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Ted Cruz, Civil Libertarian? OK. Good, Ted. Dallas Morning News: “Ted Cruz says FCC chair sounded like a mafia boss in threats against ABC over Jimmy Kimmel”.
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Something great (and awful) from Austin Kleon He quotes Wyndham Lewis, who said times like these, when “the world is too much with us," is like living in a moronic inferno. That’s a phrase to remember.
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Goes Both Ways Last week, I posted about the country’s need to recommit to the truth in the face of MAGA’s “reality TV” theory of governance. As Catoggio points out, the left is not so great at the truth, either.
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Not a New Idea, But … “Reality TV” doesn’t care about reality, but about presenting a version of life that the viewer can believe is true. Likewise, our Reality TV President cares little for truth, but only for what he can convince “viewers” to be true. And, as with Reality TV, the viewers go along, even if they know it’s not real, because Trump’s lies scratch an itch – for entertainment, catharsis, confirmation of biases, etc.
To get out of this mess, we must recommit to truth.
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If a business in a good neighborhood gets held up, everyone talks about it. But if a business in a bad neighborhood gets held up, it’s barely news. What can the locals realistically do except sigh and say, “Yeah, that happens now”?
The president is monetizing his office in broad daylight to the tune of billions per year? Yeah, that happens now.
No wonder, then, that Americans can’t get excited about Trump’s history with Epstein. If he were a person of good character committed to ethical government, it’d be earth-shaking to find him sending risqué letters to his child-molester pal. As it is, it’s like finding out that the leader of the local gang that runs the neighborhood is involved in a prostitution racket. You might not approve of it but you’re certainly not surprised.
That’s just how this neighborhood is nowadays.
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Fools and Crackpots I am continually awed (and frightened) by Hannah Arendt’s insights.
Totalitarianism in power invariably replaces all first-rate talents, regardless of their sympathies, with those crackpots and fools whose lack of intelligence and creativity is still the best guarantee of their loyalty.
Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism
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This headline makes my brain twitch Scientists just created spacetime crystals made of knotted light
Researchers have developed a blueprint for weaving hopfions—complex, knot-like light structures—into repeating spacetime crystals.
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Stephen Shore, Photographer The NYTimes has a superb article about Stephen Shore’s recent publication of phenomenal photographs he took as a teenager. I love this quote:
I wanted to make pictures that looked like seeing and not pictures that look like photographs.
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Lending Out Books by Hal Sirowitz You’re always giving, my therapist said.
You have to learn how to take. Whenever
you meet a woman, the first thing you do
is lend her your books. You think she’ll
have to see you again in order to return them.
But what happens is, she doesn’t have the time
to read them & she’s afraid if she sees you again
you’ll expect her to talk about them, & will
want to lend her even more. So she
cancels the date. You end up losing
a lot of books. You should borrow hers.
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A Discovery Last spring, I planted fennel plants, thinking they would produce bulbs. Not so. I’d planted “herb fennel," a related, but different, plant. It produces anise-flavored seeds, which I’m adding to sandwiches, salads, tostadas, and just chewing on. Utterly delightful. I can’t get enough.
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Happy Birthday, Connie Smith Dolly Parton once noted that there were just three real female singers around—Barbra Streisand, Linda Ronstadt, and Connie Smith. “The rest of us,” she said, “are only pretending.”
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Strange (or Maybe Not So Much) Whatever you may think of Kevin Williamson (and I know
manysome of those I follow on MBloathesometimes have issues with him), this is sizzling:It is strange how excessive admiration for the will to power brings out the servility in so many men.
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Kate MccGwire: Art with Feathers 
MccGwire’s palette is ethically sourced feathers. (It’s worth opening the image in its own tab.)
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Flaco Jiménez, RIP 
I’ve always loved songs with accordions, concertinas, Hammond B3s, etc. Long ago, I even made mix-tapes with names like: “Songs with Organs, Including Accordions.” Flaco Jiménez was a major presence on those mixes.
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Insights from my Bishop I think this is good. Evokes Solzhenitsyn about how “the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either—but right through every human heart.”
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