Locus Awards and Being Busy

Posted on Sunday 22 June 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

Locus Awards; publisher prospects; recent reading.

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It’s a truism that the busier one is, the less time one has to jot notes in one’s journal, or write posts on one’s blog. The past few days have been busy, but the business — busy-ness? — is all over now, so I have time this Sunday afternoon to catch up.

Family from LA arrived on Thursday (with a day’s notice): my partner’s younger son and his wife, expecting their first child in July. Their last trip to the Bay Area to see us and various friends and cousins before the baby comes. Dinners out, lunch with cousins, visits to esoteric coffee shops. They left for home this morning, Sunday, after a trip to Boichik Bagels on 6th St. in Berkeley.

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No Shades of Gray

Posted on Friday 20 June 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Trump wants national parks to reflect only patriotic history;
  • Trump thinks if you’re not on his side then you “hate America”;
  • Yet another example: Beware “common sense”;
  • Short items: Atheists in prison; Trump officials reverse ICE guidelines, again and again; Brian Karem on how we’ve become a failed nation-state in just 150 days.
– – –

Again: everything, for conservatives, must be reduced to simplistic terms, black and white, good and evil. And America must always have been good. Also: another snitch line!

LA Times, 19 Jun 2025: Trump bans ‘negative’ signage at national parks, asks visitors to report text deemed ‘unpatriotic’

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Girls and Boys and Evolutionary Psychology

Posted on Thursday 19 June 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Apparently there’s a worldwide shift in preference for baby girls over baby boys, reversing an age-old bias;
  • The article cited doesn’t explain the evolutionary rationales for these shifting preferences, but I will;
  • And Sophie’s Choice;
  • And it reveals reasons why girls, in their own way, are smarter than boys;
  • And music by Jocelyn Pook.
– – –

Is this real? What would explain it?

Vox, Bryan Walsh, 15 Jun 2025: The stunning reversal of humanity’s oldest bias, subtitled “Everyone wants to be a girl dad now.”

This piece discusses the evidence, which seems legitimate enough, without at all wondering how the bias toward boys arose in the first place, or why it would be changing now. It begins:

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Police Uniforms and Masks; Humor vs. Anger

Posted on Wednesday 18 June 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
    • How fake police wear uniforms, and secret police (ICE) wears face masks;
    • Robert Reich on the most regressive bill in history;
    • The lack of conservative humor;
    • Becoming aware of Rebecca Solnit;
    • And short items about how Trump cut the suicide prevention hotline for gay people; how support for Israel, no matter what it does, is justified as “Biblical”; and how “deeply religious” is an alarm bell.
– – –

So last week a man dressed up as a policeman shot several Minnesota Democrats and killed two of them. Meanwhile, ICE goes around nabbing people off the street while wearing no uniforms at all, providing no credentials of being law enforcement, and masking their faces. The situation is getting worse. Trumps fans, not paying close attention, presumably think this is what they voted for.

Slate, Sam Adams, 17 Jun 2025: Does America Have Secret Police Now?, subtitled “Of all the things this Trump term, the rapid normalization of masked law enforcement disturbs me the most.”

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Paleolithic Emotions, Medieval Institutions, and Godlike Technology

Posted on Tuesday 17 June 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • EO Wilson on the real problem of humanity;
  • Conservatives think you can command things into existence, despite the evidence of the real world; re: Trump’s tariffs on aluminum;
  • With my comments about modern technology and globalism;
  • How the Minnesota killer was deep into a Christian movement about spiritual warfare and demon-possessed politicians;
  • With my comments about religion as community vs religion as faith in supernatural claims;
  • And how America, if it was once “exceptional,” isn’t anymore, because Trump.
– – –

Things come around again. It’s all one world. Here’s a quote from E.O. Wilson that I read years ago in one of his books, and now appreciate anew given my recent readings in human nature and politics. He understood.

“The real problem of humanity is the following: We have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions and godlike technology. And it is terrifically dangerous, and it is now approaching a point of crisis overall.”

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Are Trump and MAGA intending to ethnically cleanse Democrats? Signs Point That Way

Posted on Monday 16 June 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Paul Krugman and Guardian on how the parade was a flop, while No Kings Day was a hit;
  • Photos from Trump’s military parade;
  • Motivated reasoning and conspiracy theories about the Minnesota shootings, even though the facts are apparent enough (and implicate a right-wing, religious, shooter);
  • Bigger picture: Trump takes aim at states’ rights — at least, blue states’ rights;
  • And he wants VA doctors to refuse treatment to Democrats (!?);
  • Is this building up to some kind of ethnic cleansing of Democrats?
  • Adam Serwer’s “tyrant test”;
  • And Fox News.
– – –

First, just to restate the situation.

Paul Krugman, 16 Jun 2025: Trump’s parade flopped. No Kings Day was a hit.

America is no longer a full-fledged democracy. We are currently living under a version of competitive authoritarianism — a system that (like Orban’s Hungary or Erdogan’s Turkey) is still democratic on paper but in which a ruling party no longer takes democracy’s rules seriously. As a result those in power

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Say Black Is White, and Some Will Believe You

Posted on Sunday 15 June 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • The ‘No Kings’ demonstrations yesterday were a huge success, the parade in Washington DC less so;
  • How the White House lies about those demonstrations;
  • How MAGA and Musk are somehow blaming the *left* for the shootings of Democratic lawmakers in Minnesota;
  • With thoughts about the upside-down world of MAGA conservatives.
– – –

As widely covered in the new media, hundreds of “No Kings” demonstrations were held across the country yesterday, Saturday.

A gallery of photos.

Salon, Alan Taylor, 15 Jun 2025: Photos: ‘No Kings’ Protests Across America, subtitled “Yesterday, according to estimates by event organizers, millions marched in protest against the Trump administration, including its recent controversial immigration-enforcement raids. Hundreds of ‘No Kings’ demonstrations took place in cities and towns throughout the U.S.”

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Trump and MAGA’s War on California

Posted on Saturday 14 June 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • News today: Trump’s parade, No Kings demonstrations, and a dress-up cop shoots Democratic lawmakers in Minnesota;
  • Charlie Warzel on the surfeit of information and how the right can invent via AI narratives to its advantage;
  • Similar gaslighting about Alex Padilla;
  • Sensing the deportation targets are absurd, Trump changes the targets (TACO!);
  • David Barton lies again; Shane Vaughn celebrates an imminent arrival of the end times; and a new entry in “If the US press covered the US the way it covers other countries.”
– – –

Today is Trump’s parade; today hundreds, maybe thousands, of No Kings demonstrations are being held in cities across the nation; and today we woke to learn that two Minnesota lawmakers and their spouses had been shot overnight by someone dressed as a policeman, killing one couple, with a list of other planned targets, include abortion providers and other Democrats.

One way of looking at this is that Trump is an egomaniac, Trump and MAGA have declared war on the blue states and Trump has had the US military invade California with the intent of displacing its elected leaders. Californians are protesting. Of course. And — I’m speculating here — elements of MAGA are taking to violence against those who oppose their king.

The Atlantic, Charlie Warzel, 13 Jun 2025: I’m Running Out of Ways to Explain How Bad This Is (Again), subtitled “The L.A. distortion effect”

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It’s Not Even About Deportation

Posted on Friday 13 June 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • The Alex Padilla incident, and the threat to “liberate” Los Angeles from its lawfully-elected leaders;
  • Trump always thinks protestors are paid demonstrators; why cannot he conceive that people disagree with him on principle?
  • And bonus items!
– – –

Because deportation is a legal process, which Trump and ICE are ignoring. It’s actually a racist, xenophobic drive about routing the nation of non-Whites, by any means. They don’t do “due process.” They just *know* that non-Whites are bad and must be expelled from the country. Or removed from the room.

You can get away with a lot when your fans apparently don’t realize what they’re seeing, even when it’s right in front of them. This has happened before in history; why aren’t more Americans alarmed by this??

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Now a US senator — who happens to be brown-skinned — was forcibly removed from a press conference held by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem (she of brown hair carefully arranged over her shoulders for every photo op) and handcuffed.

LA Times, Gustavo Arellano, 13 Jun 2025: Sen. Alex Padilla’s crime? Being Mexican in MAGA America

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Dr. Christopher Evans, CULTS OF UNREASON

Posted on Thursday 12 June 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

No subtitle (they didn’t do them so often fifty years ago).

(UK, 1973; US: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1974, 258pp, including 5pp index.)

Like Nicholas Humphrey’s LEAPS OF FAITH, discussed a couple weeks ago, this is a book I read decades ago, soon after it came out, and revisited recently to see how what it says fits into my current schema. Since the book came out in 1974, I also have to wonder, at this remove, what prompted me to buy and read it back then? I was a year into college, and had sufficient pocket money to buy books, even a hardcover now and then, but why did I spend $7.95 on *this* book?

I can sort of retrace the trajectory of my thinking and reading experiences. Continue reading →

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