July, 2025 archive
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
And another “responsible gun owner” feels privileged to discharge his portable phallus whilst proceeding along the nation’s highways.
Get Me Rewrite! 0
The Trump maladministration has rewritten Lady Liberty’s poem.
It now reads
- “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
And I will charge them a fee.”
“History Does Not Repeat Itself, but It Often Rhymes”* 0
At the Austin Statesman, Hannah Strong hears a rhyme echoing across the sea from eight decades ago. She refers to the movie The Zone of Interest, which IMDB describes as
and asks
I commend her article to your attention.
____________
*Mark Twain.
Freedom of Suppress 0
Farron discusses Donald Trump’s efforts to suppress voices that disagree with him.
Suffer the Children 0
In Lawrence County, Tennessee, it’s now against the rules for students to miss school because they are sick.
Under this policy, when I had measles (it was before the measles vaccine, when I was in the fourth grade, not after RFK Jr.), I could have been “referred to” the court for being home sick with a fever, for Pete’s sake.
We are a society in regress.
Hollow Days 0
If Donald Trump truly wants to eliminate some federal holidays, LZ Granderson has some suggestions for him.
Signs of the Times 0
Steve M suggests a revision.
Artificial? Yes. Intelligent? Not So Much. 0
A learning aid? Impediment, actually.
Timothy Cook (no relation to Tim Apple) argues that, rather than helping students learn, AI, with its built-in bias towards certainty (often based on stuff AI makes up out of thin air, I will add), will stunt their education. Specifically, it will inhibit their development of critical thinking skills.
He identifies four specific dangers.
Students lose the ability to sit with “I don’t know.” . . .
They learn intellectual dishonesty as a strategy. . . .
They develop intolerance for complexity. . . .
Most dangerously, they lose their authentic voice. . . .
Follow the link for a detailed discussion of this issue.
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
Really now.
If you are going to play with your portable phallus, you shouldn’t act surprised if it discharges.
Guns and stupid, guns and stupid.
They go together like love and Cupid.
Let me tell you brother,
You can’t have one without the other.
All that Was Old Is New Again, Misdirection Play Dept. 0
Afterthought:
Right-wing nutbags have spent decades trying to convince us that the federal government cannot be trusted.
And now we know.
A federal government of right-wing nutbags most definitely cannot be trusted.
“History Does Not Repeat Itself, but It Often Rhymes”* 0
Robert Reich looks how the Trump maladministration maladministrates and hears a rhyme from a long time ago:
“His Ministers, generals, mistresses, and courtiers soon found out his weak point, namely, his love of hearing his own praises. There was nothing he liked so much as flattery, or, to put it more plainly, adulation; the coarser and clumsier it was, the more he relished it. That was the only way to approach him; if he ever took a liking to a man it was invariably due to some lucky stroke of flattery in the first instance, and to indefatigable perseverance in the same line afterwards.”
__________________-
*Mark Twain.