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Living Freedom Posts

Another one you really hope is satire

Last time an article like this came around, it turned out to be a put-on. Unfortunately, I don’t see anything about the linked publication that shows that anybody connected with it has a sense of humor. Or for that matter, a sense of humanity. Today’s message is: “White women; abort your babies.” ‘Cause you know, you and your inherently eeeeeevil white-skinned spawn are perpetuating white supremacy. [T]he notion of “choice” in abortion is inherently white supremacist and ableist. Women of color do not often have the same privilege to choose termination as do white women. For social, religious, economic, and…

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Weather, work, rest, and the damned dog

Ninety-seven degrees yesterday. We go from January-in-June to too darned hot. I reminded myself Joel had it worse. I could at least keep the inside temps down (and I see that as of today, Joel has some hope for that, too; yay, Joel). Not until after 8:00 last night did it cool to pleasantness. I hauled the computer outside and completed a long and overdue pair of emails to a friend. That felt good. It was already 75 at 6:00 this morning, and 80 on our morning dog walk. But that’s where the day decided to settle. Low 80s with…

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Weekend links

  • Two shoots, two hits, two misses. Scott Greenfield explains.
  • Beneath the fold; how it’s still wrong to deny rights to one group just because rights were at some time denied to another.
  • A one-sentence bill to slash through the health-care mess. Is it pure freedomista? Nope. Not by a longshot. (And this isn’t an endorsement, so don’t rail at me for being a statist, okay?) But it’s out-of-the-box thinking, which Our Health-Insurance Overlords badly need to do. (H/T MJ) 8 Comments
  • Friday links

  • Was “bad training” responsible for Jeronimo Yanez murdering Philando Castile? this article by David Kopel is good, as always. But “bad training” doesn’t excuse the “reasonably scared cop” rule.
  • Now here’s a cop who would surely be drummed out of any militarized U.S. police force. Good thing he works in Thailand.
  • The harm of unpaid internships (especially for “creatives,” whose work tends to be undervalued both by potential employers and ourselves). 18 Comments
  • It’s those little things

    My cover gets blown The other day I was depositing the house-loan money in my local bank with a teller I didn’t recognize, a vacation sub who travels from branch-to-branch. We got to chatting, then when I went to leave, she said, “May I ask you something?” “Sure.” “Are you a writer?” I keep my professional life and my town life separate and try to avoid letting locals know what I do. If somebody must know I tell them I’m a totally obscure blogger who does “political and lifestyle” content. Then I change the subject. “Um … yeah. Why do…

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    Summertime and the projects are rollin’

    Finally. Summer made it. After January returned last Thursday, after a solid week of downpour that held up projects in May, after chilly, overcast weeks between, Summer decided to show up today. Reportedly it’s even going to stick around. I spent the day outdoors, trimming brush and burning a heap of construction rubble (only one of several, but it sure felt good). The wood was so rain-saturated it took an hour to get the fire going, but once it caught, the whole neighborhood knew it. As you can imagine from the way the early stages of the Great Foundation and…

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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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    Painting an icon

    I promised (or for those of you uninterested in art, perhaps I threatened) to make a post on the details of painting a religious icon. So here goes. If you want to skip the longish intro, there are lots of pictures and short descriptions of the process below. In the beginning For those coming in late, I spent the first full week of June at an Eastern Catholic monastery, courtesy of a friend who dared my non-religious self to do it and courtesy of that friend and others who generously funded the expedition. Though I didn’t experience the leap of…

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    Peder Lund, RIP

    That name might not ring bells with most of you. Peder was the publisher at Paladin Press (which took over my titles when Mike Hoy closed Loompanics and which later published one of my lesser-known books). He died suddenly on June 3 while vacationing in Finland — which I suppose is a good way to go if you gotta go. But it left his traveling companion (and longtime wife? partner? co-worker) Sheila with the terrible necessity of dealing with both the U.S. and Finnish governments to get his body home. And of course it was a jolt to all the…

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