[Today’s run: 3.2 miles]<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I ran my third time this week on Friday because I’ll be travelling and unable to run with the crew in Starkville tomorrow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Later …<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is Saturday morning and I’ve made it to Des Moines. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I heard from the home front this morning by phone. I got a report from the Chief Duck Aligner that all is well. I think I’m going to hop in the shower here in a bit and then maybe go out for breakfast with my #1 sister.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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I’ve been enjoying reading articles from two new-form news sources in the last few months. One is The Dispatch, which could be described as conservative pundits of the anti-Trump persuasion, many of whom spent some time at National Review the main example being Jonah Goldberg.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The other is The Free Press, a similar thing but center left-ish and from the New York Times talent pool headed up by Bari Weiss.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Both are on Substack, which seems to be a bloggish web thing with colaboration and commenting… and a subscription\/payment system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Actually, come to think of it, I think The Dispatch has moved off of Substack on to their own site.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I also recently went in for a cheap introductory offer for web access to the NY Times itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So I get four newsy emails a day, some kind of Free Press article, an news summaries from National Review, The Dispatch, and the NYT.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I get National Review and The Atlantic in printed form. And we get in both print and electronic form The Meridian Star newspaper.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I was kind of surprised this week that The Atlantic has had a few articles that weren’t bent completely leftward. One was an approving piece about Mike Pence as a presidential candidate. Another was a piece with a semi-sympathetic light on why people vote for Trump. And there was a piece comparing the economic positions of Mississippi and Great Britain, written by a Brit who now lives in Mississippi.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Atlantic took down their comment system some years ago. So I find myself frustrated that I can’t tell them how wrong they are.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Today’s morning piece from The Free Press was about places that are designated as Dark Sky, where excess light is restricted by local agreement so that the stars can be seen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I watch YouTube a lot. I have a list of car repair and other mechanical things. And recently I’ve seen quite a bit of judges and magistrates who stream their proceedings. That seems to be a thing, particularly in Michigan and Texas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There is a lot of interesting content online.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I have to be pretty vigorous in blocking porn and violence. Every once in awhile I will get something in my Facebook feed or YouTube suggestion list that is an invitation to a porn gateway video. It might be some young golfer girl in a short skirt hitting the ball out of a sand trap. And if you watch that then you’ll start to get “wardrobe malfunction” stuff and I don’t know how far it goes in that direction. Likewise, if I watch a clip of something from one of the John Wick movies or, for example I watched a clip from the newly release Diablo 4 video game, and then a bunch of suggestions pop up for more shoot-em-up and videos of criminal attacks or whatever.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I’m sure there are moral hazards when watching a guy repair a lawn mower (like wasting my life away), but when I’m done I feel like going and working on a lawn mower, which often would be an improvement on my general attitude.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Oh, another thing about the court videos on YouTube, there is a secondary market of people who watch the court live feeds and then compile interesting bits, make commentary, or otherwise do some sort of “value add” repackaging. So you can get that content in various forms. I see that for sports and for some of the political\/social commentary also, the 2nd and 3rd tier repackaging. (Along with the ubiquitous music “reaction” videos where someone will supposedly listen to this genre or era of music for the “first time” and make oooh aaaah noises, which is nice since I can feel superior, like dude, you never heard of Little River Band???)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
(I haven’t heard of any value-add repackaging of CSpan. “And here is Schumer voting to not take a vote on the XYZ bill as a strategy to get it sent off to a committee that only meets on leap years.” But there is a steady flow of congress people grilling hapless witnesses on all sorts of subjects, mostly put out by the congress persons themselves to show they are insightful and probing.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n