Mark R. Kelly
» Founder in 1997 and site-runner for 20 years of Locus Online (Hugo Award winner in 2002). Founder in 2012 and still site-runner of sfadb.com (Science Fiction Awards Database). Retired in 2012 after 30 years as a software engineer for a certain rocket engine factory.
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Meta
Category Archives: Culture
Ls&Qs: Rationality and Fear
Two long quotes today, from opposite ends of the spectrum from rationality to fear.
Ls&Cs: Utopias; Crises; Paranoia
A sidebar article in last Sunday’s New York Times Magazine interviews Rutger Bregman. How to Think Like a Utopian. Bregman is a young Dutch historian who wrote UTOPIA FOR REALISTS (which I blogged about here) and more recently HUMANKIND: A … Continue reading
Posted in Conservative Resistance, Culture, Links, Social Progress
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Links and Comments, 6 April 2021: Sciencey Things
When life began in the universe; how or whether civilizations die; why people like closed-captioning
Links and Comments: Things Change, 1
Will MAGA panic subside with an old white man back in the presidency? How American political parties have disintegrated in the past, and the Republican party may now be doing. How Britain has become the dumbest society in the world, … Continue reading
Posted in Conservative Resistance, Culture, Politics
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Nonfiction Notes: Bobby Duffy, WHY WE’RE WRONG ABOUT NEARLY EVERYTHING
Bobby Duffy, Why We’re Wrong About Nearly Everything: A Theory of Human Misunderstanding (2018) (US edition Nov 2019) Here’s another book on a seemingly familiar theme: why people so frequently misunderstand the world, and what we can do to correct … Continue reading
Posted in Book Notes, Changing One's Mind, Culture, Social Progress
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Links and Comments: Trying to Be Smarter; Faith vs Fact
NYT: How Do We Get to Herd Immunity for Fake News?, subtitled, “We need to match our focus on the supply of misinformation with a focus on the demand for it.” Yet the chorus of angst over misinformation has focused … Continue reading
Links and Comments: Pandemic Responses and Routines
The Atlantic, 24 Nov: Your Individually Rational Choice Is Collectively Disastrous, subtitled “Stopping the virus from spreading requires us to override our basic intuitions.” This isn’t about haywire individual thinking (cognitive biases, the appeal of simplistic stories to explain the … Continue reading
Posted in Culture, Psychology
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This Week’s Facebook Memes
Quoted without comment. Opinions, not claims of fact; From Gloria Steinem: How about we treat every young man who wants to buy a gun like every woman who wants to get an abortion — mandatory 48-hour waiting period, parental permission, … Continue reading
Posted in Conservative Resistance, Culture, Lunacy
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Links and Comments: Science, Reality Bubbles, and Stories
The most interesting one is at the bottom. \\ Scientific American: To Understand How Science Denial Works, Look to History, subtitled, “The same tactics used to cast doubt on the dangers of smoking and climate change are now being used … Continue reading
Ls&Cs: Interesting Times
The latest on strategies to avoid long-term calamities, knowing of calamities and lying about them, the US compared to South America and Europe, and Americans’ grasp of reality.