’s done with capitalism — except mainstream Democrats, late to the party as usual”

As you may have noticed, many members of the American media and political classes are currently rending their garments in terror and despair at the perceived threat of “socialism.” It’s not at all clear what that word means in 2026, in this context or any other.

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