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Presented Without Comment Nick Cattogio, The Dispatch, “Boiling Frogs,” July 11, 2025:
Naming an austere detention camp where conditions are reportedly horrible something as silly as “Alligator Alcatraz” is postliberal Republican politics in a nutshell. On the one hand, it dials up the cruelty to 11 in the belief that maximum ruthlessness is the key to good policy. Beefing up Immigration and Customs Enforcement and deporting people en masse isn’t enough to deter illegal immigration, you see; to make would-be border-hoppers think twice, what you really need is gigantic carnivorous reptiles.
But on the other hand, it’s deeply cringe. “Alligator Alcatraz” sounds like the premise of a schlock TV movie in the mold of Sharknado.*
- or Kristi Noem
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We think we’re so smart. But we’re not. Matthew Butterick on Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), via @ayjay:
Because here’s the thing: to me one of the greatest risks posed by AI is rooted in our failure of imagination: our failure to broadly imagine the possible forms AI (including AGI) could take; our failure to broadly imagine the possible consequences it could wreak.
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Movies of First Quarter of this Century I’ve been looking at the NYTimes list of the “best” movies since Jan. 1, 2000. Compared to their list, mine is a bit odd, but these movies moved or delighted me.
Honorable Mention: “The Tao of Steve”. It’ll never make anyone’s“greatest” list, but I love it.
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Rinkitink 
King Rinkitink of Gilgad, by John R. Neill, from Rinkitink in Oz, by Frank L. Baum, 1916From The Sacred Journey, Frederick Buechner:
For reasons that I can only guess at now, no one I came to know during that first year in Oz left a deeper mark on me than a plump, ebullient king named Rinkitink. He was a foolish man in many ways who laughed too much and talked too much and at moments of stress was apt to burst into unkingly tears; but beneath all that, he gave the impression of remarkable strength and resilience and courage even…
Rinkitink was a very vulnerable man, silly and unstable in numberless ways, but in his fatness he seemed also somehow solid and substantial, eccentric and yet reliable with his slippered feet planted heavily on the ground and his heart in the right place. Like a tree that has been blown for years from so many directions by so many winds that none of them can ever quite blow it down, he seemed strong in his very vulnerability. In his capacity to laugh and weep at the drop of a hat and in general to make a fool of himself, he seemed wise with the wisdom of a child who sees better than his elders that the world is indeed something to laugh and weep about and who, more realistically than the rest of us, accepts his own foolishness as part of the givenness of things. Frightening and terrible adventures befall him in the course of Baum’s book, but somehow he always manages to come riding out of them on the back of his faithful goat Bilbil. The world can wound him and scare the daylights out of him, but never, you feel, can it destroy him. It is only the world of the fairy tale to be sure, but nonetheless he has overcome that world, and I have remembered him with admiration and love ever since.
In different guises (though always fat) and under different names, Rinkitink has haunted me always…
… these books were all childhood or early boyhood reading – but certain patterns were set, certain rooms were made ready, so that when, years later, I came upon Saint Paul for the first time and heard him say, “God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise, God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong, God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are,” I had the feeling that I knew something of what he was talking about. Something of the divine comedy that we are all of us involved in. Something of grace.
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Frederick Buechner,
The Sacred JourneyIt is by its content rather than its duration that a child knows time, by its quality rather than its quantity–happy times and sad times, the time the rabbit bit your finger, the time you had your first taste of bananas and cream, the time you were crying yourself to sleep when somebody came and lay down beside you in the dark for comfort. Childhood’s time is Adam and Eve’s time before they left the garden for good and from that time on divided everything into before and after.
(Probably a lot of F.B. in the pipeline, fyi.)
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RIP, Brian Wilson He shared beautiful gifts from a sad life and a tortured mind.*
Yes, my father used to beat the hell out of us… That is probably why I wrote those happy songs. I try to get as close to paradise as I can. I try to steer clear of heartbreaks.
– New York Times Magazine, 2024
*One might say the same of Sly Stone, may he also rest in peace.
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Don’t feel great about this “Following a review of performances and after significant reflection, the Club can announce that Ange Postecoglou has been relieved of his duties.” – Tottenham Hotspur (@SpursOfficial) June 6, 2025
In any case, waiting around this long is a very Spursy move. (Also, adiós, Christian Romero, best player on the club [except when he goes bananas].) ⚽︎
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New York Times May 30, 2025:
#1: As Elon Musk entered President Trump’s orbit, he told people he was taking so much ketamine that it was affecting his bladder. He was also taking Ecstasy and psychedelic mushrooms, and he traveled with a daily medication box of about 20 pills.
#2: Trump is now presenting Musk with a giant golden key he says he gives only to “very special people.”
#3: White House Health Report Included Fake Citations - A report on children’s health released by the Make America Healthy Again Commission referred to scientific papers that did not exist.
I’m special. Where can I get one of those keys? Maybe Buc-ees?
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