Nostalgia I enjoyed this article about a piece of common iconography (right) from my salad days, used in both feminist posters and reactionary advertising. It started as an ad for a steakhouse. The model cam…

rturpin.wordpress.com/2026/04/20/n...

Bravo zulu, Hungary! In what looks to be the start of a sea change, Hungarian voters made a record turn out to pause their descent into right-wing nationalism, ushering in the Tisza party. Johan Norberg wrote an articl…

rturpin.wordpress.com/2026/04/13/b...

Wine slows aging in men? I have made quite a few posts around studies that use mortality statistics, and how they relate to a variety of practices, from drinking and exercise to vaccination. There are some problems in usin…

rturpin.wordpress.com/2026/04/06/w...

Of kings and oligarchy There is a bit of irony that there was a No Kings protest in London. Which has a king. But in the UK, a prince who treads on law is stripped of his title and investigated. In the US, the current pr…

rturpin.wordpress.com/2026/03/31/o...

Numeracy and honesty Kash Patel recently posted the graph below, bragging about how the Trump administration has reduced homicide rates in the US. The problem, of course, is that the graph ends before the Trump adminis…

rturpin.wordpress.com/2026/03/30/n...

“All you fascists bound to lose” I suspect Woodie Guthrie would have been pleased to see the Divine Miss M recut one of his classics (youtube), just in time for the No Kings protest today. Or would he have been disappointed to see…

rturpin.wordpress.com/2026/03/28/a...

A better option for desalination? I’m glad to see that Corpus Christi is looking at the Barney Davis power station as a site for a desalination facility. (See photo.) The large objection to the inner harbor was that the disch…

rturpin.wordpress.com/2026/03/24/a...

Robert Mueller Robert Mueller died Saturday. He was a conservative Republican who headed the FBI under presidents Bush and Obama. The latter posted this comment: Bob Mueller was one of the finest directors in the…

rturpin.wordpress.com/2026/03/23/r...

Shush, MAGA One of the things that stands out reading Jack Smith’s indictments of Trump is that the vast majority of factual claims either were acts done in public, such as the fraudulent court filings T…

rturpin.wordpress.com/2026/03/16/s...

The Danish do it The screen is hurting childhood learning, according to Dr. Jared Horvath: Across 80 countries, as Jean was just saying, if you look at the data, once countries adopt digital technology widely in sc…

rturpin.wordpress.com/2026/03/09/t...

Will the Iranian state fall? It surprises me how many posts and articles I now see that assume the killing of Ali Khamenei will trigger structural changes in Iran’s government. Iran is a constitutional republic, with fun…

rturpin.wordpress.com/2026/03/02/w...

First things Trump’s use of the IEEPA always was a bald lie. Justice Kagan minces no words: IEEPA’s key phrase — the one the Government relies on — says nothing about imposing tariffs or taxes. That text …

rturpin.wordpress.com/2026/02/23/f...

Hear Cassandra Andrew Yang makes the harshest predictions for the near-term consequences of AI: This automation wave will kick millions of white-collar workers to the curb in the next 12 – 18 months. As one…

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Ridiculous people Bill Maher is a comedian who gets paid to be ridiculous, so there is at least a nudge and a wink when he says QAnon deserves an apology. Alas, there are millions of Americans who took QAnon serious…

rturpin.wordpress.com/2026/02/09/r...

Out of facts For as long as I can remember, the CIA World Factbook has been my first reference when wanting to look at the contours of a nation, or verify some basic detail. Now, it is gone. Which strikes me as…

rturpin.wordpress.com/2026/02/06/o...

Autocracy pays The Emerati bribe to Trump was more blatant than first reported, including a straight half billion dollar purchase of stock done days before the inauguration. The Wall Street Journal broke the stor…

rturpin.wordpress.com/2026/02/04/a...

A cheer for honest conservatives It is not entirely coincidence that George Will published an editorial yesterday echoing my own post about the dishonest nature of Trump’s inner circle. We both wrote in response to ICE&#8217…

rturpin.wordpress.com/2026/01/29/a...

Dishonest by design A silly kind of meme frequent today poses the question: why are so many upset with Trump’s deportation of undocumented immigrants, when Obama deported so many more? The pretense is that nothi…

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The Taco trade Trump has backed down from his threatened tariffs and military invasion to take Greenland, claiming he reached a framework of a deal with NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte for it to become part of …

rturpin.wordpress.com/2026/01/22/t...

Open that window! I’ve never quite understood the desire to live in a sealed box. Only recently have I learned that my desire for daily fresh air in the house is a German practice called lüften. And, yes, I sl…

rturpin.wordpress.com/2026/01/21/o...

Cellphones should sign images The ICE killing of Renee Good shows how important bystanders’ cellphones have become as a mechanism for documenting events. Those videos show that she had turned her wheel to the right and aw…

rturpin.wordpress.com/2026/01/14/c...

We evolve together It is not surprising that the Anna’s hummingbird is evolving in response to human behavior. (Cite.) A species’s interaction with other species is a major constraint and driver for its o…

rturpin.wordpress.com/2026/01/12/w...

Starting the year on the water We delivered the boat to Seabrook this weekend for a major refit the owner has planned. There wasn’t much wind, and mostly from the wrong direction, so we motored up the ICW. Dolphins swam by…

rturpin.wordpress.com/2026/01/06/s...

Mesh! The ubiquity of digital connectivity makes it easy to overlook the fact that it relies on complex infrastructure maintained by a few companies. Natural disaster or social conflict can disrupt it, l…

rturpin.wordpress.com/2025/12/31/m...

Trump, death, and lies The damning part of Trump’s reaction to the Reiners’ death is the lie. He blamed their murder on Rob Reiner’s dislike for Trump. The claim that somehow motivated the murder is fan…

rturpin.wordpress.com/2025/12/18/t...

Children, social media, and books Parents shield their children from a variety of influences, wanting first to instill better personal habits and social behavior that prepares them for the larger world. I am not surprised that some…

rturpin.wordpress.com/2025/12/15/c...

The mRNA Covid vaccines save lives A hard question for any new drug is what its long-term side effects might be. That question is especially sharp for drugs requiring long-term use, and for vaccines, which cause a long-term change i…

rturpin.wordpress.com/2025/12/08/t...

The joy of winter races Last night had just about everything I enjoy about winter races. Just enough air to sail. Just enough cool that everyone wears foulies. Just enough crew to do it. The mark was a beam reach. We rais…

rturpin.wordpress.com/2025/12/04/t...

MAGA, religion, and civility Rob Schenck provides a Christian perspective on the rise of MAGA, referencing past religious movements led by flamboyant hucksters. I suspect his dour conclusion is accurate: It will be at least a …

rturpin.wordpress.com/2025/12/01/m...

America is getting dumber Rose Horowitch writes a bleak article on how students entering college are woefully unprepared for the basic math. Which has always been the case, in some sense. The interesting and disheartening f…

rturpin.wordpress.com/2025/11/24/a...