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Post by millring on Aug 25, 2023 5:59:59 GMT -5
When things I never guessed would happen happen, I sometimes come away with a sense that I may have misunderstood the situation. Usually, though, I figure that history is happening wrong.
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Post by millring on Aug 25, 2023 5:56:58 GMT -5
After John left I got a call from my coworker saying they were going to be out past 9PM trying to finish 4 routes. I went in to help and worked until 8:30. It was unbelievably hot, but the human cooling system worked like a charm -- moving air over a sweaty body isn't all that uncomfortable. And it actually feels good to sweat that much.
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Post by millring on Aug 25, 2023 5:46:39 GMT -5
You don't EVER let Glenn Close rise back up out of the bathtub. Ever.
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Post by millring on Aug 25, 2023 5:40:59 GMT -5
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Debate
Aug 24, 2023 9:45:17 GMT -5
Post by millring on Aug 24, 2023 9:45:17 GMT -5
Didn't watch it and wouldn't have even if Trump had been there. I pretty much made a decision to unplug from political media several years ago. Best decision ever. I see enough Google feed headlines flying by and chatter here to basically know what the current big issues are but seek that shit out on TV or radio and waste an hour of my life on that? No way. Being a bachelor for 2 weeks saw me tuning in to both CNN and Fox on Sunday A.M. while I drank coffee. After a long hiatus the bias and manufactured rage on both sides is painfully obvious. The whole political media thing is a show to sell shit folks, and both sides are doing it. I could have written exactly the same words. (I'm so tuned out, I didn't even know there WAS a debate last night). And especially ditto on the highlighted (bold) sentence. It's always been a bit that way. It's always been easy to tell almost instantly which side the speaker/newscaster/writer is coming from. They use the same language (and avoid the same language), same phrases, same issues. But what is really striking after taking a long step back is just how profoundly everyone is guided by their side's prevailing narrative. It's also obvious that one side isn't listening AT ALL to the other side. When it looks like they're listening, they're not. They're already formulating their response to what the proponents of their narrative have told them the other side is saying.
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Post by millring on Aug 24, 2023 9:21:55 GMT -5
The same company that brought you EarthQuaker Oats. The hot cereal laxative.
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Post by millring on Aug 24, 2023 9:20:06 GMT -5
How odd. I'm sure it will finally heat up, but for now I'm enjoying the cloudy, almost-rainy 75 degrees here in Warsaw. That wasn't the forecast.
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Debate
Aug 24, 2023 9:16:40 GMT -5
Post by millring on Aug 24, 2023 9:16:40 GMT -5
A bunch of angry white me. indeed?
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Post by millring on Aug 24, 2023 7:28:37 GMT -5
Could anything in the world matter less than a Republican debate?
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Post by millring on Aug 24, 2023 7:27:49 GMT -5
I actually typed the correct answer to wordle on my third try ... and then said "nah" ... and tapped in a different word. So I got it in 4.
I'm awaiting the arrival of the other John B. Imma show off my Faridas.
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Post by millring on Aug 24, 2023 7:24:11 GMT -5
The last thing I read (a month or so ago) was Apostles of Reason: The Crisis of Authority in American Evangelicalism. It's an interesting and honest history of American Evangelicalism. It's not flattering, but from my perspective having lived in the midst of it, she gets the facts mostly right. And it's certainly not the picture you'd get if you talked to the man on the street educated by the evening news.
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Post by millring on Aug 23, 2023 18:29:10 GMT -5
I also got wordle in 6 this morning. The load was light but the routes were long. And hot. Very hot.
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Post by millring on Aug 23, 2023 18:26:59 GMT -5
Ran across this interesting NYTimes excerpt this morning amid my editing chores: Leave it to Dolly Parton to reunite the surviving Beatles for a rousing rendition of “Let It Be,” which will appear on her star-studded November album, “Rockstar.” Accompanied by Peter Frampton on guitar and Mick Fleetwood on drums, Parton dives head-first into the song’s reverent spiritualism, as she did on her great 2001 cover of Collective Soul’s “Shine.” Her “Let It Be” hews closer to the original arrangement, as McCartney leads the way with his memorable piano progression and Frampton lets a mid-song solo rip. Were it done with anything less than absolute conviction, the whole thing would feel like a superfluous rock star indulgence. But the earnest, serene warmth of Parton’s voice makes it work, as she enlivens one of the most familiar songs in rock history with her own particular glow. Ehh. I listened. Paul contributes too many “Let It Be” responses to Dolly’s “Let It Be” calls. Dolly also speaks the final “let It be” and the end of each verse, where once would do. And I’m not sure what Ringo’s doing, because Mick Fleetwood is also on the track. But Frampton’s guitar solo is pretty good, though nothing matches the original(s). Maybe she should have let it be.
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Post by millring on Aug 20, 2023 5:38:02 GMT -5
This pasture (and tree) I've been photographing for the past three years ... my coworker told me yesterday morning that the farmer -- Rowland MacFarland -- died in a farming accident on Friday. As I drove by the home I saw the yard filled with pickup trucks and SUVs. Out in the yard, children aged 6-16 of friends, family, and neighbors were standing around waiting for their parents to come back out of the house.
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Post by millring on Aug 18, 2023 20:12:25 GMT -5
I mentioned that while listening out on my route random play came up with a really nice guitar piece that had me grabbing my phone to see who was playing. I repeated the title several times in my head so I wouldn't forget it 'til I got home and could hear it again. And then I forgot. But here it is:
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Post by millring on Aug 18, 2023 14:19:09 GMT -5
ditto plums.
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Post by millring on Aug 18, 2023 14:01:40 GMT -5
Is there a fruit anywhere more perfect than a perfectly ripe peach? Nope. And I've been enjoying them daily for the past few weeks.
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Post by millring on Aug 18, 2023 12:10:46 GMT -5
I’ve been reading a history book, The Edge of the World, and he talked at length about how societies evolved. One of the things he discussed was how people were tried. In the early middle ages, trial by ordeal was the norm. You had to carry a hot chunk of metal for so many steps, and the state of healing a few days later indicated whether you were right or wrong, or you were bound and tossed in pond, and whether you floated or not indicated your guilt. It was a religious ceremony — god would show your guilt or innocence by what happened. (No, I’m not religion bashing here.) This was slowly replaced by lawyers, written law, judges. What was the appeal of the original system, which was painful and dangerous? It was simple. No one had to make a decision. No one had to take the blame for judging someone else; it was an impartial deity, and whether you believed in god or not, it was tidy, simple, and done. And that’s what people want, really, they want simplicity, they want it all in black and white. And the more complex society becomes, the more sophisticated the arguments in support of X or Y, we want somewhere, somehow, that one sentence that clarifies the world for us. It seems to me that much of battles going on now in society are about that — which simple narrative are we going to believe? Which is pretty tough, in this world we’ve made with our brains, our thought processes and opinions. For kicks sometime (if you haven't already -- and I shouldn't assume you haven't) google up "urim and thummim". I remember the elementary school aged Sunday school me wondering what urim and thummim were and getting pretty thin answers from teachers. Back then, in that 1960s intersection of Reformed Theology, Evangelical compassion, and Fundamentalist gravity, I was mostly given the answer that it -- like the ubiquitous occurrence of "casting lots" -- was a calling on the supernatural -- divine intervention -- to settle disputes, and that urim and thummim were something like a Godly Ouija board that the priests could employ to judge disputes. I've since come to the conclusion (in my mind, anyway) that urim and thummim were nothing of the (supernatural) sort, but rather, a manifestation of an acceptance of a necessary social contract that reflected the widely held paradoxical theology that God intervenes by not intervening. It was merely a social agreement among the people of God that in disputes that could not be settled by the facts or the evidence, the parties would agree to accept the result of a coin toss in order to go on with their lives. So, in a way they weren't so much asking God to guide the coin toss as much as they were accepting that he did. Also, your comment (the latter half of it) brings to mind the curious irony that rational and rationalize are soundalike opposites (that are also the snare of the intellectual).
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Post by millring on Aug 18, 2023 11:45:40 GMT -5
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Post by millring on Aug 18, 2023 9:22:07 GMT -5
I suspect there is an unflattering aspect to human nature -- exhibited in our politics, religions, and philosophies -- that we judge our enemies by their effectiveness and results (or lack thereof), all the while judging ourselves and our friends by our intentions.
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