This contains my random/unclassifiable links found about politics, pop culture, etc. See also: my bio page and music reviews. By the way, blogging will be light in November because of my 1965 Project.
The Curious Case of Kacyee Nicole by Mimi Lamarre about a controversy about whether a young person with cancer is actually the person she says she was. The article talks about John Halcyon Styn , a nice and colorful man whom I talked to several times at South by Southwest.
I suggest that we could take a big step forward by distinguishing free speech from just access. Access to the general public, granted by institutions like television networks, newspapers, magazines, and university lectures, is a finite resource. Justice requires that, like any finite good, institutional access should be apportioned based on merit and on what benefits the community as a whole….
The invincibly ignorant and the intellectual huckster have every right to express their opinions, but their right to free speech is not the right to an audience.
Here’s a compilation of John Lennon’s recorded statements about the Beatles and the breakup. (YT) Here’s another compilation of Paul’s statements (YT)
Here’s a terrific behind-the-scenes video about the making of the Once More with Feeling episode of Buffy. (YT) That episode is absolute magic.
In a weekend with an ongoing war and several mass shootings, it seems almost irresponsible to point to the murder of a celebrity couple. Rob Reiner was one of a kind. He was great in my favorite show, “All in the Family” and he was recently interviewed by Ted Danson on his “Where Everybody Knows Your Name” podcast about his movie career, AIIF, Spinal Tap, his family, etc. (also on YouTube). It’s a must listen!
DREW CAREY SHOW ON YOUTUBE: I have been waiting 20 years to rewatch one of my favorite shows (which didn’t make it onto DVD or streaming for various copyright reasons). Now though, every single episode is on Youtube — plus there are some great discussions about making the show.
It seems strange to focus on Ukraine on Christmas Day, but this harrowing report about Russia’s bombing on the port city of Odesa (a UNESCO World Heritage Site) is a grim reminder that the people who suffer the consequences are those least able to flee to somewhere safer. The Internet says that the current temperature of Odesa is -7C (20 F), and in my own city of Houston, the temperature is 26C (80 F), and kids are actually swimming in the neighborhood swimming pool (on Christmas!) One can only hope that the new year will bring positive changes.
Three personal notes. First, the Facebook suspension continues. From what I read, it could take months to get restored. It doesn’t affect me, but I think a lot of people upload photos there and don’t store them elsewhere. So a ban could be devastating. Update: It got reinstated 4 weeks later.
Second, I am happy to report putting together a table/spreadsheet of reviews I have written about music albums. I created a Google Form for inputting data, but the raw spreadsheet was so hard to read and search through that I rarely consulted it. I didn’t even realize that I had accidentally written 20+ reviews multiple times. I never had the time to look into how to create a read-only table that was user-friendly. I even included several tabs offering different ways to sort data.
I have a backlog of technical tasks to work on. Frankly, if this Facebook ban lasts more than a month, I’m going to have to email Facebook friends to let them know what is going on. What a pain.
Third, I have started a new series called “Political Pulse.” I really haven’t posted anything substantive about politics on my blog (aside from the usual linkdumps), but I feel that it’s useful to include unvarnished snapshots of my feelings towards current politics.
I eventually cancelled my Washington Post subscription. Their reporting was really good, but in the last year or so the editorial pages is overrun with conservative viewpoints, and of course WP failed to endorse Kamala Harris. The main thing about the subscription I enjoyed was having access to their book review archive. I will miss that.
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If you think science and public health are expensive, try ignorance and pandemics. (NYT commenter on an article about CDC and Kennedy).
(M)odels that were run for longer, to 2300 and 2500. … show the tipping point that makes an Amoc shutdown inevitable is likely to be passed within a few decades, but that the collapse itself may not happen until 50 to 100 years later.
The research found that if carbon emissions continued to rise, 70% of the model runs led to collapse, while an intermediate level of emissions resulted in collapse in 37% of the models. Even in the case of low future emissions, an Amoc shutdown happened in 25% of the models….
The new results are “quite shocking, because I used to say that the chance of Amoc collapsing as a result of global warming was less than 10%”, said Prof Stefan Rahmstorf, at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, who was part of the study team. “Now even in a low-emission scenario, sticking to the Paris agreement, it looks like it may be more like 25%.
“These numbers are not very certain, but we are talking about a matter of risk assessment where even a 10% chance of an Amoc collapse would be far too high. We found that the tipping point where the shutdown becomes inevitable is probably in the next 10 to 20 years or so. That is quite a shocking finding as well and why we have to act really fast in cutting down emissions.”
I haven’t done it in a while, but maybe I will try to use an RSS reader again.
Comment I posted in response to a review of Wizard of Oz remake in Los Vegas’s The Sphere:
It’s important to remind everyone that the Wizard of Oz movie would have normally gone into the public domain in 2015 — were it not for the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act, which extended copyright ownership of all works in the USA by 20 years. A movie like Wizard of Oz properly should belong in the public domain already, and it should be easier for people to repurpose and recontextualize the work, as the Sphere people have done. That’s the entire point of the public domain — to provide artistic elements for people in the future to play with. Sure, when that happens, it’s a different work and should be treated as such. Frankly, I’m grateful that the corporation owning the movie copyright allowed this reworking to occur, but just imagine what other works might have been created if the copyright were allowed to expire in 2015 (as originally intended).
On a YT clip about the 1990s show A Different World, one commenter wrote, “It was September 1992. It was a weekday night my freshman year at college and my roommate, a friend, and I were watching this show when I spoke up and said “We are a bunch of young college students living in a dorm watching a TV show about young college students living in a dorm.”
Sourcewatch page about Turning Point USA, the organization that slain conservative leader Charlie Kirk ran. That group is amply funded by Koch, Donor Trust, etc. The wiki article about Charlie Kirk gives a rundown of his controversial positions. I’m sure that many will whitewash Kirk’s extreme positions, but he was involved in Professor Watchlist, climate change denialism, the Great Replacement theory, COVID misinformation and in initial organization of “stop the steal” Jan 6 protests. (He wasn’t involved on Jan 6, but had helped arrange buses to send students there; he even testified at the Jan 6 hearings about his role). Propublica and others have reported on wrongdoing at Turning Point, but this had little to do with Kirk — even though he drew a handsome salary from the organization.
I have nothing against proselytizing, but it seems that organizations like Turning Point funnel lots of conservative money into funding a blowhard to go around campuses to spread the gospel of conservatism. There is no real equivalent funding source on the liberal side; not even George Soros of Bill Gates are funding proselytizing missions. If anything, the liberal side funds speakers who are actually qualified to talk about certain subjects.
Also, it’s worth asking whether public debates result in meaningful discussion or are just ways to allow certain rhetorically-skilled people to knock down people who aren’t really that schooled in argumentation. One technique that Kirk uses is to note a contradiction in the other side and keep hammering it and then to go off on Gish gallops while the other side is too polite or diffident to stand up.
I’ve been fascinated by this Cambridge debate between Charlie Kirk and Tilly Middlehurst (YT). Here’s a discussion between a Cambridge debate coach and Middlehurst about how she did it (YT). First, it’s a great discussion about how to handle blowhards.
Here’s a 13 minute discussion by Roshan Salgado D’Arcy of the climate change misinformation that Charlie Kirk spread in public debates about climate change (YT). The speaker is a climate scientist, and he made this video 4 years ago. Says a commenter, ” one lesson … from watching those kinds of “debates” is to never try and counter argue someone at a podium when the audience is behind them. You can be overwhelmingly correct and you will still lose.”
It’s probably no surprise to anyone that fossil fuel interests funded Mr. Kirk’s foundation. Emily Atkin wrote about that (btw, her climate change substack is a must).
To address the YouTube comment cited above. I guess public debates are not a bad idea per se as long as you have two people who have knowledge or experience about the subject. In these walk-up-and-ask-question public debates, Kirk and his crew control the setting and what kind of people participate. It seems more like a venue for Kirk to land his talking points and Gotchas which seem to impress the easily impressed.
ROBERT REDFORD ON THE TWILIGHT ZONE. (It was great — no exhilarating! — to watch the 1962 episode, NOTHING IN THE DARK (Season 3, Ep. 16) where Robert Redford plays a wounded officer which an old woman treats suspiciously. Uncommonly good acting; Gladys Cooper was a stage and movie veteran whose first movie was in 1913 (and had been in Rebecca (1940) and My Fair Lady (1964). It’s amazing that Robert Redford had continued making movies 111 years after Cooper’s first movie.
To my delight, I realize that Cooper had been in two other Twilight Zone episodes, including the equally haunting Night Call (1964).
Gisela Salim-Peyer on the similarities between US autocracy and Venezuelan autocracy:
The word autocracy conjures images of police officers violently crushing protests and dissidents going to prison for their ideals. Those things do happen, but for many people, the experience is more passive: Living through the rise of a dictatorship just means inhabiting a space that is gradually shrinking. There’s no point in resisting, not at first. You just make do with whatever breathing room you still have—until you lose that too…. There is a lag in time between the abstract threat of authoritarianism and its concrete realization, between hoping that your fears are mere paranoia and seeing them fulfilled.
Louis CK on why people don’t appreciate technological progress (YT)
Did you know the TV show Lost had a (legitimate) epilogue which never was aired? (YT) Blows my mind too (and actually it’s terrific in its own way). Also, the two Lost writers did a wonderful spoof of alternate endings on Jimmy Kimmel (YT). Really well done. I love the cast of that show.
Reality Chex is a news aggregator site run by one woman Marie Burns. I’ve been following her site for over a decade. She personally summarizes all the big stories from major news sources — as well as major substacks (Heather Cox Richardson, etc) and social media. Added bonus: gifted article URLs to the premium news sites!
NEWS SITES I LIKE This is Not Cool is a climate change & energy blog run by videographer Peter Sinclair. A decade ago he made incredibly informative vids about climate change & climate change denials. This blog contains the latest news & video reporting about climate change, with lots of interviews.
Guardian (voluntary $60) is a special category unto itself. It asks for a $60 donation, but doesn’t put anything behind a paywall. Reporting & commentary is generally first rate. (who knows?!)
NEWS SITES I LIKE. The CNN Lite text-only is a great place to read full CNN stories without ads or multimedia. (PS, NPR also has a lite text-only site as well).
NEWS SITES I LIKE. Electoral-vote has daily news and commentary by two California professors, with reader questions and commentary on the weekend. Initially it focused on election news, but now it covers all aspects of national politics and the Trump legacy. BTW, the site looks atrocious on mobile devices; there is another link specifically for mobile readers.
NEWS SITES I LIKE David Corn is a journalist & author whose substack includes lots of interesting reports & commentary. I generally avoid following reporters on social media, but DC’s bluesky feed always has interesting stories & commentary. (He also has an Our Land newsletter which has a free trial. But even after it expires, it still sends regular commentary via email twice week.
NEWS SITES I LIKE Deceleration is a blog/newsletter run by Marisol Cortez. She is a San Antonio journalist/intellectual/writer who focuses on environmental and social justice stories which affect Texas.
NEWS SITES I LIKE Atlantic Council provides commentary about foreign policy issues (including outstanding analysis about Ukraine). It’s a newsletter, and you can choose the countries or topics which interest you. Voila! You will receive articles via email.
NEWS SITES I LIKE Sri Preston Kulkarni is a foreign policy expert who ran for Congress (and lost) in my congressional district. In his Seeking a Better Future Substack he writes eloquently about the latest political events. FUN FACT: Sri is the son of Venkatesh Kulkarni who was a distinguished Indian-American novelist who taught at Rice University in Houston.
NEWS SITES I LIKE . Clive Thompson is a tech reporter & geek who digs up the most amazing things. He drops a lot of cool things on his Mastodon account and every few weeks or so he publishes a summary of his favorite links on his Linkfest — which is really fun to read!
NEWS SITE I LIKE . I used to like BoingBoing for my unusual/geek news until it went behind a paywall. Still haven’t found an adequate replacement even though Cory Doctorow’s feeds are everywhere. Metafilter is a geek link-sharing site which was really cool 20 years ago, but it’s still semi-cool. PS, there is a $5 fee to become a member, but you can just lurk — as I have done for a long time. For other link sharing/commentary, check out HackerNews , and Slashdot) and certain subreddits.
Paywalled journalism. Slate.com (120$), Vox.com ($40), Atlantic Monthly $80), New Republic ($20) are all excellent, but pricey. I mean, how many premium news & commentary services do you really need (i.e., can you afford?). NYT is still essential reading, but who the hell knows what the annual cost is– there are so many opportunities to get discounts — especially when you call their customer service line to cancel.
Other people on Substack, etc. Worth mentioning that almost all of them have active bluesky feeds.
Heather Cox Richardson. (BS) Believe it or not, I have not subscribed to her substack yet, but her pieces are linked to so often that I feel as though I already do.
FACEBOOK CLASS ACTION SUIT: FYI, the privacy class action suit has concluded and payments for people who signed up for one will start going out in August 2025. https://facebookuserprivacysettlement.com/
In this 8 minute comedy sketch, an Australian comedy writer asks two comedians to read aloud sight unseen from an absurd cop drama script. Lots of hilarity and surprises. Perpetrated by Australian comedy writer Rob Hunter. (YT) Hunter is selling vids of some of his Late O’Clock comedy shows on Gumroad . But there are generous clips from the shows on YT. (YT) Rob Hunter was on the writing team of Rosehaven for Season 5, making an already great sitcom to be greater. Here’s a YT playlist of episodes from Season 4 and Season 5. (YT) I note with horror that the series is impossible to stream in the US. I was able to watch Season 1-3 on the rare times they were on streaming. Comedian Celia Pacquola is the star of the show, but the characters are all great. The two main people select their favorite show moments. (YT)
QUOTE: “If this is how they treat someone with a title and a national platform, imagine how undocumented members of our communities — without cameras or microphones — are being treated when no one is watching. This is not just an abuse of power; it is a reflection of an administration increasingly comfortable with authoritarian tactics.” (Congresswoman Nanette Barragán from California about the handcuffing of Senator Padilla).
Sri Kulkarni about the “threat” of undocumented workers:
It would be reasonable to assume, based on how many stories about cartels and gangs we see, that murders by undocumented people are a huge problem, right? Well, according to DHS, the total number of homicides (including manslaughter) by undocumented people last year was 29. (Not 29,000 murders. 29 total homicides in all of America.) To put that into perspective, there were more murders (31) in Kristi Noem’s home state of South Dakota (pop. 924,000) than there were by illegal immigrants in a country of 340 million people. Dakotans are more dangerous than undocumented people. Overall, illegal immigrants commit FEWER crimes than US citizens, so you are probably safer around them than they are around you. (Sri Kulkarni Facebook post).
Wait — what? Did Trump just declare war against Iran? Did he just indicate that he was thinking of assisting in the assassination of Iran’s supreme leader? Trump’s ill-considered tweets reveal the sheer depth of incompetence of our public diplomacy and the sort of kingly powers that Trump likes to believe that he has.
I, a private U.S. citizen, call for the unconditional surrender of the Israeli government until it discloses 100% of its hidden nuclear weapony and agrees to be subject to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and to IAEA monitoring.
PBS SCIENCE VID ON HOUSTON WEATHER. (YT) Wow, I am blown away that PBS is producing top-quality education vids on earth science and global warming. Well-spent tax dollars! This one is about Houston’s 2017 and how the urban topologies of megacities like Houston amplify weather events. I can’t wait to watch the other vids from the PBS Terra series.
QUOTE: “Things aren’t just getting worse. They’re getting worse faster… We’re actively moving in the wrong direction in a critical period of time that we would need to meet our most ambitious climate goals. Some reports, there’s a silver lining. I don’t think there really is one in this one.” (AP Report on 2025 IGCC report). Here are key messages from the 2024 data and an outstanding infographic poster (PDF) from the 2024 report
EPISTEMIC CLOSURE. 1)Trump has been duped many many times before becoming president and after he became president, i.e., “Obama is a Muslim,” “Climate Change is a Hoax,” “Election was stolen,” etc. 2)Trump values absolute loyalty over expertise or science. He simply refuses to believe experts whenever they contradict his naive notions of reality. In fact, in the face of criticism, Trump makes it a point to double down on his mistaken beliefs and denigrate the views of experts so that he (and his flock) can feel superior to those experts. Then he surrounds himself with YES MEN who reinforce his biases and ignorance. 4)The modus operandi of Trump has been to create crises out of his paranoid beliefs, and then to “solve” them by trying some simplistic “brute force” solution. During these times, it is vital not to rely on Trump’s version of reality and instead use news sources that are completely independent of Trump’s corrosive ambit.
RIP Bill Moyers. Besides his politics and his early work organizing the Peace Corps, Texan Bill Moyers was always one of the best interviewers ever. (I’ve been collecting books of his interview transcripts). He always had provocative questions and unusual guests. Here’s an interview he did in the 1980s with philosopher Martha Nussbaum (who gave a lecture at Trinity at about the same time).(YT) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWfK1E4L–c
LOCKING THE INNOCENT: Out of the 59,000 people detained by ICE this year, 47% lack a criminal record and fewer than 30% have ever been convicted of crimes. (source)
Israel’s secret nuclear weapon program has been common knowledge among people who follow foreign policy, and yet no U.S. president — famously, not even Obama in a press conference when asked by Helen Thomas — had ever brought it up publicly. Yet politicians and critics on all sides have raised the issue of Iran’s nuclear proliferation repeatedly. But Iran has generally cooperated with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) and for a while has been allowing IAEA monitoring. Why the double standard? During this week’s discussion on CNN/MSNBC, I almost never heard experts or commentators even mention Israel’s nuclear program, and barely in online media (except here: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/17/world/middleeast/israel-nuclear-weapons.html ) .
If Israel says it has the pre-emptive right to attack Iran to degrade its nuclear weapons program (and the U.S. Government explicitly reaffirms this rationale), isn’t Israel basically conceding that other states have the pre-emptive right to attack Israel to degrade its own secret nuclear weapon program?
Israel’s secret nuclear weapon program has been common knowledge among people who follow foreign policy, and yet no U.S. president — famously, not even Obama in a press conference when asked by Helen Thomas — had ever brought it up publicly. Yet politicians and critics on all sides have raised the issue of Iran’s nuclear proliferation repeatedly. But Iran has generally cooperated with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) and for a while has been allowing IAEA monitoring. Israel has done none of these things.
Here’s my list of top 10 movies (in alphabetical order) for the 21st century which I submitted to the New York Times. Below these ten are some OTHER MOVIES which I also found to be remarkable and noteworthy:
AI — Stephen Spielberg (2001)
Big Short — Adam McKay (2015)
Downfall — Oliver Hirschbiegel (2004)
Europa Report – Sebastián Cordero (2013)
Fourteen — Dan Sallitt (2019)
Frances Ha — Noah Baumbach (2012)
Happy-Go-Lucky – Mike Leigh (2008)
Monsters — Gareth Edwards(2010)
Primer — Shane Carruth (2004)
Travelers and Magicians — Khyentse Norbu (2003)
************OTHER MOVIES****************
Avé — Konstantin Bojanov (2011)
Brooklyn — John Crowley (2015)
Flatland — Ladd Ehlinger Jr (2007)
Founder — John Lee Hancock (2016)
I’m Still Here — Walter Salles (2024)
It Follows — David Robert Mitchell (2014)
Junebug – Phil Morrison (2005)
Man From Earth — Richard Schenkman (2007)
Napoleon Dynamite — Jared Hess (2004)
Problemista – Julio Torres (2023)
Tetris — Jon Baird (2023)
I actually have about 20 other titles to mention. Here is some commentary. Europa Report is the most pro-science movie I have ever seen; it’s about the drive and sacrifices people will do for the sake of science. It makes me emotional whenever I think of it. Monsters is a beautiful masterpiece about alienation (and alien nations). Downfall is an engrossing story about true believers of a failed ideology. Travelers and Magicians has a wonderful surreal and fairy tale quality. It is totally unexpected and very beautiful and Buddhist. Frances Ha is utterly whimsical and silly and about the futility of artistic pursuits. Big Short is a great study in irony, outrage and satire. Fourteen is a quiet tragedy about losing people to addictions. Happy-go-lucky is a story about hope and resiliency and not being dragged down by the world’s problems. Primer is a great allegory about the follies and paradoxes of technological innovation. Founder is an all-American story about the ugly side of American business.
MCDONALD’S IN KIEV. Delighted to read this article about how the fast food joint is taking over Ukraine (& maybe horrified?!) I remember visiting the first McD in Kiev in January 6, 1998 — a few months after it had opened. It was located in probably the busiest place in Kiev across from the main train station. Even though I barely spoke Russian/Ukraine, I confidently said my order to the cashier, “Big Mac Menu — Тут!” — it was one of the busiest most remarkable McD’s I’d ever seen..
I assume that many have already seen this amazing music vid with Saoirse Ronan, but it’s absolutely great (with the Talking Heads note that “We LOVE what this video is NOT—it’s not literal, creepy, bloody, physically violent or obvious.” (YT)
Spoof of How I met Your Mother (YT) The kids are sick of being strung along with this story.
if you took a dementia test and thought it was an IQ test you failed both the dementia test and the IQ test. (BSKY by Sal Gentile) (Referring to Trump’s ludicrous statement, “”AOC — look. I think she’s very nice. But she’s very low IQ, and we really don’t need low IQ. Between her and Crockett, we’re gonna give ’em both an IQ test to see who comes out best. I took a real test at Walter Reed medical center and I aced it. Now it’s time for them to take a test.”)
US GOVERNMENT HATES TOURISTS. Here’s a case of an Irish citizen visiting his girlfriend on a 90 day tourist visa and staying 3 extra days because of a serious medical issue. After being mixed up in a police action, ICE took custody of the tourist and imprisoned him for 100 days. Says his American-born girlfriend, ” “It’s not an option for him to come here and I don’t want to be in America anymore.”
Even more shocking, there are cases of U.S. citizens being wrongly captured by ICE. This one was wrongly incarcerated for 3 days.
In response to Trump’s posting of a stupid/offensive AI-generated video of Obama getting arrested, satirist Andy Borowitz writes an appropriate fake response.
Trump’s accusations against Obama, but let’s not forget that Trump was one of the earliest ones who hyped the “Obama is not American” conspiracy theory. For more than 5 years (2011-2016), Trump repeated the untrue charge that Obama wasn’t a U.S. citizen; doing so only increased Trump’s popularity among conservatives. Now that Trump is democratically elected and his administration has enormous financial resources to investigate/hype whatever stupid things he wants to, Trump has potential to sow distrust in the US justice system that has already found him guilty or liable of tax fraud, falsifying business records and sexual assault.
Right-wing propaganda is the result of decline of commercial journalism,Karl Bode writes.
Netflix Recommendation: PERNILLE is a wonderful Norwegian-language family dramedy about an overworked divorced social worker who has to manage both her child welfare cases and the ordinary dramas of her complicated family (BTW, her two daughters are hilarious). You the viewer are thrown into all this chaos and have the opportunity to share the grief, surprise, laughter and love. Gosh, it almost makes me want to move to Norway tomorrow.
Among the many wonderful things about the show is the killer soundtrack — a mixture of Europop and occasionally American songs. Here’s the 60s hit You’ll Never walk alone by Gerry and the Pacemakers (YT) Also, the intro briefly samples a famous cover version of You Don’t Own Me by Australian Saygrace( YT)
DOGS ENJOYING HAUTE CUISINE. The next time your favorite Italian restaurant is already booked up, here’s the reason why. (YT) At first glance the Chocodogger vids seemed to be AI, but no, it’s just elaborately staged nonsense. Here’s a lobster dinner (YT).
REACTIONS TO TRUMP-ZELENSKY PRESS CONFERENCE: 1. Trump surrounds himself with a lot of “YES MEN” journalists who parrot his talking points. 2. Trump never loses an opportunity to insult Biden or people who disagree with him. 3. Trump can get distracted by all sorts of irrelevant issues. He totally lacks focus. 4. Trump has an exaggerated sense of his power and his presidential record. Trump’s ludicrous statements raise the question of whether he is afflicted by “confabulation” (something at least Biden never seemed to have done).
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“I decided this morning about the difference between movies and documentaries. A movie is where a woman gets attacked by a monster and men come and save her. A documentary is where a woman gets attacked by a monster and then makes that monster pay $83 million.” (E. Jean Carroll on agreeing to have a documentary made about her life).
Journalist report about how power providers are expanding their capacity to meet demand of AI companies — and passing on these expansion costs to consumers. (YT)
MISTAKEN ICE RAID: The most shocking things is that it took days for Department of Homeland Security to admit its mistake and still hasn’t returned the family’s belongings.
Renewable energy companies that can’t pass costs onto their customers might shut down projects instead.
In fact, 15% of the existing wind fleet in Texas could shutter, according to a recent analysis of HB3356 and SB715 from the consulting firm Aurora Energy Research.
The two bills exempt natural gas and coal-fired power plants. In other words, if fossil fuel power plants aren’t reliable enough per a certain standard, they wouldn’t have to acquire backup power like their renewable energy counterparts.
However, “the retroactive nature of the bills is something that could send a chilling market signal to anybody wanting to do a long-term investment in Texas,” said Walt Baum, CEO of Powering Texans, a trade association representing the largest companies developing gas-fired power plants in the state.
Here’s an advocacy video by energy analyst Doug Lewin (YT).
Wow, here’s an unaired pilot (YT) of the failed attempt to adapt the British scifi comedy Red Dwarf to US TV. Highlights: Jane Leeves (aka Daphne Moon from Frasier) plays Holly the computer. Kryton is included from the very start, and Broadway actor/dancer Hinton Battle played the Cat. It’s a shame that it wasn’t picked up.
Update: They did a second partial pilot, this time having CAT played by a female (Terry Farrell — yes, that Terry Farrell who went on to play Jadzia Dax in Deep Space Nine). Of course, the British version (and its actors) can’t be beat, but the Americanization of it was still amusing, and plus I generally like efforts to adapt UK shows into American versions.
Be open minded and be willing to alter your beliefs with new evidence.
Strive to understand what is most likely true, not just what you wish to be true.
Science is the most reliable way of understanding the natural world.
Every person has the right to control their body.
God is good for those who believe, but is not necessary to be a good person or to live a full and meaningful life.
Be mindful of the consequences of your actions and take responsibility for them.
Treat others as you would want them to treat you and as you expect them to want to be treated.
We have the responsibility to consider others, including future generations.
There is no one right way to live.
Leave the world a better place than you found it.
DISHONORING MEMORIAL DAY: Trump Administration shows contempt for US veterans and the rule of law by wrongly arresting a female Australian police officer who had married a US soldier. What’s so contemptible is not merely that this wrongful arrest occurred but that US border officials illegally prevented her and her mother from communicating with her husband and pressured her to sign unnecessary statements. Also, I expect that DHS will publish a press release this week containing ludicrous and unsubstantiated statements justifying this arrest.
In this 8 minute comedy sketch, an Australian comedy writer asks two comedians to read aloud sight unseen from an absurd cop drama script. Lots of hilarity and surprises. Perpetrated by Australian comedy writer Rob Hunter. (YT) Rob Hunter was a writer for that hilarious Tasmanian/Australian show, Rosehaven. (Oops, didn’t realize I posted this for next month as well).
This month started with the terrible Oval Office abandonment of Ukraine by Trump. It’s really embarrassing. If there’s any silver lining in this, it’s that Trump has completely discredited his ability to broker any kind of solution. Even honest conservatives in the USA will find this assholery hard to rationalize…
THE DELIGHTFUL JOHN LITHGOW: Lithgow reads lines from characters he has played and tries to recall which movie or TV show they were from. (I enjoyed playing this game a lot). (YT) . Here he picks his favorite Criterion Collection movies. (YT)
I first discovered Lithgow from Third Rock from the Sun. Even though the entire cast was stellar, Lithgow particularly stood out. I was actually shocked at how many serious roles he had played before and after Third Rock.
WHO HAS THE RIGHT TO HAVE RIGHTS? Here’s a letter from Mahmoud Khalil whom the Trump Administration wrongly and unfairly labeled as a “radical anti-American and antisemitic foreigner.” “For decades,” Khalil writes, “anti-Palestinian racism has driven efforts to expand U.S. laws and practices that are used to violently repress Palestinians, Arab Americans, and other communities. That is precisely why I am being targeted.”
“Ice detention isn’t just a bureaucratic nightmare. It’s a business. These facilities are privately owned and run for profit. Companies like CoreCivic and GEO Group receive government funding based on the number of people they detain, which is why they lobby for stricter immigration policies. It’s a lucrative business: CoreCivic made over $560m from Ice contracts in a single year. In 2024, GEO Group made more than $763m from Ice contracts. The more detainees, the more money they make. It stands to reason that these companies have no incentive to release people quickly. What I had experienced was finally starting to make sense…
(From Bill McKibben’s Substack). WOW! Chinese Car Maker BYD announce that their new $30,000 model due in April will charge in 5 minutes and go 400 miles. Luo Hongbin, BYD senior vice president, said the motor “not only significantly boosts a vehicle’s speed, but also greatly reduces the motor’s weight and size, enhancing power density.” McKibben wryly comments,
“BYD did not waste its time giving Nazi salutes. It didn’t buy a social media platform so it could make obscure marijuana jokes and make fun of poor people. It didn’t devote itself to helping a nincompoop win the presidency and then decide it would be exhilarating fun to fire a bunch of government workers. Instead, BYD did, you know, engineering. It must sting for Musk to watch that kind of progress, especially on a week when he had to recall all 46,000 cybertrucks (and thus disclose for the first time that he’d only sold 46,000 cybertrucks) in order to keep them from dropping parts on the road.”
“Being the genius I am I left Fox soon afterwards for the relative safety and sense of mutual trust I could find at NBC.” (Conan O’Brien talking about why he left his writer’s gig on the Simpsons). (YT)
Frankly I am enraged every single day at actions by the Trump Administration. I already knew how bad it was going to be if Trump won, and still remain a constant state of fury. Even Facebook seems to have a lot of shares of anti-Trump news.
It is both shocking and horrifying how many international graduate students have been forcibly detained by ICE officials for the flimsiest of reasons. The Trump Administration quickly is establishing itself as a force for anti-intellectualism and lawlessness. International students have always enriched the lives of college campuses. We should be encouraging them to visit USA and be candid in their opinions. In contrast, the voters that supported Trump and his party have endorsed lawless behavior, bigotry and intolerance. They commit crimes and pardon people who commit (sometimes very serious) crimes. The Founding Fathers would probably have been more comfortable with a country full of Rumeysa Ozturks and Mahmoud Khalils than Donald Trumps and Stephen Millers and Paul Manaforts and Steve Bannons. What happens when international students decide that studying in America is too trouble? They forget about USA and bring their research and innovations to freer countries which can benefit economically from their contributions.
Tim Snyder on THE BIGGER SCANDAL: “Using Signal enables American authorities to violate the rights of Americans. Signal is attractive not because it is secure with respect to foreign adversaries, which it is not, but because it is secure with respect to American citizens and American judges. The autodelete function, which Mike Waltz was using, violates the law. But what is most essential is the purpose of that law: to protect the rights of Americans from their government. The timed deletion function allows American officials to be confident that their communications will never be recorded and that they can therefore conspire without any chance of their actions being known to citizens at the time or at any later point.” The Guardian concludes, “”The leak exposes a system of broken accountability, where high-ranking officials can spill military secrets with apparent near-total immunity. Despite potential violations of classification protocols, federal record-keeping laws and promises of operational security, the leaders look to face no meaningful legal consequences.”
I confess, I find the news story about the US Secretary of Homeland Security having her purse stolen in front of Secret Service workers the funniest thing I’ve seen in a long time. I hope SNL, Daily Show and Stephen Colbert have a great time with it…
“But her equally bizarre cash stash looks much more explicable when you consider two other peculiar items she had in her handbag: her passport and a set of blank checks. If it’s strange to bring $3,000 to a burger joint, it’s completely incomprehensible for a government official to be carrying her passport around D.C. on a family visit. And who uses checks for anything but rent these days? Taken together, the contents of this stolen purse sound less like what you might find in an average pocketbook and more like what someone might store in a go-bag. Does Noem fear the possibility of an impending indictment—or, dare I say, a coup—that would force her to flee the country at a moment’s notice? Could be! With her meds, her cash, and her makeup bag, she’d be ready for life as an official in exile. But with all the vigilance and forethought it takes to prepare for such an eventuality, you’d think she’d keep a closer eye on her purse.” (Snark from Christina Cauterucci (Paywalled).
To be fair, I have no idea if the person who did it was some person with nefarious or sinister intentions — maybe to blackmail or publicly embarrass the politician. Let’s assume it’s just a bandit with ordinary motives. But if the director of homeland security can’t manage her own purse, that suggests a level of incompetence we have never seen before. Also, the most shocking thing is that they STILL have not caught the thief.
TEXAS UNIVERSITIES ARE COWARDS! As of this morning, 403 university presidents have signed a public statement speaking out against the “unprecedented government overreach and political interference now endangering American higher education.” Out of those 403, there are ZERO presidents from universities (public or private) in Texas. RELATED: The Trump Administration has continued to “Pinochet” various graduate students and professors in Texas.
TRUMP V. UNIVERSITIES: Between 2000 and 2014, more than 1/3 of the Americans who won Nobel Prizes in science were immigrants. In 2019, almost 40 percent of all software developers were immigrants. And in the major cancer centers in 2015, the percentage of immigrants ranged from around 30 percent in Fred Hutchinson to 62 percent at MD Anderson. But this is changing fast. Students are being rounded up to be deported, and graduate students and researchers from China now face the prospect of constant FBI investigations. China has created generous incentives to welcome its best and brightest back home. Many others are choosing to go elsewhere. From Europe to Canada to Australia. Last month, “Nature” magazine asked its readers who are American researchers, whether they were thinking of leaving this country. After more than 1,600 who responded, a stunning 75 percent said that they were.(Fahreed Zakaria)
