Reading

Created
Thu, 13/07/2023 - 02:00
There have always been eccentric, senile and downright simple-minded members of congress. That’s democracy in action. But there is an unusually high number of them these days and they are all right wing Republicans. We’re accustomed to the House MAGA chaos agents’ preposterous escapades. Like this, for instance: It’s hard to know if Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene still doesn’t understand how the government works or how the world works but she does have a way of getting attention. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy couldn’t be more happy with her. He told Axios, “I think Marjorie Taylor Greene is one of the best members we have, I think she’s the one of the most conservative members and one of the strongest legislators. I support Marjorie Greene very strongly.” (That was in response to a question about her ouster from the Freedom Caucus which is reportedly because she can’t be trusted not to share their strategies with McCarthy.) The House has always been the more fractious of the two houses of congress, more partisan and subject to volatility.
Created
Thu, 13/07/2023 - 00:58
Over the fold, a piece I wrote for The Conversation. It’s focused on Australia, but includes a swipe at European advocates of a “nuclear renaissance”, the most notable of whom are Macron and (at least until his defenstration) Boris Johnson Last week, opposition leader Peter Dutton called for Australia to join what he dubbed the […]
Created
Thu, 13/07/2023 - 00:30
Crash on the levee, momma What’s it gonna take for governments to take climate change seriously? Weren’t we just here the other day? CNN: Intense rainstorms inundating the Northeast are turning streets into rivers, forcing evacuations and have prompted officials in Vermont’s capital, Montpelier, to close the downtown area. “Make no mistake, the devastation and flooding we’re experiencing across Vermont is historic and catastrophic,” Gov. Phil Scott told reporters Tuesday. Floodwater continues to rise in some places, the governor said, “and have surpassed levels seen during Tropical Storm Irene,” he added. Irene hit the US as a hurricane in August 2011 and left entire communities submerged, killing more than 40 people in several Eastern states. A bit south of Montpelier on Sunday, things were dicey in the Hudson Valley: We easily brush off deadly flooding in foreign countries, even in Appalachia, dammit. But you know how this works. Until it happens to you….
Created
Thu, 13/07/2023 - 00:28

This is going to be the first of what I hope many more updates regarding the Pitchburgh initiative and the projects involved. Some months, and depending on interest, I’ll be talking about innovation in Drupal as well, and I’d love to see this as a space for dialog and discussion. If this feels like something you are interested in, keep reading and watch this space.

Just as a recap, the innovation initiative, Pitch-burgh was held last month in DrupalCon Pittsburgh, and we can confirm it was a success. We received 35 submissions, which ideas and videos the judges reviewed and voted on. This resulted in 7 finalists.

Created
Wed, 12/07/2023 - 23:00
In your head Wrap a police tape perimeter around Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. His anti-woke mania is a crime scene. Greg Sargent explains: In recent weeks, plaintiffs who are suing to invalidate Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s “Stop Woke Act” have been confronting its defenders with a seemingly loaded question: Would the law, which restricts school discussion of race, prohibit a public university professor from endorsing affirmative action in a classroom setting? Surprisingly, lawyers defending the DeSantis administration just answered this question with a qualified “yes.” Which exposes a core truth about his anti-woke directives: They really do constitute efforts at state censorship, not just of concepts he likes to call “woke indoctrination” but also of viewpoints that are contested yet remain squarely within mainstream academic discourse. A provision in the law prohibits instruction that “espouses” or “promotes” certain ideas. Affirmative action, for instance: DeSantis has already fielded election police.
Created
Wed, 12/07/2023 - 23:00

Across his first five—and now six—collections of poetry, Michael Earl Craig has developed a poetry as whimsical as it is serious, diffusing the gravitas not by leaving it out, but by building out a surface—a texture in language—that feels disarming, direct, omnivorous in its references, and impishly playful. Parataxis is Craig’s friend, but more often he’s just describing the way he sees the world, and leaving out the boring parts. There’s as much Edward Abbey in this poetics as there is Nicanor Parra. Iggy Horse is his latest book, and though much of it was written while the poet had a life-changing six-week residency in an Italian castle, the work’s roots remain in the western United States, in a deeply felt but unpredictable experience of what it means to be rural, to live in the open spaces of Montana. But this is not the rural poetry of the pure pastoral or the didacticism of Wendell Berry, but rather the gallows-tinged idiom of Charles Simic, blended with the peculiarity of a Lorine Niedecker.

Created
Wed, 12/07/2023 - 22:41
The proposition that theoretical models are necessary for understanding our economic system does not imply that having some particular theoretical model automatically means that we understand anything useful. If one is creative in choosing the ‘right’ assumptions and reasonably clever, then one can produce all kinds of results … This potentially creates a problem that […]
Created
Wed, 12/07/2023 - 22:00

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately…” — Henry David Thoreau, Walden; Or, Life in the Woods

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I went to the bathroom because I wished to live deliberately, to sit on the toilet while doing the New York Times Spelling Bee puzzle, and see if I could learn the solution, and not, when I came to die—probably one week from now, smothered by a LEGO avalanche—discover that I had not lived. I would have liked to go to the woods instead, but I didn’t have a babysitter.

When I wrote these words, I lived alone, in the bathroom, three to ten feet from any family member, in a house of solitude which I had built myself, by locking the door, with the labor of my hands only, as well as one of my feet, which I used to gently force my clinging toddler out of the doorway without pinching any fingies.

The mass of men and women lead lives of quiet desperation because they are trying very, very hard to do Gentle Parenting and not yell at their children.