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Category: Mind and Spirit

Spirituality, moods, feelings, and thinking free to live free.

Monday links

The U.S. is not “one nation” — and it never was. Among the other “benefits” of artificial intelligence, it’ll make it easy to forge nearly everything. Yet another cowardly, too-quick-on-the-trigger cop shoots dogs in their owner’s fenced backward. On video. Both dogs survived the vicious attack, though one is still touch-and-go. A GoFundMe appeal for their vet care was fully funded in less than a day. But on the good side of cops … The sad story of the man who invented the equal sign and brought math to the masses. Oh darn. I missed Nicola Tesla’s birthday. Again. You…

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Thursday links

  • NPR tweeted the Declaration of Independence. Ignorami and snowflakes were offended.
  • Finding the spiritual meaning in Harry Potter. Um. Okay. I can see Rowling put it in there (return from the dead, guardian figures from the beyond, immortal evil, perseverence against overwhelming darkness, etc.), but … um.
  • Utah. Strange place. But at least the “Zion curtain” between restaurant patrons and bartenders is finally falling.
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  • Happy Independence Day

    Enjoy the fireworks, to whatever extent your local government allows. Raise a glass to the spirit of freedom, as long as you don’t get on the wrong side of the law for public intoxication. Celebrate the freest country in the world, while being careful not to say anything that might attract the attention of the NSA, FBI, IRS, CIA, or other surveillance agency whose existence is currently being kept secret. Create some joyful booms and bangs of your own, subject of course to those 20,000+ federal, state, and local laws (which surely you’ve memorized), and the completely scrupulously fair and…

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    Tuesday links

    It was gay pride time last weekend. Lots of parades and marches. It’s great that it’s now okay to be everything under the sun. So why, oh why, oh why is it now NOT okay to be gay and Jewish? Man, some people have sure gotten selective about their “inclusivity.” New York pastor is surprised to discover that a gun-rights activist is human. “School vs the Gateless Gate: Fixing the Damage.” A great reprint from L. Reichard White and The Price of Liberty. Franklin Foer says the Dems need to appeal to white, working-class voters if they want to win…

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    Advances in apathy

    I don’t care. Really, this time. I do. Not. Care. And I hope you don’t, either. I don’t care about the latest earthshattering crisis in Qatar. I don’t care about Qatar. I don’t care if the whole bloody Middle East (with the exception of Israel) devours itself in fire and brimstone. I don’t care what “covfefe” really means. And I don’t care that covfefe was last week’s craze and mentioning it now shows I’m hopelessly out of step with current events. I don’t care if the Russians hacked the 2016 presidential election — any more than I care about who…

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    I demand to be oppressed!

    So. We have this big hit superhero movie. Directed by a woman. Staring not only a woman but a minority woman. And everybody loves it. Audiences flock to it. It had the biggest-ever opening weekend for a movie by a female director. Critics lavish praise upon it like relish on a summertime hot dog. And DC Comics breathes a huge sigh of relief that their otherwise dismal movie franchises are suddenly revived. By Wonder Woman You’d think the Speakers of the Feminist World would be over-the-moon delighted. That is, you would think so if you did not already understand that…

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    After five days out of (or out in) the real world …

    … I returned to discover that the hottest news during my absence was a peahen getting loose in a California liquor store and wrecking the place. Or maybe it was some story about one political liar lying about another political liar Comey and Trump. Or North Korea testing more missiles. But the peahen story was definitely more relevant. (Though will somebody please tell the “journalist” who covered that one that even in this day of trans-anything, “female peacock” is still not an actual thing?) In other vital news of the day, J.R.R. Tolkein has just come out with another new…

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    Special Sunday

    This afternoon, or perhaps tomorrow morning depending, I head off to the long-awaited iconography workshop. I’ll be staying at a monastery for nearly a week. Though I will take the laptop, I have no idea whether there’s wifi in the vicinity. Under the circumstances this is a question I’d feel really off-point asking. So if I don’t blog until next weekend, don’t worry. I haven’t been kidnapped by agents of the Deep State or taken up into an alien spacecraft and subjected to anal probes (but I repeat myself). I’m just studying icons and enjoying away-time, courtesy of the retreat…

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    Weekend links

  • One sincerely hopes this is satire. But these days, who knows?
  • OneLogin, which gives access to dozens of sites and apps has lost all U.S. customer data to malicious hackers. Gave the hackers access to the encryption, too. But it’s okay. All you have to do is register and log into their special support page to find out what you should do next.
  • “Was I wrong about hunting?” (More on the “kindness and humanity” of anti-hunters.) (H/T LA)
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  • Ruminations

    Yesterday I woke early, intending to blog about my peaceful, happy Memorial Day weekend. Before I could sit down to it, I got word from a friend that another friend was racing to the scene of a family tragedy. One person was dead. Another’s life would be irreparably altered, not for the better. Torn between my personal contentment and my friend’s catastrophe, what could I write? Nothing at that moment and even now nothing more than some cliched observation on life’s vicissitudes. Even the phrase “life’s vicissitudes” seems gratingly pat and bromidic. I don’t know the circumstances of the tragedy…

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