What if Donald Trump is best as a vehicle of mass distraction? Tweeting and being loud while the agenda of the Koch Brothers of the World get enacted. Lower taxes for the rich and corporations, less environmental restrictions, less benefits for the poor. Somehow even more money for the military and the security state.
Pay no attention to the men behind the curtain just the orange menace saying ridiculous things. Seems about how the last year has gone.
I finally saw “Black Panther” today and it was excellent.
And a totally distinctive world. And everyone was beautiful.
It’s hard not to say a whole lot more without spoilers, but I am definitely curious about how Wakanda affects the Marvel Universe.
It’s a very special place. And an impressive movie. Well acted, well written, beautiful great music.
Fantastic book with amazing stories.
Great pictures of former members of the Black Panther Party.
So many of them grew to live wonderful lives.
I wonder how much good the Black Panther Party could have done without bringing everyone back to Oakland and closing local chapters. And the vast government conspiracy of infiltrating the Black Panther Party and other organizations with COINTELPRO.
The National School Breakfast Program definitely could have come from the Black Panthers. And we can still use free community health centers and ambulances. And of course the size of the immense US prison population and police brutality is still an enormous issue.
Amazing work by photojournalist Bryan Shih and professor Yohuru Williams of nearby Fairfield University.
Highly recommended.
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I am going to the Yale Law School Rebellious Lawyers Conference (RebLaw) on Friday and Saturday and they had links related to some of the presentations.
One is about Puerto Rico which included this powerful Washington Post video essay: “Life Without Power”.
It’s absolutely awful how Puerto Rico is still treated as a colony to America. Puerto Ricans have US Citizenship but no members of the House or Senate or the right to vote for President.
They also have a horrendous debt we need to forgive so they can rebuild.
Puerto Ricans are Americans and they deserve everything we can give so they can prosper. It’s insane how long it’s taking the terroritory to rebuild.
I almost wonder if they would just be better off without the United States completely.
We can and must do better.
So, so much darker than I remember. Tales of the Atomic Age, tales of ruining what was great about a place. Tales of suburbanization. Tales of trying to change a place to home.
Tales of morality and censorship with parallels to Bradbury’s masterpiece a few years later “Fahrenheit 451.” I’m very happy that Ray Bradbury found an agent to turn some of his short stories into a larger work. Interesting that this came out in 1950 not long after World War II, the Holocaust and the bombing of Hiroshima. So much death so close.
I think I would have stayed on Mars. Not “come home, come home, come home.”
I can’t believe this is a book I remember flying through on Christmas Day, 1981 during first grade with a YA science fiction book and the much shorter “The Time Machine” by HG Wells. There is no way I would understand so much of what happens in this book. No way at all.
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