Some Saturday night music: Lexicon, by Vagabon. youtu.be/JfvhimQyNgs?...

Meanwhile ... "With little public scrutiny, the Trump administration is handing out hundreds of billions of dollars in tax cuts to some of the country’s most profitable companies and wealthiest investors." www.nytimes.com/2025/11/08/b...

"We must be honest and admit that most of Christianity has focused very little on what Jesus himself taught and spent most of his time doing: healing people, doing acts of justice and inclusion, embodying compassionate and nonviolent ways of living." — Richard Rohr cac.org/daily-medita...

Pitino can’t be happy with this defense

"On the night of Sept. 21, 1965 ... Cleveland Indians manager Birdie Tebbetts sent him in to pinch-run for Larry Brown in the top of the ninth inning at Yankee Stadium. He wasn’t there very long. The next batter, rookie Richie Scheinblum, swung at the first pitch ..." www.nytimes.com/athletic/660...

Some Friday night music: Phantom Limb, by The Shins. youtu.be/XoMAbmZw3mI?...

Stopped to get some groceries … a Tesla taking up 4 parking spaces near the front door is on-brand.

Mapping out some of the thinking in Far Right circles concerning women and rights. www.liberalcurrents.com/women-should...

For the last century many people have imagined what an American dictator might look like but none that I know of predicted that his approach would be to repeatedly say “Hello I would like to be a dictator.”

Mike Johnson's response: “The reason many people refer to the Bidens as the Biden crime family is because they were doing all this stuff behind curtains. Whatever President Trump is doing is out in the open."

This seems symbolic of somethingorother. "Nobody can argue that that is not a failure." www.nytimes.com/2025/10/19/n...

Chris Rufo/Ron DeSantis overhauled New College and made it "the most financially inefficient school in the university system" Degree yield is 19%, 2nd-worst in Fla. Operating funds per student at New College: $83,207 Same category at Univ of Florida: $45,765 www.heraldtribune.com/story/news/e...

Some Thursday night music: The Train to Zermatt, by Steph Strings. youtu.be/HxZFcODmYkc?...

"By its own admission, the Agriculture Department had ample funds to continue SNAP without interruption in November and to make its payments in full. But the program is one that Mr. Trump and his Republican allies in Congress have long sought to cut." www.nytimes.com/2025/11/06/u...

"Built on the site where a large mining dam collapsed on January 25, 2019, releasing a torrent of mining waste and mud that engulfed numerous structures. The disaster killed an estimated 272 people." www.dezeen.com/2025/11/05/g...

"The big issue we’re having now is finding workers," Tirres said. "God almighty, is it hard." www.texasmonthly.com/news-politic...

This photo encapsulates Trump better than the combined word count of every article ever written about him.

"Earlier this year, findings from MIT Media Lab’s Project NANDA said that 95 percent of the companies that invested in generative AI to boost earnings and productivity have zero gains to show for it."

Some Wednesday night music: Dream Baby Dream, by Bruce Springsteen. youtu.be/eaZRSQfFo8Y?...

In addition to the atrocities of ICE. "Criminals posing as US immigration officers have carried out robberies, kidnappings, and sexual assaults in several states." www.wired.com/story/fbi-wa...

Beshear: Let me be clear. The president has both the funding and the authority to fund snap during a shutdown. In fact, every other president in every other shutdown has done so. People going hungry in this instance is a choice that this president has made.

Mamdani got a humanities degree. His win helps to illustrate that one of the central forces driving higher ed’s dissolution of the humanities is the fear that teaching people how power works can also lead to their interest in seizing it on behalf of the less powerful.

"More important to the story ... is the devastating loss of meaning that accompanies the death of a child ... The Brothers Karamazov is written in defiance of this loss of meaning—that is, the abyss it stares into, the night it seeks to fill with light." www.newyorker.com/books/second...

Some Tuesday night music: The Masterplan, by Oasis. youtu.be/dPPi2D6GK7A?...

"I think I need a new ballot—I filled in the bubble too emphatically." www.newyorker.com/cartoons/dai...

“That is not how anything grows.” — Andrea Gibson

"If you’re analyzing lyrics while listening to Oasis songs, you’re doing it wrong." www.stereogum.com/2327906/the-...

Well done, Virginia! The state's first female governor.

My morning reading: Take Me With You, by Andrea Gibson

"Behind the closed doors of the courthouse, he set aside decades of institutional precedent by not gathering the court’s seven justices to debate the legislature’s request in person, as chief justices had historically done for important matters." www.propublica.org/article/paul...

@hallieshoffner.bsky.social files paperwork in bid to unseat U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton, who has gone 8 years without holding a town hall: “What we know about Tom Cotton is that he doesn’t care about the state of Arkansas." #arpx #Arkansas buff.ly/aJ3811i

Some Monday night music: Wildflower Wildfire, by Lana Del Rey. youtu.be/bg2Nk0LX9Mg?...

"Why are the keys to our future in the hands of those who have the longest commutes from their heads to their hearts?" — Andrea Gibson andreagibson.org/homesick-a-p...

Emma Vossen, a Tolkien scholar: "Those who wish to oppress need to see themselves as underdogs (i.e., Hobbits) to justify their actions and values to themselves. It’s very similar to the way the far right uses and abuses the bible to justify their actions." www.wired.com/story/elon-m...

All I want is one single reporter to ask him if he thinks people seeking asylum = means from insane asylums

Some Sunday night music: Angel From Montgomery, by John Prine and Emmylou Harris. youtu.be/QXo3K8l-uDc?...

"When a war ends, what does that look like exactly? Do the cells in the body stop detonating themselves? Does the orphanage stop screaming for its mother?" — Andrea Gibson.

My afternoon reading: The Idiot, by Elif Batuman.

"One of her most memorable quotes [Dorothy Day] is remembered by is 'The Gospel takes away our right forever, to discriminate between the deserving and the undeserving poor.'" — @brcremer.bsky.social benjamin-cremer.kit.com/posts/blesse...

Some Saturday night music: I Prefer Your Love, by St. Vincent. youtu.be/kL2pZG6r2yM?...

"In the foreground of the featured image are the Pinnacles, unusual rock spires in Nambung National Park in Western Australia ... Milky Way over the Australian Pinnacles (Image Credit & Copyright: Michael Goh) apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap25020...

"I've struggled with anxiety for most of my life, and anxiety’s close friend is normally depression because by the end of the day you're so exhausted from the adrenal burnout that you just kind of plummet and get really sad." www.nytimes.com/2025/11/01/m...

“They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess...”

Some Friday night music: Forgive You, by Leon Bridges. youtu.be/PoNsVhMM_oE?...

"As Walker noted during a preview for Monuments, creating the sculpture offered a space to meditate upon such Confederate statues and the power, values, and myths they have carried throughout history—and, in return, a moment to redefine all of that." mymodernmet.com/kara-walker-...

"For ICE, it will create a closed loop: Local authorities apprehend immigrants. Private contractors deliver them to either a local jail (paid to house detainees) or a detention site run by a private corporation." www.wired.com/story/ice-is...

Some Thursday night music: Crystalized, by The xx. youtu.be/Pib8eYDSFEI?...

"Finding this Galton study came as a relief to Nick. Now at least he knew that there had been other people lacking mental imagery who’d lived normal lives, so it wasn’t a disease, or a symptom of a brain tumor." www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

Some Wednesday night music: Showbiz, by Muse. youtu.be/HLa9eO3oNsw?...

"Amid outbreak, [Louisiana's] state surgeon general stopped state promotion of all vaccines." www.npr.org/sections/sho...