Commentaries about Last Night’s Republican Debate

Posted on Thursday 24 August 2023 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Various reactions to the Republican debate, with its themes of science denial, and lying to a base that feeds on lies;
  • Robert Reich on Republicans’ denial of climate change.

I watched bits of it. I’m relying on the commentaries published today. Beginning with some headlines. And subtitles.

Salon, Amanda Marcotte, 24 Aug 2023: Why do Republicans even bother with this whole farce?, subtitled “Trump wasn’t there, but we saw why he’s leading: GOP voters don’t care about substance, just unjustified grievances”

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Freedom, Liberty, and Religion

Posted on Wednesday 23 August 2023 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Liberty and freedom, vs. conformity to religion;
  • More on how some Christians now think Jesus was too “woke”;
  • How Republicans politicians lie, because it works: their “distorted reality insulates right-wing media consumers from contradictions and challenges to their beliefs”;
  • And a revisit to a 2014 essay by a writer whose “father lost his mind” to Fox News.

Here’s an essay with what may seem like a startling premise, but one which actually is implicit in many cultures.

Adam Lee, OnlySky, 21 Aug 2023: Don’t be yourself

Overview:
A growing movement of Christian evangelicals decries “expressive individualism,” or in other words, the freedom to make your own choices and decide what to do with your own life.

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Explaining Trump and his Followers; Conservatives’ Lies about Heartstopper

Posted on Tuesday 22 August 2023 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Two kinds of boomers, and the naivete of older people about how social media works;
  • Why Republican voters believe Trump — it’s all about their feelings of victimhood;
  • An example of how pearl-clutching conservatives lie about Heartstopper.

Not one but two articles today whose headlines purport to offer explanations for Trump and his followers.

Slate, Ben Mathis-Lilley, 22 Aug 2023: The Georgia Trump Trial Will Be, Above All, the Final War Between the Two Kinds of Boomers on the Internet, subtitled “Hillary Clinton did not invent AIDS. (We’ll get into why that’s relevant.)”

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Conservatives and Mental Health

Posted on Monday 21 August 2023 by Mark R. Kelly
  • How Republican fears reveal their own mental health crisis;
  • How Trump voters trust him more than family, friends, or clergy;
  • How the worst people run for office (from Adam Grant), and how SF has anticipated this (from Isaac Asimov).

This seems plausible enough, given evidence every day.

Salon, Kirk Swearingen, 20 Aug 2023: Guns, Republicans and “manliness”: We all suffer from the right’s mental health crisis, subtitled “Republican men seem massively troubled about their masculinity — and that’s literally causing death and suffering”

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Insecurity and Inequality

Posted on Saturday 19 August 2023 by Mark R. Kelly
  • A long NYT piece about the US economy, feeling bad, inequality, and insecurity;
  • Shorter items about hearing dialogue in movies; the latest anti-woke tantrum; and that “First they came for…” poem.

Here’s a big piece in NY Times, that could be about the necessity of everyone wanting *more* all the time — always comparing themselves to the neighbors, always needing to update to the latest model or version — to keep the capitalist economy going. Or it could be about how inequality is driven by how Republicans keep cutting taxes for the wealthy, over and over. (Because the Republican party is financed by oligarchs.)

NY Times, guest essay by Astra Taylor, 18 Aug 2023: Our Economy Thrives on Bad Feelings

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Veritasium, Star Talk, Sapiens

Posted on Friday 18 August 2023 by Mark R. Kelly

There is so much nonsense on the web — and so much news about nonsensical, irrational people — it’s refreshing to find occasional pockets of knowledge and wisdom. I should try to pay more attention to these, and less attention to the entirely predictable torrent of nonsense from the conspiracy theorists and politics in general.

Here’s a site I stumbled upon years ago, and discussed in this post but haven’t kept up with. It’s called Veritasium, which has a Facebook page, a YouTube channel (with 14.1M subscribers!), and its own site Veritasium: An element of truth, run by one Derek Muller Derek Muller, who apparently makes a living making videos on science and engineering topics for these sites. (Presumably through the ads embedded in the videos.) Here’s a sample YouTube video, about entropy.

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Jocks In, Academics Out

Posted on Thursday 17 August 2023 by Mark R. Kelly
  • How that college in Florida is transforming itself to focusing on jocks, rather than academics;
  • How at least one commentator thinks Trump is doomed and will go to jail, while I’m not so sure;
  • Then several items about conservatives’ explicit homophobia, their simplistic take on the “war between good and evil,” and the increasing evangelical take on Jesus’ teachings as “weak”.

NYT, Michelle Goldberg, 14 Aug 2023: At a College Targeted by DeSantis, Gender Studies Is Out, Jocks Are In

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Corridors

Posted on Wednesday 16 August 2023 by Mark R. Kelly
  • The way I would have reimagined the Enterprise for Strange New Worlds;
  • Five rules for reading the news, from Big Think, and my thoughts about them;
  • Apocalyptic rhetoric from the right; conspiracy theories about the Maui wildfires.

I’ve enjoyed the current season of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds well enough. (Though I’m extremely irritated by its not displaying the episode titles.) But it’s always bothered me about this franchise, extending from 1966 to the present day, that the producers and production designers keep re-imagining and changing everything when there’s no particular reason for doing so. (Never mind the early movies’ penchant for destroying the Enterprise again and again, so they kept having to get new ones.) The ship of course, and also the uniforms.

If I were making a Star Trek series set on the same Enterprise that James Kirk captained, but a decade or two before when Captain Pike commanded it, this is what I would do.

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Scales of the Universe

Posted on Tuesday 15 August 2023 by Mark R. Kelly
  • The 13 scales that define our physical universe;
  • A video that maps the Milky Way onto the United States, where on that scale our sun would fit between the ridges of a fingerprint;
  • Recalling again the famous Powers of Ten video from 1977;
  • And “Religion” from Philip Glass’ Naqoyqatsi.

Some sciency bits today. I’ve always been fascinated by timelines and by scales of time and space. Here are a couple new ones.

Big Think, Ethan Siegel, 14 Aug 2023: The 13 scales that define our physical Universe, subtitled “The visible Universe extends 46.1 billion light-years from us, while we’ve probed scales down to as small as ~10^-19 meters.”

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Why I Hate Pop Concerts

Posted on Monday 14 August 2023 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Today’s lead article is about those of us who dislike attending pop concerts, even of singers and bands we otherwise admire and adore;
  • Then, about PragerU; the “lost boys” on the American Right; and Lukianoff & Haidt’s book about Coddling, which I’m still reading my way through.
  • And the leading track from Philip Glass’s Powaqqatsi.

Why I don’t like attending concerts. Of pop singers, I should say; I’m fine with classical concerts.

Salon, D. Watkins, 13 Aug 2023: You don’t love live shows: I have questions for concertgoers who record everything, subtitled “I used to think I was the only one who detested attending concerts, but your actions show I’m not alone”

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