Useful Categories

Posted on Wednesday 29 October 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Five ideas to tell when America has become a dictatorship;
  • A Jesus and Mo cartoon that reflects my discussions of secular awe and religion;
  • Phil Zuckerman on how social justice is secular;
  • Short items about worries of American’s impending population collapse, national emergencies and election fraud, the firing of the commission on design, how Musk’s project is cribbing from Wikipedia, and yet another example of conservative bigotry and nonsense.
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Slate, Herb Bowman, 29 Oct 2025: How Will You Know That America Has Become a Dictatorship? After 20 Years Living in One, I Can Tell You.
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Moral Rot

Posted on Tuesday 28 October 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Paul Krugman on food stamps/SNAP; the common conservative belief that recipients are malingerers; and some facts about who actually gets those benefits;
  • The Labor Department’s white supremacist posters;
  • Short items;
  • Dr. Warren J. Blumenfeld on Trump’s disrespect, and how he’s wrong in the head.
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Paul Krugman, 28 Oct 2025: The Hunger Games Begin, subtitled “40 million Americans are about to lose food stamps”

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What People Know, and What They Want

Posted on Monday 27 October 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • What undecided voters say they are concerned about, vs. reality;
  • Tom Tomorrow on effect and cause, within the Trump administration;
  • An OnlySky piece by Michael Carteron about the paradox of modern life;
  • Jerry Coyne on Charles Murray’s “God-sized hole”;
  • My thoughts about the need for someone to take care of you.
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The Bulwark, Jonathan V. Last, 27 Oct 2025: The Lies They Tell Themselves, subtitled “A conversation with voters about The Real Issues.”

The writer participates in some sort of focus group surveying undecided voters in New Jersey, and concludes:

Some large portion of voters do not appear to understand elementary, objective aspects of reality.

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Drizzly

Posted on Sunday 26 October 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Intro;
  • Are religions by their nature fascist?
  • Latest on the Republican war on science;
  • Peanut allergies go away when infants are exposed early on;
  • Takes on what socialism is.
– – –

It was drizzly all weekend. Yesterday we attended a birthday party for grandson Nicholas, at a park in Alameda, despite weather predictions of light rain. The rain mostly let up by noon (we were there at 11) but resumed with drizzle before we packed up and left. Today, more shifting forecasts of rain this afternoon, changing every time I looked at the weather app on my phone. As I did earlier in the week, by chance, I went out for a walk during what turned out to be the lightest drizzle of the day; now, despite earlier forecasts, it’s not just drizzling, it’s raining.

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Several substantial leftover items from the past week.

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Are religions by their nature fascist? Is this an impertinent question, or a dumb one?

I’m recalling the nutshell definition of fascism in Heather Cox Richardson’s book (review begins here).

…The US has an actual history of struggles, leading to the idea that all people are equal. Fascism, in contrast, was based on the idea that some people are better than others, and deserved to rule.

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Disintegration

Posted on Sunday 26 October 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • The Pentagon Press Corps;
  • Trump’s pardons;
  • Charlie Kirk;
  • The East Wing and the new ballroom, with an analysis that suggests the proposed ballroom is not real;
  • Short items.
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What’s new?

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Propaganda, not news.

Slate, Molly Olmstead, 24 Oct 2025: The New Pentagon Press Corps Is … Really Something, subtitled “Legitimate journalists declined to agree to absurd eligibility rules for Pentagon press passes. Trump’s team is very excited about their replacements.”

The Gateway Pundit, RedState, LindellTV, OAN, and The Epoch Times, among others.
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They’re Already Here

Posted on Friday 24 October 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

About transcendence, and alien intelligence.

More about “transcendence,” and quibbling with that essay I linked yesterday. It said this:

Transcendence—basically, the human experience of a higher and deeper reality somehow hidden in our everyday existences, but giving hints of itself in certain circumstances—is a constant phenomenon across time and cultures. … Without any form of supernatural existence, what could transcendence be about?

The error is tying the perception of something “higher and deeper” than our everyday existence, with religion.

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Transcendence, and Science Fiction

Posted on Thursday 23 October 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Writers keep puzzling about the idea of transcendence and its association with religion; I’ve proposed an answer;
  • Local news about federal agents in Alameda, near me, and how Trump called them off today;
  • Heather Cox Richardson about the destruction of the East Wing of the White House; Karoline Leavitt on Trump’s unilateral power;
  • Short takes about capitalists, how Democrats should commit to restoring the East Wing, how MAGA thirsts to find evidence of left-wing violence, and Robert Reich on the second gilded age’s billionaire’s ballroom.
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OnlySky, Bruce Ledewitz, 22 Oct 2025: The lure of the transcendent, subtitled “We need a secular framework for human experiences of awe and deep meaning.”

I’m reading this essay for the first time as I post. Going in, I’m puzzled by the premise. Since feelings of awe and deep meaning do exist, they are obviously related to something other that the (non)existence of various supernatural beings. Which came first? Why would feelings of awe have evolved if they weren’t perceptions of the supernatural? (And if the supernatural were real — why the special feelings?) A while back I read a book called AWE (review here), which I was not deeply impressed by, especially since the author didn’t address the science fictional idea of “sense of wonder” (which I do in my essay).

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Demolition

Posted on Wednesday 22 October 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Trump demolishes the East Wing, after promising not to;
  • Michelle Goldberg about MAGA;
  • Robert Reich on options to challenge the right’s “hate America” rhetoric;
  • Short items about how Christians should be in charge of everything, how MAGA hates people from India too, and Bill Maher on how if you’re a racist, you’re probably Republican.
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A few days ago Trump said his new ballroom would be close to but wouldn’t affect the existing East Wing. This week, he’s had the entire East Wing torn down, with no due process for how construction projects are usually built or torn down.

CNN, 22 Oct 2025: Why Trump’s sudden East Wing demolition is extraordinary — and dicey
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Slop

Posted on Tuesday 21 October 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Essays about AI slop, and how this endangers objective truth;
  • Trump is tearing down the East Wing of the White House, after he said he wouldn’t;
  • Responses to Trump’s poop video;
  • Paul Krugman on Trump’s loss of touch with reality;
  • How to deal with everyday religious platitudes;
  • Short items about how believers twist the Bible, and the Constitution, to their ends; and how those Young Republicans stiffed a NY hotel restaurant bill… just as Trump has done.
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I’ve heard this word, referring to certain gratuitous examples of AI-generated video, a few times. But today comes not one but two thoughtful essays on the subject. (Not to mention Trump’s puerile video a few days ago, to which the world might also apply.)

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NY Times, guest essay by Bobbie Johnson, 19 Oct 2025: What Is Sora Slop For, Exactly?

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The Need for Community

Posted on Monday 20 October 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • An essay about how humans raised children in villages, throughout most of history;
  • Another essay about how Gen Z-ers are drawn to conservative Christianity, not because it’s in any way true, but because of that same need for community;
  • Heather Cox Richardson on Trump’s gross video, and the ideas of American government that are being lost;
  • Paul Krugman’s theory on the MAGA attacks;
  • Brief items about “Democrat programs,” how MAGA reactions to the No King marches proved the protesters right; and brief items about Adam Serwer, Dinesh D’Souza, MAGA objectors to No Kings, an attack in San Leandro, Chip Roy, communism, and national parks.
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Curiously, there are aspects of what we are calling base human nature, that which evolved over hundreds of thousands of years in the ancestral environment, which modern conservatives resist, at least in the US.

NY Times, guest essay by Louise Perry, 14 Oct 2025: It’s Not Normal to Raise Children Like This (gift link)

By “normal” she means what has been common throughout most of human history, going back millennia. And still exists in some enclaves. Beginning:

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