Topics: African Americans, African Studies, Civics, Civil Rights, Civilization

The 'Green Book' Was a Travel Guide Just for Black Motorists, Danielle Moodie-Mills, NBCBLK, October 11, 2016

The meaning of SANKOFA, Sankofa.org/about

Happy Black History Month (tomorrow), for what it's worth at the moment.

The Green Book: Guide to Freedom is a documentary about the emergence of the Black middle class in the 1940s and 1950s. The documentary explores the dangerous journeys Black people took outside their cities and the book that helped guide them.

The book, The Negro Motorist Green Book, was a guide for Black people to find places to eat, drink, shop, and stay overnight. The book was no longer needed after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlawed the racial discrimination that made it necessary. Google AI

The Google AI stated that it's "not available on Hulu," which was news to me, as I had just watched it on Hulu (probably because I saved it in my "favorites" and the Hulu streaming gods left me alone - they get paid monthly).

The Negro Motorist Green Book, popularly known as the Green Book, was a travel guide intended to help African American motorists avoid social obstacles prevalent during the period of racial segregation, commonly referred to as Jim Crow.  The Green Book listed businesses that would accept African American customers.

The book was the vision of Victor Green, an African American US postal employee from Harlem, New York.  The first guide focused on Metropolitan New York.  The next year, in 1937, Green expanded listings to other locations.  His book would eventually include every state and several international destinations before ceasing publication in 1964.  Before its demise, the book was the most popular of several tourist guides created specifically for an African American audience.

These types of travel guides were necessary during the Jim Crow era because African Americans were subject to acts of discrimination and occasional intimidation as many businesses refused to accept them as customers.  African American motorists, for example, were warned to avoid sundown towns which required minorities to be outside the city limits before sundown, hence the name.  African American travel could be fraught with risk and guides like the Green Book were an important resource. 

Black Past dot org: The Negro Motorist Green Book (1936 - 1964)

One of the unintended consequences of the success of the Civil Rights Movement is a lot of businesses that sprang up in reaction to segregation now had to compete with larger corporations during "integration" that could offer more services. Many businesses that advertised in the Green Book no longer exist, boarded up, and condemned, many are not even memorialized with a historical designation in the cities they were located. The FW Woolworth International Civil Rights Museum is a noted exception and the Magnolia House (listed in The Green Book), both in Greensboro, North Carolina.

Tabitha Brown and Melissa Butler have sounded the alarm on the unintended consequences of boycotting businesses that have removed their DEI initiatives. Like the black-owned businesses post-Green Book, they might not survive, and it took years to get their products placed in the "big box" stores. Their sales dropping would mean they would be removed from the shelves they fought so long to occupy, in favor of the products the corporation would promote over theirs. Again, going into spaces that took considerable effort to sell products in gives our (as of 2019) 910 billion dollars, projected to be 1.7 trillion in 2030 consumer impact, it would seem that we lack both focus and vision: that buying power impacts Target and similar businesses giving our dollars on the altar of corporate indifference. We seem to justify finding our own backdoors.

“If you can control a man's thinking you do not have to worry about his action. When you determine what a man shall think you do not have to concern yourself about what he will do. If you make a man feel that he is inferior, you do not have to compel him to accept an inferior status, for he will seek it himself. If you make a man think that he is justly an outcast, you do not have to order him to the back door. He will go without being told; and if there is no back door, his very nature will demand one.”
― Carter Godwin Woodson, The Mis-Education of the Negro

"Who taught you to hate yourself? Who taught you to hate the color of your skin? To such an extent you bleach, to get like the white man. Who taught you to hate the shape of your nose and the shape of your lips? Who taught you to hate yourself from the top of your head to the soles of your feet? Who taught you to hate your own kind? Who taught you to hate the race that you belong to so much so that you don't want to be around each other?"

Who Taught You to Hate Yourself? Malcolm X, May 5, 1962, Genius dot com

Sixty-three years ago, Malcolm called the motives of the Antioch High School shooter. He posted anti-black, antisemitic tropes online. Who taught him to hate himself?

Boycotts are the knee-jerk, go-to tactic we gravitate to without an understanding of the mathematics of the Montgomery Bus Boycott: 30,000 - 40,000 African Americans participated, 90% of the black residents participated, and they comprised 75% of the bus company's customers. Therefore, unless the clientele of Target and Walmart match Montgomery's numbers, any thought of a boycott will only hurt these black businesses.

The irony of these dark times is this blatant white supremacy should drive us closer together. In our 0.9 to 1.7 trillion dollar demographic, only two cents gets to the African American community:

An NAACP study found that a dollar circulates in Asian communities for 30 days, as opposed to six hours in Black communities. It found that only two cents of every dollar African Americans spend goes to Black-owned businesses. One researcher estimated that if Black consumers spent at least one dollar out of every ten with Black businesses, it could generate one million jobs for African Americans. Minority buying power can do far more than purchase; it can become an investment in stronger, local communities.

The Color of Money: Reaping the Dividends of Entrepreneurship [March 2, 2016], National Urban League

One dollar out of every ten is ten cents per dollar of the 0.9 to eventually 1.7 trillion dollars we freely give to this economy for continued disrespect, disheartening policy decisions, and abject hatred of our contributions to this nation. A tithe, and we don't have to ask anyone's permission to do so. This cooperation is beyond reflexive boycotts without clear goals and the will to be uncomfortable for long terms: the Montgomery boycott lasted over a year.

Wakanda and its superhero ruler, T'Challa/The Black Panther, is a fantasy comic book product (the first black superhero) developed by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, for Marvel.

Mansa Musa ruled the Mali Empire, and unlike the fictional wealth of the nonexistent element, Vibranium, his wealth was from the conventional element of gold and the mineral salt. He was said to have been the richest person who has ever lived.

This present darkness may be the thing we need to come together again. Ten cents won't get us the Mali Empire, or Wakanda, but it might get us independence, freedom, a sense of control of our own destinies, and peace of mind. It will be as long, or longer than a boycott, but we would have to work together towards a common goal. It would be the last thing they would expect us to do. The dominant society is counting on it that we won't. We will also have to be willing to literally fight for it because as history has shown in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and Rosewood, Florida, success attracts the jealousy of psychopaths.

Sankofa.

Keeping the carbon: Biochar can be added to cement to sequester carbon within concrete. (Courtesy: Sabbie Miller)

Topics: Biomass, Civil Engineering, Environment, Global Warming, Green Tech

Replacing conventional building materials with alternatives that sequester carbon dioxide could allow the world to lock away up to half the CO₂ generated by humans each year – about 16 billion tons. This is the finding of researchers at the University of California Davis and Stanford University, both in the US, who studied the sequestration potential of materials such as carbonate-based aggregates and biomass fiber in brick.

Despite efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by decarbonizing industry and switching to renewable energy sources, humans will likely continue to produce significant amounts of CO₂ beyond the target “net zero” date of 2050. Carbon storage and sequestration – at source or directly from the atmosphere – are therefore worth exploring as an additional route towards this goal. Researchers have proposed several possible ways of doing this, including injecting carbon underground or deep under the ocean. However, all these scenarios are challenging to implement practically and pose their own environmental risks.

Modifying common building materials

In the present work, a team of civil engineers and earth systems scientists led by Elisabeth van Roijen (then a PhD student at UC Davis) calculated how much carbon could be stored in modified versions of several common building materials. These include concrete (cement) and asphalt containing carbonate-based aggregates; bio-based plastics; wood; biomass-fiber bricks (from waste biomass); and biochar filler in cement.

The researchers obtained the “16 billion tons of CO₂” figure by assuming all aggregates currently employed in concrete would be replaced with carbonate-based versions. They also supplemented 15% of cement with biochar and the remainder with carbonatable cement; increased the amount of wood used in all new construction by 20%; and supplemented 15% of bricks with biomass and the remainder with carbonatable calcium hydroxide. A final element in their calculation was to replace all plastics used in construction today with bio-based plastics and all bitumen with bio-oil in asphalt.

“We calculated the carbon storage potential of each material based on the mass ratio of carbon in each material,” explains van Roijen. “These values were then scaled up based on 2016 consumption values for each material.”

“The sheer magnitude of carbon storage is pretty impressive”

While the production of some replacement materials would need to increase to meet the resulting demand, van Roijen and colleagues found that resources readily available today – for example, mineral-rich waste streams – would already let us replace 10% of conventional aggregates with carbonate-based ones. “These alone could store 1 billion tonnes of CO₂,” she says. “The sheer magnitude of carbon storage is pretty impressive, especially when you put it in context of the level of carbon dioxide removal needed to stay below the 1.5 and 2 °C targets set by The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).”

Indeed, even if the world doesn’t implement these technologies until 2075, we could still store enough carbon between 2075 and 2100 to stay below these targets, she tells Physics World. “This is assuming, of course, that all other decarbonization efforts outlined in the IPCC reports are also implemented to achieve net-zero emissions,” she says.

Alternative building materials could store massive amounts of carbon dioxide, Isabelle Dumé, Physics World

Topics: Applied Physics, Chemistry, Entropy, Environment, Existentialism

Humans tend to chronicle worst-case scenarios, such as Armageddon (Judao-Christian), Pralaya (Hindu), and Ragnarok (Norse). If you follow the scripts for each, there is a "hack": a insisted upon "happy ending" where everything is reborn anew, and those bothersome "others" that you couldn't legislate or exterminate are killed off in the melee.

There have never been once concluded two possibilities: 1) we can try to avoid Mutually Assured Destruction (M.A.D., the actual nuclear "strategy," and 2) happy endings only work for fairy tales, and physics is kind of unforgiving.

WASHINGTON, Jan 28 (Reuters) - Atomic scientists on Tuesday moved their "Doomsday Clock" closer to midnight than ever before, citing Russian nuclear threats amid its invasion of Ukraine, tensions in other world hot spots, military applications of artificial intelligence and climate change as factors underlying the risks of global catastrophe.

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists set the clock to 89 seconds before midnight - the theoretical point of annihilation. That is one second closer than it was set last year. The Chicago-based nonprofit created the clock in 1947 during the Cold War tensions that followed World War Two to warn the public about how close humankind was to destroying the world.

Atomic scientists adjust 'Doomsday Clock' closer than ever to midnight, Will Dunham, Reuters

Topics: Chemistry, Materials Science, Plasmons, Quantum Mechanics, Semiconductor Technology

Researchers report plasmons in boron-doped diamond; quantum applications
Diamond, often celebrated for its unmatched hardness and transparency, has emerged as an exceptional material for high-power electronics and next-generation quantum optics. Diamond can be engineered to be as electrically conductive as a metal, by introducing impurities like the element boron.

Researchers from Case Western Reserve University and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign have discovered another interesting property in diamonds with added boron, known as boron-doped diamonds. Their findings could pave the way for new types of biomedical and quantum optical devices—faster, more efficient, and capable of processing information in ways that classical technologies cannot. Their results are published recently in Nature Communications.

Potential advancements in quantum devices, biosensors, solar cells
The researchers found that boron-doped diamonds exhibit plasmons—waves of electrons that move when light hits them—allowing electric fields to be controlled and enhanced on a nanometer scale. This is important for advanced biosensors, nanoscale optical devices, and for improving solar cells and quantum devices. Previously, boron-doped diamonds were known to conduct electricity and become superconductors, but not to have plasmonic properties. Unlike metals or even other doped semiconductors, boron-doped diamonds remain optically clear.

Diamond continues to shine: new properties discovered in diamond semiconductors, Case-Western Reserve University, The Daily

Source: Reddit

Topics: Civics, Civil Rights, Civilization, Climate Change, Existentialism

Oligarchy (noun): government by the few; a government in which a small group exercises control especially for corrupt and selfish purposes, Merriam-Webster

In Dwight D. Eisenhower's Farewell Address, he warned of the military-industrial complex.

"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist." National Archives

In Joseph R. Biden's Farewell Address, he warned of oligarchy, run by the tech-industrial complex, which ironically spells the acronym: "T.I.C."

"Today, an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power, and influence that really threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedom, and a fair shot for everyone to get ahead." Reuters

Tick (noun): any of a superfamily (Ixodoidea) of bloodsucking acarid arachnids that are larger than the related mites, attach themselves to warm-blooded vertebrates to feed and include important vectors of infectious diseases. Seems appropriate.

From Quora:

Why do Republicans believe so much stuff that is simply not true? What is their problem with reality?

Stay with me on this for a second….

In 1976 Republicans lost a Presidential election with an incumbent candidate to an unknown peanut farmer. This rocked them to the core.

After the election, they used a new methodology (focus group studies) to try to figure out how to win elections in the future. Their efforts identified one narrow path to victory for Republicans in national elections. They had to divide the country along the lines of religion and race to win. Ronald Reagan used this to great effect in 1980. In making this change Republicans switched their base from fiscal conservatives to religious conservatives. This fundamentally changed the nature of the Republican Party.

Previously Republicans were a pragmatic group of people looking for workable solutions to the problems of the country. Here is what Barry Goldwater had to say about this change.

“Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the [Republican] party, and they're sure trying to do so, it's going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can't and won't compromise. I know, I've tried to deal with them.”

This switch turned the Republican Party from a group of political pragmatists to a faith community. In short, the most important issues to Republicans were group loyalty and shared belief.

The problem you have when a group is centered on its beliefs as opposed to its goals is that if any of the beliefs do not line up with the facts, it is going to be very hard to change them. This goes double if these beliefs are wrapped up in their religion such that they believe that they came from God.

The solution for Republicans was “alternative facts.” Their beliefs were the most important thing to them, but the facts were less so. They were much more willing to create facts that aligned with their beliefs and then believe those facts than change their beliefs.

This is cowardice and if it continues will create even worse disasters for the U.S. Policy has to align with the facts. Beliefs are not terribly important in politics. The facts and policies that align with those facts need to be the focus.

I haven't watched the confirmation hearings, though I've been asked if I did. I have seen excerpts posted on YouTube that have been decidedly nauseous. Despite that most of the candidates' slim "qualifications" should bar them from selection, they have the votes in the Senate on party lines alone, especially if they throw out the filibuster for the minority party and 60-vote threshold as I expect them to do.

This kabuki theater isn't supposed to put forward the best and brightest minds, or anyone qualified for the positions. Sycophancy is the "secret sauce" of political expediency. "Deconstructing the administrative state" (Bannon, the Leninist) means defying the norms that have held the republic together since its inception, but like any physical momentum, it eventually meets the Entropy of friction over time and distance. Their despise of the "deep state" means what they want is a shallow alternative, where expertise can be ignored for the almighty, all-powerful "gut," "hunch," or claims of communication with spirits through dreams. Preparation can be substituted for crowdsourcing "concepts of plans," otherwise known as conspiracy theories. Quantum mechanics can be mastered in a few clicks: Who needs a degree in Physics? Who needs those stinking, liberal-biased facts?

Where does this lead us?

Kakistocracy (noun): government by the worst people.

Kleptocracy (noun): government by those who seek chiefly status and personal gain at the expense of the governed.

Idiocracy (noun): 1. a society governed or populated by idiots 2. government by idiots.

Our nation is turning into an idiocracy.—Neil deGrasse Tyson

As we lurch toward idiocracy—the real thing, not the movie—we must change course.—John Kass - definitions and quotes from Merriam-Webster.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Preamble to the Declaration of Independence - National Archives

The Washington Post's tagline used to be "Democracy Dies in Darkness." The United States: July 4, 1776 - January 20, 2025. Consider this a eulogy.

This chip-based "tractor-beam," which uses an intensely focused beam of light to capture and manipulate biological particles without damaging the cells, could help biologists study the mechanisms of diseases. Credits: Credit: Sampson Wilcox, RLE

Topics: Biology, Biotechnology, Optical Tweezers, Research

MIT researchers have developed a miniature, chip-based “tractor beam,” like the one that captures the Millennium Falcon in the film “Star Wars,” that could someday help biologists and clinicians study DNA, classify cells, and investigate the mechanisms of disease.

Small enough to fit in the palm of your hand, the device uses a beam of light emitted by a silicon-photonics chip to manipulate particles millimeters away from the chip surface. The light can penetrate the glass coverslips that protect samples used in biological experiments, enabling cells to remain in a sterile environment.

Traditional optical tweezers, which trap and manipulate particles using light, usually require bulky microscope setups, but chip-based optical tweezers could offer a more compact, mass manufacturable, broadly accessible, and high-throughput solution for optical manipulation in biological experiments.

However, other similar integrated optical tweezers can only capture and manipulate cells very close to or directly on the chip surface. This contaminates the chip and can stress the cells, limiting compatibility with standard biological experiments.

Using an integrated optical phased array, MIT researchers have developed a new modality for integrated optical tweezers that enables trapping and tweezing of cells more than a hundred times further away from the chip surface.

MIT engineers create a chip-based tractor beam for biological particles, Adam Zewe, MIT Press, October 3, 2024

A finished device: Optical microscope image of the transistor (left) and an ultra-scaled vertical nanowire (right). (Courtesy: Y Shao)

Topics: Electrical Engineering, Materials Science, Nanoengineering, Nanomaterials, Nanotechnology, Semiconductor Technology

A new transistor made from semiconducting vertical nanowires of gallium antimonide (GaSb) and indium arsenide (InAs) could rival today’s best silicon-based devices. The new transistors are switched on and off by electrons tunnelling through an energy barrier, making them highly energy-efficient. According to their developers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the US, they could be ideal for low-energy applications such as the Internet of Things (IoT).

Electronic transistors use an applied voltage to regulate the flow of electricity – that is, electrons – within a semiconductor chip. When this voltage is applied to a conventional silicon transistor, electrons climb over an energy barrier from one side of the device to the other, and it switches from an “off” state to an “on” one. This type of switching is the basis of modern information technology, but there is a fundamental physical limit on the threshold voltage required to get the electrons moving. This limit, which is sometimes termed the “Boltzmann tyranny” because it stems from the Boltzmann-like energy distribution of electrons in a semiconductor, puts a cap on the energy efficiency of this type of transistor.

Highly precise process

In the new work, MIT researchers led by electrical engineer Jesús A del Alamo made their transistor using a top-down fabrication technique they developed. This extremely precise process uses high-quality, epitaxially-grown structures and both dry and wet etching to fabricate nanowires just 6 nm in diameter. The researchers then placed a gate stack composed of a very thin gate dielectric and a metal gate on the sidewalls of the nanowires. Finally, they added point contacts to the source, gate and drain of the transistors using multiple planarization and etch-back steps.

Vertical-nanowire transistors defeat the Boltzmann tyranny, Isabelle Dumé, Physics World

Emissions of Carbon Dioxide in the Transportation Sector, Motor Vehicle Miles Traveled, and Emissions per Mile Traveled by Light-Duty Vehicles Measured as a Percentage of Their Value in 1975 - Transportation sector emissions have not risen nearly as much as vehicle miles traveled because gains in fuel economy have reduced emissions per mile of travel.

Image source: Emissions of Carbon Dioxide in the Transportation Sector, Congressional Budget Office (CBO), December 2022

Topics: Chemistry, Climate Change, Environment, Existentialism, Global Warming

Comment: Americans go above and beyond anything suggested, even if the goal is to improve things. Americans in particular, and humans in general like "quick fixes" that don't disrupt their lives and approximate what they're used to doing already. Lithium is an energetic element, number 3 on the Periodic Table, following Hydrogen and Helium. Its properties as an anode are why we use the element in battery technology. It's now "trendy" to own an Electric Vehicle, when during the pandemic (see the dip above in Fig. 10 from the CBO report), the simplest solution - at least short term - would be to drive less. This might entail telework agreements to come into the office on set days in a pay period. It could also mean an infrastructure centered around public transportation, Maglev trains such as in China, Japan, and Korea. A longer-term solution would be a total revision of what we regard as capital, earnings, and quarterly profits, which seem shortsighted and not strategically positioned for the global environment or species survival.

Lithium is an essential component of clean energy technologies, from electric vehicles (EVs) to the big batteries used to store electricity at power plants. It is an abundant mineral, but to be used it must be extracted from the earth and processed. 

Today, there are two main ways to pull lithium from the ground. Until recently, most lithium mining occurred in Chile, where lithium is extracted from brines: salty liquid found at the Earth’s surface or underground. To extract lithium, that liquid is pumped from the earth and then placed in pools where the water can evaporate, leaving behind lithium and other elements.

Elsewhere, lithium mining looks more traditional. In 2017, Australia overtook Chile as the dominant lithium producer. Companies there blast a lithium-rich mineral called spodumene out of open pits. Today, Australia produces roughly half of the globe’s supplies.¹ More than 80 percent of that rock then travels to China, where it’s further processed to yield lithium.²

Though Australia and Chile dominate production, the rise of clean energy has spurred a growing hunger for lithium, so other mining operations have cropped up in numerous other places. Global lithium production has grown from about 37,000 tons a decade ago to 130,000 tons in 2022.^1,3

“We've just seen an explosion of proposed projects in the planning, piloting, demonstration stage across a much wider array of countries,” says Caroline White-Nockleby, a PhD candidate who studies renewable energy transitions in MIT’s doctoral program in History and anthropology; and Science, Technology, and Society.

How is Lithium mined? MIT Climate Portal

Related articles:

Elon Musk, ready to dry up Texas: He wants what has been underground for millions of years, Sanusha S., Eco News, January 13, 2025, in Energy

How demand for lithium batteries could drain America’s water resources, PBS News Hour, January 25, 2024

Ice sample on the melter during continuous ice core chemical analyses at the Desert Research Institute (Credit: Sylvain Masclin)

Topics: Chemistry, Civilization, Democracy, Environment, Existentialism

It’s perhaps historically appropriate that the word “ironic” contains “iron.” Mining and smelting minerals like iron represented technological highs at the Roman Empire’s peak. But those activities also produced enough lead pollution to impair its citizens’ IQs, according to a new study in PNAS.

“Detailed ice core records of Arctic lead pollution, together with sophisticated atmospheric modeling and modern epidemiology, indicate that human industrial activities were measurably damaging human health more than 2,000 years ago,” says Joe McConnell, a scientist at the Desert Research Institute and lead author of the study.

Scholars have debated lead poisoning’s impact on Roman history for decades. Some have even argued that lead poisoning played a role in the downfall of the Roman empire. Most of those arguments have focused on ancient writings and archeology that provide hints about lead’s impact — circumstantial evidence, if you will.

Now a team of researchers has provided hard evidence linking pollution and ancient intellect. They identified the level of pollutants in three ice cores that dated between 500 B.C.E. through 600 C.E. — the era spanning the rise of the Roman Republic through the fall of the Roman Empire. Then they compared those levels with how lead pollution affected the general public during its peak in the 1970s, before it was banned from gasoline.

According to the study, the lead in the air in Roman times affected IQs by about a third as much as in the late 1970s, when the U.S. Clean Air Act went into effect, and about twice as much as in the early 2010s.

“Elites and non-elites in cities and rural areas alike were affected by the background air pollution — no one could escape the health effects," says McConnell.

Ancient Lead Poisoning May Have Contributed to the Roman Empire’s Downfall, Paul Smaglik, Discover Magazine

Topics: Civics, Civil Rights, Civilization, Climate Change, Democracy, Existentialism

Ref: https://litkicks.com/ingatsbystracks/, In Gatsby’s Tracks: Locating the Valley of Ashes in a 1924 Photo. The ash heap was a metaphor for the rot and decay of modern life as the author depicted it in the novel:

The spot where Fitzgerald had a vision would soon become world famous because the trash-burning operation at Flushing Meadows was closed shortly after The Great Gatsby was written. The creeks were drained and turned into artificial lakes, and the Long Island Expressway, Van Wyck Expressway, and Grand Central Parkway were all built to carry the massive automobile traffic between New York City and Long Island that they still carry today. Beautiful Flushing Meadows Park was developed on the large square of land circumscribed by these three highways, encompassing the creek and its valley. This park hosted the 1939 Worlds Fair and then the 1964-65 Worlds Fair. Shea Stadium was built to host the New York Mets on the northern side and was then replaced by CitiField on the same spot. Every year the US Open Tennis Tournament is held at the Billie Jean King Tennis Center south of the baseball fields. Here’s what the same spot looks like in an aerial photograph from 2009. Shea Stadium is on the top left, and the US Open tennis courts are on the bottom left.

The hashtag #FAFO is apropos here. Noam Chomsky's book is a pamphlet. It is short and meant to be absorbed in one sitting. In 1991, Chomsky was 65. He's knocking on the door of his 99th birthday, and we buried President Carter yesterday who was 100. My fear: will anyone ever read anything brief, in paperback, and offline before Chomsky expires?

Chomsky begins by asserting two models of democracy—one in which the public actively participates, and one in which the public is manipulated and controlled. According to Chomsky "propaganda is to democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state," and the mass media is the primary vehicle for delivering propaganda in the United States. From an examination of how Woodrow Wilson's Creel Commission "succeeded, within six months, in turning a pacifist population into a hysterical, war-mongering population," to Bush Sr.'s war on Iraq, Chomsky examines how the mass media and public relations industries have been used as propaganda to generate public support for going to war.
Chomsky touches on how the modern public relations industry has been influenced by Walter Lippmann's theory of "spectator democracy," in which the public is seen as a "bewildered herd" that needs to be directed, not empowered; and how the public relations industry in the United States focuses on "controlling the public mind," and not on informing it.

Media Control: The Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda, Noam Chomsky, Seven Stories Press

What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. 

Post "Retreat and Aftermath," and "Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business," by Neil Postman

Morpheus: This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue pill - the story ends, and you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill - you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes. The Matrix

I worked alongside H-1B visa recipients with no stigma whatsoever. They worked alongside me, a graduate of the largest HBCU in the nation, and the largest supplier of graduate engineers and scientists in the STEM pipeline. I spoke at conferences. I published proceedings. I never once felt inferior, nor did I feel that Motorola, Advanced Micro Devices, or Applied Materials did me a "favor." It's ludicrous. It's self-defeating and stupid. Instead of a faux halcyon "great again," it's the blueprint for the reinstitution of serfdom.

The giveaway was Elon and Vivek disparaging “American” workers, which means all of us, and all ages. This is what I expect in their ketamine-fueled thought process that will lead us to perdition:

1. “Break” the economy (Elon's words) - sending the U.S. into a recession.

2. Layoffs, particularly of African American, Hispanic/Latino, and Asian-Pacific Islander talent.

3. Wait a few months and lower salary price points.

4. Hire H-1Bs at LOWER than even that lowered rate. Companies don't have to and usually don't, but they have that option and have always had it. What about all of that African American, Hispanic/Latino, Asian-Pacific Islander, and white American talent? They can apply for "black jobs," plentiful after the forcible expulsion of undocumented immigrant labor from home and commercial builder sites, fields, and meat processing plants. Someone's got to do it. Don't worry. They won't go anywhere. They'll be working alongside you as leased labor from for-profit prisons. It will keep salaries down. The "minimum wage" will become an urban myth. "Social security" was always a communist plot.

5. All leverage is with the employer. Don’t like your job? Quitting will get your H-1B revoked and you’ll be sent back to your country. Fired at will? Break the law? See the first and third sentences of item 5.

6. (Added) Look for stiff competition on "Who will be the world's first trillionaire?"

A reporter once asked John D. Rockefeller, the founder of the Standard Oil Company, the first billionaire of the United States of America, and once the richest man on Earth, “How much money is enough?” He calmly replied, "Just a little bit more." CNBCTV

Where does it leave American workers? Well, the pesky, “woke” DEI thing is history. Industries have abandoned it for the simple reason that it's no longer profitable. It's ridiculous to think that corporations will "do the right thing." They only think in quarters and the bank accounts of shareholders, life on Earth be damned. Unions will be in the vein of Tyrannosaurus and the Dodo. Income inequality will be SOLVED because rural and urban workers will be in a goulash of poverty. Training to be in the "specialized class" will become irrelevant. Social mobility will be eliminated by the financial canyon erected between the have-nots by the Hoarding Disorder kleptocratic haves! We're at the same income inequality that preceded the French Revolution. Brian Thomson and Luigi Mangione might be the harbinger of things to come.

I call it “tech bro servitude,” or “lords, and serfs.” If you’re not a billionaire, you’re probably a serf. Again, I fear the result of the blowback. Unfortunately, imposed totalitarian regimes don't crumble without a lot of bloodshed and violence.

“The most dangerous creation of any society is a man who feels he has nothing to lose.”

-James Baldwin, “The Fire Next Time”

The Palisades Fire on January 7, 2025. ZUMA Press, Inc./Alamy Stock Photo

Topics: Civilization, Climate Change, Existentialism

 “People have changed the climate of the world. Now they’re waiting for the old days to come back.”—Lauren Olamina, “Parable of the Sower” by Octavia E. Butler

I called my cousin, our family historian last night, to check on her. She calmly told me she lived about 15 miles from the Palisades, where the fires are fueled by a dry winter and climate change. I was checking to see if she received my payments for our family reunion planned for Los Angeles this summer and my concern for her safety. I signed us up for the tour of Hollywood, thinking that fate and the summer would be "normal" in this environment of climate crisis and science denial. She assured me that she had packed her "Mo-bag" and if the authorities told her to go, she'd go. This post hits home more than any other I've produced. We said "I love you" before we hung up. I'll keep checking on her.

The nature of the Santa Ana winds makes them perfectly suited to fueling blazes like the Palisades Fire, and climate change is increasing the risk.

Editor’s Note (1/8/25): This story is being updated as the situation unfolds.

Another explosive wildfire in California, driven by the region’s notorious Santa Ana winds, has burned hundreds of buildings and has forced thousands to evacuate from their homes. The Palisades Fire began at 10:30 A.M. local time on Tuesday near Los Angeles’s Pacific Palisades neighborhood. Much of the neighborhood is under evacuation orders, which extended to northern Santa Monica. As of Wednesday afternoon, the fire had scorched more than 15,000 acres and destroyed more than 1,000 structures.

Another blaze, the Eaton Fire, erupted on Tuesday evening in Altadena, Calif., just north of Los Angeles. As of late Wednesday, it had burned more than 10,000 acres and resulted in at least five deaths. Both fires had caused numerous injuries, according to officials.

On Wednesday evening, another fire began in the heart of Los Angeles just north of Hollywood. The fire grew rapidly to cover at least 20 acres as it spread downhill in Runyon Canyon. Though winds were not as high as Tuesday night, they were still pushing the fire and carrying embers that started spot fires.

Forecasters had warned that the risk of fire was extremely high this week, reaching “particularly dangerous situation” status as the ferocious winds combined with tinder-dry vegetation after a lack of rain during the beginning of what would usually be the wet season.

How the Ferocious Santa Ana Winds Are Fueling the Palisades Fire, Andrea Thompson, edited by Dean Visser, Scientific American

CROCUS researchers crossed Chicago’s Michigan Avenue as they collected data on how buildings, streets, and greenspaces impact temperature and air quality. (Image by Argonne National Laboratory.)

Topics: Civilization, Climate Change, Environment, Global Warming, Thermodynamics

CROCUS’s Urban Canyon campaign captured data on heat islands and air quality while also helping scientists understand how to conduct a major research initiative in the heart of one of America’s largest cities.

When you picture atmospheric scientists, you might think of them monitoring cloud cover on the open plains or even chasing a twister through a cornfield. You probably don’t imagine teams of people launching weather balloons in the center of one of the largest cities in the U.S.

But that’s what happened this past July during the CROCUS Urban Canyon Campaign in Chicago. Funded by the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Science, Biological and Environmental Research program, the Community Research on Climate and Urban Science (CROCUS) effort studies urban climate change and the impact it has on local homeowners and businesses.

An urban canyon is a dense city street with buildings on both sides. These confined spaces trap heat, leading to an urban heat island effect. This effect is one factor contributing to cities being warmer than surrounding areas. It can impact energy use, air quality, and overall climate patterns. The goal of the Urban Canyon campaign was to collect data at the street level, where people live and work, and in the boundary layer, where air from the city mixes with the atmosphere.

Over two weeks, CROCUS researchers from Chicago and around the region converged on the city to conduct two intensive measurement sessions. They measured temperature, air quality, and airflow in and around Chicago’s mix of skyscrapers, highways, and neighborhoods. Their data will help inform strategies to mitigate extreme heat and weather while protecting property and infrastructure.

Backed by the support of community partners Blacks in Green (BIG) and the Puerto Rican Agenda, more than 40 scientists and staff collaborated to make the campaign successful. Throughout their work, they snapped pictures of research in action.

Snapshots of urban climate science
Researchers study heat islands and air quality in the heart of Chicago, Gillian-King Carlyle, Argonne National Laboratory

Image source: https://www.istockphoto.com/photos/methane-molecule

Topics: Chemistry, Civilization, Climate Change, Entropy, Environment, Global Warming

The "good news": you can download the PDF for free by registering an email, or read the report from the National Academies of Science and Medicine here. Citizenship takes work and effort to be informed. It would be nice to carry on a little longer than the dinosaurs.

2023 shattered global climate records as the warmest year in the modern record, bringing with it devastating impacts on human and natural systems. About 60% of methane emissions come from human activities and are a major contributor to global warming, second only to carbon dioxide (CO2). Methane is relatively short-lived in the atmosphere but is 80 times more potent than CO2 at trapping heat over a 20-year period. Together with reducing CO2 emissions, rapid and sustained reductions in methane emissions are critical to limit both near- and long-term warming in future decades. However, given the many barriers to achieving needed emissions reductions at scale, researchers are exploring the potential of technologies to remove methane from the atmosphere.

A Research Agenda Toward Atmospheric Methane Removal is the first report of a two-phase study to assess the need and potential for atmospheric methane removal. This report identifies priority research that should be addressed within 3-5 years so that a second-phase assessment could more robustly assess the technical, economic, and social viability of technologies to remove atmospheric methane at climate-relevant scales. The research agenda presented in this report includes foundational research that would help us better understand atmospheric methane removal while also filling knowledge gaps in related fields, and systems research that seek to address what developing and/or deploying atmospheric methane removal at scale would entail. A Research Agenda Toward Atmospheric Methane Removal also assesses five atmospheric methane removal technologies that would accelerate the conversion of methane to a less radiatively potent form or physically remove methane from the atmosphere and store it elsewhere.

Contributor(s): National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine; Division on Earth and Life Studies; Division on Engineering and Physical Sciences; Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate; Board on Chemical Sciences and Technology; Board on Energy and Environmental Systems; Committee on Atmospheric Methane Removal: Development of a Research Agenda

An artist's impression of the cosmic web (Volker Springel/Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics/et al)

Topics: Astronomy, Astrophysics, Cosmology, Dark Matter, Einstein, Research

Q: Why does science seem to always change its mind?

A: Because, the enterprise of science is about discovery, and a lot of discoveries happen when you have better instrumentation, apply The Scientific Method and rigorous peer review. (See the quote below by economist John Maynard Keynes)

When science tried to fit the universe into a mechanistic viewpoint, it coined something called the luminiferous aether. Albert Michelson and Edward Morley built what we now know as an interferometer to measure its existence, and ended up measuring the speed of light. It earned them the Nobel Prize. Theirs were the shoulders on which Einstein built his Theory of Relativity, along with Newton, Faraday and others. Knowing better, science changes its mind.

“When the facts change, I change my mind - what do you do, sir?”
― John Maynard Keynes

There might not be a mysterious 'dark' force accelerating the expansion of the Universe after all. The truth could be much stranger – bubbles of space where time passes at drastically different rates.

The passage of time isn't as constant as our experience with it suggests. Areas of higher gravity experience a slower pace of time compared with areas where gravity is weaker, a fact that could have some pretty major implications on how we compare rates of cosmic expansion according to a recently developed model called timescape cosmology.

Discrepancies in how fast time passes in different regions of the Universe could add up to billions of years, giving some places more time to expand than others. When we look at distant objects through these time-warping bubbles, it could create the illusion that the expansion of the Universe is accelerating.

Two new studies have analyzed more than 1,500 supernovae to investigate how likely the concept could be – and found that the timescape model might be a better fit for observations than our current best model.

The standard model of cosmology does a pretty good job of explaining the Universe – provided we fudge the numbers a bit. There doesn't seem to be enough mass to account for the gravitational effects we observe, so we invented an invisible placeholder called dark matter.

There also seems to be a strange force that counteracts gravity, pushing the cosmos to expand at accelerating rates. We don't know what it is yet, so in the same spirit we dubbed it dark energy. All of this comes together, along with ordinary matter, to form what we call the lambda cold dark matter (ΛCDM) model.

The problem is that this model uses a simplified equation that assumes the whole Universe is smooth, and expands at the same speed everywhere. But it's far from smooth out there: we see a colossal cosmic web, crisscrossed by filaments of galaxies separated by vast voids emptier than we can comprehend.

Timescape cosmology takes that 'lumpiness' into account. More matter means stronger gravity, which means slower time – in fact, an atomic clock located in a galaxy could tick up to a third slower than the same clock in the middle of a void.

When you stretch that over the huge lifespan of the Universe, billions more years may have passed in the voids than in the matter-dense areas. A mind-boggling implication of that is that it no longer makes sense to say that the Universe has a single unified age of 13.8 billion years. Instead, different regions would have different ages.

And since so much more time has passed in the voids, more cosmological expansion has taken place there. Therefore, if you look at an object on the far side of a void, it would appear to be moving away from you much faster than something on this side of the void. Over time, these voids take up a larger proportion of the Universe, creating the illusion of an accelerating expansion, without needing to conjure up any dark energy.

Dark Energy May Not Exist: Something Stranger Might Explain The Universe, Hinah Shah, Shining Science

ABYSSINIA MEDIA GROUP® WISHES EVERYONE A SAFE AND PROSPEROUS 2025

Topics: Civics, Civil Rights, Civilization, Democracy, Existentialism

September 11, 2001, was on a Tuesday. We were a year from a contested election decided by the Supreme Court. We were scrambling to make sense of the senseless, and trying mightily, not to individually, or collectively go insane.

I remember President George W. Bush being told that we were under attack, and the astonished look on his face. He had received a PDB: Presidential Daily Brief, in Crawford, Texas a month before that was explicit in its description: "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US." The affable person everyone would "like to have a beer with" (though he's a teetotaler) apparently said to the intelligence agent, "You've covered your ass now." He was already setting a precedent, a pattern, for his republican successors in the number of days he vacationed at his ranch rather than actually work in Washington. The presidency from a distance looked like an easy job to anyone who wanted to throw their hat in the ring. Social media and Nielsen Ratings meant the only thing one had to do was something outrageous for attention and "clicks." We have become Guy Debord's "Society of the Spectacle."

I remember the push after the attacks not to understand why a former intelligence asset, Osama Bin Laden, wanted to smash planes into the symbols of financial and political power, CNN reporter Peter Bergen reported on the former Mujahadeen rebel from the mountains of Afghanistan. He was hard to catch because the CIA taught him their playbook.

I remember the push to "get back to normal," to shop, to "help the economy" as an act of defiance to then, the grossest attack on US soil that had ever been captured on film. It felt like the same push to get the economy "rocking again" during Covid.

I remember that we never collectively, sought counsel about what had then happened to us, and how it might have affected us psychologically as a country.

Posttraumatic stress disorder: Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a psychiatric disorder that may occur in people who have experienced or witnessed a traumatic event, series of events, or set of circumstances. An individual may experience this as emotionally or physically harmful or life-threatening and may affect mental, physical, social, and/or spiritual well-being. Examples include natural disasters, serious accidents, terrorist acts, war/combat, rape/sexual assault, historical trauma, intimate partner violence and bullying.

PTSD has been known by many names in the past, such as “shell shock” during the years of World War I and “combat fatigue” after World War II, but PTSD does not just happen to combat veterans. PTSD can occur in all people, of any ethnicity, nationality, or culture, and at any age. PTSD affects approximately 3.5 percent of U.S. adults every year. The lifetime prevalence of PTSD in adolescents ages 13 -18 is 8%. An estimated one in 11 people will be diagnosed with PTSD in their lifetime. Women are twice as likely as men to have PTSD. Three ethnic groups – U.S. Latinos, African Americans, and Native Americans/Alaska Natives – are disproportionately affected and have higher rates of PTSD than non-Latino whites.

People with PTSD have intense, disturbing thoughts and feelings related to their experience that last long after the traumatic event has ended. They may relive the event through flashbacks or nightmares; they may feel sadness, fear, or anger; and they may feel detached or estranged from other people. People with PTSD may avoid situations or people that remind them of the traumatic event, and they may have strong negative reactions to something as ordinary as a loud noise or an accidental touch.

Psychiatry.org: What is Posttraumatic Stress Disorder?

*****

At least 14 people are dead and 35 people were injured after a man drove a truck into a crowd at Bourbon and Canal streets in New Orleans on New Year's Day in a terrorist attack, according to the FBI.

It happened around 3:15 a.m. toward the end of New Year’s celebrations in New Orleans and hours before the expected kickoff of the Allstate Sugar Bowl, a college football quarterfinal held in the city’s Caesars Superdome.

The FBI confirmed the identity of the suspected driver of the truck as Shamsud Din Jabbar, 42, of Texas. A new photo of Jabbar was released early Thursday morning:

The FBI confirmed that despite previous reports, investigators believe Jabbar acted alone in the attack.

According to the FBI, Jabbar drove to New Orleans on Dec. 31 and posted on Facebook his support for ISIS.

14 victims dead, 35 hurt as FBI puts call out for tips in terror attack investigation, Erin Lowrey, WDSU News

*****

The suspected driver of the Tesla Cybertruck that exploded Wednesday outside the Trump International Las Vegas Hotel sustained a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head prior to the blast, officials confirmed in a press briefing Thursday.

The Clark County Coroner identified the driver of the vehicle in this incident as 37-year-old Matthew Livelsberger of Colorado Springs, Colorado, on Thursday. His cause of death was as a result of an intraoral gunshot wound by suicide.

No one else suffered serious injuries.

Prior to his official identification, officials found overwhelming evidence -- including credit cards in his name, similar tattoos, Livelsberger purchasing the weapons in the truck, and an ID card -- pointing to him as the individual. The fire and explosion slowed the identification process because of the physical injuries sustained by the driver, officials said.

Suspect in Las Vegas Cybertruck explosion was an Army member on leave, Josh Margolin, Alex Stone, Alexandra Hutzler, David Brennan, Aaron Katersky, and Julia Reinstein, ABC News

Jabbar and Livelsberger were US Army veterans who had been stationed at Fort Bragg/Liberty. Both men had deployed to Afghanistan after the attacks of 9/11. Both were decorated veterans who had "protected and served" their country.

Both men were broken. The country is still broken.

We lost the Vietnam War and the veterans who survived came home and were spat upon as "baby killers." The propaganda movies by Stallone and Schwarzenegger in the 1980s tried to bring back our collective loss of esteem and testosterone. In the Reagan era, we were trying to re-establish the chutzpah of old World War II movies where the "good guys won."

We started going dark in our entertainment with the Michael Keaton "Batman," and the plethora of clone superhero movies spawned that had to be "grounded" in reality, involving a lot of property damage, and bloodshed. "24" was our revenge porn, and the template for things on television going ... dark. We were the "good guys," even if Jack Bauer had to torture a captive terrorist for info before the hour was up. This was copied in the live-action "Arrow" and in the animated series, Batman Beyond: "This is how you interrogate someone!" It was a subtle, inexorable change into the abyss. The fantasy entertainment made torture "cool," and it morphed soldiers', citizens, and politicians' psyches.

Shamsud Din Jabbar was 42, and Matthew Livelsberger of Colorado Springs, Colorado, was 37. That would make both men 19, and 14, respectively, when 9/11 happened. They joined. They deployed. They were radicalized, and that can take many forms from many venues.

I'm talking about 2 men, a microcosm of 330 million citizens.

Before 9/11, you could walk with your loved ones to the plane they were boarding. Before 9/11, your shoes stayed on your feet, and not fed into an X-ray. Before 9/11, there wasn't an invasive body scan or bomb dogs sniffing as you passed through the line if you didn't have TSA Pre-Check. You weren't separated by personnel incessantly checking your ID. Before 9/11, even if you didn't board the plane, you were a part of the trip, departure, and return. Halcyon days before giving up our civil liberties to sit on an overcrowded bus with wings.

"United States" was always a caveat, an oxymoron for Indigenous Peoples, captured Africans, and the Chinese who built the transcontinental railroads, victims of their efficiency, and the first "war on drugs" that was a war on their competitive labor. "Melting pot" was always self-gaslighting and propaganda, a putty to hide the fissures beneath the surface of an unstable foundation that we just can't lie our way around, or ban its history.

Something broke Jabbar and Livelsberger before they deployed to Afghanistan.

Something broke us as a country, and we still haven't solicited counsel, or been on a couch.

James Carter, the 39th President of the United States, https://www.whitehouse.gov/about-the-white-house/presidents/james-carter/

Topics: Civics, Civil Rights, Civilization, Climate Change, Democracy, Education, Existentialism, Nobel Peace Prize, Nuclear Power

James Earl Carter Jr. was the 39^th President of the United States. In 1980, I voted for the first time as an eighteen-year-old for his re-election. He lost to Reagan, the “Gipper,” who launched his presidential campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi, blocks from the assassination of voting rights activists Cheney, Goodman, and Schwerner by domestic terrorists in white robes,[1] and the first uttered promise by a political candidate to “make America great again,” without defining “when” greatness was, or how he would bring it about. It has recently been revealed (long suspected) that his operatives had a secret deal with Iran to hold the hostages until after the election was “won,” then miraculously release them after Reagan’s inauguration.[2] He was the first president to comment on the climate crisis and put solar panels on the White House roof. His successor, safely in the pockets of the fossil fuels industry, promptly took them off and forgot about the crisis.[3]

Carter was an Annapolis Naval Graduate, and a Nuclear Engineer (I did wince at his southern pronunciation: “new que lure”). He rappelled into a nuclear reactor after a meltdown and lived to a hundred to tell about it.[4] Jimmy Carter negotiated peace between Egypt and Israel at Camp David in 1978, two years before I voted for him, and the year I received my driver’s license (that I am scheduled to renew this summer). He is the reason that we ratified the Panama Canal treaties. He established full-diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China and negotiated the SALT II Treaty with Russia (important in the Cold War/M.A.D. era). He is the reason we HAVE a Department of Education. You can see why I was proud to vote for him.

His post-presidency was astonishingly productive. He witnessed over 100 elections promoting democracy around the world. He and his wife Rosalyn built up to 1,000 homes through Habitat For Humanity. He won the Nobel Peace Prize “for work to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development.” In addition to all of that, he still managed to teach Sunday School at Maranatha Baptist Church in Georgia. Jimmy Carter, a one-term president, and the longest-lived ex-president, was the backlash to Watergate.[5]

The Nixon administration years brought us Watergate and the lack of trust in our institutions, which we currently still endure today. It started with his first Vice President, Spiro Agnew, accepting bags of money in the White House (as he had as Maryland’s governor),[6] Richard Nixon’s departure before impeachment and removal, and his pardon by his unelected Vice President, Gerald Ford, which gave a green light for future presidents to skirt the law.[7] He colluded with a foreign power to win an election before collusion was “cool.”[8]

If history is not propagandized, obfuscated, or “banned” beyond this moment, Jimmy Carter will go down as our only authentically Christian president. I say authentic versus “cultural,” now used to describe people who like the ritual, music, and customs around holidays (Christmas just concluded, unless you include Epiphany), but may be non-practicing, non-theist, apathetic, trans-theist, deist, pantheist, or atheist, like Richard Dawkins,[9] of “The God Delusion.” For Jimmy Carter, God was no delusion. He walked out his faith, while other politicians memorized scriptures to spout from podiums.

He was our first openly Evangelical Christian President, and it’s why politicos like Michelle Bachmann supported him initially. He ran afoul of the religious right when he applied federal law and the Bible against Bob Jones University for their anti-miscegenation (“interracial dating” and generally not wanting African Americans as students – old school terminology).[10] The right pivoted to a B-Movie actor who could “act” presidential but showed zero interest in being of intellectual heft to BE presidential. Hence, a former reality show host isn’t much of a departure from the Reagan model.

They’ve never been about that “Jesus’ life.” Jimmy Carter always was.

Godspeed Jimmy, to Rosalyn’s arms.

[1] Aug. 3, 1980: Reagan Gives “State’s Rights” Speech at Neshoba County Fair, Zinn Education Project, https://www.zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/reagan-speech-at-neshoba/

[2] Expert analyzes new account of GOP deal that used Iran hostage crisis for gain, PBS News Weekend, https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/expert-analyzes-new-account-of-gop-deal-that-used-iran-hostage-crisis-for-gain

[3] Where Did the Carter White House's Solar Panels Go? David Biello, Scientific American, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/carter-white-house-solar-panel-array/

[4] How Jimmy Carter Saved a Canadian Nuclear Reactor After a Meltdown, Blake Stilwell, Military.com, https://www.military.com/history/how-jimmy-carter-saved-canadian-nuclear-reactor-after-meltdown.html

[5] James Carter, 39^th President of the United States, https://www.whitehouse.gov/about-the-white-house/presidents/james-carter/

[6] Spiro Agnew and “Bagman,” https://www.southplattesentinel.com/2019/02/26/spiro-agnew-and-bagman/

[7] Watergate Scandal, Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/event/Watergate-Scandal

[8] When a Candidate Conspired With a Foreign Power to Win An Election, John A. Farrell, Politico, https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/08/06/nixon-vietnam-candidate-conspired-with-foreign-power-win-election-215461/

[9] Richard Dawkins, a “Cultural Christian,” John Stonestreet, Breaking Point, https://www.breakpoint.org/richard-dawkins-a-cultural-christian/

[10] The Real Origins of the Religious Right, Randall Balmer, Politico, https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/05/religious-right-real-origins-107133/

Week EIGHT of AMG®'s 7 DAY AUCTION
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Topics: Civics, Civil Rights, Civilization, Climate Change, Democracy, Existentialism

Like many people after the election, I retreated from corporate media, which is anything on television and in print now. GE/Comcast, News Corps/Fox, Disney, Viacom, Time Warner, and CBS: six corporations control 90% of what we passively consume after long hard days of work on what was affectionately dubbed "the boob tube" (and it was not a compliment). The distinction between mainstream media and corporate couldn't be more stark. "Mainstream" (noun) is "a prevailing current or direction of activity or influence," and (adjective) is "having, reflecting, or being compatible with the prevailing attitudes and values of a society or group" - Merriam-Webster. We gravitate towards outlets that reflect and reinforce our viewpoints, and we feel it's "mainstream," but none of these outlets is doing anything for the "public good": they are answering to boards of directors, CEOs, and Wall Street. I began my retreat by rereading an old book that seemed strange when published in 1985. Neil Postman's central argument was the danger of CNN:

“We were keeping our eye on 1984. When the year came and the prophecy didn't, thoughtful Americans sang softly in praise of themselves. The roots of liberal democracy had held. Wherever else the terror had happened, we, at least, had not been visited by Orwellian nightmares.

But we had forgotten that alongside Orwell's dark vision, there was another - slightly older, slightly less well-known, equally chilling: Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. Contrary to common belief even among the educated, Huxley and Orwell did not prophesy the same thing. Orwell warns that we will be overcome by externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley's vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity, and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.

What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny "failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions." In 1984, Orwell added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we fear will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we desire will ruin us.

This book is about the possibility that Huxley, not Orwell, was right.”

― Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business

We say something is "Orwellian" when it reminds us of "1984," where the Cambridge dictionary defines it as "a political system in which the government tries to control every part of people's lives." The loss of bodily autonomy by over 50% of the population qualifies as Orwellian. But also, the naming of a device a "smartphone" which is a supercomputer on our hips capable of using global positioning satellites to guide us better than a Rand McNally map (old school), and give us meaningless drivel from TikTok. That qualifies as the "equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy." Yet even though these supercomputers would compete well with Star Trek Tricorders: "21% of adults in the US are illiterate in 2024. 54% of adults have literacy below a 6th-grade level (20% are below a 5th-grade level). Low levels of literacy cost the US up to 2.2 trillion per year." Source: The National Literacy Institute - Literacy Statistics 2024- 2025 (Where we are now)

Our Cellular Ones, I-Phones, Galaxies, and Motorola "centrifugal bumble-puppies" do not appear to be making us, their owners "smarter."

I keep hearing "Don't check out." I haven't checked out. I've checked in to reading actual books offline about history, and science, climate change, and critical thinking.

Even before this dichotomy between Huxley and Orwell, the three original television stations' only incentive structure was based on Nielsen Ratings, which used to go for sitcoms after Harry Reasoner and Walter Cronkite scared the crap out of you. We needed something then to tamp us down. We currently have nothing of the sort. As "trickledown" was Orwellian doublespeak for "siphon up," every form of media - social, print, and television must engage our emotions before our intelligence, it must strategically induce Intermittent Explosive Disorder (with the ironic initials, "I.E.D."). It's not enough to sell "if it bleeds, it leads," corporate media must induce the bleeding. They must convince us that our neighbor is "the other": alien, dangerous, trying to destroy with liberal or fascistic policies. "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore!" The movie "Network's" mantra has to be shouted from windows, Capitols have to be stormed and defecated on, billionaire celebrities have to join "joy campaigns" to fight a dreaded, pending tyranny, and when the election is over, we're supposed to go back to "normal" like nothing was ever uttered.

Well, I'm "mad as hell." And I'm reading every book I can get my hands on. Ten so far this year. Read the Financial Times and other overseas journals - there is this new thing called "The Internet." I'm walking two miles a day, meditating, and taking pleasure in my immediate life without thinking that I'm on some great quest for the "Dawn of the Age of Aquarius" by any means necessary! That's where the lit powder keg explodes.

Try it. Breath. Relax. Talk to your neighbors, especially the ones whose political signs you disagreed with. Control the things you can. Play chess. Your blood pressure will lower, I promise. And vote: It pisses off the small cadre of nincompoops who like Brain the Mouse want to "take over the world!" But he, and Pinky, are just that, mice, not men.