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"Digging for the Truth" Experiment #3 -- Letters from an American, Heather Cox Richardson

Heather Cox Richardson is American Historian.  Before last week, I had never heard of her, but she apparently does a daily podcast -- average length about 12 minutes.  The April 18, 2025, edition was 26 minutes long, and it marked the 250th anniversary of Paul Revere's famous midnight ride.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3s6bjnkOYUs Not surprisingly, when you listen to the Paul Revere story today, the present political situation echoes through. 1775 Boston is hard to imagine. It had a total population of 7,000. The British troops stationed there numbered 13,000.  While the patriots in Boston outnumbered loyalists, Richardson notes that the majority of Bostonians remained neutral. They just wanted to live their lives.  Overall, I liked this podcast, because it clearly and concisely presented the story of how Paul Revere and the colonial patriots stood up to the tyranny of the King. They did what they could, not because they thought they were going to change the...
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"Digging for the Truth" Experiment #2 -- Bald and Bankrupt

His first name is Benjamin, but he usually goes by "Bald." Bald has been posting travel videos since 2018. His passion is anything Soviet Union, but he will take the time to learn a language before he visits a place -- not only Russian, but Spanish, say. It's important for him to have the ability to speak to people in their native tongue.  On Friday, April 18, Bald posted a video called "Solo on Ukraine's Eastern Front." So far it's generated 2.7 million views, and based on viewer average, it will likely go over 5 million views. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3HRnwC6pso Most of his videos are in the neighborhood of an hour in length. In them, he usually establishes where he is and what his goal for being there is. He will start somewhere and then go seek out a place, without knowing exactly what he will find there.  For the latest Ukraine video, he starts at the Kiev train station. It's been 3 years, he says, since he last visited Ukraine, and he h...
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"Digging for the Truth" Experiment #1 - Real Coffee with Scott Adams

I've been curious about how others perceive reality. What is "true" and "real" to me is not necessarily "true" and "real" to others.  First stop: Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert.  He's currently 67, does a daily podcast called "Real Coffee with Scott Adams" which draws about 30,000 listeners on YouTube, with 172,000 total subscribers to the channel. Podcast is also available on all the usual places, with a 4.4 rating on Apple Podcasts. Each episode is about an hour long, or a little less.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15SFbr2vj8c 1. Basic format: Just runs through news articles that drew his interest. On the April 15 episode (link above), he ran through 28 articles. Often he'd laugh at something, sometimes to show his disbelief.  2. Adams is not a big fan of science. He's open to conspiracy theories. Believes that the government doesn't tell us the truth (although he seems to think the Trump administration is an e...
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Chingona Alert

Sandra Cisneros -- not an author I've read much of, but she's thought highly of in writing circles, and under the current political climate, I feel like I should be reading her and more authors like her. Not that literature should be politicized and part of the culture wars, but it is. And if I have to pick a side, I will side with Cisneros. She's a chingona, or roughly translated, a "bad ass."  https://www.huffpost.com/entry/sandra-cisneros-chingona-definition_n_59ae10ade4b0dfaafcf2030b I think we typically do want to "read" authors from different backgrounds differently. If I'm reading Raymond Carver, it's not natural for me to think about his background or why he picks a certain theme or approach. But if I'm reading Cisneros, I find myself starting to think that way. Do you? It's 2025. Unfortunately, we live in a moment of time when if you're not a white man (and bring straight helps), you might be labeled as DEI or un-American or ...
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Jesus and the Inconvenience of His Word to American Christians

I'm not a preacher, but if you follow the teachings of Jesus, it was he who said: Do to others as you would have them do to you. That's from Luke 6:31 , and reading all of Luke 6 isn't a bad way to spend five minutes of your time.  https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=luke%206&version=NIV I guess a lot of Christians understand the Golden Rule and practice it in their daily lives. Others, however, especially political Christians (and specifically those promoting Christian Nationalism) seem to ignore the Golden Rule. They don't care about humanitarian issues. They claim they either don't exist, aren't the problem of the United States, or are the fault of the victims. They counter with distractions like, "Why do you care so much about THEM when you should be caring about the REAL people who matter?" Sorry, but I don't recall Jesus ever dividing people into those who matter more and those who matter less. Of course, Jesus also said not to j...
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Chunderstruck

Chundering. Is that bad? It doesn't sound good. The base root of the word sounds like "thunder" and the "Chuh" sound at the beginning of the word sounds like "chuck." And that's what the word means -- to chunder is to vomit.  I'm not sure if I've run across this word before, but apparently it is an English word, just more commonly used in Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom than the United States.  Who was doing the chundering? Space X just launched a billionaire and three astronauts into space, and they all experienced space sickness. The article didn't mention anything about chunder bags, but they must have some sort of chunder bag like they do in airplanes, right? It couldn't just be a small paper bag, though, could it? It would need to be a bag designed with "space-age anti-chunder technology." https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/crypto-billionaire-and-3-private-astronauts-launched-to-space-then-the-ch...
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Birthday Massacre on a Weeknight

Wednesday isn't a good night for a concert, but it's been maybe 8 years since I last saw the Birthday Massacre in concert. That show went on until 12:30 in the morning, and as best I remember, they played 21 songs. The concert went on for so long that Linda fell asleep and eventually made her exit back to the car. This show was shorter: 19 songs. It was over by 11:15, but people were already starting to head for the door by 10:30. Just a few, and then a few more, and so on. Did they really have to be somewhere else, or did they simply need to get to bed for an early morning? I like small concerts with bands that a ton of people don't necessarily know or like. The Fine Line has a capacity of maybe 600, and I'd say they almost had that. Most of the people were maybe in their 30s, but it's hard to tell. I did feel like one of the older people there. I basically found a post in the back and stood by it.  Great show. Glad I went. Glad I'm not too old to go to a conce...
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Microblogging? The Future of Writing with ADHD

Bill Bennett is a very common name. Right now, I'm reading a book by the Australian film maker Bill Bennett. He hiked the Camino in 2013 and then wrote a book (and made an Australian movie, not available in the U.S.) about it.  Seems he kept a blog about that hike, too. I went to look for his Camino blog, and found he started one years after the hike, but he didn't post regularly... His last post from 2022 announced his had Parkinson's and had kept the diagnosis secret for 4 years.  Now that almost three years have passed from that post, I wonder what's happened to him.  Blogs are weird. They just sit there. Anyone can stumble upon them, and read them. So I decided to keep looking for his Camino blog.  https://billbennett.blog/home/ *** And I found another Bill Bennett, this one from New Zealand, who keeps a microblog. It's current and updated. "What's a microblog?" My wife asked. Well, I said, it's a small blog. Just a sentence or two for a post. ...
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