Robert Nagle (aka idiotprogrammer)

Of course, the king of fun business reporting has to be Paul Solmon on PBS Newshour. His news reports are not as sleek as the above series, but they are always insightful.

László Krasznahorkai on hope, apocalypse, and his new short story Hari Kunzru interviews the Hungarian novelist László Krasznahorkai.

KRASZNAHORKAI ON UKRAINE CONFLICT: "A dirty, rotten war is unfolding before my eyes...... While a fundamentally twentieth-century war is raging, someone is talking about how we’ll soon be going to Mars. I hope Putin & his sympathizers will be the first passengers." yalereview.org/article/l%C3...

Every pool used to have a diving board. Now they’ve practically disappeared. In this episode, Nora Ali sets out to find out why, from standing on the edge of the tallest dive tower in the Western Hemisphere to digging into the forgotten history of backyard pools and the hidden forces that reshaped A Why America Got Rid of All Its Diving Boards

BUSINESS REPORTING VIDS. I've been enjoying this series of video reports about "fun" business topics. Each vid is about 15 minutes and full of insights about the business aspects of the world.

The 25 Most Influential Magazine Covers of All Time Four editors, a creative director and a visual artist met to debate and discuss the best of print media — and its enduring legacy.

(GIFTED) Here's an absolutely lovely annotated list of the 25 most important/meaningful magazine covers of the last century. Best to read on a laptop or tablet (not a phone)

Bob Dylan received the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature "for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition". Bob Dylan 2016 Nobel Lecture in Literature

Here's a thoughtful & wonderful Nobel Prize acceptance speech by Bob Dylan -- pre-recorded & read aloud by the man himself. In addition to talking about poetry and musical influences, he gave personal accounts of reading Moby Dick, All Quiet on the Western Front & Odyssey.

Authoritarianism Feels Surprisingly Normal—Until It Doesn’t Life in Venezuela was deceptively mundane. Then everything collapsed.

"Living through the rise of a dictatorship just means inhabiting a space that is gradually shrinking. There’s no point in resisting, not at first. You just make do with whatever breathing room you still have—until you lose that too."
Read Gisela Salim-Peyer:
www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

Lunatics: A Novel Lunatics: A Novel - Kindle edition by Denton, Bradley. Download it once and read it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets. Use features like bookmarks, note taking and highlighting while reading Lunatics: A Novel.

50 Cent #ebookdeal_usa This 1996 Humorous SF fantasy novel is about a widowed man who meets a moon goddess of desire (!?). This sci fi author @bradleycdenton.bsky.social lives in Austin, TX. www.amazon.com/Lunatics-Nov...

Freebie by this TX author is a great deal...

Overlooked No More: Valaida Snow, Charismatic ‘Queen of the Trumpet’ (Published 2020)

Better late than never obituary of the jazz age singer-trumpeter Valaida Snow (dubbed "Queen of the Trumpet") www.nytimes.com/2020/02/22/o...

I'm amazed at the # of public figures & ordinary people who continue to use Twitter for postings. That platform has been discredited: overridden with bots, disinfo, unmoderated hate speech & sock puppets. Continuing to post on X is like holding a giant sign that says "I AM TOTALLY CLUELESS."

YouTube video by Gushagi Servant of the people opening Music

Here is that Ukrainian intro sung by Dmytro Shurov of the group Okean Elzy . First season of the show was great, not as impressed with later seasons. www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wy1Z...

Here are my fave sitcom intros. Special kudos go to the Ukrainian SERVANT OF THE PEOPLE -- showing pretend prez Zelenky riding his bicycle to the president's office. Now looks very bittersweet & overrun by circumstances -- a memory of Kiev before the war. www.imaginaryplanet.net/weblogs/idio...

This may be less of a statement of how good the Rabbit sequels are than how mediocre the early Rabbit novels were.

Probably doesn't answer yr ?, but Updike's Rabbit novels get better & richer with each successive volume. Not a sequel per se, but a study of a character over different decades (BTW, brilliant concept!). Early Rabbit bks =so,so, but the older version has richer perspective & insight into aging.

Mike Royko: The Chicago Tribune Collection 1984-1997 ebook by Mike Royko - Rakuten Kobo Read "Mike Royko: The Chicago Tribune Collection 1984-1997" by Mike Royko available from Rakuten Kobo. Mike Royko: The Chicago Tribune Collection 1984–1997 is an expansive new volume of the longtime C...

TWO MILLION WORD EBOOK. This ebook contains ALL of Mike Royko's newspaper columns (which I love). HINT: Kobo lists the word count for all ebooks in its store. www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/...

Great vid. Interesting that the report didn't mention carbon footprint. Any idea how much incentives big techs have to partner w/ renewables? 15 yrs ago, Big Tech was focusing on carbon neutrality & ensuring power sources were clean. IIRC, power centers around VA were pretty dirty emitters.

Worlds Apart: An Anthology of Russian Fantasy and Science Fiction Worlds Apart: An Anthology of Russian Fantasy and Science Fiction - Kindle edition by Levitsky, Alexander. Download it once and read it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets. Use features like bookmarks, note taking and highlighting while reading Worlds Apart: An Anthology of Russian Fantasy and Science Fiction.

GIGANTIC CLASSIC RUSSIAN FANTASY ANTHOLOGY. #ebookdeal_usa $0.50 Selected, translated and edited by a well known Slavic professor, with lots of poetry & unconventional pieces. www.amazon.com/Worlds-Apart...

Interview with the Sphinx

COMIC-CEREBRAL AUDIO PLAY ON SPOTIFY (64 minutes) A decade ago I produced a great audio play by Ohio author Jack Matthews. So cerebral that your mind will explode midway through. Premium Spotify users can listen for free -- FYI I did the intro and the narration. open.spotify.com/show/2UiJ4wv...

How to Listen to Great Music: A Guide to Its History, Culture, and Heart (The Great Courses) How to Listen to Great Music: A Guide to Its History, Culture, and Heart (The Great Courses) - Kindle edition by Greenberg, Robert. Download it once and read it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets. Use features like bookmarks, note taking and highlighting while reading How to Listen to Great Music: A Guide to Its History, Culture, and Heart (The Great Courses).

#ebookdeals_usa Delighted to discover that Robert Greenberg's guide to classical music has finally been discounted to $1.99 . He did some Music Appreciation classes for the Great Courses,which I loved. www.amazon.com/gp/product/B...

FACEBOOK RANT PT 2. Looks like being banned from FB is more common than I thought. www.imaginaryplanet.net/weblogs/idio...

Robert holding a sign saying "Facebook suckws"

I really don't do Facebook that often, but recently when I tried to download my personal data from their export program, they suspended my acct & as part of my appeal, required me to upload a photo of myself. Here is what I uploaded to that #$#$# service.

The 2025 Kukula Award Winners  | Washington Monthly Annual award celebrates nonfiction book reviewing and honors the memory of Kukula Kapoor Glastris, the magazine’s beloved books editor.

AWARD FOR BOOK REVIEWERS (NONFICTION). Reviewing is a thankless and unprofitable art, and we need more ways to recognize them. BTW, @lauramille.bsky.social is one of my favorite book reviewers -- & she reviews both fiction & nonfiction. washingtonmonthly.com/2025/08/20/t...

Here's something I wrote up about books I feel comfortable reviewing. My literary preferences are oddly specific & bizarre, but I'm open to many different kinds of stories -- if only there was enough time to read them all! www.imaginaryplanet.net/weblogs/idio...

Black Deutschland: A Novel Black Deutschland: A Novel - Kindle edition by Pinckney, Darryl. Download it once and read it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets. Use features like bookmarks, note taking and highlighting while reading Black Deutschland: A Novel.

$0.50 novel (2016) #ebookdeal_usa “What Christopher Isherwood did for Weimar Berlin, Darryl Pinckney has done, more profoundly, for Berlin behind the wall.... A beautiful book, witty, sophisticated, and intensely moving.” www.amazon.com/gp/product/B...

COMBATING CLIENT CHANGE DISINFORMATION. This ebook (on sale in USA for $3.64) dissects climate change disinfo & summarizes the latest research in climate change policy & economics. Unusually in-depth for a nonscientist. This was my favorite book I read last year! www.amazon.com/Langu...

Contrarian climate assessment from U.S. government draws swift pushback Researchers say DOE report cherry-picks data to downplay threat of greenhouse gases

Contrarian climate assessment from U.S. government draws swift pushback | Science | AAAS www.science.org/content/arti...

nice article from @voosen.me

$0.50 FUTURISTIC DYSTOPIAN NOVEL. (USA Only) This intriguing novel imagines a future where most humans have died from plague & remaining ones have strange views of the past. Described as "if Blood Meridan, The Road, & Candide had a baby with a tarot deck?" #ebookdeal_usa www.amazon.com/Wonde...

$0.50 ESSAY COLLECTION. Here's a collection of short & random essays by my favorite Romanian-American poet & author. Talk about Eastern Europe, democracy, pop culture, poetry, dadaism, consumerism -- all the usual stuff. (Amazon USA only) www.amazon.com/dp/B0... #ebookdeal_usa

if you took a dementia test and thought it was an IQ test you failed both the dementia test and the IQ test

Flanders Point: A Novel Flanders Point: A Novel - Kindle edition by Gordon, Jacquie. Download it once and read it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets. Use features like bookmarks, note taking and highlighting while reading Flanders Point: A Novel.

$0.50 novel (1997). "Gordon weaves together the interconnecting strands of her novel with understated finesse... she handles the time-honored theme of schoolgirl infatuation with a winning blend of freshness & sophistication." #ebookdeal_usa www.amazon.com/Flanders-Poi...