Politics
📰 More than 200 mayoral candidates have been killed in Mexico during this election season, WSJ (ungated link)
I was randomly contacted to participate in a national survey about the 2024 election. As one who holds a PhD in political science I was more gitty to “look under the hood” than happy to share my idiosyncratic views as a member of the electorate. Lot of interesting survey design questions.
The Three Factions of American Culture (Substack)
The macroculture, it must be emphasized, is nowhere near collapse. I think it will transmogrify, not vanish. But it’s no longer growing. It’s the microculture that is expanding, often explosively.
This is not a value judgement, merely an expression of bare fact.
📰 This Corner of Texas Was Remote. Then Instagram Found It., WSJ.
For decades, this quirky cluster of trailers, hippies and a ghost town was a lonesome one, in a remote corner of Texas near the Mexico border, on the outskirts of one of the country’s least-visited national parks.
Now, the glass of scores of shiny new casitas glitters against rust-brown mountains.
🗞️Rudy Giuliani files for backruptcy, WSJ
From the NYT:
On Wednesday, the judge overseeing the election worker case… ordered Mr. Giuliani to start paying the two women immediately out of concerns that he might “conceal his assets” if he were allowed to wait the typical 30 days.
Honestly, I didn’t have the Colorado Supreme Court on my bingo card.
‘Hamas said they wouldn’t shoot, then murdered my daughter’ - BBC News
“They’re screaming ‘we don’t shoot’, and then they shot. Tsachi yelled ‘who’s been hit, who’s been hit?’ And it was Maayan. She fell next to him, and then Hamas were able to open the door. There were screams, and they turned on the light.”
“We hope that … we can bring the unidentified down to less than 200. But some people, we will never find. We will never identify them. And people need to be prepared for this.”
Hamas torture confirmed as Israeli forensics institute identifies victims
🗞 “My Ithaca Burned Down Too,” Ukrainian teenager reflects on reading James Joyce just before war.
Yuuuuup.
“More than any other time, if you are not on Twitter, you just don’t know what is going on.”
“As a born-and-bred Californian, I naturally think of RTOR as God’s will.”
Kevin Drum, “Right Turn on Red” is California’s gift to the nation
As a born-and-bred Californian, I naturally think Drum is correct.
Fleeing Mariupol, one checkpoint at a time.
We were the last journalists in Mariupol. Now there are none.
We are still flooded by messages from people wanting to learn the fate of loved ones we photographed and filmed.
Considering Options in Ukraine, me at Providence Journal. I’ll post a TLDR thread later.
For those following me here on the blog or via micro.blog, just a note that I’ve been on Twitter of late sharing articles and my thoughts on Ukraine. If you’re interested in that, you can find me there.
When geopolitics hits home: Just saw a gas station up it’s price 7¢ on the marquee as I was driving by.
Mark Tooley has it about right:
So maybe Putin’s overreach in Ukraine will ultimately destroy him. But if so, it may take years to see that destruction. The United States should be persistent, patient, and confident.
It seems that the war has started. A lot will remain in flux in the coming hours and days. Keep that in mind as you read the news. My general approach will be to read widely, repost cautiously.
The audacity of a school administrator trying to end run around parents who, respectively, have a PhD and an MSW and who know the rules at least as well as they do is something. I don’t know if I’m appalled at the behavior or impressed at the bravado.