Saturday - the packing kind of came to a halt. Nor did CC show up to help. I went to Payless for a few items. I ran out of energy in the morning - after being up for 5 hours. And I started this post. In the evening, I spent time just watching YouTube videos, Oh, I did a very long blog post. Nothing else written.
Today, I will go to church then to Wabash to pick up my steamer trunk from my sister. Hopefully, I can do some of the things needing done from yesterday.
I decided to submit "Agnes" to Blanket Gravity Magazine after reading RJ Auran's One for Sorrow.
Tim Curry Reflects on 50 Years of ‘The Rocky Horror Picture Show’: “Gives Anyone Permission to Behave as Badly as They Want” (Hollywood Reporter)
Busseron Creek Reimagined: A Journey of Restoration
The art of the steal: Trump’s TikTok deal is not what it seems (Salon), but neither does Salon go in for any depth. Everyone knows the sale is good for Trump cronies, so it will not be good for a propaganda free social media site.
More than a social media platform, TikTok has grown into one of the country’s largest consumer apps. For months, the Trump administration ignored a 2024 law passed by Congress and upheld by the Supreme Court banning the app unless the Chinese company ByteDance sold off its majority ownership. Despite its now less than 20% stake in the American spinoff, ByteDance reportedly may still retain rights for upwards of 50% of any profit. Contrary to Trump’s claim, the Abu Dhabi-based investment firm MGX is now one of several companies involved in the TikTok deal. Oracle — one of the world’s largest cloud computing firms, which already hosts all of TikTok’s U.S. data, is set to build a $20 billion data center in the United Arab Emirates and will be responsible for the app’s famous algorithm. As the New York Times reported, another potential TikTok investor, Silver Lake, has a stake in one of the partners involved in the Emirates data center project.
Deepika Padukone to shoot sequel to XXX: Return of Xander Cage in Mumbai, and will again do the best acting job in the movie.
Evolution Shocks Scientists in an Electric Battle against Invasive Bass (Scientific American) - interesting in many ways, but my first thought was could we use this to increase the size of Indiana smallmouth bass? Yep, got fishing on my mind.
Sheila Kennedy post today, Memorize This Paragraph!, is one of those things that makes me think I will never understand MAGA. Such hatred, such self-destructiveness is not so strange to me - I had such feelings when I was depressed - but its direction out to others is anathema to me. This mentality is, to me, the same as that of mass shooters - they blame others for the wreckage of their lives.
Are those tariffs making groceries and everyday items more expensive? Are even immigrants who are in the country legally terrified of the ICE masked bullies who are rounding up anyone with dark skin? Is the war being waged against science–very much including medical science–making it more likely that you will contract a disease, or that a cure for what ails you won’t be forthcoming? Those and other negative consequences of official corruption and stupidity are bearable, because Trump is keeping his promise to go after “those people.” If there has been one through-line in this administration, it has been the unremitting effort to stamp out the progress made by women, people of color and LGBTQ folks, and to elevate White psuedo-Christian males to their former (albeit unearned) social dominance.
File under “pathetic.”
Is this a feature of human nature, or something about American culture? If the former, I suppose it can be dealt with over time and with great care. If the latter is true, I see only bloodshed as being the cure.
You should also read Eric Reinhart's What Is Political Violence? (Boston Review).
The One Trait That Predicts Trump Support (w. Matthew MacWilliams):
Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Times publishes an op/ed from a Democrat trying to be rational in the face of this kind of irrationality: Trump is doing everything he can to raise your energy bills.
Trump has also raised costs of existing energy resources, including supporting the oil industry’s efforts to dramatically increase U.S. exports of natural gas. This will reduce the supply available for heating homes and running power plants in America, raising prices on electricity bills and gas bills at once. Trump has also used emergency powers to force less-than-profitable coal plants to stay open, saddling customers with the extra costs to subsidize these old plants. In one instance, it cost locals $29 million to keep the J.H. Campbell plant in West Olive, Mich., open for just five weeks of extended operations. Analysts now estimate that Trump’s push to keep coal plants open could add between $3 billion and $6 billion per year to our electricity bills.
Is this sheer economic incompetence — not difficult to fathom given the rate at which Trump has driven businesses into bankruptcy — or part of his strategy to deliberately make electricity more expensive so people won’t switch to EVs and the oil industry won’t lose its customers?
Ball State student launches independent news outlet for Muncie (Ball State Daily Student)
This mission has led her to make a program that will teach any aspiring journalist how to be independent. The Muncie Independent News Initiative, MINI, will be a five-week lesson, leaving members with their own website and at least one article.
“When you have a trailblazer like that it is very selfless to give your skillset, your passion, what you have learned… to others who are just as easily capable,” van Dongen said.
The program is expected to be announced by the end of the semester. An interest form is live on the website, https://mini.vivianbostick.com/. Bostick hopes that the work she does for the Muncie community will continue on and inspire more.
“There’s going to be a day in the future, I just know it. It’s one of those things that you can just kind of tell. I cannot wait for the moment where I go ‘Wow, Vivian has truly made it.’ She’s doing it now, but she’s changing the world just like I knew she would,” van Dongen said.
With all of these projects, Bostick’s end goal is to have her own media company. If you want to follow along with her content, you can find her website at https://news.vivianbostick.com/.
Earlier in the day the Indianapolis Star posted a story detailing how entities controlled by three men benefited handsomely from taxpayer-funded grants and no-bid professional services contracts: The IEDC under former Gov. Eric Holcomb doled out more than $180 million over less than six years in awards to entities controlled, either in whole or in part, by at least one — and sometimes all — of the three men.
One of those entities was Applied Research Institute, which is included in the audit findings.
Commerce Secretary David Adams additionally fleshed out a new vision for the IEDC.
“Our mission remains unchanged … but our approach is new,” he said. “(It’s going) from state-led to region-led, from fragmented with these various agencies to a unified commerce vertical, and moving from being transactional to transformational.”
Adams emphasized the importance of nurturing the state’s existing workforce — highlighting the administration’s modified employer reimbursement program — to boost productivity and wages. Another focus was homegrown entrepreneurship, in addition to the traditional wooing of big firms.
Under Braun’s administration, the average cost per incentivized job has decreased from $55,000 per job to $16,000 per job, according to the news release.
I am no more immune from clickbait as anyone else, so be warned about Here Are 12 Things People from Indiana Do That Seem Insane To Everyone Else - why response was you call this crazy, or limited only to Indiana (okay, the pork tenderloins are not to be found elsewhere)
Maher mentioned this discussion with Neil deGrasse Tyson on his show, and here are clips from that discussion. Frankly, Tyson's words sound better coming out of his mouth than they did coming out of Maher's.
I still think the best thing I have read on the subject is that sex/gender of athletes does not apply until a certain age. My own opinion is that the whole subject gets overblown - there just are not enough trans athletes to make this a crisis. The quality of education should get this kind of debate.
What If the USA Split Into New Nations?
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