The conclusion that the United States is in its bread-and-circuses phase is just about impossible to escape, and our response to it proves the point.
Ash Wednesday and Valentine’s Day collide this year. The combination feels bizarre: a day associated with fancy meals and rich desserts has been forced to share a table with one that focuses on our failures. Yet a common thread weaves between: love.
It was warmish here, certainly warm by seasonal standards, last Friday, which happened to be Groundhog Day, the day we celebrate the pulverized pork product usually called “sausage.” Okay, I’ve been waiting to make that joke for years, and the fact that I do now reflects a mood that I think others share.
A year after Microsoft unveiled its big push into AI riding on the early wave of ChatGPT excitement, we haven’t come to terms with how AI fits into our world. Sorting it out will take time, but we need to start doing so with the assumption it is here to stay.
Here we are again. Each time it is worse than the time before. We’re speeding toward the point when, come November, we will have a choice between two men whom we know are unqualified to be president of the United States. The only positive thing that can be said for either is that he is not the other.
This week, I saw a meme that gave me a moment of clarity. Donald Trump and Taylor Swift have an awful lot in common. Call me fearless — the last sentence could lead to nearly all of the Internet hating me — but the comparison is worth entertaining to consider our political moment.
It was 45 years ago that a band called “The Buggles” had a hit record, “Video Killed the Radio Star.” The song was big, as you’d expect, on MTV, which at the time played music videos. The song was wrong. Video didn’t kill the radio star, the internet did. (It also pretty well killed MTV, too.)
The primary season is over. With New Hampshire handing President Donald Trump a decisive win and clear polling in his favor ahead, it’s time for Ambassador Nikki Haley to concede the inevitable and step aside. Er, wait a second… I haven’t voted yet!
Last week in a closed hearing of a congressional committee looking at the pandemic and governments’ handling of it, the former head of the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Francis Collins, admitted that much of what his agency and others told the country was just pulled out of thin air (literally), and that his agency and others under his control tried to quash any talk of the likely origin of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
“Why do they call it ‘rescuing’ a dog? That word makes it sound like they, personally, pulled the dog from a burning building. It’s virtue signaling, for sure. Call it what it is: you went to the pound and got a dog.”